seem to have destroyed my lips playing the Oboe today. lots of pain and i still have more to play!
I’ve always said a good song will survive almost anything, and some of these things were ripped off wholesale from classical music, anyway.
-Sting
Read here.
I often feel like I can’t come up with a darn thing for the twitter operaplot contest, and yet I keep trying. Go figure! I guess I am competitive after all. Hmmm.
I had totally forgotten what I did last year, so I’m glad that they are up for me to see (and get embarrassed over). Some are so bad I can’t post them here. Some are moderately acceptable, so I’ll admit to them, although they just aren’t clever enough to win anything.
I’m sure you can guess the operas:
@pattyoboe – Smoking hot might win the guys, especially with her fiery eyes. But it’s bound to kill her too, ’tis true. No bull
@pattyoboe – opera haiku: sad sack hides daughter/cad tries to get her in sack/daughter dies in sack
@pattyoboe – They both may die a Shakespearean death, but this time they take their last breath together. Lucky kids.
@pattyoboe – I must marry who mom said/Why can’t you love me instead?/I’ll shoot myself with your husband’s gun/Kiss/Die/Opera done
… the weird thing is that I had forgotten about these and some new ones are awfully close to what I did last year. More embarrassment! Sigh.
So far I’ve submitted seven this year. I’ll post ‘em all when the contest has ended (Friday). Or maybe I’ll post ‘em all. I might decide they simply aren’t presentable enough. We’ll see!
Being Gidon Kremer
Please don’t try the following with oboes!
A Fistful of Dollars (hope Brandon enjoys this one):
And, finally, Ave Astor Piazzolla:
From The Opera Critic. (The review is by Michael J. Vaughn.)
Got 113 on my oboe exam while hallucinating; quite good I think :)
I’ll just remain silent on this one. Well, except to say I’ll remain silent on it. Um. Yeah.
Dan’s comments (not word-for-word since I’m not good at that memory thing):
“A dependable conductor.”
“If more than one person wears these you have a codependent orchestra.”
Classical music fans pay the most library fines
“I’ve always known Lincolnshire is cultured,” he said, “So the idea that enough classical cds are being borrowed to allow them to be returned late on a regular basis is not a surprise.
“Many people assume that classical music isn’t for them.
“But this shows that there is a demand for this sort of music to be available.
“And it’s really encouraging that so many classical CDs are being taken out and listened to – even if the people who are, are getting fined for keeping them too long.”
The English horn, according to Medieval Life and Times, also evolved from the shawm and the hautbois, but historians are not sure as to when the oboe and the English horn became two separate instruments. The English horn is typically larger in size and slightly deeper in pitch.
Um … when someone writes “typically” it sort of implies to me “but not always” … am I wrong about this?
Read here: Origins of the Oboe and English Horn.
Reviews are coming in! Following Richard Scheinin’s, these are now up:
The Examiner has one here, by Eman Isadiar. SFCV is quite favorable, Joshua Kosman gives a somewhat mixed review, and blogger Emma Krasov is complimentary.
It’s nice to see this opera — and this opera company — getting such positive attention!
What did you aspire to be when you were growing up, and what other careers were you considering?
I loved to draw when I was a kid, so I thought I might become a cartoonist or illustrator. Once I got serious about singing, I considered transferring from Grinnell College to a conservatory, but I’m glad I stayed and got a liberal arts education and spent those formative years surrounded by people with varied interests and not just musicians. I think that helped make me a more well rounded person and musician—and if I ever had second thoughts about a singing career, I always felt like I could have done a lot of other things.
The above comes from an interview with baritone Thomas Meglioranza. I think it is a very important paragraph from a very interesting interview. (Thomas is also a bogger, in case you didn’t already know that.)
When people ask me about where they should go to pursue a music career I always recommend saving the music conservatory for graduate work. Making it in the music business is tough. There are absolutely no guarantees. In high school an oboist is often not only a big fish in a small pond, but is frequently the only fish in her pond. She’s been told she’s great by nearly everyone. When you hear that for four years you really start thinking you are as good, if not better, than every oboist out there. This is never the case. Really. There are plenty of great high school oboists out in the big bad world. High school students need to know that! So while you might be told by everyone around you that you will be the next principal oboist of the New York Philharmonic, so are a large number of other oboists at other high schools. And each professional orchestra only needs one, or in rare cases two, principal oboist.
So go to a university. Get a well rounded education. Mix with people other than those classical trained, blind-to-anything-else musicians. Find out if you have other loves. Give yourself options.
The music world I live in is a very wonderful one. I’m thankful for the musician’s life. I love playing with my colleagues. Shoot, I even get some sort of twisted enjoyment from whining over reeds. But could I live if it were taken away? Yes. And you can too.
Besides, if you do succeed in music, it’s helpful to know the non-performing folks as well. Make connections at school with people who don’t play an instrument. They are the ones buying tickets, after all. :-)
Son totally mouthed the words to the songs at the play. Reminded me of how I used to pretend to play the oboe at school concerts.
I think these are high schoolers …?!
Nielsen WWQ, First Movement:
Madonna is like Nero; she marks the turning point.
-Joni Mitchell
I read it here, where Ms. Mitchell also calls Bob Dylan a fake.
Yikes. Some people get cranky when they get older.
To those who suggest, as many do, that my brain doesn’t seem to function very effectively at times, I know exactly what’s wrong with me.
And I blame my parents.
Never during my upbringing did I hear the words that so many millions of children dread:
“You’re going to take piano lessons, and you’re going to like them.”
-Steve Lopez (author of “The Soloist”)
Of course knowing that music has done good things for my brain makes me wonder; Just how much more of an idiot would I have been had I not studied music?! ;-)
