ProneOboe

I had a wonderful time rehearsing the Prokofiev Quintet for our last Musicians for Michiana concert, at the end of April.  My colleagues were AMAZING, came with their A games, and were prepared and ready to work every time we got together. I found that there was a big difference in rehearsal style between the wind players that I'm accustomed to working with and the string players in the group.  Strings just plain play more in rehearsal.  We'd run a movement, without stopping, and then talk about what we needed to do differently.  Then, where wind players would have either played a few tiny spots to try out ideas or just marked their parts and moved on, this group played the whole movement again.  And again, if necessary.  It surprised me a bit each time, though I was perfectly happy to do it and it ABSOLUTELY helped us to learn this difficult and unfamiliar work as an ensemble. I think I attribute this difference to a couple of factors. One is physi...

It is Spring Break.  Because I teach in so many places, and am not myself a student, this milestone has rarely been meaningful to me - so what if six of my kids are out of school in a given week?  I still have to teach the rest.  But this week is Zoe’s Spring Break, and last week was one of the hardest I’ve had so far this season, and MERELY not having to drag a grumpy girl out of bed at seven each morning feels like a vacation.  Added to that, I’ve canceled all of my private students, even those who DON’T have break this week, and added to THAT, I have a fun concert to play in which I am not the boss of anything, and you can see why I am practically giddy with the freedom of it all. I have always found myself to be two different people - one socially, and one professionally, with an oboe in my hand.  I am naturally an introvert and draw all of my energy from being at home and being alone.  But I act the extrovert very well.  Performing is my favor...

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I can hardly believe it, but our first Musicians for Michiana concert is happening this very weekend! I’ve been working on this project for so long that I’d almost forgotten that an ACTUAL CONCERT was going to be the end result - it seemed like all I was ever going to do was worry about money and harass printers - but now that we’ve had rehearsals and I’m planning my program notes I begin to think that it might be real.  And that we might actually be getting to the part I’m good at, which can’t come soon enough for my morale.  Two years ago at a convention I heard this 2010 Martin Bresnick piece, once, and immediately recognized that I had to play it.  The composer had gone on a pilgrimage to see the tiny Belarus town his parents and grandparents had grown up in, and describes the bucolic setting with nostalgia and love.  The middle section, a lullaby, seems to reference his own childhood, and as such feels very personal. The piece is beautifully written for the...

This is it - the end of the crowdfunding campaign.  The last eighteen hours.  It's been humbling to watch as contributions came in and people from ALL OVER showed their support by donating and by sharing the campaign and by just emailing in to let us know that they loved the idea. And the idea continues to be great.  What could be wrong with a chamber music series that supports local non-profits?  So far the only downside is this one - that I have had to ask for money to start it up. Asking for help has never been my strong suit.  I want to do it all myself, every time.  But I've been blown away by the support we have gotten just by asking, and WE'RE ALMOST DONE! If you've been thinking that South Bend needs more chamber music - if you've been thinking that you wanted to support this exciting project - if you've meant to kick in a few dollars - this is your time.  Please check out the campaign today!

Here’s my favorite thing about Kellirae Boann, of The Music Village .  When I make a suggestion she says, “Yes,” and then she says, “AND,” and she makes it bigger and better than I had even ever considered that it could be.  When I approached her hoping to perform a few concerts in her space the project rapidly turned into a four-concert series, featuring fourteen musicians, four non-profit organizations, two restaurants, a recording engineer, pre-concert lectures, a local print shop, a team of volunteers, a grant proposal, and the current crowd-funding campaign which I invite YOU to participate in.  Kellirae and The Music Village have been my strategic partner in this project since its inception.  The Village will be hosting the concerts, in an intimate space just perfect for small-group chamber music and up-close audience engagement.  She and her superb staff and volunteers worked with me to refine the vision of the project and to craft a compelling grant pro...

This is Part Three in a series of posts about Musicians for Michiana .  What would a chamber music series be without a fantastic set of musicians ? This is not a large town - which is why I was pleasantly surprised to discover that there were so many serious topnotch musicians living in the area, and so many more who come in every month to perform with the South Bend Symphony.  We are just far enough from Chicago and Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo that our members frequently choose to spend the week here in town during orchestra cycles - with the result that there are a large number of professional musicians who consider South Bend a home base.  Who have connections here to the community, and a stake in its success and growth. And this was definitely another part of my inspiration in starting this project.  Musicians love to play, and crave more opportunities to dig deeply into chamber music with friends. There are few things more fun than working together in...

This is Part Two in a series of posts about Musicians for Michiana .  (Part One HERE ) All social mission aside, the whole point of a chamber music series is the music, right? There’s something a little frustrating about being an orchestral musician, which is that you never get to choose what you play.  The programming takes place in an office far away from your place of work, on the stage, and you just have to show up and do the job at hand.  I love my job, but this lack of control is an inescapable downside.  In contrast, a small series like ours with a small number of enthusiastic musicians can program works that really matter to us.  Every piece on every concert was suggested by a musician.  Every piece has a personal story associated, one which we will certainly share with you during the performances as well as here, on the website, in advance.   Yes, many of these works were my suggestions, and yes, there is a lot of OBOE represented on the ...

This begins a series of posts talking about my new project, Musicians for Michiana .  Maybe it’s not so new a project, as I’ve been working consistently on it since last May: talking to musicians, meeting with representatives from our non-profit partners, planning programming, working on the budget, getting catering quotes, writing grant proposal narratives, and generally trying to build all of the behind-the-scenes infrastructure before I made any kind of announcement.  And now here we are!  Going public and raising real funds! This project originated back in the spring.  I was out for a run, and suddenly realized that I’d been living in South Bend for years.  I’d been drowning in the busyness of raising a toddler and having an active portfolio career, and I had no idea what was going on in the town I lived in. I was ready to look around, and reach out, and try to do my part.  I was inspired by examples like the Alias Chamber Ensemble in Nashville and the...