ProneOboe

I can remember at least two old cranky violinists coming to talk to young me about NOT going into music.  There was a session, for example, during a Rochester Philharmonic Youth Orchestra retreat in which a real RPO professional (who was probably 47 but whom I remember as ancient) told us that, statistically, no one who graduates from music school wins auditions for jobs because there are only like 4 jobs out there in the world and 7000 hotshots coming into the job market every week.  Quit NOW.  I may have misremembered the details of this speech, but I remember the emotional jolt.  It was designed to discourage. Last weekend I was presenting at a Double Reed Festival, and heard some oboists grumbling about another presenter who had evidently given something of the same talk to a roomful of masterclass attendees and participants.  High school students and cheerful adult amateurs. And look, there's an element of truth to this.  Classical music is not...

Art lives from constraints and dies from freedom -Leonardo da Vinci The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution - Igor Stravinsky Sometimes constraints actually create success. Not being able to swim made me run.   And running taught me the discipline I needed as a writer - Malcolm Gladwell I bought a printer this summer.   I bought it specifically to carry in the camper with us when we took our long national parks vacation.   It was the smallest, lightest, simplest printer I could find that did what I needed - it printed in color or black and white on letter size paper, period.   With it, I was able to run my reed business from the road, and it took up barely any space, and weighed almost nothing, and it was also white and cute. I loved it for the freedom it gave me - to mail reed shipments from anywhere - and for its adorable design factor. ...