Who painted this picture of virtuoso oboist Johann Christian Fischer?

Got a question recently about how to tie your knots when you’re making an oboe reed. It’s hard to explain in words, so take a look at the video and see if it’s clear.

This video is actually part of our reedmaking course, The Beginner’s Guide to Making Your First Playing Oboe Reed… In 9 Days or Less

Been a loooonnnnggg time.

We’re living in Flagstaff now. At the top of a very tall mountain. This has nothing to do with the oboe, but I’d like to introduce you to some of our neighbors.

We’ve landed… About 1667 miles from where we started. In our new home: Flagstaff Arizona. It’s a whopping 7,300 feet above sea level.

(If you’re wondering what high altitude does to oboe reeds, well we’re about to find out

But I’ll talk about that later.

Right now, I want to tell you about something that might help you get through those oboe blahs we all go through now and then.

It’s something I call Oboe Zen: Simple Thoughts for a Musical Journey.

It’s a short booklet I’ve put together with some thoughts that will help you put your oboe life in perspective…

But I have to warn you…

This isn’t a booklet filled with how-to or “put your finger here” type of information.

This is more of a WHY-to.

A simple resource for you to use when things get tough. For those days when you wonder, “Why in the world do I play the oboe?”

Where did I get the inspiration for Oboe Zen?

During our 3 day cross-country drive stuck in a Honda CR-V (with 3 kids under 4)…

During those 24 hours of driving (in what has to be the world’s MOST uncomfortable car), we talked about music, life and what we do it all for.

And I’d like to share some of what we’ve discovered.

You can get a copy by visiting the link below.

In the booklet, you’ll find 26 “meditations” about the oboe, music and life. And you can get your copy for $18.70 (including $3.75 shipping and handling).

I’ll ship it out within 24 hours.

PLUS… you’ll get a complimentary subscription to a year’s supply of Oboe Reed Tips (through your email) with your order. The 52 Oboe Reed Tips sell for $27.00, but you’ll get them as a gift with your copy of Oboe Zen.

But here’s the thing…

We didn’t get many copies of Oboe Zen printed-because frankly, this is a new direction for MKL Reeds.

If you’re interested, here’s where you can go:

http://www.mklreeds.com/products.htm

I just read of the passing of Cynthia Steljes, oboist and founding member of Quartetto Gelato…

I didn’t know her personally, but just a few weeks ago, I sent her a letter to tell her about a new project we are working on at MKL Reeds and to ask for her input. I am telling you that only because, for some reason, it made the announcement of her death so much more real to me.

I still remember the first time I listened to their one CD, (the one with the blue cover). I was absolutely shocked by the energy, the life and the unique sound that really was quite unlike anything I had ever heard.

It is truly something special.

Of course, my ear gravitated to the oboe player and I remember running to Google to figure out just who she was.

Our thoughts are with her husband and extended family.

Here’s what happens to dead oboe reeds (in this case, a bassoon reed) in our house. My son really gets a kick out of this. I wish I could have so much fun when my reeds kick the bucket.

Did you set oboe goals for 2006?

Have you achieved them?

If you listen to any of the self-help gurus out there, you’ll find advice ranging from the simple, “you must set goals” to the contrarian, “the worst thing about setting goals is that you achieve them when you could have achieved more.”

I don’t generally read self-help books like that, but my husband does. And guess who gets to listen to his book summaries? So I hear about all of this stuff a lot.

With such contrasting opinions out there, how in the world are you supposed to know which path to choose for yourself?

If you listen to the media around this time of year, you’ll start to hear stories about new year’s resolutions - how people are setting them and how few people ever keep them.

Why is that? Are we all really so bad at setting and keeping goals?

I think the hardest thing about setting goals is getting your mind and your spirit quiet for long enough that you can connect with what you really want. Not what your relatives or teachers or bosses want for you, but what you want.

That is the real challenge to goal setting. And making sure you set the right goal is what matters most.

After that, actually achieving the goal almost seems easy.

So here’s a little exercise you can try:

1. Make a list of the top ten things you want to accomplish on the oboe next year.
2. Now whittle that list down to the top 5 things…
3. Now, narrow it down to 3…
4. And finally, pick just one thing from your list. The one thing that, if you accomplish nothing else in 2007, you will achieve.

Choosing one allows you to focus your commitment. Here’s a quote that sums up just how important that is:

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back– Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it.

Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.”

Goethe (attrib.)

What’s the number one oboe goal that you are committing to for 2007?

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.