Chariot Jubilee
… I could quote so much from the interview, but of course that would be cheating! You should go there and read it. But here’s a teaser:
I started on recorder and ordered a good oboe from Germany that came through the Goethe Institute there. Meanwhile, I would go to my oboe lessons only with a reed! [Both laugh] Every week during my lesson, I would play on my teacher’s oboe, and then go home and practice on the reed only. The poor dogs in the neighborhoods! They just hated it!
A simmering feud between senior members of the Penang State Symphony Orchestra and Chorus (Pessoc) and its new board reached a crescendo when Pessoc officials went to the musicians’ homes and took back musical instruments they have been using for years.
Well, yeah, it’s not nice that they took away the instruments. But I guess the musicians didn’t own them. But really now … “reached a crescendo”?
It’s been done before. It’ll be done again. I just had to mention it this time because it really irks me.
Besides, I really love the word “irk”.
I read it here.
The oboe sounds an A and the orchestra tune their instruments. It is one of the most glorious sounds on earth.
-Moira de Swardt
Read online:
The Symphony, comprised mostly of ASU students and alumni, concentrates on performing well-known and relevant orchestral music.
This word, “relevant”, I do not understand what it means.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek. Auuuuuuuuk.
No, I wasn’t killing a chicken. I was trying to play my oboe.
I played the oboe in the junior high school band.
This story was pretty fun to read. Check it out.
From the way it’s written — he does use his real name when he talks to the band director — I’m thinking it might be true.
If you can knock out two flawless etudes, break off a dazzling solo and nail a representative sampling of standard orchestral excerpts – all under the withering scrutiny of the school’s famously demanding faculty — you stand a chance of playing Juilliard football in the fall of 2011. With more musical prodigies per square inch than perhaps anywhere else on earth, Juilliard is the last place one would expect to have a football program. But in just two years, the fabled Juilliard campus will fill with the sounds of Chopin, Mozart and the violent cacophony of helmets colliding in ¾ time.
I read it here, and then did a search and found that this is from a 2008 article. And no, it’s not dated April 1.
But really?
Heh … no. Not really. ;-)
But maybe they’ll start a synchronized swimming team …?
spent yesterday afternoon working with beginning band kids- a clarinet, sax, flute and very confident oboe player. it. was. hilarious!
Wow … confidence + oboe?!
Read online:
I have to play the oboe in a concert in 2 weeks. I usually smoke electronic cigarettes but I ran out of liquid and was smoking real cigarettes for about a week. How long will it take for my lungs to get back to working like normal if I’ve stopped right now (able to play a long concert on the oboe)?
Until just now I had never heard of electronic cigarettes before. Bizarre.
… read online:
Is it weird to like a guy who plays the flute?I Like this guy who plays flute, is a junior and like the first chair Flute in our school band. I want to know if anyone thinks that’s wierd. If so why? And if you don’t do you think it’s cool I like him? By the way I also play the flute too.
;-)
I actually started in clubs and was really happy with that,” says DBR. “As a matter of fact, I was somewhat embarrassed to admit I played in an orchestra while I was working with such South Florida locals as 2 Live Crew. I enjoy both.
“But it’s interesting that, once my non-classical colleagues found out about my orchestra work, they were really interested and when my classical colleagues found out about my non-classical work in R&B and hip hop, they were appalled.”
-DBR (Daniel Bernard Roumain)
I read it here.
I have Figaro tonight, and three students before that; the first student of the day canceled, and while I’ll miss her I am sort of relieved, as I need my nap. Teaching, when I put myself into it, and I always do my best to do that, can really zonk me out. Figaro can too. Put ‘em together and I’m heading toward zombie land.
I’m wimpy, I know. I have a friend who works her day job and then goes and plays the opera. I know that many on stage have day jobs also, and they still manage to stay awake for the performance, and do great work, too!
But me? I’m gonna take a nap now. Otherwise I’m not sure just where my head would be tonight at, say, 11:00 PM. I haven’t been doing nothing all day, mind you. I have started our taxes (going easier this year; I guess I’m getting better at these things!), and I took a trip down to the symphony office to pick up lots of parts for Romeo and Juliet, as we begin our ballet rehearsals a week from yesterday. (I love this ballet music … which is rare!)
But in any case, the couch is calling my name. I will obey.
Here … have yourself some Figaro while I’m resting!
I’ve always admired Julie Ann Giacobassi’s English horn playing. I do wonder, these days, what she’s up to, as she retired from her San Francisco Symphony a few years back. (Her site, Fish Creek Music, is still up and running, but no recitals are mentioned, so I’m guessing she’s truly retired.)
Who knew it was a family thing?
He set out to become a classical musician with hopes for a career with a metropolitan symphony orchestra. It’s a dream his sister, Julie, and brother, Mike, both realized.“Mike has been with the Milwaukee Symphony as a violinist for, I think he said 33 years, now, and my sister, Julie (Hall) Giacobassi, just recently retired as an oboe/English horn specialist with the San Francisco Symphony. She was there, I think, 27 years,” Giacobassi said.
Giacobassi said his younger sister, Jane (Okada) Giacobassi, is a fine cellist active with community orchestras in the St. Paul, Minn., area.
Dan Giacobassi’s road has been harder. “I excelled pretty quickly with the technical aspects of the flute, but I had a terrible tone for years and years and years.”
Every evening was a musical traffic jam at the Giacobassi home. “We had to sort of line up to practice. Our house wasn’t very big and it was pretty much one person at a time got to practice.”“There was always music going on around me,” he said. “From my earliest memory, my mom (Martha), a pianist, was a church choir director. In Muskegon, it was Wood Avenue Methodist Church.”
I read it here.
| Dan Giacobassi-Musician |
Being tone-deaf with strings is bad, but double-reeds are far, far worse. An oboe in the wrong hands is unspeakable torture.
Oboe is a weird instrument. Maybe it was my early exposure to the BBC made-for-tv Chronicles of Narnia soundtrack. Maybe it was my childhood love for Peter and the Wolf. Whatever the cause, the sound of the oboe sends me off into some trippy transcendent green space that slightly resembles the British country side.
