oboeinsight

Okay, okay, that was pretty bad. But can you imagine doing opera … from canoes?
(And have you ever thought about what a weird word “canoe” is?)

It has a tragic ending which is often hard to sell to producers in movies, but in opera they seem to love it.

-Bruce Beresford

RTWT

Thanks to Twang Twang Twang (Helen Radice) I have now read this poem.
Maybe you should too?

I have a big CD collection, so I’ve had the capacity for listening to a wide range of music in the car at high quality for some time; but it’s so much work to pick out a CD, get it to the car, put it in the player. Laziness.
RTWT
I, too, have a large CD collection. [...]

She added that she found it unlikely that aspiring gang members would want to hang around an outdoor spot that plays “uncool” music.
“I don’t think classical music is a type that corresponds with criminal behavior,” she said.
And I was feeling so darn cool before I read this. Not only that, but I had these plans, [...]

Bolcom sees a danger of the computer replacing the composer’s imagination instead of sparking it. He tells of visiting Igor Stravinsky and finding that he had dampened his piano strings with cloth: “He’d play and the note would just be this ‘plink,’ and in his mind, he would assign the shape and the color of [...]

We tune because you care.

-Herb Pederson (bluegrass musician)

I’m watching a Volkwagen ad and they are just so cool and, well, don’tcha just want to buy one because of their wonderful ads and, after all, they are the people’s car, right?
But I read this and it just ticks me off. You’d think Volkwagen could do better by the people who’d possibly buy their [...]

So a poster for the Tim Burton Sweeney Todd movie is out. I’m still reserving judgment. I’m a Depp fan, to be sure. I just have a difficult time seeing him in this role, and I’m not at all sure about that streak in his hair.
But after yakking about that here at home I [...]

Yep, I said “tailgate.” Not sure if it’s true, but let’s say it anyway — The Santa Fe Opera is the only opera in the world with bona fide tailgating.
Here’s how it works:
Opera-goers arrive at least 2 hours before the performance, park their cars, and commence setting up the most elaborate feasts in the parking [...]

Okay … if you don’t know the movie that wasn’t even close to funny. Even if you do it’s probably not close to funny. Whatever. I’m just an oboe player. What do I know? ;-)
But I just read this:

Slatkin was entirely at ease on the podium, leaning back at times, his left toe raised.
Now I [...]

If music were to assume human form and explain its essence, it may say something like this: “…I love the vast surface of silence; and it is my chief delight to break it.”

- Carl Nielsen

Put simply, the fourth movement of Beethoven’s 9th rocks.

-Sean O’Hagan (RTWT)

I reader emailed me to ask about the situation between the players in the oboe section; if the principal doesn’t play for a set, who moves up? Does the English horn (often also considered a solo position although, I’m sorry to say, never in the orchestras I’ve been in) player move up first? Does the [...]

I’ll never leave. I don’t get there often enough, but it is where my pianos are and my library. It’s where I go to study scores. Maybe it’s not the most practical way to live, but I’m still a Californian.

-Kent Nagano (read here)