Skip to main content

Upcoming Concerts, Ohio version

I am writing this from a coffeeshop in downtown Lancaster, Ohio, where I am based performing with the Lancaster Festival Orchestra for the rest of this month. We have a few too many amazing concerts and events to list, but you can check out the details HERE.

We met for the first time yesterday and I am thrilled by the quality of the orchestra and conductor. This is going to be a great couple of weeks! Our first performance is tomorrow night - Roman Carnival Overture, Pines of Rome, and Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. We meet our piano soloist, Olga Kern, tonight, and I have high expectations.

What a treat to have a new orchestra to play with this summer! I know only a few of the musicians here, and so they don't know me either. Coming in with no expectations gives me a chance to show myself the way I want to be - obviously I will play as well as I am able, but I also want to be a unitasker in rehearsal. No crosswords or sudoku for this girl - I am going to be the kind of professional who pays attention even when the conductor is talking to the strings. Even when I have a long rest. My iPhone will stay in my bag, and my pencil will be ready on my stand. Oh, and I am going to get militant about the Unfussy Oboist, my outside-the-practice-room persona. No whining about temperatures or sightlines or how little sleep I got last night. And NO messing around with reeds once the rehearsal begins. The reed I tune the orchestra with is the reed I use, period.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Knife Sharpening

I've gotten a lot of questions on this topic, and the most recent querent prompted me to make a video to demonstrate.  You can find that  HERE . Knife sharpening seems to strike terror into many hearts.  And it's little wonder.  Many famous oboists have gone on record as saying that a sharp knife is the most important aspect of reed making. People have entire systems of stones and strops and rods set up to sharpen their knives. And it is important, of course it is - but I don't believe that you need your knife to be razor-like, or objectively the sharpest blade of any in your home.  The reed knife has one job - scraping cane off in precision ways - and it has to be sharp enough for that, and sharpened optimally for that purpose.  More than that is overly fussy for my taste. This is not to say that I allow my knife to be dull.  A dull knife forces you to put too much pressure on the reed and can cause cracking. Obviously it can lead to terribly inc...

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

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...