Just Too Darn Funny

18. September 2009 · Comments Off · Categories: Oboe, Videos

I was looking up videos on YouTube, thinking I should post something oboe-y. One of the first to appear included THIS comment:

its not that hard it just takes practice im in 8th grade and i can play this? song

Know what the young (foolish) writer is writing about? Mozart’s Oboe Concerto. Sorry, but the kiddo hasn’t a clue. In so many ways. Not. A. Clue.

Oh well.

I don’t make comments about the videos I find. I only post them. Sometimes I’m in love with them. Sometimes not. You can probably guess what I’m thinking about some — and why I might post some for odd reasons or goofy reasons or spectacular reasons — but I’m sure you can’t guess about all. But no matter what I think about a performance, I doubt I’d ever call a “song” easy … and certainly not the Mozart concerto.

Here’s the video that included the above quote (a different interpretation than I’ve ever heard, to be sure):

Sarasota Orchestra

18. September 2009 · 3 comments · Categories: Links, Symphony

Our base salary is $30,000 for a full-time musician. Our management is insisting that we must take an 8 percent cut. Yet, a staff member making up to $50,000 is only taking a 2.5 percent cut. The final offer of the management would also eliminate our pension.

We find this to be unfair and punitive. But in light of economic uncertainty, and in the interest of labor peace, the musicians are willing to take cuts, as long as recovery can be built into the term of the contract. This offer has been rejected.

However, there are even more complicated issues than money remaining.

Management has “attached” to its final offer more than 80 other “work-related” items. These include:

The option not to use musicians for particular concerts that are required by the composer, if management determines that they aren’t “important.”

This last sentence is especially disturbing to me.

RTWT

TQOD

18. September 2009 · Comments Off · Categories: TQOD

Although I like the oboe more, I think Mozart’s clarinet concerto is much more lovely than his oboe concerto, particularly the 2nd movement.

(I agree.)

Pigoletto

18. September 2009 · 1 comment · Categories: Videos

Thanks to San Francisco Classical Voice for bringing this to my attention!

I ♥ Opera Tattler

17. September 2009 · 2 comments · Categories: Links, Other People's Words

If you misbehave she will notice and I get to enjoy the results! :-)

The woman in Row L Seat 7 of the orchestra got a text message on her iPhone at the end of the second movement and she updated her Facebook page during much of the following Feierlich und gemessen, ohne zu schleppen. Naturally she clapped quite heartily at the end and joined in for the standing ovation.

Review #6

17. September 2009 · Comments Off · Categories: Opera, Reviews

By Mort Levine, of the Milpitas Post.

Happy Birthday, William Carlos Williams

17. September 2009 · 1 comment · Categories: Birthdays!, Poetry

My somewhat pathetic tribute to yours:

so much depends
upon
some good oboe
cane
shaped and water
soaked
beside the sharp
knives

TQOD

17. September 2009 · Comments Off · Categories: TQOD

well you add fodder for the cannon in my other oboe stereotype. Female oboists are almost always short.

(Hmmm. I’m 5’8″.)

MQOD

17. September 2009 · Comments Off · Categories: Quotes


(There are) some things that, no matter how much you practice, they’re never going to be as comfortable as what you would like …. I think almost everybody has that little solo that brings them upright in their bed in the middle of the night. Yeah, there’s some things you just have to keep practicing because you know that if you don’t, it’s going to backslide … the mechanical parts about it are like housekeeping – you know when dust is falling here, you are dusting over there, and the dust is falling wherever you haven’t dusted, and you’ve got to go back again and again and again, and its never over. And it’s that way until the last day you play your instrument – you’re just going to have to grind out certain aspects of performance on the instrument. So you may not look forward to it, but you know you have to do it.

-Grover Schiltz

I found this via this link. Robyn Dixon Costa’s thesis. Very interesting reading!

BQOD

17. September 2009 · Comments Off · Categories: BQOD

You might ask, well, what the heck is an English Horn? My answer would be: it’s the alto voice of the oboe family. And if you then ask: what is an oboe? Well, I’m afraid I’ll take a monkey wrench and club you over the head with it.

Spoon Hanging

17. September 2009 · Comments Off · Categories: Videos

Review #5

16. September 2009 · Comments Off · Categories: Opera, Reviews

Scott MacClelland reviews Manon for the Metro.

Mary Travers 1936-2009

16. September 2009 · Comments Off · Categories: Losses

No, I Don’t Blog Constantly!

16. September 2009 · Comments Off · Categories: Ramble

Some people have been confused by this blog, because posts might appear while I should be at work. Do I blog while teaching? No. Do I blog on stage? No. Do I blog in the pit? No. Do I blog while sleeping? No. Do I blog while practicing and making reeds? Well. Um. Okay. Maybe sometimes.

I can blog and then decide when that entry gets published. This way I don’t put a million things up at once. Only close to a million. Just so you know.

This particular post, however, is being posted immediately after I write it. :-)

TQOD

16. September 2009 · 2 comments · Categories: TQOD

You know that the oboe is the most expensive rental and the hardest instrument to learn, right?

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