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 a growing field, and it

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.   I had a printer,