oboeinsight

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I’ve never made much of the changing of a number—the new year begins in September for me. First I was a student and of course that meant school beginning in September. San Jose Symphony (RIP) always began the new season in September. So does Opera San José. Then I had kids and of course that meant getting them to school. And now that I’ve been teaching again at SCU and UCSC September has been even more strongly reinforced as the start of the new year, as far as I’m concerned.

So mostly I just have to remember to date things 2006 now. It’s a challenge, but I think I’m up for it.

Someone landed at my other site because he or she did a search on the authors among us. I was curious how that got the person to my site so I googled as well. Ah-hah! It’s a goofy poem I wrote. I’ll post it here, just so you can see what the heck I was writing!

Poets & Authors

The poets among us are so far from sane
and the time that they take for one word is a shame.
They fret and they ponder, they weep and they whine
for what might become one poor iambic line.
The authors among us are better perhaps;
they dump fifteen pages at once in our laps.

But still when a poet goes through authors’ words
they nix the majority, seeing absurd
or unneeded the adjectives weighing ten tons,
so maybe the poets are truly the ones
I’ll take as my friends; they are few I am told,
but the worth of one poet’s word surely is gold.

I had entirely forgotten about this poem I wrote! Now I’m thinking I should write another … maybe about being an oboe player compared to being a flute player, say.

Hmmm.

Time will tell …. 🙂
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The concerts listed here include a trio of two oboes and English horn (Beethoven: Variations on Mozart’s “La Ci Darem” from Don Giovanni). You might want to check the link out! Robin May and Peter Lemberg are on oboe, and James Matheson is on English horn.

… we musicians need help understanding why people behave the way they do at concerts. Sometimes they are noisy and we are befuddled. Sometimes they answer cell phones or their watches go off and they continue to let them beep. Sometimes they don’t act the way we think they should and that bugs us. And sometimes they are handed food at a concert and we need fair warning so we don’t react poorly!
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ACB wrote to say she did the face recognition thing, and I will admit to jealousy. I did it again with another couple of pictures. So far, I’m mostly male. There you go. Danielle (correction: DANIEL. Sorry! I guess I wanted to at least make him a bit more feminine.) Radcliffe. Areil Sharon. And more.

But then I did another picture. Whew. Not that i agree with the comparisons, but I’ll gladly take Jennifer Aniston as a first match, then Hillary Duff (well, I don’t know how to feel about that one!), um … the Dalai Lama (okay, whatever), and, scariest of all, bin Laden. Following was Johnny Depp. (Oooh … don’t care that he’s a guy, I’ll take him!) and Hugo Weaving. (Well, he’s okay too.)

Anyhoo, I honestly don’t see the similarities. I’d show you the picture, but I can’t get things to work correctly here. It’ll have to wait until I’m back home and my Computer Expert Husband can help me!

I sat at the hotel bar for dinner tonight. I don’t like sitting alone at a table, especially when the hotel is nearly empty and I’d be the lone diner. Sitting at the bar I can watch a football game and enjoy that while eating (my wonderful grilled chicken salad). So I was able to see those marching band kids (it was a college game) play when their team made a touchdown. I nearly laughed out loud because they move the entire time they play their fight song, As one. And they move in ridiculous ways. Wildly. I know enough about our instruments to know that is no way to produce a fine sound. But marching band is not about great tone quality nor is it really about music. So oh well. But I remember when Mr Sandow suggested we move more. I hope he wasn’t thinking of this! 😉
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So … I look like Ella Fitzgerald? I can’t imagine that to be true, but some face recognition software suggests that is one face that is similar to mine. The first face it suggested was some man. Sigh. But I’ll take Ella any day.

Try it out for yourself.

Here’s the picture I used:

… and I probably should use something that is a bit clearer and more head-on I suppose. But I couldn’t find one! (I’m not particularly fond of this picture, but then I am never fond of pictures of myself. This one is from several years ago, and I have a different and —dare I say it — more “hip” hairstyle I think, and my glasses are a vast improvement over what I had back then.

I suppose neither this post nor the preceding one really need to be up at the oboe site, but, well, Ella was incredibly musical, and, um … let’s see … I did mention the awful aquarium music in the prior post! (I wish they’d played Saint Saens’ Carnival of the Animals … well, the fish portion … THAT would have worked for me.)

We went on a mini-vacation (one overnight) to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary.

Yep. You read that right … THIRTY years, come this January 3rd.

It was an infant wedding of course. 😉

We went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium today, and I can do without any new-agey-sounds-like-good-under-water music for a good long time! But the fish were incredible, the penguins were cute as can be, and the jellies mesmerizing. Yesterday we were at Point Lobos and it was beautiful.

Now it’s off to Into the Woods. Woo hoo!

Tomorrow I drive our daughter back down to UCI. I’m looking forward to the little trip.
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