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)

So I’ve sometimes described oboe as an instrument that sounds sort of like a “snake charmer”. But … well … WORMS? Hmmmm.

Anywhere else and this would have looked strange, but here it’s all part of the worm charming repertoire. People playing the oboe, or jumping around on a board was commonplace. If only I had [...]

… and it’s edible too.
See here and here.

Anyone live near Nashville? If so, head on down to the Nashville Symphony ticket office tomorrow and you could get yourself some $15 tickets to Thursday night performances.
Read the blurb right here, or read this cut & paste of the majority of the news:

Interested in getting concert tickets this season and you aren’t a season [...]

I just read this site that suggests that musicians should run world governments.
The idea is that music unites. We musicians … well, we are all just peace loving creatures, right?
Well. Sometimes. But I’ll tell you, I’ve seen and heard some mighty big fights between musicians, and I know of at least one musician that [...]

Audiences are rarely on the same wavelength as performers. In fact, two very different things are going on at once. The musician is wondering how to get from the second eight bars into the bridge, and the audience is in pursuit of emotional energy. The musician is struggling, and the audience is making up dreamlike [...]

In a live concert directed by the American conductor Paul Henry Smith the “Vienna Symphony Orchestra” — in the shape of the well-known Vienna Symphonic Library VSL — will play symphonies by Ludwig van Beethoven. The stage will feature not a single instrument or musician; all sounds will be generated by a PC, which will [...]

“Orchestras are very busy,” Puts said. “It’s all business. And music isn’t going to sound as good if it’s too hard to put together fast.”
Hmm. So are composers supposed to write simple stuff so we play it well? How discouraging.
Read here.

I couldn’t play guitar for a few months, so I just started studying music again. I started working on (the symphony), and I learned very quickly that there were a lo of gaps in my musical knowledge.

-Mike Einziger (from the rock band Incubus)

I like this. I like that he admits he didn’t know everything. And [...]

I understood very little of Bart Schneemann’s conversation here, but I did understand this bit (only because it was in English!):

Conductor (I think): Yes Bart, there is a little problem for tonight.
BS: Is it a big problem?
C: Mmmmm. Yes. It’s quite a big problem.
BS: What is the problem? Is it a problem with the concert [...]

I’m debating (with myself; I don’t debate others, because I’m the wimpiest of wimps when it comes to confrontation and argument). Should I continue with my Muso subscription?
I subscribed just this past year. It’s easy reading. It’s good pit material because there’s nothing heavy in it. There are only beautiful people pictured except when [...]