Check it Out

24. July 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ramble

Terry Teachout has a thought-provoking post. To me anyway.

My thoughts? Well heck … the Giants are playing, it’s the top of the 12th, and you expect me to THINK? Hah!

But I will say this: I don’t think it has to be either/or. I don’t think you “mature” from rock to classical. Shoot. I like our local restaurant’s crabs benedict, but I still like my Cheerios.

I realize that’s not the “all of it”, but what do you expect from a person whose baseball team has one of the worst records in the MLB. Huh? .423 … sigh ….

The Good Musician

24. July 2007 · 2 comments · Categories: Ramble

Over at TGM someone writes 5-Step Guide to a Musician’s Air Travel:

Here are a few cautions you should keep in mind before hading for the airport:

1. Be ready to check in your instrument.

And there you go. This is why it’s “The Good Musician” and not “The Great Musician”. ;-)

Okay, maybe I’m joking. But oboists? Do not “be ready to check in your instrument.” We don’t do that. Ever. But do be ready to check in your reed making equipment. Of course that’s sort of a BigDuh™, right?

And, call me silly, but I can’t imagine any violinist using one of those horrendously expensive instruments being ready to place that fiddle in checked luggage.

Really Weird

24. July 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Links, Listen, sfsymphonybloggers07, Videos

Per Lisa Hirsch’s recommendation, I went to listen to a concert conducted by Alan Gilbert. Stravinsky’s Symphony In Three Movements was the first piece on the program. Symphony Silicon Valley played this just last season, so I’m pretty darn familiar with it. How different, though, to be listening to the “all of it” now, after being so focussed on how I fit in and mostly on my own part when we were working on and performing it.

But THEN … well … as I was listening I was also reading (sorry, folks, I don’t give music my full attention sometimes. I’m bad that way … I hate when I do this, to be honest!) some of my google alerts. And from that I wound up here where I clicked on the thing to watch the San Francisco Symphony blogger event video. Well, of course then I had both the blogger video with lots of chatting AND Stravinsky going on. The weird thing is, they both ended at precisely the same time! Very odd.

Now I’m on to the Mozart Clarinet Concerto. No oboes. Still, it’s a fine piece. Go figure.

It’s So Easy!

24. July 2007 · 2 comments · Categories: Ramble

How To Choose Opera Music

Who’da thunk it?

You Gotta Have A Gimmick

24. July 2007 · 1 comment · Categories: Ramble, You Gotta Be Kidding

The Kentucky Symphony Orchestra is bringing classical music fans and exercise enthusiasts together for the finale of its 2007 Summer Series. Runners will be pitted not against a clock, but rather Beethoven’s fifth symphony.

“Fit as a Fiddle” on Sept. 2 at the Devou Park amphitheater will feature what the orchestra has dubbed the “Beethoven 5-K Run” along with “Sweatin’ to the Symphony,” a circuit training program complete with pilates and yoga led by local professional trainers against a backdrop of classics by Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Bizet, Rossini, Mozart and more.

Because we all know Beethoven’s Fifth can’t stand on it’s own. And of course Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Bizet, Rossini, Mozart can all use a hand too.

Okay, okay, I’m uppity and snobby and all that jazz. But I just don’t like this idea. And I’m sorry they decided to run with it. (Couldn’t resist.)

Thoughts?

24. July 2007 · 3 comments · Categories: Ramble

The company’s heart-rending performance of Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly” proved that opera can be at once high-brow and accessible, technically rigorous and intelligible. No longer would audiences leave the theater marveling at the beauty of the production while puzzling over its plot.

Sporting the daunting mission to keep opera accessible to all, Pocket Opera features no sets, minimal costumes and — most shocking of all to the veteran opera-goer — an English version of the original libretto. The three acts were each preceded by a summary — all in English — of the events that would soon unfold.

Hmmm … I’m not sure I’d appreciate being given a summary prior to each act. To me, opera is so much about the music and even when I don’t understand it all I’m moved.

And why would no sets and minimal costumes make this opera more accessible to all?

Maybe I’m just clueless. (RTWT)

What I Really, Really Want

24. July 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Links, Ramble, Watch

When I go to people’s houses I like to look around. I’m nosey that way. I like to see their art. I like to see their bookshelves. I like to see their CD collection. It gives me a picture, or I pretend it does anyway, of what they are about.

Now some people deliberately choose things, I’m sure, that aren’t really them, but what they want others to think they are. But that’s okay too—that speaks fairly loudly and I can usually figure it out!

(Side note: I remember a man who used to come into Books Inc., where I worked for a time back in the late 70′s/early 80′s. He purchased, I think about every month, but maybe it was every other week, those leather-bound books with gold leaf pages. He didn’t seem to care what the books were, but chose them for how they looked. Ah yes! Books as decoration.)

Anyway, I just watched the first Terry Teachout contentions interview. I enjoyed it, and I’ll watch it again to get more out of it.

(Side note #2: At Terry Teachout’s blog today he uses the phrase “music and the arts” … and yeah, he’s not the only one. So is music not an art? I’m not arguing. Just wondering out loud in print.)

But you wonder (c’mon, you know you do!) what I really want? I want a tour of where he lives.
He showed us a bit of his art. But I want a tour, doggone it!

Yeah. I’m silly that way. I like seeing how folks hang their art, where they store books … oh, you know, shallow things. Shoot, I even like to see what kinds of dishes they use. (But does Mr. Teachout cook? He writes about going out, but I don’t know that I’ve seen him write about cooking!)

Ah well. Enough of that. Go watch the interview. (The interviewer is silent. Was someone really asking those questions, or did Teachout make them up?)

Today I have no HP to read. This means I could actually get things done around here.

WILL I?

Well, you never know ….

HP Over & Out

24. July 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ramble

Whew. Finished. But it’s way past my bedtime and now I’m probably going to struggle to get to sleep.

Loved the book. Guessed a few things. Didn’t guess everything.

Now back to real life.

Tee Hee

23. July 2007 · 2 comments · Categories: Ramble

Lisa Hirsch blogs a non-spoiler comment about Rowling which … well … must mean my blog writing drives her absolutely bonkers! ;-)

I’d feel bad but … to be honest … I consider myself to be the Queen of Ellipses.

Now I’m off to read … you guessed it … The Book.

Hmmm … Maybe This is the Guy?

23. July 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ramble, sfsymphonybloggers07

I wonder if this is the guy who was in our row at the Symphony concert. (If his concert-mate was sometimes sketching or writing in a small book, then I’ve got the right man. I couldn’t really see what she was doing—it seemed rude to look. And yes, sketching or journaling isn’t entirely unheard of at concerts. We used to have a woman at Opera San José who would come down to the pit to sketch us and then, sometimes, hand us the pictures. For some reason, though, I was always irked by that. I have no good reason to be, I know. Maybe it was just that the pictures were not very good at all. Sigh. I’m such a snob!)

So the blogs keep rolling in. And again his is a positive experience blog entry.

Okay. Enough of my ramble. Errands are calling. Later I think I’ll write a bit about “When Students Quit”. (Because, yes, a student quit yesterday. And another quit last week. And yes, my feelings do get hurt. More later. Stay tuned.)

MQOD

23. July 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ramble

Haughty love is worse than nerdy love, though, and it spreads through the apparatus of the classical world, sometimes through maestros pontificating and glorifying on PBS specials, sometimes through critics who adore to condescend, etc. etc. Everyone is guilty; I am terribly guilty; there are so many lurking clichés. All so well-intentioned, like a benevolent squadron of embalmers. So hard to speak of our music in the present tense!

-Jeremy Denk (RTWT)

(The ever-poetic Mr. Denk!)

Stuffy. Again.

22. July 2007 · 2 comments · Categories: Ramble, sfsymphonybloggers07

The stuffiness of the setting put me off, a stuffiness you could feel even over the TV and radio, when concerts were broadcast. I really do believe something has to be done about this. The snobs and the squares are keeping the rest of us away.

Read here.

Okay. Whatever. I’m a snob. I’m a square. And I’m old, too. :-)

Should we change our demeanor for those non-snobs and non-squares? How do I become a non-snob and non-square? Or is it too late?

I am uncomfortable at the non-classical concerts. So there you go. I am uncomfortable at jazz events because you are supposed to clap when someone solos and I find it disruptive but if I don’t do it I look uptight (which I probably am; I’m an oboe player, after all). I’ve played rock shows, and I’m uncomfortable with all the “show stuff” that goes on.

Or maybe I’m just totally defensive. I dunno.

But the writer of the above quote isn’t dissing classical music. The writer is actually getting into it. So how to deal with that? Change how we do everything? I wonder. (And since I’m uncomfortable with the clapping during jazz, would they change that for me? Oh. Wait. I’m 50. They won’t change for me. ;-)

I’m just kind of being silly here, I know. But really … what do we dump? (Someone please dump the tails! That I’ll go for!) What do we keep? Should we add colored lights to the performance, as San Francisco Symphony did at last week’s concert? (I was very distracted by it, actually! Why “blue” for R&J, red for Don Juan, and a yellowish orange for Rachmaninoff. What did the colors mean? I kept trying to figure it out!)

Ramble, ramble … time to get back to HP since Jameson is releasing into my care for a while!

The Blogs Continue

22. July 2007 · 2 comments · Categories: Ramble, sfsymphonybloggers07

I was surprised to find this new post about the San Francisco Symphony blogger event. I guess I was wrong when I said I thought the last of the blogs had appeared. I don’t believe the people we sat next to ever blogged (I believe it was just the man who had a blog, and the woman came along for the ride.), so maybe there will even be more. Who knows?

If I don’t blog within two days about an event, you can pretty much bet I’m not going to. I’m just that way.

So far I think only one other blogger is a musician; I’m finding it interesting to read all the bloggers’ opinions about the concert. They are all quite positive about the experience. I’m absolutely fine with that. The symphony I was in for 27 years folded (San Jose Symphony RIP). Yes, I’m in a new one now, but there isn’t nearly as much work. If we can get more people in the hall, I’m all for it! Now what I’d like to see is if these bloggers ever buy a ticket and attend another symphony concert. Guess I’ll have to bookmark all of them and see, yes?

What to do? What to do?

22. July 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ramble

… and why am I never asked to pull out the oboe reed and toot a tune, huh?

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Can you give some advice to a professional opera singer who is frequently asked to give impromptu performances at social gatherings?

For the answer you’ll have to go here. (I’m not sure about the legality of posting the entire question and answer.)

Napa, We Have A Problem

22. July 2007 · 2 comments · Categories: Ramble, You Gotta Be Kidding

Maybe it was just too much wine.

“As if that wasn’t enough, the pianist returned following intermission to perform Beethoven’s final piano concerto, “No 32 in C Minor (Op. 111).”"

Read here.

… now, I’m guessing a good number of you will see what I’m laughing about, yes? I saw this first at the well tempered blog. (Hmmm. Are you still well tempered after reading that article?)

I also laughed when I read “As beads of sweat bounced off his forehead…”. Um. Right. Beads of sweat bouncing, visible from the audience, and worth mentioning.

Or not.

Anyway, reviews. They can be very odd.

But really … concerto … sonata … big diff, right? They’re all just “songs” if you ask most folks. ;-)

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