“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.

I just got done reading through the recent issue of The Double Reed and found all of the letters remembering the life of John Mack. I thought I would add mine to the mix…

I went to the John Mack Oboe Camp one year and I came away with a tip that has affected my life in a very profound way - both inside and outside of music. It is something I truly think about almost every day.

I actually went to the camp as an auditor - I didn’t play, I just watched. I was brand new to the oboe and although I had a lot to learn, I didn’t have a whole lot to contribute yet. So my teacher suggested I just show up and soak it all in.

Boy was that a good decision.

At one point in one of John Mack’s masterclasses he said something like this:

Accept the challenges, then figure out how to meet them.

For some reason, I remember that exact moment. And following that simple tip from Mr. Mack has attracted more joy and fulfillment into my life than I ever imagined possible.

Back when I decided to make a tape for the Gillet Oboe Competition, I was in my sophomore year at college. Boy was that a funky year.

I was in the middle of that funk where things you are working on with your teacher are beginning to affect your playing, but your old habits are still trying their best to hang on. The result can be the temporary onset of sheer torture. For me, it was a tough year. There were a lot of things that I simply needed to wade through.

I remember when I decided to send in my tape, I had no clue how I was going to prepare all of the repertoire.

I remember that year was a Bach sonata, Shinohara’s Obsession and the Dutilleux Oboe Sonata…

It was rough.

But I decided to do it anyway. I accepted the challenge and then I figured out the details.

Although I didn’t win the competition, (or even make it to a second round) the simple act of preparing all of that taught me more than I ever dreamed.

So thank you, Mr. Mack. I am fortunate to have gained from your wisdom.

Your words have added to my life in a way you will never know.

We’ve just put the finishing touches on our new book, “Play It Right the First Time: The Oboist’s Guide to Becoming a Master Sightreader in Just 10 Minutes a Day.”

In the book, I talk a lot about rhythm and pulse, and how very important that is to being a great sightreader. When it really comes down to it, having great rhythm and a rock solid (yet flexible) inner sense of the pulse is half the battle.

To really get a good idea of what pulse feels like, I always turn to the music of Bach. For me, there is no composer better at creating that sense of constant, effortless rhythmic motion.

Here’s an example of my husband on the organ accompanying some trumpets in an arrangement of a Bach Cantata movement.

The piece is in 3 so the pulse is a bigger, slower one. But you can almost picture the “big wheel” spinning around and around. Of course the wheel is a bit lopsided, which gives you that added emphasis on the downbeat.

Developing your own inner sense of this idea is key to becoming a master sightreader.

Take a listen…

I had the pleasure of playing Tombeau for the first time a couple weeks ago. I played second oboe/English horn and it was a really fun part, though there are some really quick switches.

Due to some past wrist problems, I play both oboe and English horn with a neckstrap now, and fast switches always offer a sort of conundrum for me:

Is it better to wear 2 different neckstraps and set heights for each instruments, or wear one and adjust accordingly? I’ve tried both, but for Tombeau opted for the 2-strap option and sometimes just went without the oboe one for faster trade-offs.

In the freelancing world, there is often a lot of the same work; pick-up orchestras for the Messiah, or maybe church wedding gigs. So, I always get a little excited when something comes along that is really different, and more importantly, really fun to do.

Not that long ago, I got the chance to play with a professional vocal ensemble, and was thrilled to discover a piece for choir and oboe that I had never even heard of. I assumed that it was just some oboe accompaniment, as a lot of choral pieces are. Imagine my shock and excitement in finding out that Effinger wrote a piece (4 Pastorales) that is almost like oboe solo with choral interjections.

I totally fell in love with this piece, and had such a blast playing it. There is something so great about occasionally being the only instrumentalist. The sound of one oboe against voices is so cool, and I found there was so much I wanted to do with the music in terms of color and mood and sound. All 4 movements are really neat, but here’s the first one:

You can listen to one of the movements here

Listening to other oboists play is a great way to stay in the “loop,” get new ideas, and inspire your thoughts on a piece of music. I just got 2 new CDs of incredible oboe and English horn playing:

• Julie Giacobassi (with guest artists Rodger Weismeyer and Eugene Isatov)
• Eugene Isatov in solo

New CDs are also a great way to learn about new rep–

On the Giacobassi recording, I heard an Eric Ewazen quintet with solo English horn for the first time that was very cool. Has anybody else heard these CDs or any other good ones lately?