Skip to main content

Upcoming Concert

I have just learned that I have comments! Sorry to anyone who thought I was ignoring them - I just don't know how to blog, apparently. Will do better in future.

This weekend's exciting concert is on the South Bend Symphony's Chamber Series, at DeBartolo Performing Arts Center at Notre Dame. I actually am very excited to play it - we'll be featuring our Principal Horn, Aaron Brant, in the first Horn Concerto of Richard Strauss. He's a wonderful musician, and it is always so inspiring for me to hear my colleagues play, so I can hardly wait for our first rehearsal. Look HERE for info - student tickets are always only $5!

Meanwhile, though, I'm sitting in Panera waiting for a rehearsal for tomorrow morning's educational concerts in Northwest Indiana. I taught for two and a half hours this afternoon and didn't have time to go home, so with my unprecedented three unstructured baby-less hours I - well - I ran all of the annoying errands that I'd been putting off because they're even more annoying with a baby. Have I mentioned how much I love her? What I don't love, though, is the car seat, with its fussy five-point restraint system, all five of which points have to be undone and redone at every stop while I crouch in the back seat of the Beetle and try not to wake her up or piss her off. So although I haven't practiced worth a darn today, I do have contact lens solution and Worcestershire sauce which I can now cross off my list. Such is my glamorous life.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Zoe's Musical Beginnings

I've mentioned before that I started out on the piano by figuring out melodies.  Connecting notes and trying to learn how they worked.  I'm fascinated to observe that Zoe's initial approach to the instrument is totally different from mine. She sits at our new piano and plays random notes, and tells us what to feel.  If she is playing slowly then the music is sad, and we should cry. When we are "crying" she either gets up and hugs us so we feel better (so awesome!) or bangs faster, to indicate that the music is now happy and we should dance.  Her other piano game is accompanying herself - she plays "chords" in alternating hands while she "sings" the ABC song or Camptown Races or Sesame Street.  She makes us sing along.  She loves it when we clap at the end.  When I was little I wanted to know how music worked. Although I make my living as a performer now, I learned about the interpersonal aspects of music later.  Her immediate interest is in ...

Cleaning Your Reeds

Updated: I've posted a video of my plaque cleaning technique HERE ! Oboe reeds are made from organic material, and over time it is inevitable that they will age and change. The first few days of change are usually quite welcome, as you break the reed in by playing and the opening gradually settles down to something you can be comfortable with and the response becomes more and more predictable.  You might even hit a plateau where it appears to be perfectly consistent and reliable for several days! But after that, the reed seems to be on a constant gradually accelerating downslope, until it eventually collapses into a sharp, non-responsive, mushy mess. We can rejuvenate the reed during this time by cleaning it, and can often extend its life as well! There are three good ways to do this. First, least invasively, you can just run some fresh water through and over the reed AFTER you play each time.  Go ahead and rinse that reed in the sink, shake it as dry as possible, a...

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

We took a vacation this summer.   This is not news to anyone in my life - anyone who knows me or especially Steve on Facebook followed along with all of our pictures.   We took our travel trailer out to Arizona - via St Louis, Tulsa, Amarillo, Roswell, Santa Fe - and then stayed a week in Clarksdale and Flagstaff and visited some ancient pueblo ruins, Sedona, Jerome, the Lowell Observatory, the Grand Canyon.   We swam in swimming pools, lakes, and icy mountain streams.   We hiked.   Eventually we came home again, via Albuquerque, Amarillo, Tulsa, and St Louis. (our inventiveness had somewhat worn out).   After a week at home we took another trip, and drove to Vermont via western NY and the Adirondack Park (stayed an extra day to hike a mountain), lived four days in East Franklin VT, and came home via Catskill and eastern Ohio.   This vacation felt different from all of our previous ones.   In the 21 years we’ve been married, I can name on...