You have all the freedom on the world on the holodeck.
-Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg
I’m guessing she’d love that captain title I just gave her, eh? I always get a kick out of reading what famous musicians enjoy outside of the music thing.
(RTWT)
So here’s a problem for an opera company: Lead singer gets sick. The cover can’t sing that night. Major phoning goes on. Singer located. New singer arrives after a messy bit of travel woes. New singer finds out that the version is different than he thought. He can sing some of it in German. Some in French. Some not at all. Conductor covers what singer can’t sing. Singer sings rest. All is acted by a different person entirely.
This is all just too good … I’d certainly not ask for a refund!
Is it true? Guess so.
Yeah. The concert is over. That’s it. All that work, and then … there’s just this hollow feeling. When rehearsing—especially with a difficult program like the one we just finished—there’s a part of me just aching to be done. When I’m done I’m aching to be playing it just one more time. Go figure. I guess I’m never happy eh?
But … and here I’m going to be so bold as to say this … I played well! I am always ready to critique my work fairly harshly. But saying I did something well is difficult for me. But this concert (especially today’s) was pretty darn difficult and yet I think I did a good job.
Okay. Enough bragging. I’m not good with that. 🙂
Now I’m going to be suffering the performer’s hangover. With no concerts for a few weeks I am hoping it doesn’t linger too long.
but if you go here you can listen to podcasts with David Amram. Episodes 10 and 11 are the Amram ones.
I’ll be playing his new work in about 2 hours or so.
Boring NonOboeNews (NON, for short):
I wasn’t up at 2:00 AM!
I was only up at 3:30 AM.
Sigh.
Okay … enough whining about that. I did decide to turn my alarm clock off. I slept until Dan woke me at something like 9:30. So at least I slept. Just not when I wanted to.
Thinking …
I am realizing I’m somewhat nameless to many conductors. While one principal wind player is addressed by her first name, and another by his, I am “oboe”. I don’t know what it is about this, but it’s a frequent occurrence. I think I have a very unmemorable face. Because I’m rather introverted I don’t frequently yak with conductors. But I do wonder sometimes why I’m completely nameless. I just hope it has nothing to do with my playing! Will I ever know what it’s about? I suppose not. Maybe I need to start wearing a name tag … or at least a t-shirt that reads, “pattYOboe.” Don’t you think that would be kind of cute. Or something. Or not.
I dunno.
Okay. Never mind, then. I think I’ll rest up for another Concert of MegaNotes.
