… but not really “pretty”. If you know what I mean.
Now when they get a computer to make a good oboe reed I’ll be mightily impressed.
Of course if they got a computer to play an oboe I’d be somewhat impressed as well. ;-)
I had to wear trousers, learn to tie a bow tie, and pin my hair up so short that it looked as if I didn’t’t have any hair…..but the orchestra did not have an oboist and I was their only hope at the time……which lasted for years! As a matter of fact, on the set of “Gone with the Wind”, there were 50 musicians…and only 3 were women….one of which was me!! I signed my first contract when I was 19 years old.
-Liliane Covington
(RTWT)
If Kimberly Preiss has her way, she’ll never have to work a day in her life.
“I never want to have a job,” said the 18-year-old Niceville resident.
Although the budding oboist spends countless hours practicing and cultivating her craft, Preiss doesn’t consider playing music a job.
Well, yes. Ms. Preiss isn’t the only one who doesn’t think what we do is a job.
They also think we should do it for free and have a “real job”.
I understand how she feels, but what we do is work. Honest. Just because we enjoy it (most of the time), and because we use the verb “play”, so many think we aren’t working. We are just goofing off. Having fun.
Oh well. This will always be a problem.
I wonder … if someone monitored us during a performance — if we were hooked up to something that would be scanning (?) our brains and monitored our heart rate — would a reader of that information know we were just goofing off? Would what is read look like a person at play or a person at work? I really do wonder about that. Has this been done? Anyone know?
(I found the article here. Video.)
I have been a subscriber to the National Symphony Orchestra for more than 10 years, and I’ve been going to many other performances at the Kennedy Center ever since coming to Washington 44 years ago. But I am not going to renew our NSO subscription this year.
So what would cause you to stop attending symphony concerts? Huh? Do tell!
I was rather skeptical, but I do like this arrangement. Sounds like a challenge, though.
Maybe I’ll comment later … I have to teach soon so I can’t now. Or maybe I’ll just leave it here (more likely).
TTYL!
“If you have a deceptive cadence be sure to raise your eyebrows. Then everybody will know.”
A personal peeve is the ridiculously high horn writing in almost all of the finalists’ scores. But who is to blame them? A computerized horn can hit a hundred high Cs over the course of ten minutes without blinking. But I definitely wouldn’t want to be in the room when the fourth horn player in the LSO attempts the same.
I read this over at Lawrence Dillon’s site. I’ve heard horn players mention this. Computerized oboes can hit low notes with a perfect pianissimo too. (I just stuff my swab in my oboe unless the note is a low B-flat or B.) I’m so weary of these composers who think we can do what a computer can do. But I do tell students who end up playing these things to just do their best without stressing too much; the composers will quickly learn. I hope.
The music lowered the patients’ blood pressure and heart and respiratory rates before any sedation or pain medication, according to a paper in the Medscape Journal of Medicine, a Web resource for physicians of peer-reviewed medical journal articles.
Dr. Jorge Camara, a classically trained pianist and ophthalmologist, played music for patients before surgery as part of a study from May to August 2005 to demonstrate the medical benefits of music.
The classical and semi-classical pieces ranged from Debussy’s “Arabesque No. 1 in E Major” and Chopin’s “Etude in E Major, Op. 10 No. 3,” to “The More I See You,” by Harry Warren and Mack Gordon.
What if the pianist isn’t very good? Would better musicians find that they actually react negatively? I wonder. What if the patient doesn’t care for Debussy, Chopin or whoever the pianist chose to play? Can the patient request his or her favorite music?
And I don’t quite understand how “The More I See You” is a classical or semi-classical piece.
The symphony orchestra in the 21st century has become something of a dinosaur, and dinosaurs cannot be saved from extinction by external intervention. Orchestras are extremely expensive to maintain, and the present-day public is simply not going to support them monetarily.
I believe that the solution for both audience and musicians lies in, horrid as the term may sound, downsizing. A string quintet plus a woodwind quintet and a pianist/harpsichordist, augmented as necessary by one to four professional singers, is able to deliver thousands of works ranging from the early 17th century to the most outré modern compositions.
I read it here.
I have no words for this writer. Aside from “Get the heck outa music, please.”
No, there aren’t any professional musicians in my family. My mother had me take piano lessons, and I’m very glad she did, but at the time it wasn’t exciting, practicing and all that. It’s a funny story about how I got started with oboe. In junior high my older brother was in band, and I started off on clarinet. At one point an oboe became available because the oboist graduated, and I thought I’d take it up. Since there was only one, I knew I would be first chair. It is a great instrument, but you spend a lot of time making reeds, more time doing that than actually practicing. It makes oboists a little crazy, not that opera singers are exactly sane.-Eric Owens (read at the Opera Tatler site, here)
Unless the “unknown” folks are sometimes from mainland China, I have never had a visitor from that rather large plot of land. (Check out my referrals page if you don’t know what I’m talking about.)
**If the link above doesn’t work for you try scrolling down to the very bottom of the right sidebar and click on the sitemeter link. I hope that one works. (Let me know if you feel like it!)
Earlier this morning Bill Jobert sent me the following:
Wright State University welcomes our newest music faculty member Katherine L. deGruchy who will serve as the adjunct professor of oboe, perform with the faculty woodwind quintet and the University Chamber Orchestra. Her performance background includes 17 years in the Mexico City Philharmonic. She is an active performer with the Middletown Symphony, the Lebanon Symphony, the Dayton Philharmonic and the Burning River Winds (a wind trio). She earned Bachelors and Masters degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music where she studied under John Mack and is presently working on her doctorate at the Cincinnati Conservatory with oboe professor Mark Ostoich. She presently has a full studio of students from the Dayton area and is oboe instructor at the Stivers School for the Arts.
(If you have issues with “language” please don’t listen. There. You’ve been warned.)
The chamber music insurgents with an urgence to earn it,
We’re steppin’ forth in new directions cuttin’ beats like a surgeon.
With the sound causin’ all these flat composers to flee,
it’s the Mobtown Modern and HGP.Knockin’ ivory towers down, bringin’ it straight to the hood,
it’s Dubble8 and SLN and we’re up to no good.
Spinnin’ wax, playin’ sax and makin’ music with poise,
we’re the best, oh so fresh, and all the rest is noise!
To read all the words and listen to the whole thing, visit this.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I attended on complementary tickets provided by the festival. I usually don’t do this and frankly this was my first experience acccepting press passes for something I saw for OutWestArts. I did it in part because the evening included a “blogger’s night” reception meant to welcome local bloggers to the festival and to help launch a major new addition to our ranks, the new blog from long-time music critic and recently dismissed LA Weekly contributor Alan Rich. Mr. Rich was present at the reception and made some brief comments about how he is learning about blogging, a new experience for him, and hopes this outlet will act as a space for community and conversation around local music events. He noted the importance of this given that to his understanding there are no “important” music blogs on the West Coast at this time. It’s nice to see that Mr. Rich’s transition from the “old” to the “new” media hasn’t burdened him with the unnecessary baggage of tact.
Read more here
Well. Okay. Mine is probably not considered important music blog by anyone, but I do know there really are important music blogs out here. Look at the right sidebar for a number of them.
If I were the retaliatory sort I’d nix his link from my site. But I link to a lot of folks who won’t link to me. And I link to some who aren’t always nice to me. I’m just that kind of girl. ;-)
To maximize the benefit piglets got from daily play sessions lasting 15 minutes, she and her colleagues taught them to associate play with a soundtrack by Elgar and Bach.
“I specifically chose this music because its timbre is similar to the comfortable grunts pigs make during foraging,” de Jonge said.
It’s always good to have happy pigs, don’tcha think? I wonder what Elgar and Bach would think about this.
I read it here.
