A coming production of his opera “Così Fan Tutte” will ask audience members to vote at intermission for which characters should be married in the final scene.
I read it here. So it must be true.
Ah yes, reed making. I think that reed making during every free and waking moment of one’s life off the stand takes much more of a sense of humor than most trombonists could ever imagine.
I simply come home, put my mouthpiece on a pedestal, light a candle, and pray that I won’t forget to bring it to the gig the next day.
-Phil Zahorsky
My friend Phil sent me the above response when I wrote this to him:
You trombonists have far too much time to sit around and think up funny things. I think you all should learn reed making instead. Just a suggestion, but there you go.
Don’t you just love it!? Thanks for a fun start to my day, Phil. That, along with catching a “small problem” with my footwear this morning (Whew! Caught it before my brand new student arrived.)
:-)
(How funny that my right foot looks so much smaller than the left, merely because of the shoe! They really are the same size. Honest!)
Nice pair ‘o shoes ..?, originally uploaded by OboeInsight.
I’m not sure why, but looking at someone’s vocal cords really bugs me. I have a difficult time, too, with teeth & dentists and just dealing with the inside of the mouth. But anyway, below is a video of an oboist who has had vocal cord problems. Some of you might find this really interesting. (Maybe T over at Notes of an Anesthesioboist will be interested in any case?)
Someone down the hall from me is practicing the oboe. I find the oboe to be the most wretched sounding instrument ever. Obvs makes my day.
When I used to hear classical music, my first thought was always, “elevator music.” I never thought I could fall head over heels for classical music, just from watching one little video.
I read it here. (I’d never heard anyone refer to classical music as “elevator music” before.)
I’ve been asked to play two selections for a Good Friday service. The instrumentation can be oboe/cello/piano or solo oboe. (Some kind of lamentation….)
Any suggestions?
It appears that OSJ has cut both the Entr’acte to Act 2 and Act 3. Yikes! Below are clips (poor sound quality) so you can hear what you’ll be missing. I’m just stunned, especially about Act 3. The Entr’acte before Act 4 is being moved to before Act 3. Maybe I’m clueless … is this done sometimes?
Act 2 (I love the bassoons! This includes more than the Entr’acte, of course, but listen to the beginning. That should be included in the opera!)
Act 3:
I just picked up my music today. I’m disappointed!
In addition, the librarian doesn’t understand why I redid some of the cuts last time. She has me turning pages while playing. She’s a string player … they are two on a stand! We one on a stand folks can’t turn pages while playing, so I redo cuts if I can to make them workable. Sigh. Now I have to correct them again.
The American Wind Symphony Orchestra has a 50-year history of sailing the world’s waterways from its home port in Mars, Pa. It has previously played in Marquette and Houghton.
I’d never heard of this group before, but I don’t know much about bands. Sounds … well … interesting.
So I know I have to take reviews with a grain of salt. I know a review is one person’s opinion. I know if I take the good ones to heart I’d better take the bad ones the same way. And that hurts a lot so I like to say, “They really are just one person’s opinion so I don’t take them to heart.”
But of course I lie.
Because when they hurt they hurt horribly. But when they are good they make my heart very happy.
The Richard Scheinin Mercury review is in:
English hornist Patricia Emerson Mitchell was a standout: Her solos were ear candy, richly melodious.
Yes. My heart is happy. :-)
… but you all know me, yes? Now I think, “OH NO! Will I disappoint everyone at the next two performances?!”
I know many think blogging and Twitter and Facebook are silly. Or egotistical (probably!). Whatever. I’m okay with that. I blog and use twitter and Facebook. (I think some things other people do are silly too.) But I’ve often wondered if the posts on these places are real. Turns out not all of them are. I’m happy to hear that not everyone agrees that that’s a good thing. (Lance Armstrong twittered about it. Hmm. The “real” Lance?! I think so. Really.)
The basketball star Shaquille O’Neal, for example, is a prolific Twitterer on his account — The Real Shaq — where he shares personal news, jokes and occasional trash talking about opponents with nearly 430,000 followers.
“If I am going to speak, it will come from me,” he said, adding that the technology allows him to bypass the media to speak directly to the fans.
As for the temptation to rely on a team to supply his words, he said: “It’s 140 characters. It’s so few characters. If you need a ghostwriter for that, I feel sorry for you.”
Ghostwriters have been around for a long time. If you read a famous person’s autobiography you can’t just assume that person wrote it. I guess there are still people who don’t know that. Heck, if the book is extremely well written I tend to assume there was a ghostwriter involved. Some ghostwriters get acknowledged. Some don’t.
But somehow, with Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, it seems that many believe the famous person is doing all the writing. I’ve been taught to be skeptical (thanks, you-know-who-you-are) so I tend to think the opposite until proven otherwise. Go figure.
I am not famous. I do my own blogging, twittering, “facebooking” … and I clean my own toilet too. So there you go. But this unfamous person would gladly never make another reed if only she could find a ghostreedmaker.
The French composer, Maurice Ravel may have left a hidden message – a woman’s name – inside his work.
A sequence of three notes occurring repeatedly through his work spell out the name of a famous Parisian socialite says Professor of Music, David Lamaze.
He argues that the notes, E, B, A in musical notation, or “Mi-Si-La” in the French doh-re-mi scale, refer to Misia Sert, a close friend of Ravel’s.
Why do I have an oboe lesson during spring break?
I’m home from concert #1. I think it went well. But it’s possible that as the memory “ages” I’ll nit pick and start to think I didn’t do well after all. I can be silly that way. Then again, maybe I’ll just be happy and enjoy the fact that I believe I played musically and didn’t make any awful blunders.
Of course now I do it two more times. So it ain’t over yet.
I must say, though, that both Roman Carnival Overture and New World Symphony really have such wonderful EH solos and I do love them. :-)
I’m looking at the second oboe/English horn part to Scheherazade. Does anyone every “cheat” and play those last low Cs and Bs on EH rather than oboe? They are marked pp. That would be so much easier a fifth higher on EH. (Dear composers — don’t you get that?!)
(We are doing this next year. In my effort to waste and entire day I’ve been looking up some of our works for next year. I know the book is sometimes split and I can hope for that, but who knows? If it’s not, it sure would be easier to shoot those notes out with EH.)
I just read about this and thought I’d better check it out. So here are just a few of the more educational videos I found early on:
UCLA and some interesting sports clothing:
University of Kansas shows great talent here:
UNNC is hip on posters:
Carnegie Mellon gets serious:
Okay … just goofing off here …
