My oboe has a lot of water/spit in it. It’s quite nasty
I finally had a hearing test yesterday. My right ear is quite well behaved. It seems to hear everything it should hear. Good right ear!
My left ear? Well, it’s no surprise that it’s not cooperating these days, so I wasn’t surprised by the hearing test. The test was really just the way to get me an appointment with an otologist. I will be returning a week from today to see the doctor, and find out if this problem is merely a “grin and bear it until it goes away” thing, or if there’s something to be done.
Meanwhile, I did, at the urging of the person testing my ears, get fitted for musician’s earplugs. They’ll arrive right after I’m finished with all my jobs, wouldn’t you know, but at least I’ll have them for next season. They aren’t cheap, but I need them — I should have purchased them years ago.
Last night I had an Symphony Silicon Valley rehearsal (with the Santa Clara Chorale at Mission Santa Clara. Big boomy places like that are the absolute worst thing for me right now, but I will deal. I play the first work on the program, and it’s probably all of twenty minutes, so I’m sure I’ll get through it just fine on Saturday. I’m involved only in the Beethoven Choral Fantasy** as the other piece on the program is Mozart’s Requiem. No oboes in that work … but I sure do love it, and I’d stay to listen if it weren’t for my ear.
**Many thanks to “Patti with an i” for catching my error … I had written Missa Solemnis. OldBoeBrain strikes again!
If it’s double-reeded, does that mean it sounds like an oboe? Because oboes are not cool at all. 8|
When you sing you feel a kind of strength; you think, I’m not alone, there’s a whole batch of us who feel this way.
-Pete Seeger
Found here.
Is it possible to rock out to Classical music?
Cause that’s what I’m doing now…..
I’m so addicted to the song Concert No. 11 in D Minor for 2 Violins and Cello by Vivaldi!
LOL!
This song helps me concentrate with my studies with Spanish.
I’m actually learning!
LOL!
That’s so weird!
I’m assuming Mr. Gann is serious when he gives his instructions, but what a fun read! At least for me.
… and he doesn’t like The Nutcracker so you gotta love him, too. 🙂
PIPEDOWN has been formed to counter one of the under-recognised scourges of contemporary life: PIPED MUSIC.
Also called muzak, muzac, acoustic wallpaper, elevator music or canned music, piped music is made possible by systems which allow a constant supply throughout a building or other public place.
It is the misuse of this in public areas (and only this) which Pipedown has been formed to fight, encouraging and giving a voice to millions of people who hate piped music but at present often feel totally powerless to do anything about it.
The problem arises from piped music being widely considered an unmixed blessing. Silence -in shop, restaurant, railway station, swimming bath or other public place – seems to be anathema.
I read it here and I’m all for it. (This is a UK group; I’m not sure if they do anything here in the US.)
I am so tired of piped music. And these days, of course, we hear about classical music being used to rid areas of pesky teens. Sigh.
Silence is a nice thing. And it’s not like I don’t love music — you all know that I do!
“Piped water, piped oil, piped gas – but never piped music!” Stephen Fry
the difference between an oboe and lawnmower? you can tune a lawnmower.
One of OHP’s many virtues is a simple scheme to provide 1,200 tickets free to anyone under 18. The breakdown of the statistics is interesting, if not altogether reassuring. In 2006, 28 per cent of the allocation went to under-12s, 28 per cent to 13- to 15-year-olds and 22 per cent to 16- to 18-year-olds (the remainder being taken up by accompanying parents, who also get in without charge). Last year, the figures stood at 40 per cent to the under-12s, 17 per cent to the 13 to 15 group and 10 per cent to the 16 to 18s. What this suggests to me is that more young children are being dragged along by their well-intentioned parents and fewer want to come of their own accord. My conclusion is that opera has less and less to say to teenagers: it remains an art form that people come to appreciate later in life, and it may be better just to accept this and stop trying to sell it to the young like a salutary dose of cod liver oil.
I read it here.
Hmmm. So fewer teenagers go. That sounds right to me; they are busier than younger kids, and they are deciding what they will do with their time. Does that mean that the ones that are going are having it forced on them? I kind of doubt it. (The article’s title is “Stop forcing opera on reluctant teenagers”.) Does it mean the younger ones don’t want to go, but are being forced to? Possibly. It doesn’t mean the younger ones won’t like it after they go, though.
Thoughts?
Milan’s Gothic cathedral will hold its first rooftop classical music concerts this year, officials said on Monday.
The Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo, the organization responsible since 1387 for overseeing the Duomo, said the five concerts will feature a 60-piece orchestra and choir performing about 50 meters (165 feet) above the ground.
I read it here.
So how many stories would that be, I wonder? And I hope the orchestra isn’t near the edge or I’d have to turn down the gig. And I really don’t like turning down gigs! (I can’t handle heights very well; one time I was on the top floor of a hotel — I think it had 14 floors — and all night long I thought the building was swaying to and fro. Swaying so much the top floor was near the ground. Really.)
