ProneOboe

I was listening to Marc Maron’s podcast as I commuted to Chicago last week, and enjoying an interview with actor and comic Aasif Mandvi.  Mandvi delighted me by quoting an old acting teacher - whose name I did not, regrettably, catch- in saying something that I have come to understand is true.  I’m paraphrasing, now.  You can’t prepare the whole monologue, because you never know how it is going to evolve or what it will mean to you in the moment.  You never know where it is going to take you.  Just prepare your entry point, and figure out how to get in, and then use your instincts from there.  This is something I’ve known and worked with for a long time.  You can’t craft every second of the plan - you can’t know in advance exactly how you are going to present any given note or phrase.  It could be that a colleague tosses you a turn in an unexpected way, and you choose to respond to that. It could be that the audience is giving you a particular en...

More on the eerie parallels between exercise and the oboe. I’ve been struggling with my running all spring.  Mainly because I quit it all winter, honestly - but for the past few months I’ve been dragging myself through workouts, ignoring the twinges of old injuries, and assuming that I was one good run away from a real breakthrough.  As recently as a few weeks ago I figured I was just a couple of long runs away from a successful half-marathon at the end of this month.  I mean, I wasn’t actually accomplishing my three and four milers without walking, and I hadn’t ACTUALLY done anything over six miles since November - but I just knew that if I kept pushing through these uncomfortable, gasping, leg-burning miles I would pop back into the body and fitness that I had last May. Turns out it doesn’t work like that when you’re forty. I’m playing the Strauss Oboe Concerto with a community orchestra on June 12, and somehow, shockingly, my first rehearsal with them is this Tuesd...

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 . 

You’ve heard before that Zoe is struggling with the cello. It turns out that not every week is as fun as the first week.  And we almost caved and let her quit a few months ago, which I’m sure would have been a relief to her teacher.  We’ve been dragging through this semester, waiting for summer and a much-needed break.  And then last week we went to her lesson and she ACED it.  Had a huge breakthrough with her counting and plucking, got to play a little bit of a duet with her teacher.  Seemed to be re-inspired.  Has had better practice sessions ever since.  I have a high school student who can’t count.  Has NO rhythm or internal pulse.  We’ve been banging our heads against the walls all year trying to solve this problem.  She’s an adept mimic, which is how she’s made it through the system this long - if I play something for her she can play it right back, and if she hears a lick in band often enough she can approximate it pretty well....

You know how, in E.T.:The Extra-Terrestrial , E.T. and Elliott are psychically connected, and then ultimately physiologically connected, and when ET gets sick from the unfriendly atmosphere of the Earth, Elliott gets sick too, and then eventually they both magically recover? I would not have thought that I had that sort of connection with my oboe.  I’ve been subbing with the (amazing, excellent, inspiring) Milwaukee Symphony this week, and it’s been rough going for my new oboe and me.  I’ve been struggling to fit in with the group.  Most surprising to me were several low attacks that I really expected my Bulgheroni to carry off with aplomb.  I kept over- or under-blowing them and missing ever so slightly, and I was annoyed at myself, and super self-conscious about it.  And then annoyed that I was making so big a deal about myself, to myself, and then I would make more mistakes.  Thursday morning, after two long days of hard commutes, I finally had time to g...

You don’t play someone else’s solos on stage.  It’s one of the strictest pieces of orchestra etiquette out there, right along with Stop Playing when the Conductor Stops, and Turn off your Cell Phone, Already.  So strongly has this been ingrained in me that I was quite nervous while warming up for the set of concerts we just finished in Fort Wayne. I was playing English horn on Samuel Barber’s Symphony No. 1.  This symphony features an enormous oboe solo, slow and arching and gorgeous, on some significantly awkward notes.  It’s a common audition excerpt and I’ve worked on it many times.  I would sooner die than let anyone hear me play that solo on the oboe while the orchestra’s excellent principal oboist was even in the same building, or town.  That melody, however, also happens to be one of the main themes of the entire symphony, and the English horn plays it with the violas when it first appears.  So, technically, it’s my solo too.  When we p...

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...