… played the oboe!
Well there you go. No wonder I like the guy. 😉
Jonathan Stockhammer, regarded as a dynamic member of the younger generation of conductors, believes classical music is dying and needs a good jolt to get its heart beating again.
I thought we were done talking about this. I was wrong. (RTWT)
NOTE: I’m happy to post any oboe recitals coming up. Be sure and fill me in if you have something coming up!
Free Concert, January 28, MTSU
George T. Riordan will present a faculty oboe recital and be joined by five other professional musicians in a free and open concert at 8 p.m. Jan. 28 in the T. Earl Hinton Music Hall of the Wright Music Building on the MTSU campus.
Riordan, who is director of the MTSU School of Music, will be joined by faculty and friends Lynn Rice-See (piano), Karen Clarke (violin), Sarah Coté (viola), Chris Stenstrom (cello) and Murray Somerville (harpsichord).
The performance will include Georg Philipp Telemann’s Partita 2 in G Major, Carl Stamitz’s Quartet in D Major, Camille Saint-Saëns’s Sonate pour hautbois avec accompt de piano and Charles Martin Loeffler’s Two Rhapsodies of 1905.
Riordan has performed with modern and period instrument ensembles and
orchestras and taught at festivals throughout the country. He is currently principal oboist with the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra and Belle Meade Baroque.Rice-See is coordinator of the keyboard area at the MTSU School of Music, where she teaches piano.
Many thanks to two of you who shared that you deal with similar things regarding intonation. It is so crazy making, isn’t it? You think you are sharp and you adjust and it only gets worse. So you go the other direction and … well … something seems wrong then, too. I had assumed I was sharp during the first half. So I’d adjust appropriately. I then used a tuner during break and the news was I was either in tune or low. Go figure. Of course part of the problem is that I assume … always!! … that I am the only one that is wrong. Heh.
After talking to a few colleagues, I believe (and they managed to nearly convince me) that it was actually that something going on in another section, which was very out, and I was reacting to that. I’d try to match that pitch—a timbre that cut through better with my hearing problem—but it was tremendously sharp in comparison to the wind row. (The winds were, I believe, in tune.) Because my hearing is so wacky right now, it only makes things worse.
And, of course, I haven’t played with anyone, aside from students, since my Christmas Eve in the freezing cold with a very sharp trumpet gig.
Ah well. Whining over. This morning is reed work time. After that it’s two services. With, I hope, a nice meal in between.
The greatest recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony can’t equal the thrill you can get from even a mediocre performance because there are so many dimensions missing — being in the crowd, the natural resonance of sound in a room, the sense of collective effort, the accidental magical things that happen.
People are more conscious of the power of live performance. It’s something classical music can offer in this electronically saturated culture, where everything is amplified and plugged-in and bits of information are buzzing this way and that. Then you enter a concert hall and you’re in a space that’s shut off from all of that — it’s natural sound emerging out of silence. There’s a spiritual and psychological dimension from this music, offering something very particular you can’t otherwise get so easily.
(Found here.)
… and if you missed the Charlie Rose conversation yesterday, as I did, you can get that online. I just visited the Charlie Rose site and there it is!
