 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: marzi
Date: 2006-02-02 13:52
My husband and I want to move back to a more rural area, more acreage for a small livestock venture (we have a couple of acres now with goats and sheep , he wants to get back to Holsteins), which is what this area used to be before it got so popular with NYC, BUT I don't want to give up playing in community orchestras and bands,, is there still any areas that are relatively rural but with an orchestra? we never dreamed it would get so developed so fast around here! It gets lonely when few other people understand and even denigrate farming. Unless you want to pay 3million dollars, no exaggeration, you will not get enough land for any real farming. and thats for acreage already protected under a no development clause. And even more strange, with so many string teachers around, and ever more people, you would think we could get more string players, ! Our present interim director is slowly recruiting some talent(she tactfully replaced our oboe player with 2 excellent ones, so far she hasn't hinted she'd like to replace the clarinets, whew)!! Don't worry, the oboe player is in the trombone section now, he only had 4 lessons on the oboe and read music quite well, but the tuning!!!
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Author: larryb
Date: 2006-02-02 14:24
Marzi,
Have you tried the northern Catskills for farming and music?
Check out Delaware, Otsego, Schoharie counties.
Here's the website for the Catskill Symphony: http://www.catskillsymphony.org/
There are also lots of (mostly summer) music festivals around Woodstock, Hunter, Oneonta. And Glimmerglass near Cooperstown has one of the finest summer opera programs in the country.
Hartwick College seems to have a decent music program, probably a community orchestra associated with it.
Check out Amateur Chamber Players (<www.acmp.net>) to find out who plays music for fun in the Hudson Valley, Catskills, Finger Lakes, etc.
As for agriculture, check out the website of the Watershed Agricultural Council: <www.nycwatershed.org>, and there is a listerv called catskillag@yahoogroups.com (go to yahoo to find it).
And you'd only be about a 3 hour drive to the New York City area, striking distance to hundreds of community music groups.
Good luck.
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Author: Bob Phillips
Date: 2006-02-02 16:44
Marzi,
I hear you, loud and clear!
We live in a town of about 8,000 including surrounding areas. We sort of support 2 "music shops." The later mostly service the school bands and the "bluegrass" strummers.
We have a community orchestra, but only through the dedication and committment of the director (Direktor) and his wife. There is a swing band (16-piece "big band"), and a chorus (or two). We'd have a community band, too, but everyone wants to play; and no one wants to conduct.
There is enough "talent" for a few ad-hoc chamber groups to spring up --often to work on a particular composer or piece.
Our instrumentation is thin, with only about 6 fiddles on each part in the orchestra, half dozen cellos, one viola, and no string bass. Two fiesty, competitive clarinetists, two good oboeists, a bassoon --sometimes augmented by a high school student, and an advancing flutist. Tympani, keyboard (fills in the low bass parts). Two trumpets, and a trombone.
The strong personality of the orchestra Direktor and our propensity to buy cheap music can make the orchestra frustrating. Some of us buy decent arrangements to augment some of the awful, awful stuff made for youth groups.
The swing band contains snowbirds who may head for sunshine and leave the band short handed at times. We fill in with high school students from the well organized program there. We are not rich in saxes, but usually have a couple extra trombones and trumpet players. The charts for the swing band are great, the standards, now approaching 300 tunes.
We have a woodwind qunitet, and we play a lot of the "good stuff." We've had flute shortage this year, and are currently trying to match rehearsal times with a new candidate player.
Last year, I had a call from a Santa Barbara couple through the Amateur Chamber Players. They come here for 2-weeks of vacation and can't do without their instruments. Last year, we worked (successfully, blush) on the Mozart "Kegelstaadt" Trio, and this coming summer, we're looking forward to some work with von Weber, (maybe Brahms).
Our town has recieved an inordinate amount of attention, and immigration is a severe problem (along with a lot of attractive places in Idaho). Property "values" (prices) are unreasonable, property taxes are following real estate listing prices. This is the forested end of Idaho (panandle, Canadian border), not the 'tater farming south/central/eastern part. Tax breaks acrue to those with a few or more acres of trees. Short growing season, but lots of yuppie ranches featuring Andian mammels.
For my part, I'd enjoy having more ensemble playing opportunities. I'm studying with a fellow from the Spokane Symphony; and I drive to Spokane (3-hours on the road) weekly for lessons.
We are seriously considering the pros/cons of a move to British Columbia. Issues include affordability, health care, taxation, and the music scene!
Good luck to you
Bob Phillips
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Author: Synonymous Botch
Date: 2006-02-02 20:49
Sounds like the "Montana syndrome"... everyone wants the barbed wire fence installed to keep out interlopers - after they buy a parcel.
Have a look up the river at Hudson, and the Taconic parkway stretch.
There are a few good quality orchestras operating in the area, and easily as important, an actual audience.
If you're going to dress up, you may as well do so with attendant ears.
Me, I would sooner eat dirt than deal with milking at 0-dark thirty in Winter.
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Author: larryb
Date: 2006-02-02 21:22
and USDA forecasts lower bulk milk prices for the coming year - probably will hover around the $14/cwt area. Even with support from the MILC program, you'd still be struggling, especially with energy and feed costs the way they are. And with school systems heading towards low fat milk (see today's New York Times), you may not be able to rely on premiums from high milk fat content.
I'd stay with the small livestock (goats and lambs) especially for niche markets and keep away from the holsteins.
"Buffet is the Holstein of the clarinet world."
Post Edited (2006-02-03 11:18)
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Author: Terry Stibal
Date: 2006-02-03 13:54
One thing to keep in mind with distance issues is that you not only will have time expenditure. For a "three hour drive", you need to budget three hours in, three hours out, plus the cost of the gas (figure maybe six to ten gallons for such a trip). Real quickly, that community group rehearsal turns into a major league investment of money and time (for a leisure activity).
I used to live in rural IL where there were two community groups in the area. One was a poorly funded and run local community orchestra, where the director insisted on playing only straight classical and romantic programming. They would put on three concerts a year, all poorly attended, and only survived by doing stuff like Peter and The Wolf with a celebrity narrator. (Good thing I was around with an A clarinet to help them out, I tell you. I must have had the only A clarinet in a hundred mile radius)
Being relatively tightly controlled by the concertmistress, there was real trouble in filling in the positions in the group. Only about three violins, two violas and one contrabass met her standards in the string section, so there was a lot of doubling up by other instruments to fill the gap. You haven't lived until you've experienced Espania played with no trombones...
In short, the group was not fun, the concerts were embarrassing, and the instrumentation was barely adequate to play reductions, much less the full boat orchestrations we were attempting.
The other was a very viable and well supported community group in a city about forty minutes away. This one was integrated with the local "cultural society" (which encompassed all of the arts and theater), which put on a variety of musical events through the year (including a community theater production musical), and (in general) was something that the local folks paid attention to.
To get all of this, I had to spend a goodly forty extra hours a year in travel time, about eighty dollars a year more in gasoline (this in the days of cheap gasoline, mind you), plus the added expense of suppers away from home on rehearsal nights.
Was it worth it? Well, I had a lot more fun at the Centralia Cultural Society than I ever did at my home town group, even if I was no longer playing Clarinet 1. (For Centralia, I played bass clarinet, 3rd Clarinet when needed and various saxophone parts. And, none of them had an A clarinet there, either...)
Would it be worth it now? With gasoline set at something like three times the cost back in the 1980's, it might be something that I'd think about for a bit. But, going back to playing in a group where the 'cello part was covered by an alto sax player (with cocommitant big band vibrato) just wouldn't be any fun, so I probably would bite the bullet and spend the extra money...
leader of Houston's Sounds Of The South Dance Orchestra
info@sotsdo.com
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