Skip to main content

The Struggle is Real

I talk so blithely about how the oboe is not your friend. How it is a different instrument every day.  How complicated and annoying those tiny reeds are.  In our quintet concerts this week I commiserated openly with the high school oboists in the audience, and told whole classes of kids that REEDS are the hardest thing about the oboe.

Which is not untrue, but I can say it so easily, and write about it so preachily, because most of the time I privately believe that I am past it.  I make so many reeds that SOMETHING will almost always work, and I have the skills and savvy to cover for most deficiencies and the showmanship to perform through reed inadequacies.  At this point in my career, it's pretty easy to be "good enough" in any given performance, and I'm always striving for the more elusive "great" or "awesome". 

It's been a long time since I had to fight my way note by note through a concert, hyperaware of every register shift and articulation, just struggling  to keep producing sound on the thing.  It seems that every reed I've made in the past couple of weeks chose tonight to go COMPLETELY CRAZY, or maybe that the oboe has a latent crack somewhere, or perhaps that one of my non-standard adjustment screws has gone berserk.  

Whatever it was, I spent the evening playing defense, just trying not to embarrass myself audibly.  I changed reeds a few times during the concert, ran all of my adjustments beforehand and at the intermission, and even scraped the heart of one reed onstage between pieces.  Nothing was vibrating, nothing was ringing, nothing was any fun about the event.

After driving home through a blizzard and paying out the babysitter after midnight, I won't be tackling this problem tonight - tomorrow morning before the dress rehearsal of our SBSO pops concert should give me plenty of time and I have dozens of reeds in progress and an alternate oboe.  Something will work.  But it's humbling every now and then to realize just how much of my perceived value to the world hangs on a hunk of African Blackwood and two tiny pieces of damp bamboo.  

I love the oboe, I love my job, I love my life.  And frankly I don't think I'd enjoy it as much if it were always easy.  But this one was rough. 

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

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...
7 comments
Read more

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

Exciting Upcoming Concerts

The South Bend Symphony has a great concert this weekend that I've been really excited about. If you are in town you should definitely try to attend, as it features Prokofiev's thrilling Symphony no. 5 AND our marvelous concertmistress, Zofia Glashauser, playing the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. However, I will not be there. This Friday and Saturday I am playing Strauss's Ein Heldenleben with the Milwaukee Symphony , and loving every single minute. This orchestra sounds spectacular, and here's why. They rehearse. They have plenty of time to really listen to each other and get things right. This morning, our service was a wind sectional, which blew my mind. Almost 2 full hours with only the winds and brass, just on this one 40-minute piece. The conductor worked with us on every detail. Intonation, articulation, ensemble, balance, style. And still we have another full orchestra rehearsal tomorrow as well as the dress. I haven't sat in a winds-only rehearsal...
7 comments
Read more