He was just a normal little boy and then he fell in love with art. He got moody ….
From the show Castle
Yeah. That’s how it goes. Fall in love with art and you get all messed up.
Or something.
Tuesday is UCSC day. This morning I decided to give myself a treat, so I left home very early and headed to The Abbey to have a latté. I’ve missed my lattés, since our machine has been at the repair shop. When I’m at The Abbey I use my computer (surprise surprise) so I use my very special wonderful can’t do without ’em music glasses. I didn’t change back into my regular glasses until I got back in the car. This is often the way it works for me; I don’t realize I can’t see long distances until I get into the car. After getting to work I took my very special wonderful can’t do without ’em music glasses and dropped them into my UCSC oboe bag. I went from the parking lot to the music office to my studio. All I did in the music office was to check my (empty) mailbox, so I didn’t need to open my oboe bag at all. Getting into the studio, I first unpacked my computer (duh!), and then went to grab my VSWCDWE music glasses. They were nowhere to be found. I went to my car. I went back to the office. I went back to my car. And again to the office. Between student #1 and #2 I even visited the car again, looking under seats and even under the car. My VSWCDWE music glasses simply disappeared.
Sigh.
After picking up our repaired (!!) espresso machine I raced over to Kaiser and ordered new glasses. It was a lot of money I didn’t expect to have to spend today, although I did get a 20% discount because I always purchase their 2 year insurance. I’m thankful that they just had to look up my info and reorder what I already had so I didn’t have to deal with searching through all their frames. Now we’ll see how quickly they can get them done. (They put a rush on the order, and implied they might be ready as soon as Thursday or Friday of this week.) I have a recital on November 6, with rehearsals for both that and Opera San José every day but Tuesday next week. I can’t read music without my very special wonderful can’t do without ’em music glasses. Really. Can you imagine canceling a recital because the silly oboist lost her very special wonderful can’t do without ’em music glasses? Yikes!
One of my favorite young composers, Nico Muhly, was writing last week about the marked differences between working with instrumentalists and singers (specifically, opera singers,) and his take made me think about the seemingly widening gulf between the concert hall and the opera house.
Muhly’s post was mainly about rhythmic accuracy, or the lack of it, which he experiences very directly as a composer working both with orchestral-type musicians, who prize rhythm above nearly everything else, and rely on accurate counting to hold the ensemble together, and opera companies, where singers (who control the ensemble in the end) focus more on the overall shape of musical phrases than on the specific rhythms that have been written for them.
But orchestras and opera companies have been growing apart in less musically specific ways, too.
I play in both opera and symphony orchestras. But I don’t play for the big bucks, and I don’t play in the “big groups”. I just love what I do. The article, though, is very interesting. It’s really about the top companies; it doesn’t relate so much to the two groups I’m in. (Well, except for the rhythm thing!)
RTWT, by Sam Bergman, or the Minnesota Orchestra … because the parts that are more important aren’t included here. 🙂
… and then there’s this …
Everyone who reads this blog knows I’m not a huge fan of the tails the guys have to wear. Who the heck dresses that way any more? Seems silly. We women get to be more creative, and can choose from so many different looks.
But hey … maybe we should ALL dress differently. How ’bout this:
