Playing the oboe isn’t easy.

Reedmaking isn’t always easy either. So how do you stay focused and know if you are really making progress, or just spinning your wheels?

It’s funny, because this is something I always notice in hindsight. Usually at the time in question, I either feel incredibly overworked or just plain discouraged. I feel like I am trying hard, but not getting anywhere.

It happened a lot more when I was a student, and now that I am in the “real world,” I actually look forward to it happening every so often, because then I know that my hard work is paying off.

So, what in the world am I talking about?

I am sure you have been there, but maybe you just didn’t recognize it at the time.

It’s that oboe audition you just don’t win, or that recital that just doesn’t go as well as you thought it would or should. It’s hard to get over those times when you feel like you are moving in “oboe reverse,” but those are the times you just have to pick yourself up and get going again. In fact, those are the times that give you the largest opportunity for growth and advancement.

The times that are toughest are actually pure gold. It is during those times that you are learning the most and making more progress than ever.

Now you can view those instances as depressing events, or you can see them as the ultimate springboard for moving your oboe playing to the next level.

I agree that the feeling of rejection or disappointment is not pleasant, and I definitely wouldn’t say I look forward to it, but I DO look forward to what comes after… getting grounded again, finding new things that are fun and exciting to work on and figuring out a way to solve the new challenges I have just faced.

It’s all a matter of perception, like so many things in life. When being an oboe player is all lemons, find a way to make lemonade.

Running an oboe reed business and all, I often get requests or inquiries about reeds and the desired tone they’ll produce. And while I agree that reeds play an important part in determining your sound on a given day, I am old-fashioned and in favor of hard work to get the tone you want!!

I’ll always think of my teacher, Richard Killmer, who could take your most crude, unfinished reed and make it sound amazing.

So, what’s the secret?

The secret is that your tone is your voice, and it can be developed and matured like any other voice.

As oboists, we are always so quick to blame the reed, or let the reed become our personality.

But your tone is your personality, and it will come through in your playing pretty much no matter what you do. But there certainly are steps you can take to refine your voice and make it sound more like the ideal sound you hear in your head.

The hard work you have to do is long tones!!

Not just any long tones, but mindful long tones. That means that for 15-30 minutes a day you concentrate and listen and notice all the subtleties of your sound.

You’ll spend hours (although they’ll fly by) trying to stop and start a note just the way you want it, and hours more slurring up and down between notes to get that seamless buttery-ness that comes from you, and not your reed.

Plugging in a great reed will never do you justice if you haven’t spent time on identifying your voice and refining it. The best part about working in this way is the rewards you will see slowly, but consistently over time.

You’ll probably struggle daily with long tones for a while, have bouts of frustration…..and then finally it will happen!!

You might get to perform a Bach cantata, and you still feel like you are struggling. Someone gives you a recording, and although there is always stuff you’d like to do over, you notice a transformation of your sound!

It sounds effortless and liquid, just what you have been hearing in your ear for the last few months. Those moments make it all worth it because you have somehow transferred the voice you’ve had in your head to your oboe playing!

Just remember the rewards that you will reap from working hard to “find yourself” the next time you are in a reed slump. The reed is just the vehicle for a sound – your voice is what you make it.

When I was a student at Juilliard Pre-College, I was probably at the peak of my early learning about music and the oboe. I remember feeling continually challenged, and I could practice for hours on end.

My teacher was especially demanding, and I learned all kinds of things about the oboe, especially about oboe technique. It was at times excruciating to go through all of the Barrett book’s articulation studies… and that was before I would have to transpose them.

I was hard at work and loving it.

Finally, one day I was actually working on a real piece of oboe music. It had taken about 6 months to get to this point, and I remember it being more frustrating than anything. The piece was the Saint Saens Oboe Sonata, and I could not make it past the first few bars without a slew of comments and suggestions from my teacher.

It was a pivotal moment in my learning, (and in my life) when I became so frustrated about not being able to put all the pieces together well enough. There was the attack, the pitch, the blowing through all the notes – I felt like the technical demands were endless.

My teacher, in her calm and quiet way just stopped and looked at me. She knew I was frustrated and she knew why. I will always remember her advice to me:

When you think about the music, and not what you “have” to do or “should” be doing, the technique takes a back seat.

This was such important advice, and even more so coming from her. We spent so much time on the “right” way to do things that is was pretty easy to get overwhelmed. Hearing that I should and could be myself was the most liberating thing, because you will never be done learning.

There will always be that technical thing you could have done better, or that newer technique that you are trying to master at the same time you need to be preparing a recital. But no matter what, when push comes to shove, no one cares about anything except the music you are communicating.

So, even when you are playing an etude, you need to play it less like something you are learning and trying to be “good at” and more like a “gem of self-expression” (another oboe phrase my teacher liked to use).

Through the years, this mantra has served me well. When it comes time to play for real, nothing else matters except the music. Not your reed, or what you have to do to play it. Part of being an adaptable musician and a great oboe player is being able to produce in the worst of circumstances.

It is a refreshing thing to hear someone do this, because their personality and gifts as a musician shine through no matter what. So, keep practicing and perfecting. But when it counts, be able to get back to what really matters… and remember that music is an art and not a science.

Question

I’m a student and I will have my exam recital this May. The program has to contain a modern/contemporary piece (my teacher claims Poulenc and Britten do not fall into that category, they are too old). So, I’m out of ideas!

I would like to find an interesting/cool/beautiful piece and not strange just for the sake of being strange, also one that I can have a chance to play good by May. Since I’m playing another solo piece on the concert, it would be good if the piece was not solo too. I really have no clue about contemporary oboe repertoire, so I would be grateful for any tip.

Answer

Paul Reade has some great oboe music. One of my favorite all-time oboe pieces is his “Suite from Jane Eyre”. You can hear a snippet of it here:

Suite from Jane Eyre by Paul Reade (Live Performance, Rochester NY)

On the total other side of the spectrum is a piece called “Obsession” by Shinohara.

Play the music, not the instrument.
- Author Unknown

Boy how true… especially for us oboe players who spend so much time trying to get along with such a finicky instrument.

How often have you spent more time trying to play the oboe than you have trying to play the music through the oboe?

I know I’ve done it many times. And it’s always somewhat comforting to remember what’s really important. It’s not the clicking and clacking of the keys, or this fingering or that fingering… that truly matters.

It’s the music that comes out because of (or even in spite of) those things. It’s the music that matters.

My teacher always said, “You’re not an oboe player. You’re a musician who happens to play the oboe.”

It might sound like those are just words, but they’re not. In fact, understanding and living that phrase is a secret to understanding what being a musician is really about.

What are you going to focus on? Playing the oboe… or making the music?

“Fear has a smell, as love does.”

-Margaret Atwood-

I think the appropriate adaptation of this quote for oboists is “fear has a sound.”

It does not matter how much you practice or how good or bad you think your reed is. Fear is obvious, and it is a sound that has no place in music.

My very wise teacher had a saying along the same lines that I will never forget:

“Fear is not an appropriate color.”

It is a bizarre thing, because someone can play very well and still play fearfully. And someone else can play less well, missing notes here or there or whatever but be full of confidence.

Strive to remove any fear from your playing. If you detect any, ask yourself where it is coming from. Sometimes we just need to acknowledge it and move on instead of acting like everything is OK.

I remember my first solo recital after I had graduated and left school. I was a “professional,” but I didn’t feel like it. I had a really hard time being on my own at first because I realized it was all up to me, and that was very scary.

Luckily, I recorded the recital and literally could hear my own fear. It was then that I decided it was going to be confidence or bust from now on, because it just wasn’t worth it any other way.

Here’s a page from my Oboe Notebook (one of them) back from a Masterclass I took with Richard Woodhams.

It’s funny to look back at old things like this. It makes you realize how far you’ve come… and gives you the encouragement you need to go even farther.

Take a look at the page, it’s still good advice from a master. To see the large version (that you can read), just click on the image.

This masterclass was on April 13, 1995… just a few months before I started at Eastman.

We were driving to my grandmother’s house today for a holiday get-together when I chanced upon some production of the Nutcracker playing on the radio.

One of the amazing things about music is how certain pieces can bring back a flood of memories in an instant. The first thing I thought about when I heard the Nutcracker was how sore my arm was the last time I had to play English horn in a string of Nutcrackers a few years ago.

Sure the Nutcracker is nice, but if you’ve ever had the opportunity to play it once (sometimes twice) a day for two straight weeks, you know that it can get a little old… Anything would get old, right?

Looking back on the whole thing though, I realize that it wasn’t the music that was boring, it was just my approach that was boring…

Being bored doesn’t always have to do with what you are doing as much as it has to do with how you are doing it.

Have you ever read an article where some famous music teacher says words like these to the young, unsuspecting music student:

“You should only choose a career in music if you love it more than anything else.”

Or maybe something like this:

“A career in music isn’t easy, so if you have anything else you can do, do that instead.”

I read an article the other day that was loaded with famous musicians (some were oboe players) saying this type of stuff and it really made me think.

Is this really how it has to be? Is this true?

Is pursuing a career in music really so bleak?

My short answer is no.

You don’t have to agree with me, but if you want music to be part of your “career” and are a bit apprehensive about jumping in, then at least consider these thoughts…

Musicians by nature are supposed to be creative. That means we can see (or hear) things that others can’t or don’t. We don’t just take what we’re given and play the notes on the page.

We can see potential. We can hear potential. We can dream about how something could be and then make it real.

So why not apply that skill to your life and career? You don’t need the paycheck of a major symphony or the gig contractor to give you that permission. You have it already.

You just have to do it.

How do you know if you should pursue a career in music?

You should do it, if you want to do it.

Life is too short to let others’ opinions limit your happiness.

You are already the one standing up there conducting your own life. You get to decide how it goes. It’s just part of being the boss

Not sure what it is about commencement speeches this week, but I keep attracting them.

I was cleaning out one of my oboe closets yesterday and came across a copy of a commencement address delivered by the famous cellist, Lynn Harrell, to the graduating class of the Cleveland Institute of Music in 1994.

Rather than make any comments about it, I think I’ll let it speak for itself:

Commencement Address
by Lynn Harrell
May 21, 1994
The Cleveland Institute of Music

When I came to Cleveland and joined The Orchestra, I was eighteen years old, and I thought I was a finished product. Now I had arrived. All the hard work was behind me.

You know how it is at ten when you think you’ll never get beyond the first position… at thirteen when you can’t cope with ten minutes practicing before school and two hours after it… at sixteen when you’re working 25 hours a day for the big competition… and then, for me, at eighteen. It was all over. Finished. I had A Job.

And how little I know! It was only the bare beginning. It is so easy in music to forget that we are doing something we love. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that we even love it as deeply as we do. It’s so difficult when you’re young that, with as much passion as you have, it seems impossible to imagine ever playing well enough. It’s so difficult as you get older to realize that this feeling will never go away.

I am fifty now. The young students I played with at summer string camp are fathers and grandfathers. And I am still touched and amazed when playing with distinguished colleagues of my own age to realize that — as well as they may cover it up — they shake with stage fright before walking out, and sometimes even in performance. The doubts, the insecurities, the anger at the space between the dream and the achievement — these never go away.

There is never a moment in music when you can say, “This is it. Now I have arrived.” It is a journey with many stops. There are frustrating pauses, whirlwind acceleration — and sometimes, just a sense of having got seriously lost.

I see now how ironic it was for me that only a year after I got to Cleveland with the feeling that I could now sit back and enjoy things… that I had the worst time of my whole musical career. It seemed to my old colleagues — many of whom were still in music school then — that I had it made. I had a regular salary — enough to keep a man and family, after all — and I with only myself to take care of. I had concerts all over the world with one of the greatest orchestras of all time… who, from the outside, could possibly have guessed the desolation and emptiness that I felt. Was it all for this? Was this the magic? Here I was on the third stand, never heard and never noticed. I felt invisible — it began to feel like a boring, terrible, slow death. Forty years of this — how was I to endure it?

The problem was, of course, the total lack of a good, true education. In those early days, I never listened to my colleagues. I just stared at the page and played along with everyone else. One of the herd. Then one day, George Szell — clearly frustrated beyond belief at my donkey-like sleepwalking — told me to stay back during the intermission of a rehearsal. He grabbed my right arm and started to play as I should play out. It was a terrible, terrible noise — but the passion was there again, the commitment. He was furious with me. He barked at me: “You don’t contribute. You don’t know anything. You’re not prepared. You just float along down the stream. You never know how the music goes.” It was a tirade — and it amazed me. It had simply never entered my self-pitying state that this could all be my fault. That if I was bored, it was because I wasn’t trying hard enough. Music isn’t boring; people are.

So he told me about studying the score, about practicing music not just technique; about learning to hear the rest of the music — to study beforehand the architecture of a piece, the lines weaving through it in all the individual instruments. Above all, he dared me to have pride again in my playing. It wasn’t to be the old pride — narcissistically and aimlessly self-delighting in the trivia of instrumental playing. But to get immersed into the whole psyche and personality of a composer. He taught me respect for the creative force behind a great piece of music. He taught me respect for my fellow musicians: bullied and scorned by him, I was forced to open up and listen to the great musicians who surrounded me. I was over-awed by a horn sound that my wretched cello could never match; a clarinet legato that defined the word for me at last; the silvery shimmer of beautiful flute playing. George Szell opened my ears to the musical inventiveness of fine oboe playing. He taught me humility and — through it — he brought me joy.

It’s so interesting for me to look back. When I was made principal cello of The Cleveland Orchestra, I was probably the same age as most of you. Many of my friends then, I still see and play with. Or, actually, not too many. That’s the rub.

When I went into the orchestra, most of my old Juilliard and Curtis classmates wrote me off as solo material. That was me out of the fray — out of the running — for a lifetime. There were big talents, big stars-to-be… and I was no longer counted among them. Or, perhaps, never was. And I would have put my money on other cellists than I for a solo career, quite frankly. There are people I can still see in my mind’s eye who seemed incandescent: tall, good looks’ flashing fingers; the right mentors; competition winners; stunning self-confidence. And most of them — if not all of them, actually — you wouldn’t have even heard of. I had no idea at twenty-one what a long, long journey it is.

The key is simple: You just have to keep going. It isn’t a competition — it’s only about yourself, about one practice day after another, about keeping going, and above all, forcing yourself to understand that you never understand it all. The English have a term which I have just discovered. It’s called DINTISM. “How did he get that job?” I asked about a colleague. “Oh, dintism,” came the answer. Dintism? It is — it was explained to me — by sheer dint of doing it. Of doing it, with all good will and effort day after day, year after year. Of not giving up.

I’m often asked whether or not I get bored of carrying the Dvorak Concerto around the world. Bored? They must be joking. I, who thought I knew everything I needed to know about the Dvorak Concerto when I was twenty, am still discovering new things every single time I play it. I hear someone else play it and that goes for my students too — and in their interpretation, I’ll hear a phrase, a note, an unfamiliar turn of musical gesture, and there will be a new discovery for me.

I’ll never forget my encounters with Marcel Moyse, the legendary French flutist, at the Marlboro Festival. In his eighties, he kept tripping over his words in his passion, his eagerness to tell you of a piece of music. As much toil and work as music demands — it is also our brush with immortality. I heard Pablo Casals play when he was so old that his fingers and technique could hardly be recognized as good cello playing — and yet, it was the most moving and dynamically powerful music-making you can imagine, so alive was the soul, so strong the belief in the music.

What, you may ask, has all this to do with you who are just about to go into the world? Well, I am here as a scout. I am here to report back on what it looks like down the road. And I can tell you that the journey at the beginning, and the journey to the end are no different — music is one and the same journey, and it always continues.

I meet young musicians in their early twenties who are already turned off; they’re bored; they’re cynical. “It’s all politics,” they’ll say. But I met them thirty years ago, too, like that — and those are the talents who disappeared. Only the music remained — and those who in delighting in the music; in never failing to find refreshment in it; who rejoice in their gift… those are the musicians who have lasted, whose way has been lit by this special lantern of our art.

It’s hard to remember that now, perhaps. Most students I know graduate with the full weight of student loans on their shoulders, cars in need of new transmissions and gearboxes, rent that’s due, freelance jobs far and few between…

But I came here today to say, “Keep going.” Magical things have happened to me. Magical things have happened to many of us — and we’re all surprised. I have colleagues who are much older than I who teach at The Royal Academy of Music in London, and I feel the bond of being in this amazing and magical circle together. They don’t have the international chances that I do — but the music, and the delight in it, is the same.

Franz Schubert is dead, but his music is alive. It almost breaks my heart that I never knew him. But what truly breaks my heart are the musicians I meet on my path who are alive — but somehow dead.

Go out and join the living.

Joy and good fortune to you all.