ProneOboe

 For oboists, endurance is a huge problem.  We can play an endlessly long phrase, because of the way the instrument is constructed, but we can really only do that a few times in a row before our embouchure starts to get fatigued.  We develop a buildup of air that feels exhausting to hold onto, and the thought of sustaining that kind of energy over  an entire page of music, much less a 45 minute recital program, is intimidating.    There's almost always a lesson, a week or two before a jury or a recital, where my student comes in and says, "I just can't DO this! I can play every detail in my music, but I can't put the whole thing together!  My mouth comes right off the oboe when I try - I'm going to fall apart in front of the audience, and it's going to be terrible!"  Look, I'm putting this on my students now - but there's a moment a week or so before MY performances that feels exactly the same! I have not outgrown this moment of panic. And at that...

I was chatting with a friend this week and she was lamenting being too busy to write.  It’s exactly the way I’ve been feeling, and something I rarely hear a musician say.  We always complain that we haven’t been practicing - in fact, I think I said precisely that back to her - but mostly we musicians don’t talk about our other forms of creativity, and that’s a sad thing,  Even when I can’t make time to practice, I play the oboe every day.  When I’m sitting in rehearsal I try to bring mindfulness to my work, so it’s not just walking through notes and rhythms but actively trying to be artistic, to be interesting, to play with integrity, to be great.  This is why I can let practicing go on a busy day - it’s not that I don’t need it, but I can scratch that itch at work, while simultaneously doing something someone else wants.  I’m a multitasker from way back.   Writing though, is a thing I can’t do while I’m making reeds.  Or when I’m in rehe...

This gig did not start out promising.  We had a LOONNNNGGGG three hour rehearsal the first night with no soloists, on a fairly dull and repetitive score, filled with heavy irrelevant playing.  We are all coming off summer break, and I'll tell you, I've been practicing, but I was not prepared for 40 pages of long tones and periodic loud interjections.  My face was falling off by the end.  This was a rock and roll concert, a symphonic arrangement of The Who's Quadrophenia.  I did not know this music.  But listening to the symphonic arrangement of its background music I was unmoved.  I was sitting among people who can be... cynical.  I was heading that way myself. But the next afternoon our soloists arrived.  Alfie Boe.  Billy Idol.  Eddie Vedder. And Pete Townshend.  And things immediately improved.  They could not have been more delightful - because they were all SO INTO IT.  The rehearsal was a full run through, a f...

I do a lot in my life and career, as I have discussed before .  And every bit of it is something I have taken on intentionally, at some point, and every bit of it is something that I enjoy - but still sometimes it gets overwhelming.  Just as you should balance your checkbook every month and your investment portfolio every year - or so I read -  I have to periodically find a way to rebalance all of the balls I keep in the air in my life. My income comes from three main sources - performance, teaching, and my reed business.  My time has more claims on than that, of course, because of non-income-producing but important things like interacting with my husband and daughter, exercising for my own health, and practicing and writing which are sort of a part of my job but are mostly my own creative outlets. This year I have had a lot of wonderful performance opportunities, including my Mozart concerto, several enjoyable chamber music concerts, our ballet tour to NYC, and ...

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...

I played a concert tonight in Fort Wayne and we had a piano soloist for Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue . Jodie DeSalvo was absolutely marvelous. The thing that impressed me the most was the absolute joy she projected every time she played.  From the moment the piece started - even in the very first working rehearsal - with our excellent principal clarinet wailing up to the high note, she was listening, engaged, visibly enjoying what she heard.  She reacted with obvious delight to what the orchestra gave her in the opening, and responded as soon as she started playing with some fun of her own.  I have played Rhapsody in Blue dozens of times, and never heard it as fresh, playful, and rambunctious as it was this evening.  She performed this 90 year old work as if she was making it up on the spot, and the orchestra responded with energetic glee of its own.  The audience loved it, and brought her back for three curtain calls. Sometimes we can get caught in the tra...

I had a blast today sightreading the Joffrey Ballet's Sylvia performance.  I've sightread performances before , in emergency situations, and compared to that this was a non-stressful gig, since I had had it on my calendar for weeks. I had had the music to prepare from, and I had attended one performance to hear the way the orchestra played and to practice watching the conductor's tempo changes.   That didn't mean that I wasn't a little tense about it. Being able to play all of the licks in the privacy of my room, at the tempos I set for myself, is one thing. But finding my place in the chords, picking my way through tempo and key changes in real time, and discovering in the moment just how my other colleagues were interpreting the tunes we play together is quite another. What made this experience amazing was how nice all my colleagues were to me. I got lovely, clear, helpful cues from the principal flute, the second oboe, and of course the conductor. I felt ...

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...

Are there any high school oboists reading this blog?  I wanted to let you know that  IN ADDITION to Oboe Reed Boot Camp  which will be in South Bend and at Valparaiso University in June and July and open to oboists of all ages, I will be teaching at two fantastic camps this summer.   The Dake Summer Music Academy  will take place here in South Bend at the end of June. It's five busy days of chamber music, seminars, masterclasses, conducting classes, and orchestra, all working closely with the great principal musicians of the South Bend Symphony Orchestra.  I always enjoy this camp enormously, partly because my colleagues are SO good, and partly because I love coaching chamber music and meeting new oboists. The other great benefit of this experience is that it is SUPER affordable, although you do have to be able to commute there daily all week.   I will also be teaching this July at the terrific Pine Mountain Music Festival in Michigan’s beauti...

I will not complain about being busy during the Christmas season.  That would be absurd, because everyone is busy.  And because for a musician to complain about working too much would be like a retailer griping that people just keep BUYING things in December.  This season, for us, has enormous financial impact, and the fact that I haven’t had a day off since Thanksgiving is just one of those side effects. But I will admit that after playing three quintet concerts today (and having worked every day since Thanksgiving, did I mention? Plus every day but two in November…) I was DREADING tonight’s Holiday Pops rehearsal here in South Bend.   Early in the season I was enjoying the effort, and challenging myself in every rehearsal and performance to improve even as I played through yet another schmaltzy or jazzy or cutely technical Christmas carol arrangement - but by this point I really don’t have a lot left.  I kind of hate the oboe - I hate my sound - I hate ot...

I am snowed in.  I came up this week to Muskegon to play with the West Michigan Symphony for the first time, and after last night’s rehearsal the blowing blizzard was just too much for me.  I am used to commuting in the Midwest.  I’ve been through my share of white-knuckled drives, and I do not fear them.  I can slow down and take my time, and I can creep patiently from mile marker to mile marker with my hazard lights on, and I have been in a few ditches and waited for help to arrive. I don’t fear this kind of drive, but nor do I welcome it.  On Monday, after my two hour commute to work turned into three and a half, and after the snow continued to fall and blow in throughout our rehearsal, and after I confirmed that Steve was safely at home with Zoe, I chose to spend the night in the local Holiday Inn. I didn’t have a change of clothes with me, or pajamas. I didn’t have workout gear for the lovely indoor fitness center.  Had I planned to stay over I mi...

If I had an English horn job, I would get a lot more reading done.  I like playing the thing fine, and I even don’t mind schlepping it around since I got my BAM Ultralight case a few years ago.  I don’t love making the reeds, but once made they last a really long time and I could get used to that. What I will never grow to like is the sitting around.  There’s always a pretty solo for the English horn somewhere, but waiting for my piece and then waiting for my entrance gets old pretty fast.  But on the upside, I’ve finished two New Yorker s today, and the stack of unread reads in my room is shrinking nicely this week.  If I did this regularly, there's no telling how caught up I might be with my life.  AND, we have another concert tomorrow.  This week for me is the Illinois Philharmonic, in a concert of Bernstein and Prokofiev, which I love, and Glazunov, which I read during.  Fun program.  Beautiful music.  Details HERE . 

I love to work.  I’m happy playing in orchestras, and would gladly do so every single week, but some weeks are slow, and some months.  I enjoy teaching.  The challenge of finding the right words to inspire incremental improvements in many different people is a fascinating one which uses many facets of my brain and gives me pleasure.  I am proud of my reed business.  It’s grown enormously since I started it 16 years ago, and I get to pour my entrepreneurial spirit into it.  Plus, I pretty much always have good reeds to play on since I’m making so many every day.  I love my annual recital tour, which keeps me learning (and inventing) new repertoire and gives me my spotlight fix.  And I’m ecstatic about Musicians for Michiana, my new chamber music series, which is forging new connections in the community and just being a lot of fun along the way.  I also adore my daughter, and here’s the challenge.  When the orchestra work is slow, I worry ...

This week we are putting on a huge concert with the South Bend Symphony.  Strauss, Sibelius, Smetana, and Lalo - great tone poems, huge and complex works that tell deep stories and require serious preparation.  And tonight’s rehearsal was canceled. Tonight’s rehearsal was canceled, and mercifully the orchestra’s management was committed to fixing the problem.  The Force Majeure clause in our contract, as in most contracts, would mean that the canceled service was UNPAID, despite having been on our books for months.  I’ve held this Tuesday night clear of other gigs and scheduled students around the rehearsal.  I might have hired a babysitter or arranged a playdate.  It’s been my job ever since the schedule came out in August to show up at 7:30 tonight ready to play Don Juan.  And just because we have two feet of snow on the ground and wind chills of 25 below, or whatever, suddenly I’m not making any money tonight, and no one is liable.  At nine th...

I am excited to get back to work this weekend with the South Bend Symphony.  It’s been a long vacation.  We welcomed it, and made good use of it- some traveling and a lot of sleeping, mostly, but every day is fun with Zoe. We made Hide and Seek Muffins and French Toast and Ice Cream out of Snow, and played innumerable games of Uno, and hiked and shoveled when the weather permitted and watched movies when it didn’t.   Our family needed the break desperately, but after three snow days - right as school was supposed to begin again - extended our vacation another week I am intensely ready to get back to a routine of regular orchestra work.  My private students all came back this week, and the college kids will start up soon - but the playing is really what it’s about, isn’t it?  So we go back to work tomorrow morning.  This will be the first non-Christmas orchestral playing I’ve done since mid-November!  I hope I remember how to maintain a tempo...

I couldn’t get started yesterday.  After I warmed up on the oboe, I played a few notes of my concerto.  Then I tried an excerpt or two.  An etude?  Nothing seemed to take - I wasn’t having fun or finding things to work on or feeling the magic at all.  I was scattered and uninterested. So I thought I’d work with my computer a bit.  I opened a text window to rough out the mission statement for my new chamber music series (curious yet?), and jotted down a few words.  But it wasn’t flowing.  I toyed with Wordpress to start a website for it.  Didn’t really get anything going.  I thought I’d explore fonts.  Typed my name a jillion times and refonted it over and over.  This was obviously a make-work project - simply me grasping at anything, ANYTHING to feel productive.  Didn’t work. I tried responding to emails.  That was all right, but when I went to compose a new one - info for  newly enrolling students for next year ...

You know, freelancers get no respect.  We respect each other, sure, but if I meet another oboist and we start comparing resumes, there’s a real difference in status between the person with one job in a full time orchestra and the person with multiple smaller jobs.  Even though a busy freelancer might actually earn more in a year, or may have higher quality musical experiences much of the time, there’s definitely a stigma attached to that lifestyle which disappears for the person who can state their employer and position in one simple sentence. But the freelancers I know are some of the finest musicians I have encountered, and the couple of weeks I am engrossed in right now well represent the challenges and joys of the job. During these two weeks, my own orchestras did not have big concert cycles, but I am certainly bringing in my share of the household income.  On top of my regular teaching (there would have been more if all of the colleges were all still in session) I wo...

Zoe and I went for a Big Wheel walk.  In other words, she big wheeled, I walked.  We traveled around our tiny neighborhood block once.  First, she pressed a “button” on the handlebars and asked Siri for directions to the corner.  “Siri, take me to the corner please - directions for Zoe Ingle.”  She listened intently for a moment and then we were off. Before we even made it to the corner, she was Tigger, and pretended that her big wheel was bouncy. She found a little branch that had fallen off a pine tree, and explained that if I waved it from side to side it was red, but up and down made it green.  We then had a “rally race” which consisted of a lot of flags and stopping and starting.  She stopped and hung her head.  She was a sad Minnie Mouse, because it was “raining a robot rain and her bike basket got wet.”   We pressed a “button” to magically dry her bike basket. She drove intentionally into a yard, and became a sad Minnie Mouse,...

Hi, blog readers!  I have just returned from a tour of China, and although I was thinking and writing while I was there, I couldn’t publish anything because Blogger is a Google product and Google is blocked by the government.  So I’ll be posting the reflections from my trip over the next few days.  Enjoy! December 27, 2012.  I am writing this on a plane bound for Shanghai, where Steve and Zoe and I will be touring with Valparaiso University’s Symphony Orchestra.  I have rarely been so poorly equipped for a journey, mentally, physically, and oboistically - but I have every expectation of enjoying myself nevertheless. When we are coming up on a trip out of town, we try not to buy new groceries.  For the week or so before we go, we try hard to consume all the perishables in the kitchen, with no thought of maintaining pantry stores or of continuing to live in the house after our trip.  We can wind up with some peculiar stir-fries during this period, and i...

Here we go.  I have managed so far to maintain my sense of personal denial about the upcoming holidays.  I have not listened to a holiday song, decorated a tree, house, or room, or purchased a gift.  I hunkered down on Black Friday and managed to keep from leaving my house for almost the entire day.  But now it starts.  From here on I play only Christmas music until after the big day. This week I am performing with Mannheim Steamroller, which is a super-fun show and inescapably  part of the Christmas season.  You can hear me in Wabash, IN on Monday, South Bend on Thursday, Fort Wayne on Friday, and Chicago on Saturday.  I’ve played their gigs many times, and always enjoy myself.  The show is tightly paced, totally professional, and tricky enough to hold my attention without being the least bit difficult.  Audiences love it and it is a treat to play for a full house.  I dig a fog machine.   My life is busy from here on, but...