In response to In Other News Jill wrote, “Well, I am impressed! Seems like I only do housework to get out of practicing these days.”
Um. Blush. Well, yes.
Why do you think I got so much housework done? That was all BEFORE the reed work. ;-)
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Busy day. This headache better go away. NOW.
Planning on living the life of a musician? Think you have what it takes? And do you understand how few get the Big Gig that will pay for a “normal” life. (Okay, so no musician ever really lives a normal life … when you lose most weekends and a lot of evenings normal doesn’t happen.) Do you realize you may live your entire life as a freelance musician? It isn’t that you aren’t good enough … there are only so many jobs, there are only so many auditions, and you have about 10 minutes to prove that you are the best. Sometimes the best isn’t the best that day. Sometimes the best doesn’t audition as well. Sometimes it just doesn’t happen.
So be prepared.
Read Jason Heath’s blog. He has covered it all. He’s done it all. Heck, he’s even watched a car burn up. The guy has lived the musician’s life, believe me.
And he has very good things to say about how he survives in the crazy music biz.
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Or … more importantly to this oboist … Do you hear the musicians play?
Because we aren’t being hired as much these days. For shows like Les Misérables (for those of you not in the know, that’s where the subject title comes from), the large pit orchestra has gotten smaller since it was first performed. Reduced orchestration. It’s the thing to do. Sometimes. For other shows, things like the virtual orchestra has replaced instrumentalists. The legitimate, if frustrating, smaller pit bands are there because composers are writing for smaller and smaller groups. They have to … to get performed. It’s all about money, folks.
But the reduced orchestras and the fake orchestras … sigh … what can ya do?
I just wonder if audiences care. Or even notice. How tuned in are audience members?
When Jameson and I went to CATS a few years back, the pit band consisted of three keyboard players and a rhythm section. I couldn’t believe how abominable the music was (but then that show isn’t particularly wonderful anyway). But the rest of the audience? They were on their feet at the end. I heard no complaints.
Read Theater’s Alive With the Sound of Laptops here.
Update
And yes, as Deceptively Simple points out, the article isn’t exactly poifect … as he quotes:
„Technology is always a threat to live music,‰ said Bruce Pomahac, director of music at Rodgers & Hammerstein. „When the pianoforte replaced the harpsichord, every harpsichordist was out of a job.”
Heh.
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The rehearsal space of Baghdad’s Symphony Orchestra is in the capital’s largely Shiite Shaab district. Hassam al-Din al-Ansari, aged 64, the orchestra’s composer and principal violinist, is in his office tuning his violin and improvising little arpeggios as he does. Like most in the orchestra before the invasion, he sustained his poorly paid musical career with another job, in al-Ansari’s case as a deputy manager in the Ministry of Industry.
It is an oppressive day late in September 2006. The electricity, inevitably, is down. It has been out for 40 hours, one of the musicians complains. Without a generator to light and cool the theatre, the musicians arriving to warm up before rehearsing find themselves on a stage playing in a stifling gloom peering at scores lit only by a distant skylight. In the heat, the stage smells of sweat and dust and resin.
When it becomes too dark, the musicians abandon their efforts to use the stage and cram into the kitchen, which has windows on two sides. It is instantly a pick-a-stick of competing elbows, bows, flutes, music stands, cellos and French horns.
“We are challenging the situation,” al-Ansari says with a sigh, “by trying to not be too far from the public. We are trying to put on a concert every month, but circumstances are very difficult.”
So the performances that the orchestra do put on are private and rarefied, little events for a small audience who do not have to travel very far or have their own security, and put on mainly at the city’s two subscription-only “country clubs”. Other events are by invitation only, for government officials and diplomats from the Green Zone. Even Iraq’s music has become gated.
The difficulties in assembling the musicians for rehearsal have led to another kind of fragmentation: of the very music itself. Complicated symphonies, al-Ansari admits, are too difficult to prepare, especially with no certainty that all the musicians will be able to appear. Instead, their performances are dominated by overtures, fragments of larger works and short pieces – Rossini, Tchaikovsky and Dvorak. The war, too, has forced the orchestra to break into smaller units, ad hoc chamber ensembles more easy to assemble and to perform around the city when they can.
“We could just stop work. We could submit,” says al-Ansari, “but we are determined to challenge the times we live in and to do our best. In the 1950s, we used to get a lot of Russian films in Iraq. We were just talking about this a quarter of an hour ago … there was a film from the Second World War, from the battle of Leningrad, about the orchestra there that continued broadcasting on the radio through the German attack. The film showed different players and how they came to the concert and the difficulties they had because of the fighting. I feel,” he says with a sad resignation, “we are living that old film.
“It took me three hours to reach the concert that we held last Sunday. There was an IED [Improvised Explosive Device] on the road that held me up. Some of the players could not make it at all. We feel like we are battling in our own war.”
Throughout Iraq’s collapse into violence, al-Ansari has continued with his compositions, including one for oboe, two violins, viola and cello called, without irony, The Good Land. It is about Iraq. “This is still a good land,” he insists. He pauses for a moment of further consideration. “Maybe the land is good,” he adds, “but sometimes the people are not good … ”
The article deals with more than this; I thought this part might interest enough readers to get you all to check out the whole thing.
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The moment I realized I didn’t have to major in music in order to play, it was like a blinding light shining down.
-Eve Cohen
This is from Blair Tindall’s latest article.
There are alternatives to going into music professionally. You don’t have to quit music entirely. And that’s a good thing, don’t you think?
I’ve coached a few times for the Chamber Musicians of Northern California (members of the larger Amateur Chamber Music Players) and some of the players were very, very good. In addition, they love to play, and you don’t hear whining.
Even from the oboists. :-)
And now I must get to practicing. Without whining.
Rats.
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Here are two blogs I just now found that have black backgrounds and white letters.
I think I might like the blogs, but I can’t read them because my darn eyes go all wacky after reading white on black.
Rats.
I know I’ve read other blogs where the writer says he/she finds it easier to read white on black … so I wonder why it’s difficult for me to deal with this. Anyone else have this problem?
The jury is out on this piece. I just don’t know about it. Of course, I’m the next to the most severe critic of my music, the most severe being my son. I like parts of it very, very much. Other things in it I’m unconvinced by. I shouldn’t be giving myself bad press, but I’m being very honest. …
-John Adams (talking about his work, On the Transmigration of Souls)
Interview here.
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You know how some clothes are … they swish when you walk? They look good, but that sound. Ugh. Not as bad as squeaky shoes (at least not to me) but still ….
Anyway (without the “s” … why do so many people type “anyways”?) I do know what Jason Heath meant, but when I read, “Listen to James Levine conduct Fidelio online,” at his blog I laughed because I got an image … um, no … a sound in my head. A swishy sound. I didn’t hear an orchestra. I only heard swishes.
I wonder if conductors think about clothing and noise, or if that’s not an issue. I guess I’ve never seen Levine—or any other conductor—wearing taffeta. Good thing, no?
Of course if you look at the picture at Jason’s site it does appear that Levine is singing. Hmmm.
(Oh, and Jason, I’m really not mocking you. Just goofing off. Because I can. ;-)
Tomorrow we begin rehearsals for performances on Thursday, Saturday and the following Sunday. We’re playing Verdi’s Requiem and William Boughton is conducting. The Merc has a Richard Scheinin interview with him in the paper today.
I’m looking forward to working with Maestro Boughton again. He isn’t one to flatter us, but he speaks plainly, he is demanding, and asks us to play well. That’s fine by me. I don’t care for the wacky, screaming, “You can do nothing right,” conductors, but I also think the “Oh you are so great!” conductors can take a hike. There is always something to work on. There is always something that can be played better. I appreciate good direction from good conductors.
The Reqiuem sometimes makes me squirm a little; it’s so operatic and sometimes … well … oh this is sad, I’m sure … it makes me laugh. Just a little laugh, mind you, but I feel as if we are in the middle of a Verdi opera.
Hmmm. Maybe we are?
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Ask classical-music buffs to choose a single favorite masterpiece and chances are that their selections will share a discomforting trait — all will be at least 100 years old. My pick, though, comes from the heart of the past century. It’s a work of internal perfection, startling elegance and vast philosophical import that opens as wide a window to eternity as any venerable favorite by Bach, Mozart or Beethoven.
The full impact of John Cage (1912-92) upon modern aesthetics has yet to be grasped, and he still has more detractors than fans. Yet even his most vehement critics must concede …
This is the begininng of a Wall Street Journal article. I’ve not read the rest because I don’t subscribe to WSJ.
Now my choice would not be John Cage, but it wouldn’t be Bach, Mozart or Beethoven either. (Not that I don’t love those composers, because I certainly do!) Nope. I’d go for Ravel, I think. Or Mahler. Or Sibelius. Granted, they aren’t totally recent works either, but they aren’t quite 100 years old. Yet.
But, in reality, I couldn’t choose one favorite work. It just doesn’t work that way for me. At least let me make a list of 10. Or 50. Or 100. Please.
Too Many Cooks?
Under the direction of conductor Christopher Johnston, the Symphony Orchestra premieres Suite for Electric Guitar and Orchestra, composed by eight Fairfax Academy for Communication and the Arts students.
Wow. Eight students compose one work? Wish they’d make me reeds instead.
I’ll happily play a plastic reed when someone can make it work. So far that hasn’t happened and they’ve been pushing these things for a very long time. (I was handed one when I began oboe, and that was close to 40 years ago.)
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Then watch this. I’m not quite sure what to make of it, but you might find it tasty. ;-)
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Price reduction for Verdi’s Requiem tickets. If you sing in a choir. That is part of the Catholic Church.
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