oboeinsight

In all my years as a professional oboist, I’ve never played a summer music festival. (I played in Midsummer Mozart Festival Orchestra for a good number of years, but even though it was a festival and was in the summer all the musicians commuted from their homes.) But you know the sort I’m talking about—it’s kind of like a paid vacation except you end up working (playing) like crazy. Still, it’s somewhere other than home, you get to do something you love in a new place (preferably a lovely location), it doesn’t cost you any money, and you might even bring home a wee bit of income. Or at least I think that’s how it works.

And I’ve never done one. I was asked once, but my children were very young and I didn’t want to leave them.

Now I want to do one, at least once, before I die.

So I can dream, can’t I?
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Woo hoo! I just landed on this page, which is an article on one of my favorite conductors, Constantine Kitsopoulos. He just began a new opera company, the Chatham Opera. Very cool … and I wish him the best in this new endeavor.

Hey, Constantine, need an extra oboist? [grin] (Constantine’s wife, Lynne Cohen, is an excellent oboist, by the way.)
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The quote below is proof that Mr. Sondheim is partial to oboists.

😉

(I just wish his orchestrators were partial enough to write more “straight books”. And no, that’s not a dig at homosexuals, although I once offended someone horribly until I explained the term; a “straight book” is a book that includes only oboe and it’s direct relatives (English horn, oboe d’amore, bass oboe) rather than a book that includes flute, clarinet, sax and/or bassoon.)