Here’s the question:
Is the English horn a nice instrument to try after playing the Bb clarinet and Eb alto clarinet?
Are the fingerings complex for beginners?
Here’s my answer: No. It’s a nice instrument to play before those ones! :-)
At 80 years old, Agnes Varis is trying to make opera audiences younger.
“Your average opera-goer cannot be 65—give me break,” said Ms. Varis. “You’re not going to keep an opera house alive with that.”
Ms. Varis, the founder and former president of several pharmaceutical companies, including Agvar Chemicals, Marsam Pharmaceuticals and Aegis Pharmaceuticals, is on a mission to build a younger audience for the Metropolitan Opera, where she is a trustee. “The opera’s like Broadway but better. It’s got sex, it’s got incest, it’s got rape,” she said. “You introduce young people to music, you’ve got them for life.”
Toward that goal, she has donated $2.5 million to subsidize a program offering $25 orchestra tickets for all but two weekend performances of the company’s 2010-11 season—13,600 seats in all. The program, which the Met announced Tuesday, is an extension of the Agnes Varis and Karl Leichtman Rush Ticket program, started in 2006, which subsidizes 200 seats at $20 apiece for every weekday performance excluding galas.
While the beginning of the article sounds as if the discount is only for younger folks, it appears, from what I read later, that it’s for anyone, really. (Or am I misreading as I so frequently do?):
“The older people who have retired, they can’t afford the orchestra tickets and they can’t go upstairs where it’s $30—they’ll get a nosebleed. “I’m an old lady—if you’re an old lady and you wanted to come to the opera, would you sit on the floor in the lobby for tickets? I can’t do that to senior citizens.”
Ms. Varis has underwritten several opera productions, but she believes it her duty to build the company’s future audience, and she said she will continue to funnel her fortune toward that goal.
“Making money and doing good are not opposing values,” she said. “I made more money than I could use in many lifetimes…. If you want money, I’m ready to do it, but I want to see a plan for a younger generation.”
Very cool.
My friend Pam might enjoy this part:
Bay Ridge-raised and one of eight siblings, Ms. Varis is a product of Brooklyn public schools and Brooklyn College. Her mother held a factory job sewing buttons and her father sold ice cream from a street cart. “I came from Greek, poor, working-class people,” she said. (Asked if she lived at home while attending college, Ms. Varis said: “You cannot grow up with Greeks and think that you can move out.”)
:-)
[name here] is excited for classes to start tomorrow and meet with her oboe instructor.
These have nothing to do with oboe or music … but for some reason this bride caught my attention and I just had to take the pictures. I spotted her as we were walking toward High Line Park. I love the color … and I do get all squishy inside when I see a bride or a wedding. (Of course if you cut me open you’d probably realize I’m always squishy inside.)
These are best seen enlarged, I think, so just click on each one to enlarge, or command-click to open in a different tab if you’re on a Mac (not sure how other computers work):
While we were in New York we checked out the instruments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. What an amazing collection! Here are just a few pictures of the western instrument double reed area. (Nothing has been worked on yet, so these are crooked, not-so-great pictures. Dan will, I know, have much better ones eventually, and I do plan on working on these someday. Maybe.)
Click on the photo to enlarge:
This last one … well … I thought the answer to, “What are you playing?!” would be, “Watering can.” (Okay, maybe only I find that funny. Figures.)
… but what is it really?! Here you go:
Mouth Organ, Peter Peckmann, Vienna, ca. 1835
Wood, leather, brass, copper. This instrument, known o…nly by this one example, has the shape of a Baroque-period racket. It speaks with draw and blow, has two-by-five finger buttons and is tuned like a harmonica in D. The arrangement of the buttons, however, allows one to play chords, making the instrument well suited for accompaniment. Another innovation was a large resonance chamber in the form of the hollow wooden cylinder underneath the reeds at the upper end of the instrument. The sound of the instrument has a special tenderness. Peckmann is also known as the maker of music boxes.
Awful kids behind me on train ‘I’m grade 8 oboe, and off to Cambridge’ etc etc. Bring back the belt!
Read Online:
The score was composed by Oscar winner Elmer Bernstein (Thoroughly Modern Millie). So that explains all the oboe solos during the sentimental parts…
I guess I’ll have to listen to some of his film scores to understand this oboe quote.
I read it here.
… only because I experienced it again today, albeit quite mildly.
As most readers know, I have tinnitus due to the whole episode (if you want to read about it start with the blog entries here) that I had over a year ago now (although of course I might have had tinnitus anyway, considering my career!). Vertigo has come and gone as well, but has mostly been quite mild. And I have a bit of hearing loss in my left ear. I realized, after arriving home from our trip, that I didn’t notice the tinnitus at all while in New York City. I guess the noise of the city just blocks it out. Maybe a prescription from my doctor should include an annual trip to New York, you know?
Today, though, turned into a DizzyDay™. The first thing I noticed after a drive over the hill (to Santa Cruz) and back was that my ear was really noisy. Much more so than usual. And then I realized I was feeling a bit ill. After teaching my one and only student of the day I realized I was also pretty darn dizzy. So I think I’m piecing some things together, finally; I think that when I have “screaming ear” I should expect and be ready for dizziness. The very first time I had this (the worst episode ever) the doctor prescribed some pills she said were to help with dizziness and nausea. I still had one of those pills so I decided to take it tonight. Before doing so, though, I wanted to identify it so I could ask her for more in preparation for the next episode. Turns out the darn stuff is merely diphenhydramine. Heh. Yep. Over the counter stuff. Go figure. I can pick that up and just keep it on hand. (I buy generic, but if you buy Benadryl it’s the same stuff.)
I think I’m also starting to understand what triggers can set this off. One is fluorescent lighting. Another is getting car sick. (I was sitting in the back seat and I suspect that’s not a great location for me.) I like knowing all of this. I don’t like having this, but at least the more I know the more I can deal with it.
Meanwhile … back in the real world … the GIANTS are ahead, 16-5. That’s more important than anything I’ve written above this, eh?
Q:What is an oboe reed made out of and when was the oboe first used?
A: Modern Oboe reeds are typically made of plastic. The double reed is sometimes made from cane. The oboe was played by huntsmen in the middle ages until it was finally introduced to orchestras in France in 1657. ChaCha!!!
Please oh please oh please oh please oh please don’t use a plastic oboe reed. K?
I read it here. My heart immediately began to hurt.
Israeli-Argentine conductor Daniel Barenboim called on classical musicians Thursday to take elitism out of their art and make it available to the masses, as he will be doing at the weekend with a free concert.
“It’s very important to do mass events once in a while, to show that classical music is not elitist,” Barenboim told reporters after receiving the Bicentennial Medal for outstanding contributions on the 200th anniversary of Argentina’s independence.
And I’m fine with doing something for free now and then. Sometimes.
I found a 2006 article about Maestro Barenboim:
Chicago Symphony music director Daniel Barenboim is not just one of the best-known conductors in the United States; he’s also the best paid. Barenboim took home nearly $2 million for his work in Chicago during the 2003-04, the most recent season for which information is available. That’s in addition to his fees for conducting elsewhere and performing as a pianist. His salary made Barenboim, who is stepping down from his Chicago post soon, the highest-paid conductor in the country, according to a study by the <> Wall Street Journal, which drew its figures from documents that non-profit music organizations filed with the Internal Revenue Service.
I don’t begrudge him his salary or net worth, mind you, but I’m always somewhat surprised when someone with extraordinary wealth calls on the regular folks to work for free.
I recently read of an plot that, even for opera, is a stretch. A playwright in London has written his first opera, a 30 minute work entitled Intolerance. The opera is about one woman’s quest to cure her irritable bowel syndrome. Hmmmm.
I read about it here. I’m not sure I want to do more than read about it.
[name here] loves the feeling after having a really productive and successful oboe lesson. Band camp tomorrow, aw yeaaaah!
Do you prefer Miley playing guitar or piano? Maybe she should pick up a totally different instrument all together like say a kazoo or the oboe.
(I’ve not heard Miley Cyrus sing (I hope I’m spelling that name correctly) … but I’d be happy to hear her attempt to play oboe.)
i want a guitar! a proper one! but no! dad wants me to play [expletive removed] oboe!
I read about it here. (Sorry this automatically plays … I can’t figure out how to change that!)
Update
So not only do the passengers of this plane not get the choice; they have to listen whether they want to or not (forget sleeping, eh?), but readers of this blog have had no choice but to have this video play. So I’m pulling the video down … just click on the link instead. If someone out there can supply me with the code that would switch off the autoplay I can put it back up. Otherwise … forget it! :-)
