Author: ohsuzan
Date: 2006-07-25 16:02
Well, I've just come home from a week's stay at a chamber music camp in the high New Mexican desert, so I have to say, this thread has a certain, um, "resonance" for me.
All the double reed players were constantly scraping, scraping, scraping our reeds. A reed which started out responsive and comfortable in the morning would be, by the end of the afternoon when the storm clouds gathered, huffy and impossibly resistant.
My oboe, in particular, would not stay in adjustment. The F res key would turn itself a quarter turn in the time it took to play one movement of a piece. On successive days, using feeler gauges, the adjustment of both top and bottom joints (but esp. the bottom) would vary madly. My screwdriver and my tip knife became my constant companions.
Other oboists had enormous water problems in their top joints -- just gurgling like fountains -- in addition to the huffy reed issues.
The good news is that, under the pressure to perform, I have learned to adjust both oboe and reeds to playability "on the spot". I was fortunate enough to be able to perform (with a quintet) the first movement of "Roaring Fork" by Eric Ewazen, on Saturday night's concert program, and, with the exception of a sequence which involved leaping into low B's on successive slurred eighth notes, I nailed it (as did my colleagues).
My sympathies to those of you struggling with the heat wave in the Pacific Northwest!
Susan
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