Skip to main content

From One Extreme to Another

So over the weekend I was in Philadelphia, and Paul Hamilton and I performed CHROMA on a new-ish concert series at the Delaware County Community College.  It was  a lovely little venue with a great piano and a perfect video setup, and I had a wonderful time chatting with the nice audience afterwards.  The presenter suggested that we take questions at the end of the program, and as always I really enjoyed talking about the oboe, and the circular breathing, and the terrific music we played and the beautiful video presentation Paul created for us.  



Here's a sample of the fun we had -

My life seems to swing from one extreme to another.  From featured soloist to invisible accompanist.  Next weekend in South Bend we are playing four, count ’em four piano concertos.  Mozart 21, Prokofiev 1, Rachmaninov 2, and Chopin something-or-other.  It will be fun, I’m sure - I like to play - and no doubt the soloists will be top-notch.  (Here's the Tribune article about the great Toradze studio)

I can’t believe I’m about to admit this, but I’m not a huge fan of the piano concerto genre.  There are some great pieces, of course, and audiences seem to love watching the fingers fly, but I often find the experience a little tedious. It’s hard to hear the soloist from the ensemble, because the piano lid funnels the sound outward, away from us.   And I sit right in the middle of the orchestra, completely hidden behind that same piano lid, so the work I am doing is totally unseen, if not irrelevant. 

This concert will certainly be terrific.  I am looking forward to it.   I will have a good time.  This is not my favorite program of the season, but I am lucky to be able to do what I do.   It is  delightful to have so much variety in my career.  Every week is different, and I absolutely welcome that. 

Details are HERE. 

Comments

  1. dimkordMay 3, 2012 at 11:40 PM

    Thanks for the “sampling” Jennet, I am sorry I couldn’t make it to Philadephia
    For CHROMA. But I will be at the S.B.Symphony Saturday,(craning to catch a glipse of your oboe).
    I see what you mean about the piano lid. On your second concert at the De Bartolo the only seat I could get was behind and above the orchestra, and there I was hoping you’d turn around a bit to better hear your oboe. It had been along time since I sat up there and I had forgotten the distortions.
    Keep up the good work.Dimitri

    ReplyDelete
  2. JennetMay 5, 2012 at 5:54 PM

    Thanks, Dimitri! I always appreciate your support!
    Jennet

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownNovember 3, 2016 at 1:12 PM

    good

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

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 ...
2 comments
Read more

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...
6 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 on...
6 comments
Read more