oboeinsight

So I’ve sometimes described oboe as an instrument that sounds sort of like a “snake charmer”. But … well … WORMS? Hmmmm.

Anywhere else and this would have looked strange, but here it’s all part of the worm charming repertoire. People playing the oboe, or jumping around on a board was commonplace. If only I had a didgeridoo with me.

RTWT

I just read this site that suggests that musicians should run world governments.

The idea is that music unites. We musicians … well, we are all just peace loving creatures, right?

Well. Sometimes. But I’ll tell you, I’ve seen and heard some mighty big fights between musicians, and I know of at least one musician that I sometimes deal with who scares me. If that musician were handed a loaded weapon you can bet I’d run for it.

And of course there’s the well known principal oboist and principal flutist who were in a top American orchestra who, rumor has it, wouldn’t speak to each other for years. (Fact? Fiction? Anyone know?)

We play music. Somehow a lot of people seem to think we are like our music. And we are. But don’t forget that while we have some peaceful works we also have some very twisted works and some very angry works. We aren’t all “Adagio for Strings”, you know?

I’ve had audience members come up to me after a particularly moving concert and say something like, “I can just imagine what is going through your mind as you play that! Me? I was in the desert/mountains/Italy [different people choose different places that the music takes them],” and some audience members go on to give me a complete story of their “journey” with the music.

Me? I might be thinking so many things … “Okay, don’t bite on that low note.” “Remember to breathe!” “Oh, you idiot, you totally blew that attack.” “Geesh, if the clarinet plays that softly when I come in I’m sunk on my entrance.” “Okay, after this page it’s a breeze to make it through this.” “Hey, not bad!” “Hey, not good.” “Whew!” “What am I hungry for?” “I just want to go home.” “I just want this never to end.” “I wonder what Dan has made for dinner.”

Yeah. Silly me. But hey, what do you think of while you are working?

Some people think the working together as we do, causes us to learn to get along.

Well, yeah. Sort of. It doesn’t mean we do group hugs, though. And we still argue and fight and some of us don’t speak to others.

Just like the rest ‘o the world.

I hope I’m not shattering your image of us. Musicians are people too. 🙂

Oh dear. Rambling. Again.

Audiences are rarely on the same wavelength as performers. In fact, two very different things are going on at once. The musician is wondering how to get from the second eight bars into the bridge, and the audience is in pursuit of emotional energy. The musician is struggling, and the audience is making up dreamlike opinions about the music that may have nothing at all to do with what the musician is thinking or doing musically. If audiences knew what humdrum, daylight things most musicians think when they play, they’d probably never come.

-Dick Wellstood

First read here at About Last Night, and also read with more of the background story, although the blogger didn’t know who he was quoting, here.