Skip to main content

I'm Back!

Somehow, astonishingly, the last time I published anything here was two weeks ago.  Since that time, my orchestra had its first huge masterworks concert (The Planets, the Dvorak Cello Concerto, Short Ride in a Fast Machine), I had two amazing rehearsals with colleagues for a chamber music thingy we’re doing in November, I gave a solo recital in Chicago, I was interviewed for an in depth article, I hosted a Barret Night masterclass at Valparaiso University, I mailed more than ninety hand-made reeds, and I just today had another two hour meeting with my grant-writing partners at The Music Village for my spring chamber music series.  Tomorrow I leave for Ohio University, where I will perform a DIFFERENT solo recital  - CHROMA - on Monday.

Topics that occurred to me - that every evening when I went to bed I thought, Oh, I should wake up early and write this up for my blog! - included the amazing transformation of my orchestra from a bunch of rusty, summer-tired musicians to a tight, exciting group in just 4 days of rehearsals.  How great it feels to turn off the multi-tasking brain and focus on my one small job in an orchestra rehearsal.  The pleasures and difficulties of contemporary music in a small group.  The transition back to full, active employment from a comparatively leisurely summer schedule.  How I am newly impressed by people who can sound coherent in interviews, and can find a topic and stick to it, which is MUCH harder than I expected.  Oh, let’s see - the skill of relaxing in performance, which I rediscovered playing the Bach Gavotte in recital, and the challenge of putting that intuitive skill into words for a group of students. 

I can’t imagine why I couldn’t find the time to write any of these up.  I do apologize to anyone who was waiting for MY notification of the South Bend Symphony concert or the Music That Should Have Been Written for the Oboe recital and missed these events.  It continues to be my mission to bring people out to hear classical music and I HOPE that my concert previews are helpful, but somehow in the insanity of the past two weeks nothing got out of my head and onto the page. 

Here and now I start up again. This is going to be an entire weekend of oboe fun - I’ll be driving to Fort Wayne Saturday night to hear the Philharmonic perform the Christopher Rouse Oboe Concerto with Liang Wang.  Sunday morning I’ll make my way down to Ohio University in Athens, in time to hear the Columbus Symphony’s principal oboist, Stephen Secan, give a masterclass.  That afternoon Dr. Michele Fiala will play the Mozart Oboe Concerto with the University Orchestra, and then I get to rehearse for my recital.  What a treat be a part of OU’s OktOBOEfest!

I’m performing my CHROMA recital on Monday at 5:00 in the Recital Hall.  I’m really looking forward to this performance, not least because I’m tweaking the program again.  CHROMA started out in 2010 as an Art and Opera concert - I played multiple opera arias and featured the Silvestrini Etudes which are all based on works of Impressionist art.  From there Paul and I began to add video elements and by the time we performed this program last - in April of 2012 - we had eight movements with visuals.  This year, though, as I’m practicing, I’ve been loving the songs less and less, and I can’t even tell you how tired I am of Pasculli’s bravura Donizetti opera transcription which I’ve been playing forever.  It’s hard just to be hard - hard on purpose - and exhausting to play.  For this latest iteration I get to change it out, and I’m ecstatic. 

CHROMA is now exclusively an audio and visual exploration of color, with no operatic overtones, and I get to close with the Mendelssohn transcription that I’ve been working on so hard and that was so well received in Chicago last weekend.  I’m excited to present it.  And from here on I swear I will keep you all posted!



Comments

  1. Delighted you are back. We were beginning to develop withdrawal symptoms. We caught a glimpse of you by craning our necks Saturday night. I am so please that maestro Tsung Yeh’s choices are some of my favorite pieces. Young Sebastian Baverstsam redeemed himself with firmness and alacrity; always a pleasure to hear new performers.
    I envy your musical tour and I wish I could follow you to hear these performances in Ohio.
    Looking forward to hearing your Chroma performances both live and maybe some of them in your blog.
    Welcome back and hold the tune:}
    Dimitri

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you, Dimitri! Glad you enjoyed the concert and I look forward to playing for you again soon!

    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

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, and tu

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 inconsistent scraping, an