I don’t think my oboe can comprehend the words “in tune”.
Please move to San Jose. Pretty please? BSO gets more publicity than we do. And they get more money.
The singer/songwriter plans to donate his $500,000 in earning from a five-day music festival at Tanglewood next week to the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
The Boston Globe reported that Taylor decided to donate his earnings because he and his wife are concerned about diminishing support for classical music. The couple also donated over $700,000 between 2005 and 2008 to the orchestra, which makes is summer home at Tanglewood in western Massachusetts.
I read it here.
PS I do listen to you and I really like you so I think we’d be good friends. We could get together and make music. My studio is always open.
Andy also is a member of the Fox Valley Children’s Chorus. But his musical talents are not just confined to singing.
He also plays the piano and in June, started taking oboe lessons.
“I like the sound of it,” he said. “I did violin, but I didn’t like it too much.”
The article just made me smile. It ends with a cute link:
“If somebody wanted me to sing on a cruise, I would take the job,” he said. “I want to be on the Nickelodeon Family Cruise.”
After we had talked about an hour about the brightness and joyfulness of the piece, the upper-register challenges, the complicated fingerings–English-horn keys are a bit clunky compared with the oboe, Cally told me–and other musical matters, I got to the question of reeds. For all the stuff she needs to do in this concerto, what must her reed be like for these concerts?
Cally sighed the sigh of the double-reed tribe. Then said, “It needs to be spectacular…. It needs to be a really hot piece of cane.”
Read here.
i’m trying to fall asleep with the baby banging on my door and OBOE SUSAN playing her OBOE next door
I thought this was pretty darn funny in a sad sort of way. (Because it’s sort of true ..?)
… in other news, I have to get ready to go to the dentist. How sad is that? My fear of the dentist continues. Sigh.
I just read that Hildegard Beherns died.
Here are a few videos:
A violin valued at up to $600,000 was left in a cab early Monday, the Taxi and Limousine Commission said. The instrument and its owner, the Korean violinist Hahn-Bin, were reunited later that day after the violin was found via GPS.
The funny thing about the article to me is reading the comments.
One reader is amazed anyone can forget such a thing. Another implies that musicians, like bankers, should be more responsible. Another — a musician this time — lets us know he has never left his valuable 1772 Eberle viola d’amore behind. (Oh, so la-di-da to you, Mister Viola D’amore.) One writer says, “Ahh. Now I understand why my friend, a child of musicians, is so spacey!” And one suggest that we, like pop stars, should hire an assistant to deal with our stuff. A few suggest, “So this is news?!”
… okay, I’ll stop now!
…. how ’bout some Elliott Carter? And English horn? And a work I don’t know at all (shame on me?):
Awoken by oboe practicing upstairs.
Found at Wikipedia:
Brian Sabean (born July 1, 1956) is the Senior Vice President and General Manager of the San Francisco Giants, a Major League Baseball franchise.
Gee, we are nearly the same age (I’m four months younger). Look how far I’ve come, and look how far he’s come.
Silly guy can’t even make an oboe reed. Hah!
I just received an email and read, at the top of the page: Mark Ellis Named Player of the Week!
I did see that it was from the Oakland A’s, but my first thought was, “What instrument does he play?”
Yeah. Honest.
But then when Jameson was in Little League I used to ask when the next rehearsal would be, where they were performing when they had a game, and I wanted to call the breaks “intermissions”.
How pathetic am I?
THAT pathetic!
He has been focusing on his music for nine years, starting out on the oboe but ending up on the viola. “The oboe was hard for me because after I practised I always had a stomach ache, so I decided to stop.”
Hmmm. I think maybe I give others a tummy ache, but I don’t think it ever gave me one. Yet.
I read it here.
… or at least we like to think we are! I haven’t heard of this oboist or the group he’s in, Orchestra Nova. Guess I’ll now have to go check out that orchestra. Meanwhile, here’s a bit of oboe entertainment for you:
When instrumentalists audition — at least around here — all or nearly all of the audition process is behind the screen. I’m assuming singers don’t have that same procedure, but we instrumentalists are used to it. I have mixed feelings about behind the screen auditions, but I do understand why we do them that way.
Of course theater folk can’t do things the same way. The auditionees are seen. There isn’t any anonymity.
But no matter if things are anonymous or not during an audition, it seems that what goes on in an audition room should remain there unless the people audition ask for feedback and the panel is willing to provide that.
The New York Times reports about a casting director who actually tweeted during auditions. According to what I read, she “only” tweeted between each audition, and she didn’t name names. but how wrong can this be, and why didn’t she think it was wrong, I wonder? Certainly she is now going to be pretty well known, but I can’t imagine that’s a good thing. (Or is any publicity good publicity?) If she tweeted right after an audition, that person could easily see what she wrote about him/her, as could anyone else who was around and knew who went when.
I would never think to tweet during auditions, nor would I blog about those who auditioned. It’s not right. I might make suggestions about the process after having witnessed some things I think auditionees might want to avoid, but I’d never be specific about a player.
Here’s someone else’s take on this.
Is it possible that blogs, Twitter and Facebook have caused some to lose the ability to discern? I wonder. I have read things on blogs that I’m sure the blogger will regret. People tweet quickly, and I can swear they aren’t thinking about consequences. Same with Facebook. Seems like technology has caused us to stop using our brains. Sigh.
I fear I’ll do the same thing. Should I even be blogging? Have I put things up here that I will regret horribly?
