NOTE à mes lecteurs francophones:
Encore une fois, je veux vraiment faire promotion de l'usage du français, mais l'envergure de cet article et les pressions du temps ne me le permettent simplement pas. J'explique pourquoi dans le texte ci-dessous, puis étant donné que la très grande majorité de mon lectorat comprend l'anglais, mais pas le français, je n'ai simplement pas le temps de le rendre bilingue. Vous pouvez facilement traduire en copiant l'adresse de cette page, puis la coller dans un service comme: https://translate.google.com
Giving thanks: A soloist on stage!
I recently learned that, in the USA, Thanksgiving is actually more popular than Christmas! In Canada, we celebrate it a month earlier: probably because winter comes here much more quickly than in Texas! But for me, Thanksgiving remains a really important holiday, because it is the weekend I used to go home after the intimidating start of the academic year in college.
These past few years, it has become really easy to focus on what is going wrong in the world, in our towns, in our homes. But let's be brutally honest: anyone who is capable of playing the oboe, a very expensive instrument with tons of time and effort requirements, should be thankful that life is even making it possible at all, no matter how hard it is to maintain those conditions, no matter what struggle is required to keep it going -- and I have stories to tell about my journey there ... for some other day. So let's focus instead on how life has kept us going, how Providence has shielded us from the really rough times we are living, such that we can continue to pursue our art.
In that perspective, I can give tremendous thanks that last spring, I was honoured with the opportunity to play a concerto, as soloist with the Kanata Symphony Orchestra, at the point in their development where the strings have never sounded so good: truly a string orchestra of semi-pro level!
This was a wonderful experience for me, too powerful to describe. But I want to share it because I hope it can serve to inspire other passionate amateurs, or ex-professionals to keep pursuing your dreams. When I started this blog, maybe 12 years ago, I actually did not think I would ever be playing in public again. Now look!
To music students:
Please learn this while it can still bring peace to your hearts: you don't know where life will bring you, anymore than I did, anymore than anyone does. Perhaps you will be successful professional performer, perhaps you will become a teacher, perhaps you will abandon all that to working in computer technology or installing sinks and cabinets. In all cases, I can think of nothing that brings more meaning to life than playing music ... well, maybe caring for dogs, but that's another discussion! Suffice it to say, that every musician I have ever met agrees: regardless of what we end-up doing in life, it would not be right without our instruments or our voices. Change instruments if you must, take a 10 or 30 year break if you must, but always keep a song in your heart and you will make the world better than it would be otherwise. From just practicing my digital piano for my own mental sanity, to producing You-Tube videos to track my oboe rebirth, to church music, to chamber music, to finally THIS! ... If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.
So why did it take me so long to blog about it?
I played my first concerto on May 28, 2022, at the age of 52. That was a long time ago now! So much has happened since then. If you only listen to the regular news sources, then you might have missed so many monumental events that happened all over the world. If you follow me on FaceBook, you will have noticed a drastic change in what I post: I am doing this despite an attempt to use it against me that could have literally crushed my professional career and my home. Instead, by the Grace of God, I have found a minor "calling" to participate with Veterans for Freedom. We have been joined by farmers, nurses, police, fire-fighters, lawyers, doctors and researchers among the most prestigious and most cited from all over the world. I will not grant people around me the right to remain ignorant.
But again by Providence, there have also been splendid things happening at work (computer development) making my day job very fulfilling on a personal level and I had the pleasure of meeting some wonderful musicians, making new musical projects a real possibility to be explored. So "real life" has just been so active that no time was left for blogging.
My first concerto, at the age of 52!
When the Kanata Symphony Orchestra's Artistic Director (Yves Lacoursière) offered me the opportunity to play a concerto, I made 3 suggestions:
- Bach concerto in A for oboe d'amore and strings
- Cimarosa concerto in C minor for oboe and strings
- Marcello concerto in D for oboe and strings
Marcello is the best known in these parts, and both the Artistic Director and the Concert Master (Anna Klochkova) decided it would give the strings the best combination of challenge and fun, therefore the choice was clear. But it turns out, in my opinion, the Marcello is the most difficult of the 3, mostly because of ornamentations.
Deciding on ornamentations.
I could be criticized for caring more about flashy ornaments than doing a really good job with intended style. But this concerto is very repetitive: the same motifs come back over and over again with very minor differences. So it seems to me that, even in the fast movements, ornamentation is implicitly requested by the composition itself.
My choice of ornaments may not be proper baroque in style, but then I don't play a period instrument! I started by listening to all my favourite performances (Albrecht Mayer, Antonio Masmano, Fabien Thouand and others) and used that as inspiration: not to imitate them, but to absorb the playful and joyous attitude they exude when playing. From that, it was a matter of deciding what my fingers can actually DO and where my brain doesn't get mixed up.
Difficulty: all mental!
It's really strange how you can practice for hours and days and weeks: everything seems to be going just fine! All the phrases fall neatly in place, the fingers behave perferctly, a great sense of confidence arises. Then, out of nowhere, I start practicing with the computer playing the orchestra part, and it all falls to pieces!
Learning the technique and mastering the phrasing is only the beginning. I found that the real difficulty in music is not the technique or even the instrument (reeds!), the real difficulty is THE MIND!
In fact, all the tripping and messing-up that happens when you start practicing with a metronome (but then you master it) might happen again, when you start with a computer orchestra (and master that too) AND YET AGAIN when you finally start rehearsing with the orchestra! The real trick is not the ability of the fingers and the breath, but truly to calm the wandering mind that disconnects the body from the breath.
At the concert, my fingers acted differently than during rehearsals. Usually, they are very hard on the pads, but now they pressed lightly, I could hardly close the pads or just stay on the note!
Big KUDOS to the KSO:
When I joined in 2018, the string section had a very hard time playing in tune or sounding like a proper section. They improved wonderfully up to the Covid lockdowns, but still sounded like a "community orchestra". During the lockdowns, as soon as restrictions allowed playing with masks, they started rehearsing when most other small orchestras remained closed: this attracted students and excellent string players from other orchestras. This was excellent, because the KSO already needed more string players, so the level really increased to the point where --- well, they may not be I Solisti Veneti, but I think this recording shows they actually sound like a real string orchestra.
