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?)

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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

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 [...]