is that Woody Allen? playing an oboe?? WHERE ARE YOU???
(here is the picture.)
André Previn: Trio for Oboe, Bassoon and Piano
Third movement: Jaunty
Shih-han Chiu, bassoon; Sophie Mok, oboe; Kwokwai Michael Lui, piano
Shih-han Chiu, DMA recital, University of Colorado at Boulder, College of Music, Yoshi Ishikawa Bassoon Studio
Well that concert was….interesting. I’m going to be cocky for a moment and say my oboe solo so enchanted the band that they fell apart and THAT’S why we had to stop and start over. But really, I think it was just a combination of factors that led to our brief disaster.
A Japanese Mouth Organ
I just read this online at On An Overgrown Path:
Could the following information help eliminate the maddening problem of serial coughers during concerts? In the recovery period immediately after stomach surgery coughing is exceedingly painful and possibly dangerous. During my recent stay in hospital a helpful nurse told me that coughs can be suppressed by gently pinching the windpipe at the base of the neck. I can confirm it works, apparently because it derails the small spasms in the windpipe that cause the cough. Surely worth including in concert programmes? Now perhaps someone can tell us how to pinch a mobile phone’s windpipe?
Wow … next time I have to cough I’m going to try that. It’s especially frustrating when I’m on stage and trying to play, but of course if I’m playing someone ELSE would have to reach over and pinch my windpipe! Hmm. Wonder what the audience would think about that.
This is a beautiful song…. the oboe breaks my heart
It breaks the concentration of the performer and the audience and breaks the spell and bond between them. Some people text, others leave their phones on silent but they light up at a call or when checked for messages. That is equally distracting and discourteous.
While the vast majority do remember to switch them off there are those few artistic terrorists who ruin it for everybody. These people should be fined. It is an act of vandalism as far as I’m concerned and should be punished as such.
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies
Ah well … at least those types of terrorists aren’t killing off music entirely. Now the ones who believe we are just a frivolous unnecessary thing, and those that think we don’t deserve a smidgin’ of funding are truly murdering music.
A couple of weekends ago, a friend and I went to a Sunday morning concert at London’s Wigmore Hall. With a free glass of sherry included, it’s a refined way to deal with the excesses of the night before, and naturally the quality of the music is excellent.
My friend had never been to a classical concert before and she enjoyed the first movement, so much that when the music finished she started to clap loudly. My neighbour glared, the lady in front swivelled 180 degrees to raise her eyebrows and loud shushing came from behind. My friend slunk low in her seat, mortified. “Why don’t they put up a sign,” she whispered. “How was I meant to know?” It does seem peculiar that hacking, coughing and spluttering are permissible, but clapping – a gesture of support and goodwill – will apparently distract musicians and audience so much it’s unacceptable.
Thoughts?
…artists are certainly not necessarily the most stable strata of human society.
-Peter Gelb
Um … I might have even be tempted, although the price is far too high, but when I read the description I had to laugh:
Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Opera San José is the professional opera company in San Jose, California, United States, founded in 1984 by Irene Dalis. In 1988, it formed a resident company of principal artists, for which it has purchased fourteen apartment units to provide rent-free accommodation. Until 2004, the company performed in the Montgomery Theater in San Jose’s Civic Auditorium complex. One of the keys to the company’s success over the years has been its fiscal prudence. The company opened its 2004-2005 season in the 1,119 seat California Theatre, a former vaudeville and film theatre designed by Weeks and Day. On opening day in 1927, this 1,848 seat movie palace was said to be the finest theater in California. With its magnificent Jazz Age décor, it was part of a wave of ornate theaters built to define downtowns all over the country. For nearly 50 years the theatre showed films, until it’s closure in 1973.
REALLY! This is absolutely ridiculous! They put a book together by grabbing info off the internet and then they charge $49 for it?
Yeah, I’m sure it’ll be a best seller. After you read the copy you buy may I borrow it? (And if they took things from my website, I wanna know!)
I love reading “High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles!” on the front.
Okay … if you really want to buy the book, you go right ahead. But don’t say I didn’t warn ya!
… can you guess? (At the beginning of this clip.)
I just finished the film “Tous les matins du monde”. The visuals were lovely, but boy do I have issues with music & movies!
(Btw, if you watch it, it isn’t rated, but there is nudity so if you are uncomfortable with that, please don’t watch!)
Listening to the music in the movie was wonderful. Thank you, Jordi Savall!
i want to thank the b-52s for writing one of my favorite summer songs ever, topaz, i do not know when they recorded it, but for me it means summer,’city by the sea’, and that first note, what is that, an oboe? a claire annette? whatever it is, for me that note means the start of summer, thank you b-52s, i hope you and everybody everywhere has a glorious summer
On Sunday we attended the memorial service for our dear friend Phil Zahorsky. What a time! So many memories — SO many friends, some of whom we hadn’t seen for over twenty years, and one we hadn’t seen in over thirty. Wow. Is this the way it will be now, I wonder? Will we only run into our friends at memorials? I do hope not.
After the service a friend — one I DO see more frequently, Deb, a fabulous oboist and great all-round person — thanked me for something I had up on my blog. I wasn’t honest with her (sorry, Deb) … I should have said, “Did I blog that?!” (NOT in my best Urkel voice, mind you.) but of course being me I was too embarrassed. So today I finally looked it up and it was an “AH YES!” moment. I had written about some correspondance Phil and I had here. Check it out!
And of course going to the service, hearing the stories, saying “goodbye” to Phil, all brought back other memories. So here are two of mine (hope you find this blog entry, Deb!):
When I was a freshman in college, sometime in October of 1974, I believe, Phil invited me to a lounge that was at Reed Hillview airport to hear a friend — I believe her name was Suzanne — sing there. I think it was his way of getting Dan and me together, as it was pretty obvious I had a crush on the guy. So off we go. now I was young, and I didn’t drink, but dear Phil introduced me that night to my first whiskey sour. Yep, I liked it! On the way out the door Phil laughed and said, “We should go back and tell them you’re only nineteen!” or some such thing. I laughed back and said, “Well, I’m actually seventeen!” The LOOK on his face … and then the response, “SEVENTEEN!?!?” Well, I heard that cry of “SEVENTEEN!?!?” several times after that when we ran into each other at school. He also called me “Patty pureheart” on occasion. I loved that.
Much, much later (just a few years ago, actually), Phil asked something like three questions of the maestro at one of the rehearsals. I just HAD to reprimand him. I explained that one question was plenty, but that really, for a bass trombone player, no question was better. We had a good laugh — we did love to tease each other — and from then on, whenever he asked a question, he’d come up to me and apologize (as a joke, of course!). Sometimes he’d tell me he refrained because of my words.
Yeah, Phil was fun. I’ve never met a nicer man. A friend at the service said she saw him very angry once, many years ago, at another person. Even that he got over, because later he was totally into having that person back with our orchestra, thinking there was no finer person for the job.
Miss you, Phil.
From the movie Scent of Woman (so I’m assuming this is by the composer Thomas Newman)
Galant-quartet: oboe Alexey Balashov; violin Varvara Balashova; viola Andrey Utushkin; cello Svetlana Demidenko
