Playing two programs a week with Grant Park has had me thinking about how I prepare for a first rehearsal. With only 2-3 rehearsals on a program before a concert, it’s imperative that every musician knows their part (and hopefully the piece) cold for the first rehearsal, so that rehearsal time can be devoted to interpretation, style, and ensemble. Ideally, when I prepare a piece of music, the first thing…
It’s not often that we toot our own horns, but someone once said, “If you don’t toot your own horn, there is no music.” At any rate, in this case, I think it is more than warranted. Please help us congratulate Anne Bach (co-owner of MKL Reeds) on winning the second oboe job in the Grant Park Music Festival. For those of you outside of Chicago, the Grant Park Music…
After you’ve been playing the oboe for a while, you develop your own system for organizing your reeds. If I am preparing for a recital or some other solo, it is not unusual for me to put away those “really good reeds” as I make them so that I have a collection for the big day. With this Bach Double performance in particular, I remember being surprised by the really…
Playing the oboe is not easy. I think back to when I started and I marvel at how much practice and dedication it takes just to get a nice sound out of that little piece of wood. That said, I am always surprised at what good can come from taking a break from the oboe and giving it an extended nap in its case. You would think that not playing…
I was cleaning out my desk the other day and came across my whole collection of Monumental Reed Notes. The collection is actually just a stack of Post-It-Notes from my years of study with Richard Killmer at Eastman. I thought I would share some of them with you. Don’t worry about the detail… at first. Get the reed playing. Make it a stable, functioning reed and then worry about putting…
It’s always fun to travel to festivals and gigs out of town, but it can make for unpredictable reeds. Planning ahead for multiple scenarios with a case full of gorgeous reeds is the ideal situation, but how realistic is it to make a reed in one city and expect it to be the same somewhere else? I’m back in Chicago now after spending 5 days in Nashville and am headed…
A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to have a week long gig with the American Ballet Theatre when they came through Chicago. The ballet was Giselle and it was beautiful. Or so I was told, you can’t see much from the pit. But you can read a review of the production by the Chicago Sun Times. The really special part about all of this is that I got…
I’m in Nashville playing Heldenleben this week. It’s a hectic time for the Symphony since Kenneth Schermerhorn, their music director of 22 years, recently passed away. The oboe section here is Bobby Taylor, Ellen Menking, and Rodger Weismeyer. The season after next, the Symphony will move into their brand new hall, the Schermerhorn Symphony Center.
If you make a living playing music, you are probably aware of the following points: you are in business (as the sole owner of You, Inc.) marketing can be a major key to your success Music is both art and business, and if you depend on it to keep your lights on and food on your table, you will need to pay attention to both parts. In business, one of…
Recitals can be fun, exciting, grueling and invigorating all at the same time. Here is a short clip from a recital I played a few years back. You can listen to it here. (It is fairly small but might take about 5 minutes to download on a dial-up connection.) What’s your most memorable recital experience?