ProneOboe

The oboe is a beautiful and a noble instrument, largely overlooked by big-name composers writing solo works.  My new CD aims to address this imbalance.  Have you ever wondered what the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto would sound like on an oboe?  How about the Gershwin Piano Preludes? This is your chance to find out! Music That SHOULD Have Been Written for the Oboe will be available for purchase on iTunes, CDBaby, and Amazon (and from me) on December 2, 2016.  But you can pre-order right now on my website, and I will fulfill all orders during the week of November 28.   Get it before anyone else!  Also, here's a treat from the disc.  The second of Gershwin's Three Preludes is so gentle, so loving, so intimate, so passionate. I simply loved playing it with the great Paul Hamilton, and I hope you enjoy it here! Click to listen

I get asked all the time what I do for a living.  I'm a musician, I say, proudly. Oh.  But what do you DO? I was asked to speak on this topic for the South Bend Symphony's Board of Directors this past week, and thought I'd reprint my presentation for those curious about the life of a modern-day musician. It's a fair question.  People see me playing in the South Bend Symphony, and that's clearly not a full time job, because there's not a concert every day or even every week, so what am I doing the rest of the time? I have what is called a portfolio career, which is very normal for a 21st Century musician.  I am a full time professional musician, which involves being a performer, a teacher, an arranger, a maker, a marketer, a businessman, a salesman, a treasurer, a self-promoter, a social media manager, and more. I graduated from Eastman in 1996, and since that time I have never held a full-time job, and I have never gotten benefits from my job.  But at t

You know how sometimes you have a gig with a good group that you are super excited about, and you carefully prepare your music, and then when you get there it turns out that one of your pieces is a stand up solo - in which you and two of your colleagues get to play standing up because the part is so important and the conductor wants to feature it?  And the thing that you thought would be fun is EVEN MORE FUN because in addition to getting to play great music with great colleagues, you get to be seen? That's this week.  I'm super delighted to be performing with Music of the Baroque this Sunday and next Tuesday.  The particular piece is this - the Sinfonia from J.S. Bach's Cantata No. 42 - and the performances are in Skokie and at the Harris Theater in Chicago. Details HERE .

This Friday I am playing J. S. Bach at Valparaiso University. Cantata 21, Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis (I had much grief) is not a piece I had encountered before, but it is absolutely gorgeous.  The opening Sinfonia is a long, complex, heartfelt, darkly chromatic, richly intertwined duo for oboe and violin, which I cannot WAIT to play, and the soprano aria is also going to be a treat for me. I'm looking forward to this concert because of its interesting format - it opens at 5pm in the art gallery with solo violin works, and progresses to the recital hall for the cantata.  I'm optimistic that there will be some speaking or at least excellent notes tying this all together.  The progressive nature of the concert appeals to my taste for new and innovative presentations, and of course the intellectual complexity and depth of Bach's music speaks to me from across the ages.  This cantata was composed in 1713, and now, over 200 years later, still has the power to move us.