Author: ohsuzan
Date: 2006-07-29 03:32
The concert is over now -- it went so-so -- not our tightest night, by any means.
We ended up using our indoor venue, because it started raining just at the point where we had to make a decision about where to set up. The hall had been a) closed and b) not air conditioned all day, and it was hot, hot, hot. I was soaked from the skin out by the time we finished.
The Santa Fe reed made it *almost* through the Vaughan Williams, which came third on the program. I'm just as glad that nobody really hears the oboes on the third movement (a march). Funniest thing, the other oboist and I said, almost simultaneously, at the end of that piece -- "Well, there goes that reed!" -- meaning that hers collapsed, too. So we put on different reeds, and after the next piece ("Wrong Note Rag"), she had to borrow my knife to work hers down -- said it was getting tougher to blow by the minute. Mine stayed stable -- it was an old reliable reed that just refuses to die, and was probably a good choice, under the circumstances.
I respect Damon's (d-oboe) position about one's physiology being a contributing factor to the phenomenon of perceived reed changes, but don't know if I agree. I'm thinking about charting a couple of months of barometric pressure and humidity levels, and correlating those data with my subjective perception of reed and oboe behavior. I guess that wouldn't prove whether something is happening within the reed or instrument vs. within myself, but it might give me a way of knowing what to expect.
I do know that, for whatever reason, all the oboists and bassoonists at the Santa Fe workshop kept their reed knives at the ready, and used them repeatedly -- a good lesson for what to do tonight in Ohio.
S.
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