… I think:
… the oboe experience might help you.
Kerr, who majored in oboe performance and economics at the University of Michigan, called the job “occasionally a close second” to the most stressful situation she has ever had: playing in an orchestra with “really demanding conductors.”
“I spent many, many years of my life preparing for performances and thinking about all the different things that could happen — if my reed was going to be bad, or if there was too much humidity in the room,” Kerr said.
“On-the-record experience, especially live on-the-record experience, is just like that. So I just drew upon my music training to help me.”
After campaign season wound down, Kerr hoped to work for a freshman lawmaker focused on financial or energy policy. She found just that in Himes, an investment banker who beat former Rep. Christopher Shays (R) in November and won a seat on the House Finance Committee.
Though this is her first Washington job, she spent two and a half years as an aide to new Rep. Mark Schauer (D-Mich.) when he was in the Michigan Senate, and also campaigned for Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.) in 2004.
One thing she has left behind is her oboe.
“This is what I tell everybody: The world doesn’t need another great oboist,” she said. “The world needs people with money and power who support the arts.”
RTWT
As performers we can’t even allow for the possibility that the pieces to be played that evening might not be fresh. We walk to the piano as if to a liturgy: the music is there – all that remains is for us to be ‘there’ too. Of course, we can be physically or mentally tired, or even ill, and this can affect the quality of the performance, but it shouldn’t really affect the intention of the performance. I’ve heard 17 year-olds sound jaded with a piece they’ve just learned, and 70 year-olds bursting with fresh ideas about music they’ve played their whole lives.
-Stephen Hough
I read it here.
I also really enjoyed the “train comment”, when he was making a comment later, on the same entry. Do read the comments, too!
Not only does an orchestral musician have to keep things “fresh”, but we also have to sell some music that we simply don’t care for. I don’t know if soloists, like Mr. Hough, have to do that. Would he play something he doesn’t like at all? I wonder. But really, I am hopeful that an audience member would never catch on to my disdain for a work that I’m playing. And yes, sometimes I do really hate a work that we have to play. Okay … hate is too strong … so perhaps “it isn’t my cup of tea,” would sound kinder and gentler. But no matter what, I have to give a work my complete attention and sell it to the listener.
I can always whine later. 😉
for reasons unknown to me, I am voluntarily listening to an oboe concerto
(Some things do just remain a mystery!)
There’s someone in our apartment building that plays the oboe and always practices around this time and I can hear. He/she is really good, and it always makes me happy to hear oboe music coming from the open window!
