oboeinsight

The thing is, the people who text, they don’t seem to understand that we can see you. If you really need to do that, why don’t you just leave?”

-Patti Lupone

Patti Lupone is on a mission to stop rude audience members. She is known for her outburst at the end of the run of Gypsy:

And now she did it again in Las Vegas. You can read about it here.

I may have blogged about this before (I’m too lazy to check). It seems to me that perhaps we now need people in the audience to call these rude audience members on things like this, so as not to cause the rest of the audience to have to deal with this, ruining the mood of the show and all that jazz. Perhaps having a few people facing the audience, with headsets on, who can then report anything they see to ushers or other hired folks who will pull the offending person out. I just hate seeing and hearing a performer out of character. Call me silly.

Yes, these things are distracting. From the stage, we see them. And sure, we should be able to perform even with distractions. We have to, in fact. But it’s probably time to call folks on this. Don’tcha think?

Here is a blog entry about summer music camps.

I do recommend summer music camps to students. I went to one with Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra in 1973 and I think that was the first time it really hit me that music is what I wanted to do forever. Some of the people who attended that music camp are in orchestras I now play in professionally. Funny how that works.

Gee, I think it would be fun to go to a summer music camp now!

Jessica Duchen’s blog has moved. She used to be hosted on blogspot (you can still see her there, with the latest post being the “I’ve moved” one). She has moved here.

Just a little FYI for those of you who follow such things. And I do hope you check out my right sidebar with all those music links. I do think I should clean things up a bit on this site, giving special attention to those links (I’m sure some are close to inactive …?), but thinking and doing are two very different things. I won’t even say “Stay Tuned for a Site Cleaning” because who knows when or if I’ll ever get to it.

But do “Stay Tuned”. Being out of tune is just crummy. ;-)

Lesson for young conductors (and old ones too): yes, we know when you screw up. Apologize and move on. We don’t like it when you screw up. But we despise your trying to pretend you didn’t.

-Robert Levine

You can read it here, and see the context as well that way.

But oh how true!

One common little “trick” that conductors do when they make a mistake in rehearsal is to quickly stop and correct something that we are doing. This happened fairly recently; the conductor had not caught the meter change, and conducted a 3/4 in 4/4 or some such thing. He quickly stopped and asked us to change something else. We knew he stopped because he made the meter mistake. He knew too. Why not just say, “Oops!” and move on? Instead, he tried to cover it up. That causes me — and I’m sure many of my colleagues— to snicker (silently), get annoyed, and lower the conductor approval meter down a notch or two. If this sort of thing happens in concert and we begin to get glares from a conductor, it lowers it even more.

It is admirable to admit a mistake. Heck, I do it all the time. That’s why I have so many admirers.

Um. Okay. Maybe not. But it is the right thing to do. And I don’t think less of a conductor if he or she is willing to admit a mistake, but I might when they try to cover up their mistakes. And I definitely think even less of them when they blame us. Surprise, surprise.