Rachel Whipple wrote us with a funny oboe story the other day: Today I woke up very early to go to breakfast for Mother’s Day with the entire family. Afterwards, I thought it would be fun to practice my oboe outside for the first time this spring. The birds were chirping, the bees were humming, the dogs were barking, so naturally I thought that I should give my contribution of…
I woke up one Saturday in February to find a huge article in the New York Times about the abundance of available oboe positions among the nation’s top symphonies. As a member of the “next generation” of oboists that was mentioned in the article, I took issue with some of the stuff that was said. In particular, that there is any shortage of qualified players to fill the aforementioned positions.…
Playing the oboe is hard enough as it is, so I try to keep my reed philosophy as simple as possible. I believe there are only a few things that make a good reed. The rest, as they say, is just opinion. A good reed must have: response – if it doesn’t make a sound, what good is it? stability – using words like integrity and down-to-earth seem a bit…