oboeinsight

Singer John Legend was in Washington to sing at the White House on Thursday but he had a few choice words for the politicians in town, too.

Legend told reporters before an evening concert celebrating Motown’s music that too often the arts are the first thing to go when budgets need to be cut.

“People fought to give me – a millionaire – a tax cut this year,” he said. “I didn’t need it. And all the other millionaires didn’t need it either.”

The singer said he’d benefited from cultural organizations such as community choirs and arts councils in earlier years, which often suffer when budgets get trimmed.

“I hope our politicians will not think that they are expendable and they can just get rid of them and nobody will feel the pain,” he said. “Because I think society will feel the pain.”

He added: “I’m really frustrated with some of the discourse that’s coming out of Washington.”

I read it here.

Once, before I played Carnegie Hall myself, I was backstage at a New York Philharmonic concert. I remember the principal oboe—one of the best, bar none—was getting ready to solo. With sweat running off of him in buckets, he was so nervous that he couldn’t even light his cigarette. I thought if that’s what it’s like to perform at Carnegie Hall, I’m not so sure I want to go through it myself. The first time I performed solo with an orchestra at Carnegie Hall, I was so nervous that I almost got into an automobile accident on the way to the gig.

I read it here. So who was the cigarette smoking oboist? Anyone know? Just curious!

For me, the most exciting change emanates from the musicians themselves. They seem to be coming to terms with our ever-changing world, and now grasp that the purpose of recordings and digital offerings is to market the orchestra; to create a unique and distinctive brand; and to spread the orchestra’s name to as many people as possible.

The live recording contract in America, a union agreement which now covers downloading and streaming, is a huge step towards achieving that goal. But I would hope, moving forward, that musicians would look ahead to all of the digital opportunities possible, and work out a win-win situation, so that organizations can market orchestras on as many levels as possible through new technology — within reason, but without massive restrictions.

My hope for the new year is that orchestras can become far more flexible, to respond to innovation quickly. And that managements and boards can recognize and seize those opportunities on behalf of our orchestras and those who love to listen to them.

-Marin Alsop

I read this at Deceptive Cadence. (Please check that site out!) And I SO agree. I am, in fact, doing a happy dance at the moment. Well, in my head anyway. Times, they are a’changin’. Many orchestras, they be a’foldin’. Can we do something to change this trend? Some things we have held back on could actually help promote our cause. We have been shooting ourselves in the proverbial foot by not allowing a smidge of anything out. Or maybe allowing a mini-smidge that is mostly laughable. And a web presence? I think every orchestra should have a YouTube channel. Someone should be able to search for us and find us there.

I’m not saying we should just never be paid a penny for what we do, but I am saying that making ourselves more easily accessible will benefit us more than keeping everything to ourselves, locked in our special little vaults in our symphony offices.

I do hope that someone doesn’t now smash me to smithereens because I am publicly saying this. But really now, we need to catch up to the 21st century. Or at least the 20th. This appears to be a step in that direction.

(And now you see … while I argue with those who say we need to change in certain ways, I’m not opposed to change. Really. Or maybe I’m just a walking contradiction. Hmm.)

PS When can we ever dispense with tails, for goodness sake, and just don all black? Okay, okay, I’m sure that’s asking FAR too much. Sigh.

Some orchestral musicians in the US and elsewhere can be tough customers, especially those who labor away in the back of large string sections and feel that their efforts rarely matter. As a conductor you can experience their attitude when you walk off the podium after a performance. The audience may be going berserk with pleasure, but the back section violinists will just sit there with grim, stony expressions on their faces.

But the Met Orchestra players, even though they play in the relative obscurity of the orchestra pit, seem to exude a sense of pride and pleasure in what they are doing. On my first day of orchestra readings more than a few of the players came up to me and expressed their excitement over the project and told me that they’d downloaded the recording and listened to it in advance of the rehearsal. This is something you don’t often hear coming from the majority of orchestra players.

You can read John Adams’ entire blogpost here. (I always have to control-option-command-8 the darn thing because he uses white type on black background and it absolutely KILLS my eyes!)

I’ve never sat in the back of a string section. Heck, I’ve never played a string instrument! Do they really have a glum look on their faces after performances? I’m going to have to check next time we are on stage!

And yeah, I’ve heard that some musicians don’t actually study the music. (Some even admit it at the first rehearsal.) I can’t imagine not studying a work before going into the first rehearsal. I’d be far too scared!

Please do go read the entire thing (although I must warn you it’s white letters on black background; that’s a killer for my eyes!):

Growing up as a musician that plays classical music has been interesting because for the most part, I was always in the minority when it comes to what music I feel most connected to. As a result, I tend to be a bit on the shy side when it comes to presenting the music I play, especially when it’s a recording that isn’t recording-studio perfect. But in this situation I didn’t say anything at all before playing the recording – I didn’t apologize, didn’t make excuses, didn’t explain anything about the pieces. And what happened? We had a bunch of women listening to music that they didn’t all know, smiling, and humming along. They weren’t classical music buffs, they were young and old, they were enjoying listening to the music I love so much. And did they hear the foibles, the passages that weren’t as expressive, the blemishes? I don’t believe they did. They were listening for music, not for imperfection.

Erica Ann Sipes is a pianist and a cellist.

In part, success boils down to a magic number: 10,000 hours of practice. What does Lee think of that?

“I haven’t counted – I’m afraid to count,” Lee said. “What if it’s not 10,000 yet? I think it’s very accurate in another sense. People become famous when they’re young, but they don’t peak until their 20s. I don’t think that just comes from 10,000 hours of practice but from experiences. When you’re young, you have instincts, and those instincts guide you the right way. After a period of time those instincts don’t suffice. You need something to pull on. You need your experiences. You need your emotions. You need a deeper understanding of what you’re doing and what you want to do and what’s going on around you.”

I read it here.

Yikes! I’ve been going downhill since my 20s? That would mean over 30 years of downhill.

Oh. But I was no prodigy. So do I peak later then? I’m still waiting ….

love words. But I also love the way a skilled singer can take a phrase, a scene, a role, and create something new and vibrant and relevant through their interpretation…seeing a situation through someone else’s lens is powerful, and I think the clearest way to see similarities and differences in oneself.

But these beautiful lines, this rich subtext, the conflict has to be communicated. And to successfully communicate, there need to be two parties involved: the speaker and the listener. The listener, in this case the audience, need to free themselves of distraction (i.e. no texting during the show, running through the to-do list, or firing off the random email from the seats), and be willing to spend a good chunk of time listening. They need to suspend disbelief (in dragons, true love, the wrath of the gods, et cetera ad nauseam) and be receptive to the crux of each of these stories: the relationships therein.

The performer’s responsibilities are to create a believable, multi-dimensional character: to tell that character’s story: to believe the story 100%. They also must create two types of relationships: those onstage that facilitate the telling of the story, and those with the audience that creates the space for the telling of that story.

Part of that audience relationship is made up of those nit-picky things like vocal technique and knowing your music: because let’s face it, if those pieces aren’t in place, the story you’re telling isn’t “I’m in love with a man who walked away from me and our child and now my life is not worth living,” or “Because you’ve killed my lover I’m going to throw myself off the nearest bridge/tower/parapet,” but rather “holy CRAP I’m totally unprepared and uncomfortable.”

BIG difference in subtext, that.

Do go read the whole thing.

I think we instrumentalists can learn something from this too. We are communicating to an audience, unless we are sitting in our own private little room playing to ourselves. We need to remember that.

I won’t start my own little rant here. But I do need to remind myself, at least, that when on the stage or in the pit the way I look, the way I behave, the things I do or don’t do — they are all part of the performance. And the audience is watching.

As a classical music lover, I’d like to believe that my favourite music has some kind of magical effect on people – that it soothes the savage breast in some unique way. I’d like to think that classical music somehow inspires nobler aspirations in the mind of the purse-snatcher, causing him to abandon his line of work for something more upstanding and socially beneficial.

But I know better. The hard, cold truth is that classical music in public places is often deliberately intended to make certain kinds of people feel unwelcome. Its use has been described as “musical bug spray,” and as the “weaponization” of classical music. At the Bathurst Street Subway Station, the choice of music conveys a clear message: “Move along quickly and peacefully, people; this is not your cultural space.”

Some sociologists have expressed concern that this particular use of classical music only serves to further divide society along lines of age, class and ethnicity. And, not surprisingly, some in the classical music community are offended by this new purpose for their art. The English music critic Norman Lebrecht has written that using classical music as a policing tool is “profoundly demeaning to one of the greater glories of civilization.”

RTWT

If you really want to do something that sounds like Haydn but not Mozart, something that sounds like Beethoven but not Schubert, there have to be a lot of switches that are triggered in your brain and they’re based on linguistic things. Somebody could listen to somebody’s speech and might say, ‘That’s a Southern accent.’ But somebody who has a good ear would say, ‘No, that’s Kentucky, Western Kentucky, confined to a two-county area.’ That’s what we’re talking about here—not because the audience might notice, but because if you’re going to do it, you might as well do it right.

-Robert Levin

RTWT

“If there is anything else in your life other than music that you enjoy, that is what you should pursue as a career.”

Imagine my surprise when my high school oboe teacher (then Principal Oboist of the Baltimore Symphony) said that to me when I told him my plans to pursue music as a career. How could he say that? I had been Principal oboe of my youth orchestra for years, I had been making All-State since the ninth grade, I was a real hotshot in my high school, and knew that I wanted to play the oboe as a career since I was 12…surely he didn’t mean to say such a thing to ME, right? While it hurt to hear those words at that time of my life, years later I realized the depth of his statement (and I also realized the gift that it really was). As time went on, I saw that he had issued a challenge; an inspiration. I sent him a letter thanking him for caring enough about me to prepare me for the road ahead with his honesty.

These words are from Erin Hannigan. She is a successful professional oboist, playing principal oboist for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. RTWT

Honestly, if I had to choose to listen to only one genre of music for the rest of my life, I’d pick classical. It embraces multitudes and goes places no other genre does. But I don’t have to pick, and so I get to love go-go, hip-hop, jazz, funk, soul, and any other music that grabs my little heart. No one else in this modern world has to pick either, and they’re not going to listen to anyone who tells them that they have to.

So can we get off this? Please? Forever? Instead, I pledge to tell people what I find so exciting about classical music, hopefully in novel and vivid ways, and celebrate performances that generate just that kind of excitement. That’s what it’s all about!

RTWT

(Thanks to a tweet from “mlaffs” for alerting me to the blog entry.)

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while. I’m tired of the “This is better than that” thing. I don’t mind “This is different than that”, because that’s just true. But comparing classical music to pop music to determine which is “better” just seems silly and unproductive to me. (It does go both ways; I’ve heard pop music lovers do the same thing, so don’t think it’s just us classical music slobs snobs who do this!)

What a goofy way to spend one’s time. It’s not like, say, comparing milk chocolate to dark and knowing full well milk is waaaay better. ;-)

But really now, if we could get off the comparison thing, and if we could get off the “it’s dying” or even, “it’s already dead” thing, and if we could just enjoy what we like and maybe even get others to listen a bit, well, wouldn’t that be a bit more enjoyable? Some will like what I like. Some won’t. My kids play “their” music for me. Some I like. Some I don’t. I can live with that.

When someone comments for the first time here I have to approve the comment. Sometimes I first send an email to the commenter, because I suspect the comment is actually spam. Sometimes I can see it’s clearly legit. Other times I just don’t know, but when I don’t know it’s most frequently spam. This one below was received a few days ago. I never heard back from the commenter, so I am guessing it was spam. But it did make me laugh. Dan suggests that the “obsessive” part is correct for sure … not certain about the “perfectionists” thing.

This is a serious question, more concerned – is it typical of of oboe players to be obsessive perfectionists? This is not a joke,. Thanks.