You have all the freedom on the world on the holodeck.
-Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg
I’m guessing she’d love that captain title I just gave her, eh? I always get a kick out of reading what famous musicians enjoy outside of the music thing.
(RTWT)
So here’s a problem for an opera company: Lead singer gets sick. The cover can’t sing that night. Major phoning goes on. Singer located. New singer arrives after a messy bit of travel woes. New singer finds out that the version is different than he thought. He can sing some of it in German. Some [...]
Yeah. The concert is over. That’s it. All that work, and then … there’s just this hollow feeling. When rehearsing—especially with a difficult program like the one we just finished—there’s a part of me just aching to be done. When I’m done I’m aching to be playing it just one more time. Go figure. I [...]
but if you go here you can listen to podcasts with David Amram. Episodes 10 and 11 are the Amram ones.
I’ll be playing his new work in about 2 hours or so.
Boring NonOboeNews (NON, for short):
I wasn’t up at 2:00 AM!
I was only up at 3:30 AM.
Sigh.
Okay … enough whining about that. I did decide to turn my alarm clock off. I slept until Dan woke me at something like 9:30. So at least I slept. Just not when I wanted to.
Thinking …
I am [...]
I got home about 30 minutes ago. After the concert there was a little shindig; it was opening night, after all.
About the Concert: I didn’t embarrass myself. I didn’t play absolutely perfectly. (Truthfully, there was only one thing that I think I was annoyed about that I did.) But I think there were some things [...]
This morning was spent teaching. Tonight will be spent performing. This afternoon is being spent taking it easy.
Sleeping is still not going well for yours truly. Not only am I experiencing RLS (restless leg syndrome) but now I feel as if someone is sticking pins in me.
Hmmm. Anyone has some doll in my likeness [...]
We had our dress rehearsal tonight. That’s a LOT of tough music to play, to be sure. And now I’m exhausted. So perhaps I’ll sleep tonight. I can hope … and perhaps I can dream, too. Last night was one horrendous night, so nothing will beat that one. (I had blood work done yesterday. It [...]
Three of the four also are women, a fact that Larionoff finds purely coincidental.
“The concertmaster job is genderless,” she explains. “Gender has nothing to do with leadership.”
Larionoff says that Kavafian and she share another element besides the concertmaster chair: a passion for shopping.
“The Consumer Spending Index rose last week when Ani was here,” she jokes. [...]
It wasn’t until after the intermission that Alagna started reverting to a reoccurring issue that peppered Acts I-III: Sharping. Scattered through Act I, II, and III, he would at times rise-up to a sharp landing. By the second half, he was ####’ing all over tha ##ing place. Roberto Alagna? More like Al Sharpton. It was [...]
A couple of years ago. And one of the reasons is because of my love and my family’s love for “Appalachian Spring.” There are certain pieces that capture a time and an emotion, and sometimes it’s only classical music that can do that. And there’s just nothing like “Appalachian Spring.” I thought, “That’s like our [...]
You keep on trying to improve, and that has a wonderful, medicinal effect of being anti-aging. When you have a real crowded schedule, there’s no time to grow old. To put it in the vernacular, you just keep bopping til you drop.
-David Amram (RTWT)
CSI New York: the poor victim was stuck in at timpani. Who’d a thunk it?
In other news … I’m just home from the symphony rehearsal. My mouth is tired! Opera might be 3 hours long or so, but a symphony rehearsal of 2 1/2 hours always seems to require more playing. We have a [...]
Today: SCU faculty recital at noon (no, I’m not playing, but I think I should go and hear my colleagues, don’t you?). Two symphony rehearsals. With a (yum!) nice (free!) dinner in between. We’ll begin the afternoon rehearsal with Beethoven 6th, move to Amram, and get to the Janacek in the evening. Lots of notes. [...]
“… the finest left hand technique since Franz von Biber.”
I just heard a “cellist” (actress, really) say this in a Bones episode. (Okay, I’m watching this show that doesn’t thrill me … but mostly I’m just waiting for House. Really!)
So I had to look up the name Franz von Biber. Did they mean this [...]
I spent the entire day at UCSC. It was one long day, but an enjoyable one as well. For some reason I saw only one oboist … where are you others?! (But Becky, you sounded wonderful and your orchestra audition was quite good!)
The campus was lovely, as always, and I saw more deer today [...]
So Pittsburgh artists, including musicians, can get blessed tomorrow. What with the internet and all can’t they do some sort of live webcast and bless the rest of us as well? Does it work that way? I know next to nothing about the Anglican church and the blessing of various things. (I think I’d like [...]
We finished up the run of Lucia di Lammermoor this afternoon. I really do think this was one of our best runs. Maybe I’m wrong (Who? Me?), but it just felt right, the singers were strong, and, well, I had fun! (It is about the oboe, right?) Our audiences were all enthusiastic … more than [...]
“I’ve been dreaming of this my whole life,” said pianist Zuhal Sultan, 16, one of 10 students who fill in during rehearsals because of the difficulty of getting all 70 musicians to central Baghdad for the Saturday and Tuesday sessions.
She lost her parents in the last four years, one to violence, one to illness. Her [...]
Clapping: The protocol is that you do not clap during a full performance of a multi-movement piece, such as a symphony or concerto, until the work is completely finished. The logic is that applause breaks the audience and musicians’ concentration.
This is the classical concert convention I would most like to see drop-kicked out of the [...]
I just found this site, by and about Pedro Díaz. He is the solo English hornist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. The site includes a page of tips for the English hornist. Pretty cool.
Mr. Díaz corresponded with me at one point some time ago. He was very kind and polite, and I was impressed, as [...]
I have a very, very deep love for Broadway musicals, and I’m a big jazz lover, a big-band lover, I like contemporary classical works.
-Alf Clausen (RTWT)
… and you can tell all of this if you listen to the music on The Simpsons.
I don’t often watch the show any more—maybe it has something to [...]
“It’s very dark,” he says. “It’s war. Is there anything worse?”
RTWT
(Reminder to self: Two ps, one m, two ts. Question to self: Do I need an apostrophe before the s?)
We won’t be at opening night, but we will be at one of the performances. I’m quite excited about this!
Mr. Mortier is confident that he can win New Yorkers to 20th-century material. In Paris, he said, he often gives introductory talks in the lobby 45 minutes before the curtain, to whoever wants to listen, and he plans to do the same in New York. “Everyone can love Stravinsky and Janácek,” he said. “When you [...]
Yes, the note came out in the little mini-solo moment. I didn’t leave my bassoon playing pal alone this time. I still haven’t a clue what happened the other night when the C# just wasn’t there. It’s a puzzlement. But whatever.
So one performance of Lucia to go, and then I move on to Symphony Silicon [...]
