ProneOboe

The South Bend Symphony has its opening concert this weekend, and its first Music Director candidate. This entire year is devoted to our Music Director search.  I've been on the search committee ever since the process started, and it's wildly exciting to finally get to meet these people and to play for them and to make music together.  Our five masterworks concerts each feature a different candidate. I play with a lot of different ensembles, and I've been through an MD search before.  Even jaded old me is thrilled to see what changes these conductors will bring. One of my favorite aspects of this search is how much our management is trying to involve EVERYONE.  The candidate's week will consist of multiple meetings - with board, staff, musicians, university music departments, community leaders, YOUNG community leaders - and everyone who crosses paths with the candidate will get a survey to fill out.  The audience will vote.  The musicians will vote. The...

I am in Illinois this week for the Peoria Bach Festival, with concerts tonight and tomorrow night.  As always, I love this festival.  Love the challenges of jumping between three instruments, love playing my oboe d'amore anytime.  I love playing for the music director, John Jost, who has this music in his heart and communicates it so effectively and effortlessly to us that I feel it in mine as well. Details HERE Out of town gigs used to be the norm for me - when we first lived in Chicago I played principal with the Illinois Symphony , which necessitated regular five-day stays in Springfield with a host family.  My husband and I frequently took jobs several hours from home, staying with local people and getting to know them. This was fun in its way, of course. These gigs always necessitated long days of time-killing - we'd practice and work out, and then we'd read, or shop, or drink coffee.  In my home I can do busy work every minute and still end the day f...

This week I’ve been working with the West Michigan Symphony , playing Beethoven’s 4 th Symphony and the Shostakovich Cello Concerto. The commute is long - that’s the downside - so I’ve had to reschedule most of my students and accept the short short nights that come along with Zoe’s early morning getting-ready-for-kindergarten needs. But on the upside, I get to play with my husband - Steve is on this gig with me, for a change - and I’m having such a great time working with the orchestra! It’s a treat to play under Scott Speck.  He’s got a calm and low-key approach, and he knows what he wants the orchestra to sound like.  He works efficiently - even before tonight’s dress rehearsal I feel that the group is very well prepared and I know exactly what’s being asked of me in every section.  We know what to listen for in each passage and how he wants it played.  He’s scholarly about the material, but not to a tiresome degree.  I get the sense that he knows more ...

It’s fun to be a grownup.  It’s fun to be good at something.  I love it when I can feel my own progress. Daphnis et Chloé, by Ravel, is a monumental musical work, and one which is legendary among orchestral musicians for its difficulty.  There are approximately ten million notes to play, at very fast speeds, in unexpected meters, in the extreme ranges of the instruments, and, like most of Ravel’s music, it’s very exposed and changes tempos all the time and requires exceptionally soft playing in addition to great power.  I’ve performed part of it - the second suite - at least three or four times and each time I work hard at it for weeks before the cycle, and resolve to nail a few more licks, and do, but I’m far from being flawless.  It’s just that hard. When I was newly out of school and freelancing in Chicago, I got a last minute call to cover Daphnis in a Civic Orchestra rehearsal.  Yes,  a rehearsal, and only the second suite, but at that time in m...

Oh, this concert was FUN.  Beethoven’s Second Symphony, for one thing, which is just the right amount of difficult to keep you busy and engaged and concentrating and on the edge of your chair but not quite hard enough to get stressed about or to exhaust you for the rest of the day.  And a guest conductor, for another.  We worked with David Glover, assistant conductor of the Indianapolis Symphony.  He held our orchestra to very high standard, asking for truly soft playing, driving tempos forward despite the difficulty of the piece, and insisting on excellent ensemble work.    I have a great deal of respect for a leader who requests a specific string section articulation or wind section sound and then keeps insisting until it is achieved.  I respect a leader who comes in with preformed musical ideas and a clear mental picture of the performance, and who works efficiently to create the conditions for that performance. I love to be asked to chan...