Author: oboi
Date: 2015-02-07 01:20
I have a special place for concert band, locked far away and never to be opened again... ha! Which is funny, since if I never played in band, I probably never would have taken up the oboe. Besides the music (I find it fun to play the occasional showstopper/movie theme, but generally have no interest in any music composed in the past 200 years), I find the oboe just to be ineffective as a band instrument. We're wonderful for the solos that pop up, but generally when everyone is playing, we're just buried. Add to the fact that in my bands I was often the lone one (or two) oboist among tens of flutes/clarinets, it felt like me vs. the ensemble.
I used to play in a community orchestra, which basically saw me grow from a beginner to a pre-professional oboist. I'm not sure if I gained much musically from it directly, but I am sure glad it allowed me to meet other adult amateurs and kickstart my musical renaissance. I also played for a short time in the university concert band (intermediate) and university wind ensemble (advanced).
My main focus currently is being part of an adult amateur chamber music organization. Me and a few others founded this non-profit which has bi-monthy informal public lunchtime concerts. We do the whole shebang, with professional-quality posters, a real promotional push out to the community and the concert is livestreamed out on the internet. We also do concerts at seniors homes and have some pretty large formal concert fundraisers in the works. Anyway, I am so fortunate to be a part of this, as how many chances for amateurs are there to play chamber music in a real concert setting? I make a ton of ad-hoc groups, but there are 2 main ones I'm normally in. I play the baroque oboe with a rec/vl/vc/bsn/hpd group. We've been hammering out a good chunk of Telemann, Fasch and Vivaldi. The cello still plays on steel strings on a modern instrument, but other than that, we're all period. We've recently created a modern woodwind quintet, and given the personnel in this group, I would love to tackle the most challenging quintet music out there one day. We have a small group of baroque strings/hpd which will serve to be a string orchestra, so I hope to soon have a 3rd regular group to play oboe concertos, cantatas and such (might be able to play both oboes). I actually just did a Bach double harpsichord concerto with them, and will swap to the oboe for the next performance (Bach 1060 and 1060R).
Other than that, I get called to play with the local amateur string orchestra on occasion (we're doing Bach's orchestral suite this month). Recently, someone created an advanced amateur/semi-pro level group, who hopes to do symphonies and large chamber wind works. So, I will dabble in that, too.
There is nothing I find more satisfying than playing chamber music. The hard part is finding the people for it and especially if you're like me and don't want to stick to one set of instrumentation. But once all the puzzle pieces come together, boy is it fun.
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The Oboe BBoard
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