If any of you have applied to UCSC, or are applying to SCU and would like to connect with me, feel free to drop me a line. I’ve noticed some visitors from the university websites, so I thought I’d put a note up here to get your attention!
In case you’re online and want to chat a bit, my screen name is patioboe. (If you don’t want to chat, my name is still patioboe. I’m funny that way.)
Since we splurged and went for the entire San Francisco Opera 2008-2009 season, I’m thinking we’ll skip out on the offer by San Francisco Symphony, but it IS a great deal, so I’m going to recommend it to readers! 🙂
$25 or $55 at ticket? Great prices!
I just read the blog of a wind player who was subbing in an orchestra. The player names the orchestra as well as the works. So you know there are no secrets. That same horn player then admits playing a lot of the first piece down an octave because the new work was something he/she deemed not worth playing as written, since the composer wasn’t someone like, say, Mahler or Stravinsky.
All I can say is … yikes! The blog is public. Anyone can read it. Would you want to hire someone who basically said “I chose not to play what was written and that’s that!”? I know I’d be inclined to remove the player from the sub list.
Am I wrong to suggest that?
I just love the picture here! Too. Darn. Cool.
I’d steal the picture and put it here, but I think that’s against the rules and, well, you know me and rules! 🙂
But a football player who knows about the oboe? Say what?!
And yes, you bet your life I’m going to watch the Superbowl. These past few years I’ve not been able to, due to opera. This year opera rehearsal is at 7:30 PM, and I think I’ll get in a good amount, if not all (?), of the game. It used to be a family tradition; we’d all sit around and yak through the game, but silence was required during commercials. Yeah, we are silly that way.
The misshapen Schumann Piano Concerto started its life as a stand-alone Fantasy that morphed into a long first movement, the composer then adding two small closing sections to flesh it out. The work has an unusually quirky performance history. In one of the first concert hall performances of the work, the solo oboist made a glaring mistake in the statement of its opening theme. The pianist, none other than Johannes Brahms, duplicated the error in his repetition of the melody so as not to embarrass the man. (Found here)
Now if I made a glaring mistake and the soloist did the same thing I wouldn’t think the soloist was saving me from embarrassment! How ’bout you? (It might make me laugh, though.)
I’ve been known to do this same thing with students on occasion. Sometimes they get it. Sometimes they don’t. It’s all in good fun … but I wouldn’t do it at a performance!
Repost
So if anyone is interested in registering do feel free! Please remember I want a name on that form; sometimes spambots try to register and if I see what looks to be a real name I can assume the registrant is real. Then you can join in conversations … tell me I’m goofy … tell me I’m wrong (in your oh-so-gentle way … I’m an oboe player remember?!) … fill me in on who is playing where, double reed days, auditions … you name it!
Oh … and don’t forget that I have a page that features Double Reed Instructors in the USA! So far the list is rather small. I know there are more of you out there.
Anyway, in som countris I think it is splld “obo”.
Patricia Prunty, associate professor of music, decided to throw out her obo and focus on what makes her heart really skip a beat-singing.
(and later)
After realizing the perfect dynamic the group had, Prunty decided it was best to focus on singing, rather than also playing piano, the obo and the guitar.
(and later still)I played piano. I used to play the obo, but eventually that had to bite the dust because I became more focused on singing,” Prunty said.
Found hr*, in Cal Stat Fullrton’s nwspapr.
Okay. ’nuff fun.
*article no longer available
If we want thousands to hear us in the huge auditoriums of our concert halls and opera houses we simply have to make a lot of noise.
-Gustav Mahler (read in The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
by Alex Ross)
