Jazzy Classy

100 thousand visits! ALL RIGHT! Other very successful blogs also mention how people like to read how difficulties and frustrations are shared by everyone… and how perseverance really pays off! I think this post will confirm that pushing on in the enjoyment of music resulted in pretty good progress.	Baroque and Blue	100 mille visites! SENSASS! D’autres blogues bien suivis mentionnent aussi combien le monde aime lire que leurs obstacles sont partagés … et combien ça vaut la peine de persévérer! Je crois que cet article confirmera qu’avoir poussé dans l’amour de la musique aura montré un progrès véritable.
I started practicing this last summer. I wanted to post it for Christmas, because Baroque and Blue is so playful and Irlandaise has the famous Chrismtas tune in it: a very comforting fire-side kind of feeling. It took me this long to get it ready, not just because of hectic work hours – those returned to normal after January – but also because my Tai-Chi is taking a more important role in my life and a few other home things. But in the end, it’s mostly about I wanted to do the best job I possibly could on these ones. Getting the sound right in the recording, mixing the trio MP3, my small-room track and the video take sure is a challenge…	Irlandaise	J’ai commencé à travailler ces pièces l’été dernier. Je voulais les enregistrer pour Noël, parce que Baroque and Blue est si joyeux et Irlandaise est un cantique de Noël si bien connu: sentiment chaleureux auprès du foyer. Ça m’a pris si longtemps les préparer, pas juste parce que le boulot empiète – les heures sont retournées à la normale après janvier – mais aussi parce que le Tai-Chi prend un rôle plus imoprtant dans ma vie et quelques autres histoires. Mais à la fin de l’histoire, je voulais faire de mon mieux dans ces enregistrements. Produire un timbre vraisemblable entre le MP3 du trio jazz, mon enregistrement de petite chambre et la vidéo présente un véritable défi…
Hommage to Jean-Pierre Rampal The original recordings by Jean-Pierre Rampal and the Claude Bolling Trio have been very special to me since my first years as a music student. Now, you’ll understand that having been raised in my teens and young adulthood on musicians with this kind of expressiveness, on many different instruments, I really cannot accept anything less from oboists. I never thought these pieces could sound well on anything other than the flute, but when I got the sheet music, just for laughs, I found them too much fun to resist! They are really challenging for the altissimo register, but that’s just part of the thrill!	Rampal & Bolling : Château de Versailles!	Homage à Jean-Pierre Rampal Les enregistrements originaux par Jean-Piere et le trio Claude Bolling me sont restés très chers depuis mes premières années en musique. Vous comprendrez maintenant qu’avoir été exposé, comme adolescent et jeune adulte, à des musiciens avec tant d’expressivité et sur toutes sortes d’instruments, je ne peux guère accepter moins du hautbois. Je n’ai jamais cru que ces pièces pouvaient bien sonner sur autre chose que la flûte, mais quand j’ai acheté la partition, juste pour rire, je les ai trouvés irrésistibles! Elles sont tout un défi pour le sur-aigü, mais ça fait parti de l’aventure!

Learning from the Masters… electronically!

I had the real pleasure of being “virtually” introduced to a bunch of amazing oboists that I would not have known otherwise. In this blog, I have made much ado of Albrecht Mayer… in fact, I would never have known about him if it weren’t for internet streaming radio and the CBC radio 2’s good habit of giving performance details of their playlists on their web-site.

 

We are living in a wonderful time where it has become so easy to hear so many performances, but finding these performances assumes you know what to look for… and where! Thanks to You-Tube, Facebook, personal blogs and Bill-Boards (discussion groups), I have met many fine people, young, experienced, students, amateurs and professional who have been able to share recordings they have found on the internet. Sometimes, just sharing a name was enough to launch a process of research and discovery.

Redefining Concepts

I can truly say that my concept of playing the oboe, musicianship in general, my concepts of sound and style have changed quite a lot in the past few months. For example, virtuosic (“athletic”) repertoire like Rossini or Pasculli normally leave me indifferent at best. However, the playing of Christoph Hartmann and Giovanni di Mauro are very impressive. Clear, crystalline oboe sounds usually rebuff me, but the playing of Malcom Messiter and Heinz Holliger are definitely worth careful study. Normally, there is a crisp separation between the baroque and modern oboes… in fact, in the 1990s and early 2000s it seemed politically incorrect to play baroque repertoire on modern instruments and romantic or impressionist repertoire on baroque or classical replicas were simply unheard of. Thankfully, some superstars are changing that (A.M. for the oboe, but also Nigel Kennedy on the Violin and many others on other instruments). Next time, I’ll put up a list of very odd ways different oboes are being played!

 

To open some eyes to what can be done with our instrument, take a look at the following:

--- oboe d'amore tango : excellent sound
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Jcv7YuTw0&NR=1

--- baroque oboe BAND
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFoysod39dk&feature=related

--- really good modern jazz oboe : Jean-Luc Fillon quintet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TIP8swMSi8&NR=1

--- Great 1960's jazz : “buzzaphone“ in the right place!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoAtTi_u2u8&feature=related

--- jazz sounds like a Romanian taragot
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb6Goh2lFgo&feature=related

--- bass oboe: saw 3 ships
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0YJxutxAv4&feature=related

--- ragtime oboe trio
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kmxt8qqo8v8&feature=related

--- not oboe, but REALLY funny (duet or duel?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbQwQetKm2g&feature=related

When I was a student, recordings were common place, but still expensive and there were simply fewer of them. It was also more difficult to make “discoveries” unless the record store imported on a regular basis. Nowadays, CD's have become much less expensive and public libraries have had time to amass a good collection. I have been going to the Ottawa Public library every week and discovering a wealth of performances, repertoire, ensembles and inspiration all around.

 

You-Tube doesn’t give the best sound quality, but it sure offers us the ability to hear and compare young and not so young musicians. I have had the pleasure of both sharing my experience to the benefit of others, some less advanced and others more advanced than myself while learning and gaining much from their own questions, answers and recommendations.

Helping me play:

All this wealth of exposure has definitely changed the way I perceive music and will hopefully improve performance. Right now, I’m just putting the final touches on the MIDI file that will accompany my 1st recording ever… and mark my return to public performance! Doing an arrangement on MIDI file is more work than I would have expected, but it will be well worth the effort considering the versatility in performance styles and orchestration abilities offered by computers.

 

I have an excellent digital piano that has fantastic orchestral sounds…. but my bleeping PC laptop doesn’t seem to want to communicate with it anymore! I can get the computer speakers to accompany me, but that is a bit of a shame considering. Oh well, I suppose that will just leave doors open for later!