Skip to main content

Upcoming Concerts and a Treat From My Archive

This Friday night the Northwest Indiana Symphony has a great concert. Our featured piece is the Dvorak Cello Concerto, which is one of my all-time favorites. In fact, after the first time I played it in the orchestra I went out and bought the solo cello part to transcribe for the oboe - I was that much in love. As it turned out, the outer movements were a little too unidiomatic for me to tackle that year, but I did wind up performing the slow movement several times. This is a live performance, warts and all. Don't judge me.



I'm really looking forward to playing it from within the orchestra again, and listening to our excellent soloist, Joshua Roman. I don't know where I went wrong in life that I don't play the cello.

As if that weren't enough excitement for one week, we also have a South Bend Symphony concert on Sunday afternoon. The theme is J.S.Bach and Sons, and we are featuring the very demanding Orchestral Suite number 3 and Brandenburg 5. My favorite part of this concert is getting to hear my colleagues play - the Brandenburg Concerto features our marvelous principal flutist and principal second violinist, and because there are no oboes in that work I will be free to listen and enjoy.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Idle Thought

I should be practicing right now. Putting in the hours to prepare for my audition on Monday. But this morning before I left home to teach I chose to use my time making a chicken salad that we could eat for the rest of this busy week, and now after my Notre Dame student I am cheerfully enjoying my lunch at the local coffee house, Zoe snoozing beside me in her car seat. Sometimes it's healthier to use your time taking care of yourself instead of your reeds. Or at least I hope so...
1 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.  Reminds you to seek something beyond competent, beyond
2 comments
Read more

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 only one - maybe two trips we ever took t
6 comments
Read more