oboeinsight

… because it’s just some sort of rule or something.

If you read this blog you know about my my very special wonderful can’t do without ‘em music glasses and how they somehow disappeared.

Well … drum roll … THEY HAVE BEEN FOUND!

The flutist of the UCSC faculty woodwind quintet, in fact, is the one who located them. How ’bout that? We have rehearsal on campus Monday night, so I’ll get them there. I miss them horribly, and wish I could have them sooner, but I am not sure I’m ready to drive all the way over there and back for them. I’m just sort of dealing, putting my music very low, squinting a lot, and missing notes here and there. Oh well! One good thing about missing glasses, if I dare try to look on the positive side, is that I really have to rely on my memory, and I’m realizing just how well I do know the works. Good news, yes?

So this was a $280 “oops”, but probably worth it; at least now if I lose one pair I’ll have a backup pair. If I had lost these glasses the day OF a concert I’d have really been in serious trouble!

Oh … and you wonder where the glasses were? She wrote:

How strange that your glasses showed up as I was picking up all my
stuff on the right of the desk. There they were—just on the floor
next to the right back leg of desk ( might have fallen off of the
stereo?).

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Greer! :-)

… except when it works it actually is fun! Go figure.

I really do like Eric Ewazen’s Woodwind Quintet, Roaring Fork. I think the audience will too. But there is one spot that does not make me happy. It’s the sort of thing that causes some of us to call composers “mean”. We don’t really mean it of course (well, I don’t anyway!), but when a bar like the one I’m having to deal with pops up I go a bit crazy.

Oboists will see, I’m sure, which bar I’m talking about. I’m starting with left E flat, but for the second E flat I slide from the right D flat to the right E flat. I have tried it several ways, and I think what’s best for me is to use the banana key on the low B flat. One of my colleagues actually plays left E flat and then moves her left pinkie to the low B flat key. That actually hurts when I use my usual oboe. Trouble is, right now my usual oboe has issues with the banana key (I think it needs to be bent a bit closer in, and maybe moved in height as well.), so I’m using my “not so usual” oboe. It works almost consistently. (I suspect this will never be one of those “Oh I’ll never miss!” passages.) Starting at bar 62, this is pretty much an oboe solo, too.

The other difficulty is the length of this phrase. This is a slow movement. You can see where I’ve written “solo” … and I mean “all alone” … there is no place to breathe until bar 70. If we go too slowly, I’m pretty dead by the end.

I have a recording of this work, and the Borealis Wind Quintet oboist, Tamar Beach Wells, doesn’t sound like she is struggling at ALL.

Makes me feel very, very wimpy.

In a short time I’m off to a friend’s house. He does oboe repair (and makes fine shaper tips too … stay tuned for an announcement when his site is up and running!). I’m hoping he can work on both of my oboes and my English horn in the short time we’ll have. I definitely need the banana key looked at, and I need some corks put on a few spots where I had to remove them because they were causing keys to stick. I’m hopeful, too, that he can figure out why my “usual” oboe doesn’t care for either low B or low B flat. Those appear a good number of times in our woodwind quintet music.

Name the musical from which I’m quoting, please. (I know a few of you easily are able to do that.)

I was told by the person who helped me order my glasses yesterday to call the very next day (Wednesday), to see how the order is going. The woman who I spoke with was rather shocked, “She should have known it takes 3 full days for the anti-glare treatment!” Sigh. So much for picking them up on Friday.

As I taught today I could barely see the notes. I’m honestly not sure how I’ll do at our woodwind quintet Monday night if I don’t have these glasses to wear. I can’t tell you how troubling this is. I guess I’ll go to Lenscrafters to see what sort of megabucks I’ll have to spend to get anything quicker (if that’s even possible with my prescription).

How stupid is it that I tossed my old pair of music glasses?

Yep. THAT stupid. Sigh.

Tuesday is UCSC day. This morning I decided to give myself a treat, so I left home very early and headed to The Abbey to have a latté. I’ve missed my lattés, since our machine has been at the repair shop. When I’m at The Abbey I use my computer (surprise surprise) so I use my very special wonderful can’t do without ‘em music glasses. I didn’t change back into my regular glasses until I got back in the car. This is often the way it works for me; I don’t realize I can’t see long distances until I get into the car. After getting to work I took my very special wonderful can’t do without ‘em music glasses and dropped them into my UCSC oboe bag. I went from the parking lot to the music office to my studio. All I did in the music office was to check my (empty) mailbox, so I didn’t need to open my oboe bag at all. Getting into the studio, I first unpacked my computer (duh!), and then went to grab my VSWCDWE music glasses. They were nowhere to be found. I went to my car. I went back to the office. I went back to my car. And again to the office. Between student #1 and #2 I even visited the car again, looking under seats and even under the car. My VSWCDWE music glasses simply disappeared.

Sigh.

After picking up our repaired (!!) espresso machine I raced over to Kaiser and ordered new glasses. It was a lot of money I didn’t expect to have to spend today, although I did get a 20% discount because I always purchase their 2 year insurance. I’m thankful that they just had to look up my info and reorder what I already had so I didn’t have to deal with searching through all their frames. Now we’ll see how quickly they can get them done. (They put a rush on the order, and implied they might be ready as soon as Thursday or Friday of this week.) I have a recital on November 6, with rehearsals for both that and Opera San José every day but Tuesday next week. I can’t read music without my very special wonderful can’t do without ‘em music glasses. Really. Can you imagine canceling a recital because the silly oboist lost her very special wonderful can’t do without ‘em music glasses? Yikes!