Skip to main content

Upcoming Concert

This Saturday night - after my recital in Chicago (click HERE for info on that) - I will be with the Northwest Indiana Symphony performing Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony. It's a piece that, because I played it in Youth Orchestra as a kid, I know so well I don't even have to count the rests. We would have worked on it for an entire year, and all of the ins and outs are deep in my memory. The problem I actually bump into is that it's so familiar to me I have to keep checking in with myself to make sure I'm phrasing and playing my solos like the grown-up I am rather than the high-school junior I was. It's all imprinted on my brain, bad intonation and all. So the challenge is to keep my professional mind engaged while I play passages I almost could play in my sleep.

Fortunately, the other two works on the program - Howard Hanson's Symphony No. 1 and the Kevin Puts Marimba Concerto - are far less familiar. A neat coincidence is that we're playing side-by-side with the Youth Orchestra on the Hanson, so I'm performing with my students who have been working on the piece since fall themselves. Feels like a nice circle, doesn't it? It's why I chose to play this concert - an hour and a half from home in February - instead of the perfectly nice Pops concert three blocks from my house that the SBSO is doing. Repertoire and teaching opportunities trump convenience in this case.

Click HERE for tickets and more info.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Blog has MOVED

 Have you been waiting ... and waiting ... and WAITING for a new Prone Oboe post?  Don't wait here anymore!  The blog has moved to https://jennetingle.com/prone-oboe/  and will not be updated here on Blogger anymore.  Please come and check me out there!  I love you all - stay safe out there!  Jennet
Post a Comment
Read more

How Do You WISH You Could Describe Your Reeds?

In Reed Club last Monday, we took a moment before we started scraping to set some intentions.  We each said one word - an adjective to describe what we WANTED our reeds to be.  An aspirational adjective. Efficient was a word that came up, and Consistent . Dark and Mysterious . Mellow . Predictable .  Trustworthy .  Honest .  BIGGER . Reed affirmations actually felt helpful - both in the moment and in the results we found as we worked.  I don't know why that surprises me - I set intentions at the beginning of the year, at the beginning of the month, at the beginning of a run, in the morning before I work.  I love a good affirmation.  I love WORDS.  But I'd sort of forgotten about the possibility of applying one to the mundane work of reed-making.   You don't have to know exactly how to GET to that result.  But having clarity in your mind about what that result is?  Helps you to stop going down unhelpful rabbit holes...
2 comments
Read more

On the generosity of Instagram practice accounts

Classical musicians are trained to make it perfect. To make all the notes correct, to make it sound like the CD, to do it the way everyone else has done it. The only way to shine is to be BETTER - which means cleaner, more in tune, more perfect. We DO NOT SHIP until it’s perfect, which is why so many people struggle with performance anxiety and stage fright. Live is scary because you can’t control how perfect it is. But here’s what the kids are doing, over on Instagram. They are making “practice accounts” and sharing their work in progress. They are sharing snippets of pieces, little technical etudes, minute-long snatches of what is happening. They are sharing the messy middle. The first magic in this is that the process of recording yourself, listening to what you’re doing, making judgements for yourself about what is good ENOUGH to share, trying again to make the snippet REPRESENT where you are in the journey - that PROCESS is making you better. The second magic is that seeing your ...
Post a Comment
Read more