Oh dear, oh dear … the Met has Mice. Yikes.
During an April 9 restaurant inspection at the Met, the department found “evidence of mice or live mice present in facility’s food and/or nonfood areas,” according to reports on the department’s Web site.
And now, as promised, the meeces …
I received an email yesterday from a former student. The person had attended a Beauty and the Beast performance and had wondered if I’d be playing. BUT … the oboe “didn’t sound like you”. Seeing my name in the program the student decided I must have played English horn.
Well, I played both, of course.
Now how to interpret that?
Either I sounded so bad on oboe the student couldn’t believe it was me, or the oboe sounded better than the student thinks I sound …?
I, of course, go with the former.
It’s sort of like a person saying, “Hey, I thought you were in front of me at the mall yesterday, only the person was too fat to be you!” … and you were at the mall. You know?
Yes, I tend to take things in the negative. I’m an oboist, after all!
But anyway, it was a weird email to get, and I did write back to say, “Hmmm. What does that mean?” or some such thing.
How old were you when you mother enrolled you in the music program for inner-city kids?
I think I was eight or nine. By the way, I also played the oboe and the clarinet.
Really
It was nothing to brag about Funny story: I practiced on the oboe every single day but no matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t get it. When I finally returned the instrument I learned that it was defective, it didn’t work … there was something wrong with the keys! Anyway, I never got a second whack at it!
(Read here)
I can’t tell you how many students come into my studio with horrendous instruments! This is why I now require students to get a better instrument within two months of starting up with me … if not sooner!
There’s a documentary of the making of Dr. Atomic, called Wonders Are Many. I was looking at the site to see if this was using the San Francisco Opera production. (What else would it use, eh?) It appears to be the case, but I couldn’t find a place that gave the San Francisco Opera orchestra any mention at all. I hope I’m just missing it. (That’s easy for me to do.) It would be a shame not to mention the orchestra, don’t you think?
The Right Rite? Or the Wrong Rite? You tell me! ;-)
Sacrebleu!
This was the kind of work that inspires me beyond words – it is CREATIVE and INTENSE with the highest standards of musical values – not simply to dazzle or impress – but instead calling on all these qualities to work together to build up something honest and living that may just have the chance to touch people. It’s the kind of work that fills me with joy and inspiration.
-Joyce DiDonato
I read the above here. Ms. DiDonato’s blog is wonderful.
Out West Arts recently blogged about “L. A. Phil” I thought he was referring to a person. You know? Sort of like the groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil. Sigh.
And that’s all. Except to say, “Man, he gets to go to a lot of concerts. In a lot of places.”
Oh … and they aren’t all out west, either. He’s going to New York. And Paris and Amsterdam. And he’ll hear the ever grateful Joyce DiDonato as Romeo. I’m jealous, even if I am a hermit of sorts.
Suffering from high blood pressure? Well then all you need to do is listen to just 30 minutes of rhythmically homogeneous music every day. Researchers at the American Society of Hypertension’s Twenty Third Annual Scientific Meeting and Exposition (ASH 2008) reported that patients with mild hypertension who listened to just half an hour of classical, Celtic or raga music a day for four weeks experienced significant reductions in 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure (ABP).
(RTWT)
Oh goody! I’m going to go put on some Stravinsky to lower my blood pressure. We are doing Rite of Spring next week, so it would benefit me in two ways; studying the work and lower my bp.
Um … yes indeed, all classical music is “rhythmically homogeneous”.
Oh wait. Maybe they are actually referring to the classical era in this article (for once)? Could it be?
Truth be told, I don’t need to lower my blood pressure; I’m blessed with low blood pressure. So never mind that.
In other news … I woke up, got out of bed, went to the family room couch, put up two blog entries, the latter about being tired, and proceeded to fall asleep. I only finally got out of my robe at about 10:00. Tiredness has, indeed, invaded this body. This isn’t atypical of the DayAfterTheRun. It’s just that I’m caught off guard each time. Because I’m slow to learn. I’m finally having my cup of coffee now, so maybe I’ll get a little spurt of energy after that.
Or maybe I’ll take another nap.
I woke up at a fairly decent time considering the fact that I did a four show weekend. But now I’m on the couch and thinking I just might fall back asleep. I’m really exhausted, and it’s just hitting me hard.
Ah well. I do have things to do, but maybe one more hour of sleep …?
Jason Heath blogs about conductors speaking at concerts.
Sometimes they drive me nuts, sometimes not. It is dependent on who is doing the talking. Some have the gift. Some do not. Most who do not have the gift haven’t a clue that they don’t. But, for the most part, I’m really not into of talking before a concert—whether it is done by a conductor or someone else I find it a distraction, and sometimes it feels a bit like being back at an elementary school concert or something. But I guess audiences like it. Or so I’ve been told.
Anyway, read Jason’s post and answer his question. If you want to.
In other news … it’s Memorial Day here in the US. Most people don’t work, but I’ll still teach my students. I’ve had to cancel too many students recently due to jobs that conflicted with lesson times, so I really didn’t want to cancel more. So there you go. Work continues.
I’m tired, and I think I’m feeling the start of the day-after burnout and emptiness.
This was a fun run, even being the reed eater that it was. I think the audiences enjoyed it, for the most part. (I did read one negative review at All That Chat, but oh well!
One thing that I found annoying after a while were the words for the sake of rhyme or filler. They were so unnecessary for what they said. They were merely there.
Here’s a simple example:
Oh, isn’t this amazing?
It’s my fav’rite part because you’ll see
Here’s where she meets Prince Charming
But she won’t discover that it’s him ’til chapter three
In line two the “you’ll see” is entirely unnecessary except for the music and rhyme.
I guess that’s not unusual. I just kept thinking, “Surely they could have thought of something that had more reason to be there?” But yes, I’m silly to even complain about that. Right?
So … the show was fun. I had some enjoyable solos. I think I’ll even miss it a bit.
I read a couple of things recently that made me smile. Or laugh.
Finally … Lego Tosca (there are more videos, but here is Act 1, Scene 1):
… and now I must get ready for the final two performances of Beauty & The Beast. I’ll probably miss this just a bit, but I have to confess it was tiring and I’m ready for a break.
Because the Giants game has been delayed due to rain, they put some science & sports thing on. They are talking about distractions. First they had a basketball player shoot some free throws with no distractions. He got 9/10. Then they had “visual distractions” (but with a lot of noise) and he didn’t do as well. Now they are doing the “ear attack” which, I guess, will be even noisier than the visual ones. I’m guessing that will be the worst.
But what I thought, right after the “proved” that the visual distractions were bad, was about the order. What if they go back to no distractions now? Could it also be that the guy is just tiring? Would he still nail 9/10? I wonder if they should do the experiment over a number of days, changing the order each time.
I found the experiment interesting because we have to deal with distractions in the music world too. not like crowd noise, of course, but when we are working with the backdrop of silence even a small noise is heard and can be found distracting. The thing is, we just have to deal.
I do remember when a fellow oboist was playing an outdoor concert and I heard this, “Oh no!” or some sort of comment from my side, and looked over at the oboist and a fly was climbing up her face.
Now that is distracting! And icky too.
And yes, the audio distractions were the worst. But they were also last. He’d already tossed the ball 20 times.
So let’s see … we have low Bb attacks … they run this experiment on US … would we be tired by that 21st low Bb?
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I just don’t get it. I’m no scientist! :-)
(And give me back my Giants game!)
Well, okay then ….
But, clowning around a bit more:
Cannon plays the contra monster, a leather bassoon played with a crook and double reed. It has an in-built control panel to allow her to guide the electronic effects.
(Sorry, I still can’t put pictures up here for some reason. Sigh. So check out this link.)
Not an oboe player? Shop Sheet Music Plus and see what you find!
Or just shop Amazon.com
