Since getting home from our travels I’ve been meeting up with my oboe a bit. Just now it was finally feeling somewhat “right” again. Whew!

I knew it would happen — I’ve been at this career for so long now I don’t worry (too much) that I won’t be able to get it back. I DO, though, dread the rough sound I have at first. One thing that really is obvious is vibrato. It’s just this awful, uncontrolled thing. Because of that, I find it best to either use it minimally or, better yet, not at all. Keeping a steady tone is challenging, so I think we tend to use vibrato to cover that up when we aren’t in good shape. It’s better to just deal, accept that frustrating sound for a while, and leave off the cover up. I also find that it’s good to have something new to work on. Fortunately I’ll be playing with San Jose Chamber Orchestra in a month or so (well, a little longer I guess: October 6, to be exact) and one of the works was sent to me already. I really love working on something completely new. This should be fun.

Meanwhile I’m listening and practicing Falstaff for Opera San José, of course. We have our first rehearsal this coming Tuesday. There are some quick little ditties in this thing … time to get the brain to work a bit faster!

That’s the other thing … the brain … it isn’t quite as quick to catch things. So I have to play things slower and make sure I’m seeing everything clearly. It doesn’t help that my vision is again doing weird things and even with my computer/music glasses I’m unable to focus all that well. I’m hopeful that will change soon. Sometimes it goes out like this and pops back in after a time. If not, I suppose it’s back to the doctor to see what we can do about this. Blurry music makes for a rough time!

The oboe is also in very good condition now. I took it to Mark Chudnow because so much seemed awry and I wasn’t able to get things quite right (I’ve been doing much of my own work, using the Sawicki book as a guide). Mark had my babies (English horn as well) while we were in Seattle and we picked it up on the way home. Thanks, Mark!