ProneOboe

Upcoming Concert - B Minor Mass!

2013-05-18T17:24:00.000-04:00

This is it - the end of the season. My own orchestras wrapped up several weeks ago, but I've been lucky enough to be working steadily until now. After tonight I have two weeks off and then the summer festival season will launch.

And what a way to end! Bach's B Minor Mass continues to be one of the most amazing pieces I've had the honor to perform, and although I get tired while playing it I don't get tired OF it.

We're presenting it tonight with the Vesper Chorale in South Bend. I love my life.

Beauty of Sound

2013-05-15T08:16:00.000-04:00

In our dress rehearsal Saturday afternoon, the conductor did exactly what I often do to my students - he asked the violins to play more beautifully, and they did. He didn’t tell them how, or give them a flowery expressive speech, he just asked for more beauty of sound, and they immediately gave it to him.

To a great extent the sound we produce is set, based on our equipment and the shape of our mouths and our bodies - but it can be altered, too. Adjustments in reeds and instruments can go a long way, but the key change we can make is in our own minds. I don’t know how to explain it physically, but if you determine the sound you want to make you can produce it. Or at least you can lean in and approach it.

This is something I’ve been paying a lot of attention to lately in my own playing. As I prepare the Saint-Saëns Sonata to perform on our Oboe Studio Recital (tonight at 7 - details HERE), my approach is largely about beauty of sound and vibrato. I chose the piece because it is one that my students play frequently, but no one is playing it on this performance. I wanted them to hear something that they know, or will soon know. But for a change, I am not performing a work so difficult that technique has to be my primary focus, nor am I doing a full recital and concerning myself with endurance or a large variety of styles and colors.

Thus, I am using this time to work on making my sound not only appropriate to the work, but also inherently beautiful, which is not always the same thing. I think that sometimes in my attempts to prioritize color and interest and intensity and line I can get away from an objectively attractive sound, and while that is occasionally necessary I think we all agree that it shouldn’t be the default. I’ve been focusing on the simple attractiveness of the sound for my last several orchestra concerts, and am fairly happy with the results.

It’s a delicate balance, though. If I swing too often away from beauty of sound, I do know numerous players who go to the other extreme - beautiful playing with no variety, no character, no soul. I do not think that every oboist should sound the same, and I try to encourage my students to develop their own sense of sound, musical identity, and approach.

That said, I had to lecture a student on Sound a few weeks ago, and I couldn’t believe how uncomfortable it made me. It is truly such a personal thing. I felt like I was criticizing his smell, or his personality - it was that delicate for me.

We’ve been working together for several years now, and I have tried to speak of the issue in terms of support. Of reed structure. Of intonation. Of embouchure. All of those elements of his playing have improved, substantially. He’s a great worker. Finally, I have had to realize and confront the fact that he is already producing his ideal sound. All of the work we’ve put in has made him better and better at doing that same thing, which is admirable. Truly.

But the problem is that this edgy, colorful but wild sound won’t get him a position here in the states. It won’t even get him moved up to first oboe in his university orchestra, which is his short term aspiration. I don’t actually think I am leading him wrong in insisting that he sound more “American” to fit in at his Midwestern college - but I hated telling him so. I would love for him to use his own unique voice and have it be accepted for what it is. But instead I have to encourage him to get more generic, and to sound more like everyone else. This rubs me wrong, philosophically.

On the other hand, if our sound is not beautiful, why should we bother? And more importantly, why should anyone bother to listen to us? Music is a performance art, and performance requires a willing listener. It’s just got to sound good.

Upcoming Concert: Beethoven Nine!

2013-05-09T21:36:00.001-04:00

This week I am playing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra. What an absolute treat!

It has been years since I last subbed in this orchestra, and they have a new music director - David Danzmayr - who is simply marvelous. In our first rehearsal Monday night, I was impressed with the improvements he was able to make in the group, the simplicity of his requests and the immediacy of our responses to them. He never raised his voice or got excited, but simply made corrections in a friendly, cheerful manner and expected them to happen - and they did! This very pleasant work environment is a delightful change from some other regional orchestra experiences I’ve had, and I’m looking forward to the next few rehearsals and the concert.

What is it about Beethoven Symphonies? I think I will never get tired of playing this music. You know that I am crazy about twentieth century repertoire, and even newer material - but all old music was new once. Beethoven just writes so beautifully and powerfully for the orchestra. Every articulation is meaningful, and the colors are just so rich, and the orchestration makes it easy to play. His technique is not always easy, I hasten to add, and the endurance issues are not insignificant - but when I’m playing a solo I can always be heard, and it also happens to be made up of the most perfect notes that could possibly be played at that moment. In a Beethoven symphony I am always trying to live up to the greatness of the music - and that is a wonderful challenge.

The Ninth is, of course, particularly monumental, and deservedly famous. This concert will be grand, exciting, deep - and beautiful. Please come. Details HERE.

A Freelance Week

2013-05-07T11:15:00.000-04:00

You know, freelancers get no respect. We respect each other, sure, but if I meet another oboist and we start comparing resumes, there’s a real difference in status between the person with one job in a full time orchestra and the person with multiple smaller jobs. Even though a busy freelancer might actually earn more in a year, or may have higher quality musical experiences much of the time, there’s definitely a stigma attached to that lifestyle which disappears for the person who can state their employer and position in one simple sentence.

But the freelancers I know are some of the finest musicians I have encountered, and the couple of weeks I am engrossed in right now well represent the challenges and joys of the job.

During these two weeks, my own orchestras did not have big concert cycles, but I am certainly bringing in my share of the household income. On top of my regular teaching (there would have been more if all of the colleges were all still in session) I worked with five different ensembles. One wind quintet (rehearsal and two performances), two separate pick-up orchestras (one rehearsal and one concert apiece) playing second oboe, one gala event playing principal in my own orchestra (while also trying actively to meet our donors and be socially delightful), and now a week of substituting as principal in another regional orchestra. In each case, I was acting a different role, with different colleagues, in a different venue. At times I was sight-reading repertoire that was not available in advance, and following an unfamiliar conductor in a venue new to me.

And these elements all do make a difference. During a week in my own orchestra, I know who I’ll be working with. The principal winds all play together in a quintet, and we know each other’s playing very well. I have a good relationship with my section, and with the conductor, and a history of success which makes a small mistake or two matter less.   I know what kind of reed I’ll need in the hall, and how much to push to get my sound out, and where to park and how close the restroom is to the stage.   It’s pretty comfortable.

In contrast, when I work in a new group, I have to be hyper-aware. To play good second oboe, I have to lock in my sound, style, and pitch to those of another person, with whom I haven’t worked extensively. To play in a chamber ensemble, I have to intuit the phrasing and dynamic levels of my colleagues to predict just where and how strongly to play, and also understand in the split second that it happens who I should be following, and also, of course, try to present my part in a compelling way.   There’s inevitably more guesswork involved in this than when I play with my own group, because music is going on in real time. I can’t think intellectually about who to follow or what to do - I just have to react and go.

In some cases, I’m sight-reading this music at the same time - translating the dots, lines, and symbols on the page into audible music as it is going on, and trying to catch every marking the composer has given us.   When I perform a piece in my contracted orchestra, I can expect to have it two weeks or more in advance, and can take my time studying and preparing it.   Sightreading in English is no harder than recognizing the letters and words, but in music each note can have a ton of information attached to it. The precise pitch, its duration, whether I approach it with or without my tongue and how strongly, how I release it, how loudly to play it, its relative importance in the phrase - all of these factors are communicated in our notation system, and I have to pay attention to all the details while playing music that I was perhaps issued minutes before.

I love it. Love the challenge, love getting to see different people at every gig I go out on. New music every week keeps things interesting. To be fair, four different concerts last week was perhaps a bit much - a lot of changing gears and reeds and trying to sense what a conductor or a colleague was up to, a lot of REALLY uncomfortable folding chairs, and certainly a lot of driving.

My purpose in this post is only to point out that in many ways making music on a freelance basis can be more difficult than playing in a full-time orchestra, and the people I work with in this context are well worth our respect. Don’t sell the freelancers short!

Zoe is Awesome

2013-04-27T16:07:00.000-04:00

Zoe and I went for a Big Wheel walk. In other words, she big wheeled, I walked. We traveled around our tiny neighborhood block once.

First, she pressed a “button” on the handlebars and asked Siri for directions to the corner. “Siri, take me to the corner please - directions for Zoe Ingle.” She listened intently for a moment and then we were off.

Before we even made it to the corner, she was Tigger, and pretended that her big wheel was bouncy.

She found a little branch that had fallen off a pine tree, and explained that if I waved it from side to side it was red, but up and down made it green. We then had a “rally race” which consisted of a lot of flags and stopping and starting.

She stopped and hung her head. She was a sad Minnie Mouse, because it was “raining a robot rain and her bike basket got wet.” We pressed a “button” to magically dry her bike basket.

She drove intentionally into a yard, and became a sad Minnie Mouse, because her bike went into the “mud”. She and I worked together, using Teamwork, to extract her bike from the yard.

She chased me and had me chase her.

She climbed on a fire hydrant and pretended that she was scared of the world and only the hydrant was safe.

We stopped and picked dandelions, the only flower she is allowed to remove from people’s yards.

We found a pile of sticks and pretended it was a fire and warmed our hands over it and added more sticks to it.

She pretended to be a dog and had me throw a stick for her to fetch. She fetched it in her mouth, yipping excitedly.

Every time a car passed we had to be statues and freeze in place.

When we got home we rushed inside to put our dandelions in water.

This year has been really difficult for me - I can’t seem to make time enough in my day to do everything I want, as well as I want to do. Little girl doesn’t nap anymore, and she wants and wants and wants my attention. I really can’t do good, focused work except when she is at school or in bed, and there just aren’t enough hours like that. Because I work from home a lot of the time, I feel like I am eternally putting her off, or making compromises that I should not be making with my practicing, my fitness, or my sleep. And I never feel like I am on top of my big picture plans - getting through the week with clean clothes on is the best we can sometimes do.

It takes at least forty-five minutes to get around our block - but all that said, I would not trade this activity with my imaginative, amazing daughter for any amount of actual productivity at home. What a treat this is!

Upcoming Concert - Final Masterworks!

2013-04-27T15:27:00.001-04:00

I haven’t written, I know I haven’t written. It’s because I’ve been blissing out all week on this orchestra concert. We’re playing Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier Suite and Wagner’s Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde - and both works are just so expertly written and orchestrated, and so breathtakingly romantic and beautiful, and so exhilarating to play - that I haven’t felt like talking about it.

My orchestra is playing beautifully. I love working with my colleagues here. It’s been a pretty good year, artistically, and I can’t believe that this is our last concert.

What else happened this week? My mother was visiting from out of town, to help us with Zoe as we both had a lot of services and schedule complications. And because little girl adores her gramma, I was actually able to rest a little. Catch up a little. PRACTICE in a focused way. Go for long runs with a friend and get self-reflective.

I feel ready to face the next few weeks - the end of the regular orchestra season - and beyond that, to start exploring new projects. I can’t even tell you how much I’m excited about some of my ideas. This past year was very VERY hard for me, but I have high hopes for the future.

Meanwhile, come to our concert tonight. The music is astounding. Details HERE.

Oboe Reed Boot Camp: Your Official Invitation

2013-04-22T11:25:00.000-04:00

Calling all oboe students, teachers, and parents!

Is anyone else frustrated with reed-making? It seems as though there is never enough time during oboe lessons to really get a handle on this difficult skill, and during the busy season it's hard to make time to practice it, too. In some ways, the fact that I make so many reeds every week is a negative, because my students can come to rely on my big case which is always full. I find that I enable students to not make reeds.

Having good reed skills is a tremendous advantage to a student, though. At college, or out in the world, or even over the summer when lessons are out, it is liberating to know that you can take care of your own needs without having to rely on your teacher's physical presence. When you arrive at your concert and the weather suddenly changes or a flute player crushes your best reed, it is invaluable to have the skills to pull something else out of your case and adjust it to your comfort level.

This summer I will once again run my Oboe Reed Boot Camp. I want to assemble a group - beginners as well as competent or nearly competent reedmakers - and really take the time to start off right. We will do a full fifteen hours of reed drills, games, and competitions, and have everyone turning out playable reeds by the end.

Sometimes you may hesitate to scrape because you dread ruining an expensive piece of cane - I will supply all of the cane, thread, and staples, to maximize your courage.

I am offering two sessions this summer - Monday through Friday July 22-26 from 10am-1pm, and ALSO Saturday and Sunday the 27th and 28th, from 10-6. Both sessions will take place in South Bend. Further information and open registration are available at jennetingle.com. I am also offering an early registration discount from now until June 1.

I encourage you to let your colleagues, students, teachers, and friends know of this opportunity, and to contact me with any questions.

Upcoming Concert - Altered States!

2013-04-22T10:41:00.000-04:00

I am so excited about the performance I have Tuesday night.

Chicago's Fulcrum Point New Music Project is presenting a screening of Ken Russell's 1980 film Altered States, with a 75-piece orchestra performing John Corigliano’s Oscar-nominated score. The music is amazing. Trippy. Difficult. And I get to be involved!

I’ve done these kinds of gigs before - accompanying a film in real time - and it’s always challenging, both musically and technically. The material we are playing is often demanding, and the constraints of the format means that the tempo markings are non-negotiable. We have to start right on time, and play as fast as we have to play, and if things get off we have to make immediate and sometimes unnatural-feeling adjustments. The job of the conductor, of course, is even more complex than usual. The more technology is involved, the more he has to be on top of, and the less he controls, if that makes sense. There is little room for human flexibility and interpretation, and the least error can confuse the whole orchestra, or worse, the audience.

Adding to the difficulty this week is the constrained freedom in the score. There are many places where we have to play a set of patterns in an improvisational way. The technically challenging figures are written out for us but we need to place and repeat them in a way that sounds random. We have to react to other people so that we don’t line up with them, and have to listen to the effect we are creating and keep the material going. Meanwhile, the measures are still ticking by - fast - in real time, and we have to know exactly where we are so we can stop and move on appropriately. It’s not the hardest thing I’ve done, but it’s definitely tricky. I have students who struggle to count beats while trilling - when their fingers get unmetered they have no idea how to keep track of time. This feels like the same problem, raised to an uncomfortable level.

All that said, I’m proud and delighted to be doing this work. The composer was present for our winds-only rehearsal yesterday and will attend the performance. My own part is not prominent and you won’t hear me, but you should catch this event.

Details HERE.

Runners

2013-04-15T21:30:00.002-04:00

You know I am training for a marathon. I’m not near the level of Boston, the Mecca of Marathons, but I could imagine someday being. My dad ran Boston a number of times. I had friends running today.

Two weeks ago I was ready to give up on my marathon training. Clearly I was just not meant to run such distances. I had had that cold back in early March, and the bronchitis, and had taken about a week off from my training schedule. When I started back up I had one sort of OK run and then everything went downhill fast. I was stopping short of my mileage goals and getting nowhere near my pace goals, and generally felt lousy about the whole endeavor. This lasted for almost three weeks, or “forever” in runner’s jargon. I wanted to quit.

The worst thing about a running slump is the mysterious feeling of getting progressively worse. Of fighting a losing battle against your own limits. Of inexplicably sliding further and further backwards. It would have felt better to stay on the couch - at least if I wasn’t out doing the runs at all I’d know exactly why I couldn’t get through a seven mile pace workout. It would be my fault instead of just a lousy thing happening to me. I kept pushing, and failing, and trying.

Finally, I went out with a group of symphony friends, and broke back through. We had an outstanding eight mile run during which I never felt like walking, and every run since then has been great. Not effortless, but that’s not the point. I can complete my workouts as planned, and I'm proud to be there.

My original plan for this post was to talk about working through the slump, and how I do the same thing on the oboe, and in my writing, and how just sticking with it and continuing to do the work is pretty much always the answer.

But after today's news I just want to salute runners everywhere.

I want to celebrate the athletes in Boston, who all have worked through their own hard times to get there.

I want to think about the rescue teams and volunteers who helped in the wake of the explosions there today, and all the amazing runners who finished a MARATHON and went straight on to the hospital to donate blood for the victims of this attack.

I want to thank all of the people everywhere who do NOT set bombs to harm the innocent, and who do NOT carry weapons to threaten violence to others, and who are as shocked and saddened as I am at this tragedy.

I want to continue to believe in and love the human race.

Thank you, runners. Thank you, people.

Upcoming Concert - Mahler!

2013-04-11T16:45:00.001-04:00

We are playing Mahler 2 in Northwest Indiana this week. I love this kind of work.

The Resurrection Symphony is not my favorite Mahler piece, but there’s just nothing else that feels like playing Mahler. His writing stretches both the individual musician and the ensemble to play louder, softer, more beautifully, more characterfully than any other composer. I could spend - did spend - hours looking at the part. Not because the notes are hard, but because he gives us so many markings and they all have meaning. Different shaped accents, slurs over slurs, an enormous range of dynamics, and many many tempo and character words in German - everything on the page is important and needs to be studied, translated, and considered as a way to communicate.

Music is never merely music for Mahler. Every movement has meaning, and every phrase, and every note. Trying to do justice to his markings and his intentions can be the work of a lifetime.

I love the challenge. The concert is Friday night at Bethel Church in Merrillville. Hope to see you there!

Details HERE.

Star Spangled Feeling

2013-04-07T20:47:00.000-04:00

You know, when you are a professional musician, you kind of don’t get taken in by the theater of it all. The music can be beautiful, and moving - but your job is to move someone else, which takes a calculated effort and a level of detachment. Aside from my genuine enjoyment of the interaction, and the synergy, and the admiration of other people’s efforts, it’s rare for me to have a real personal moment of response to the music itself.

Here in South Bend, we have been heavily involved all week in presenting Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem. I’m sorry I didn’t preview the concert on my blog - I always intend to, as part of my personal mission to bring people to concerts, but this cycle was too overbooked for me to manage it. The War Requiem is an astounding piece - a large-scale work with multiple choirs and two orchestras and three soloists and a lot of complex and unfamiliar music to learn. We worked hard on it all week, and various internal details of hiring and resource allocations caused some hard feelings which as orchestra committee chair I was trying to resolve, and I had quintet performances every day, and a house guest, and meetings, and a reed shipment due, and Zoe was home from school on Spring Break. Though I enjoy all of the things I do, the week felt pretty stressful.

But on Friday we found out that two members of our orchestra had just taken oaths of US Citizenship, and decided that we would play the National Anthem for them at the beginning of rehearsal. It required a little bit of scrambling and emailing and asking permission and digging out music and putting it on stands and time taken away from rehearsal for us, and even though I was not the one doing all the extra work, I wondered whether it was worth the effort.

Musicians play the Star Spangled Banner all the time. It is never rehearsed, but frequently it gets tossed in at the beginning of a concert. The snare drum roll begins, we stand, we whack through the thing, and the audience applauds. Then we get to the main business of the concert. I’m not saying that it’s a meaningless gesture, but it generally feels to us like just a part of the busy-work to get through before the real stuff begins. Like tuning, or rising for the conductor to come on stage, or the announcement about silencing your cell phones.

But on Friday night, with no one in the audience and 300+ people on stage, it felt different. The conductor cued the drum for real, we all rose to our feet, and off we went. The orchestra played with love and passion. The huge and well-trained choir sang in full voice. It was a performance for US alone. For our two new citizens, and for ourselves. Somehow, the absence of an audience made this particular performance one of the most special things I can remember doing. I was moved, and felt an unironic kinship with my colleagues and my countrymen which is rare for me.

Music is a beautiful thing. That’s my revelation of the week.

Women of the Wind: Brandon: Three Desert Fables

2013-04-05T17:24:00.002-04:00

We got our recording back! And I am so pleased with the way it came out. I would love to just stream the whole thing, but one thing that did not come across was our speaking. Most of it was cut out, and what you can hear is dim and unclear. What I’ll do, then, is share one work at a time, and include my introductory material to give it some context.

The composer Jenni Brandon lives in Southern California. I first heard of her at the Double Reed convention last summer when a friend of mine played her reed trio. I thought that the piece was spectacular and got in touch with her- and she promptly sent it to me along with this solo work, Three Desert Fables, which I am proud to present here.

The piece is about symbiotic relationships shared in the biome of the desert. The first movement explores the Joshua tree itself and its partner the yucca moth. The moth lays its eggs in the tree's flowers, and the larvae feed upon its seeds, but the moth also serves to pollinate the tree so the two species live together in harmony. In this work you will hear the Joshua tree, “angular and gnarly”, followed by the moth, "free and majestic". The two themes then interweave, in a dance of survival.

A chuckwalla is a lizard, and the rock in this movement is not exactly a dynamic character. The piece is about all of the things the rock represents to the lizard. First, of course, it radiates heat, so the lizard basking on it is warmed both by the sun and by the rock. Secondly, it is the surface on which the chuckwalla travels, skittering from place to place. And this lizard has a trick of crawling into a crevice and then taking rapid breaths to puff itself up and wedge itself in tightly, so nobody can pull him out and eat him. So in that way the rock also represents protection from predators.

The Ocotillo cactus is pollinated by the carpenter bees who feed off its nectar. In this desert waltz you’ll hear the long delicately waving arms of the ocotillo plant, and you won’t miss the bee.

Many thanks to Jenni Brandon for this lovely piece, which I truly enjoyed learning and performing.

Three Desert Fables by Jenni Brandon
Jennet Ingle, oboe

The Joshua Tree and the Moth

The Rock and the Chuckwalla

The Ocotillo and the Bee

Women of the Wind: Musgrave Impromptu

2013-03-29T22:33:00.002-04:00

Women of the Wind: McCormick Passacaglia

2013-03-28T17:16:00.000-04:00

We got our recording back! It's less than a month since our Women of the Wind performance, and I am so pleased to be able to share some of it with you. I would love to just stream the whole thing, but one thing that did not come across was our speaking. Most of it was cut out, and what you can hear is dim and unclear. What I’ll do, then, is share one work at a time, and include my introductory material to give it some context.

I was at Eastman with Dana McCormick, and this piece was composed for and premiered by one of my good friends, so I feel that I have a very personal connection to it. It is in the form of a passacaglia, which as all you probably know is a set of melodic variations over an infinitely repeated bass line. A famous example of a passacaglia is the Pachelbel Canon - it's also a famous canon, of course, but as you know if you have ever played the cello in a wedding, the bass line repeats over and over and over as the upper strings vary and vary the melody.

In this case, McCormick's form is a little looser, but the basic philosophy is the same. There is a repeating 12-bar chord progression in the right hand of the piano, and the left hand introduces a sparse melody which the oboe then takes over and develops with increasing intensity. In the middle section, the chord progression is still implied, but buried in interior voices amid complicated running notes - I can't hear it anymore myself, but I worked it all out in the score. As you listen, you may be interested in the challenge of following those chords and fifths and sevenths throughout the work, or you may just want to lose yourself in the gorgeous soundscape she’s created.

When I asked Dana about her piece, she said: it is sort of a love letter to the oboe and high notes and the piano sustain pedal, three of my favorite things in the world of sound. The form let me just really bask in the timbres.

I invite you all to bask with us.

Passacaglia from Sonata for Oboe and Piano by Dana McCormick.
Jennet Ingle, oboe, Ketevan Badridze, piano.

Formality and Intensity

2013-03-24T17:25:00.000-04:00

Let me say, first, that I am all about making classical music accessible. I consistently break the fourth wall in my solo performances by speaking and interacting with the audience, and I had that whole video thing going on in CHROMA, and in the orchestra I support the additions of multimedia presentations and conductor speeches and sponsor speeches and interactive intermissions and blue jeans concerts and all of the other innovations that groups come up with to make music friendly, and engaging, and relevant to the new generation of symphony-goers. I want the audience to recognize us as people, and to collaborate with us in making the experience enjoyable. This movement in the symphonic world is a good one, I believe.

But I played the B Minor Mass last night at Valparaiso University. The experience could not have been more different. The group performed with a level of formality I haven’t seen in years. The orchestra waited on stage, courteously hushed. The choir filed in to applause and seated themselves on a silent signal. We tuned, and the conductor and soloists entered and bowed formally, and then we began. Not a word had been spoken, not even a reminder about flash photography and fire exits. No attempt was made to ease the audience in, no remarks about Bach’s place in the historical canon or about the significance of the Latin mass or descriptions of the fugues or admissions of difficulties for the chorus or anything.

We then played the entire two hour work without intermission. And Bach’s B Minor Mass is an astounding piece. The audience was deeply, breathlessly silent throughout - I’ve been getting over a cold and even between movements had to stifle my coughs lest I be the one to break the spell. At the end of the evening, the piece ends with a rapturous fugue on Dona Nobis Pacem - Give us Peace. The final chord hung in the air for a long time. The conductor’s arms held the silence, held it, held it… held it… and finally relaxed. The applause was warm and long. I had a clear sense that we all - the choir, the orchestra, and the thousand or so audience members - had been on a journey together. A long one, a meaningful one. In that enormous chapel, we were all brothers at that moment, had all experienced something real and intense and personal and communal all at once.

Would this experience have been diminished by our customary thanking of sponsors and requesting donations? If we had tried to make ourselves more approachable, would Bach’s great Mass have been less monumental? If we had spoken between the big sections instead of taking a small, silent break, would the mood have been shattered? Is this concert experience, perhaps alienatingly formal to a layperson, actually a more immediate route to the kind of transformative, transcendent performances that might create diehard fans?

I don’t necessarily think so - I still respect the effort to reach out to an audience not well-versed in our field - but a concert like last night’s does make me think. It was an amazing performance, a special night, a precious one. The level of concentration from EVERYONE involved was just top-notch, and something we don’t often get from the symphonic stage.

Was it the format? Or just the Bach?

The Hard Truth

2013-03-14T18:11:00.000-04:00

I had a great practice session today. It’s so much fun to work on new pieces after spending so much time on one recital. I love this phase of exploring new (to me) repertoire and idly planning future performances. I love the technical practice involved in getting new music under my fingers before the real nitty-gritty work of interpreting and analyzing and understanding gets really underway. And I feel terrible for wasting my morning.

This stinks. Why should the life of a twenty-first century musician be so plagued by non-music-making? I understand, I know, I believe that the way to a career in this day and age is to be highly entrepreneurial. I know that I need to be making plans all the time for future performances, because no one else will make them for me. I know I need to be working on my idea for a chamber music series, and contacting presenters to ask for recital appearances, and looking for grants, and keeping up with what others are doing, and scanning music parts to people who have already agreed to collaborate with me. In my mind all that was going to happen this week.

It is spring break at Valparaiso University and at Notre Dame. Several of my private students have conflicts with sports or musicals, and one was sick, and I don’t have an orchestra concert this week at all. Effectively, all I have to do is keep up with my reed business and teach about 4 students - all week! This is the perfect time to get ahead with all of the afore-mentioned career stuff.

But instead I spent my morning delving deep into transcribing a violin concerto. I spent yesterday working on a Bach Partita. I love playing the oboe, and I sometimes wish that I hadn’t learned the truth about the rest of it. I remember being in my early twenties, living in Chicago, and being totally fulfilled by the making of the music. I could lose myself in a practice room for hours at a time, and eat my lunch in a daze, eager to get back to the instrument. I would go to bed at night content, knowing that I had done what I needed to do.

Unfortunately, I now realize how much more is involved than simply honing my craft. It is still possible for me to lose myself in practice, and I still need it - the practice, of course, and also the intensity and focus - but it isn’t enough. I also have to do stupid computer work and send emails that make me uncomfortable, asking for attention and time and money. I have to search for venues. I have to look for partner organizations. I have to keep thinking forward. I’m not good at it and it stresses me out and I wish things could just be easy. I wish I didn’t have to feel guilty about devoting a morning to the oboe.

I understand that this is the way things are. I don’t usually complain. But this week it depresses me. Someone do it for me, OK? Call up and offer me a path. I promise I’ll say yes. I swear I’ll be awesome. Just let me pretend for a little while that it can be all about the music.

Upcoming Concert - the Cello!

2013-03-09T13:34:00.001-05:00

Where did I go wrong that I don’t play the cello? Such a beautiful instrument. So resonant, so sweet, so soulful. In the talented hands of our principal cellist, Lara Turner, it flows like liquid and sings like a human. I might even love it more than the oboe, a little.

I tried a friend’s instrument once, though, and was disappointed to find that the cello is not as snuggly as it looks. Cellists look so comfortable with the instrument in their laps and the scroll nestled in their hair - but in reality it is a big nobbly piece of wood that doesn’t fit me as well as I had imagined. It's hard to hold the bow properly. The tuning pegs poked me in the ear. My fantasy second career went up in smoke before my eyes.

At least this week, though, I can live vicariously. Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations is a pleasure to play, mostly because it’s not particularly hard work for me. With our small chamber orchestra in the lovely acoustics of the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, I can pay deep attention to Lara’s beautiful and thoughtful playing. I can make music with her and with my other gifted colleagues in an intimate way that was quite impossible during last week’s Symphonie Fantastique extravaganza, fun though that was. Here in this small space I can use my quiet voice, and make and react to delicate nuances, and be supportive AND heard, and daydream about the cello.

Our concert is Sunday afternoon. Details are HERE. This will be a sweet one.

Upcoming Concert

2013-03-06T13:46:00.001-05:00

I have loved Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique ever since I was a teenager. It’s one of the few major orchestral works I discovered on my own rather than being assigned it, and I can still remember listening to it over and over on my Sony Discman(!) and being deeply moved by the intensity of the emotion and the feverish, eerie quality of the sound.

I remember feeling this way about certain books, too, but in nearly every case I have renounced my adoration of these. Or at least, my grownup self knows to cringe when the prose gets too purple and the melodrama too overwrought. I understand why I read and reread these stories of tragedy and ill-fated love and heroism, but I can’t do it without embarrassment now.

Somehow, though, Symphonie Fantastique has escaped this fate. I still love it, though I hear the melodrama for what it is: a transparent play for our emotions. I forgive it in spite of its too-busy orchestrations and difficult ensemble issues. I enjoy that one overplayed tune even though it sticks in my head terribly.

In other words, I’ve been looking forward to this week in the Northwest Indiana Symphony. I love the piece, I'm happy to perform it in the lovely Bethel Church in Merrillville, and I'm eager to present it to a full and enthusiastic house Friday night. Come out and join us!

Details HERE.

Saying Thanks

2013-03-05T13:04:00.000-05:00

I just read this wonderful post from Christa Garvey - The Oboist - and it struck home to me this week especially. First, because like everyone else I was shocked and saddened by Bill Bennett’s tragedy. Second, because I adore my colleagues and should tell them so a lot more than I do. Third, because we have just finished our recital set and I learned something very valuable from lovely Martha which I’ll be putting into place immediately.

In her studio at Western Michigan University, Martha Councell-Vargas TEACHES backstage behavior. She makes a point of telling her students how to thank a guest artist, or any artist, and enforces not only their presence at events but their gracious responses. It had never occurred to me to do this.

When I was at Eastman, the culture of the oboe studio was such that 15 people would ALWAYS meet you as you stepped off stage and tell you what a nice job you did. Later, in lessons, Mr. Killmer would tell you what to work on and improve, but in the moment all you felt was support and acceptance. I don’t recall that he ever told us specifically to do this, but he led by example and we were never unclear on how we were supposed to behave.

My situation as a teacher is different from his. I live a long way from the schools I teach at, and teach very few oboe majors. Therefore, I am not at every performance they give - not even at any, some years - and don’t feel that I can require recital attendance, and don’t have a studio class in which to address the group as a whole.

But I was inspired by our performance at WMU, or at least by its aftermath. Student after student approached me, thanked me for coming, and referenced something specific in my program - the double-tonguing, the intonation, the lizard in the Three Desert Fables. It was meaningful to me to hear what they had heard and what they liked - and it just felt great to be noticed, recognized, and thanked.

In contrast, at Valparaiso, which was my own home turf, I spoke to members of the faculty afterwards and to a former student’s mom, but nearly all of my students fled the instant the last note sounded. MY students! They talked about the concert in our lessons the next day, but that is nothing like the same as hearing a simple thank you in the immediate aftermath of the performance. I love getting reactions from audience members as they are fresh, and hearing about what they enjoyed helps me to continue to improve the presentation for future audiences.

So my resolution is as follows. I will personally make the effort to speak to the guest artists who perform with my orchestras. My current tendency is to admire from within the group, and say nice things on my blog, but not actually talk to them. I can fix that. I will make sure my colleagues know how much I respect and enjoy their work. And I will talk to my students about this important skill. Of course it feels awkward to talk to a stranger, but there is no reason in the world not to share your enjoyment of the performance and pay your enthusiasm forward. The artist appreciates it, and the world benefits from it, and it's great karma for your own future endeavors.

Beauty of Sound

2013-02-22T15:41:00.000-05:00

I don’t exactly know why this week has turned into the Beautiful Sound week. Shouldn’t every week, really, be a Beautiful Sound week?

Many of my high school students are going to State with their solo pieces this weekend - which means that the piece they worked on all last semester and auditioned successfully on three weeks ago has had three more weeks of polishing following a nice ego boost, and every one of them came into my studio and knocked my socks off technically. Every note is in place for these kids, and the dynamic plans and shapes are there for the most part. But what they’ve forgotten in the pressure of solving all of the details is the sound.

They are not alone. My conservatory-bound senior, about to reach the end of a grueling audition tour, can play every bit of his program. He’s learned two or three new works since we started working together in September, and added etudes and excerpts and arias along the way. He needed the reminder, too.

And I have my big set of recitals starting this Sunday. (Remember? Details HERE). When I was practicing yesterday, I came to the shocking realization that I was playing technically well, and I hope engagingly, but that in focusing on how to express my musical ideas I, too, had not been paying attention to the sound coming out of the oboe.

In EVERY case this week, when I suggested that a person bring attention to the quality of the sound, it improved instantly. This is not a new skill, nor one that requires additional hours of practice to implement. Make a beautiful sound, I say, and off they go, beautifully. Attacks improve, too, and releases, and intervals and pitch, with these few simple words.

In other words, it is easy. Why do we ever play without it?

Sometimes because adding beauty is so easy I forget how important it is. I listen to musicians for their musical communication, and I listen through or beyond the outer sound and rasps and occasional hasty attacks, and I assume that every one else does that too. But I am not sure that that is the case. Are there listeners who ONLY hear the surface sound? For whom the beauty of the sound is a major factor in judging the quality of a performance? I’m sure there are. It’s so easy to add on beauty and sometimes we just forget to bother.

I have known players - pros as well as students - for whom the beauty of the sound was the most important thing. And sure enough, they sound beautiful, but a beautiful sound with no musical storytelling or ideas makes a flat and lifeless performance. I do not prize tone quality above all other factors, and CERTAINLY I believe that the color and therefore the sound itself should change from piece to piece, or even phrase to phrase.

But in conjunction with good technique and compelling phrasing, there is no reason that we shouldn’t always pay attention to the sound we are producing. Possibly the difference between a good player and a great one is how seldom the great one has to be reminded.

I figure it counts if I remind myself before anyone else does. And this is why I teach - so I can catch myself, too.

Good luck this weekend, everyone - and Play Beautifully!

Women of the Wind!

2013-02-18T07:12:00.002-05:00

Friends, Readers, Casual Internet Passers-By,

I am delighted to announce my winter program: Women of the Wind!

It's an oboe and flute duo recital, featuring myself, Martha Councell-Vargas, and pianist Ketevan Badridze. Martha and I have been talking for years about collaborating on a program, and working on this one with her has been an absolute joy! You know that feeling when you’ve been friends with someone for a long time but never really worked together professionally, and then you get together and read a duet and it’s like you are two halves of the same person and everything is easy because you really feel the music the same way and have the same goals and also are beautifully in tune? It’s like that!

Join us to explore gorgeous, tempestuous, intelligent, beautiful music by 20th and 21st Century female composers. From the Coronation of Princess Isabelle to the chuckwalla lizard of the Mojave desert, these works are sure to transport you. You don't know them - yet - but you'll leave humming them just like we do.

The details:

Sunday, February 24, 2013, 3:00 pm CST
Valparaiso University
Duesenberg Hall

Wednesday, February 27, 2013, 7:30 pm EST
Western Michigan University
Dalton Center Recital Hall

Saturday, March 2, 2013, 3:00 pm EST
Notre Dame University
Snite Museum: Annenberg Hall

All of these events are free and open to the public. Please join us!

.

Gershwin

2013-02-14T22:45:00.002-05:00

I was hanging out with the fabulous Justin Hayford last weekend, and he mentioned his complete indifference to the music of the Gershwins. And he knows what he is talking about- he has released four albums singing music from the era, and recently did a hugely popular benefit concert in Chicago featuring Gershwin songs. Like me, he was raised in a family of music lovers whose tastes were formed in the 1940s and never progressed past the Beatles. He’s also one of the smartest people I know, so I was inclined to think he was on to something.

But tonight we had our first rehearsal for our all Gershwin pops concert this weekend, and what I realized is that I have no critical distance when it comes to this stuff. The rhythms and yummy harmonies are part of my childhood, they’re in my blood, and I can’t judge Porgy and Bess or An American in Paris with any of my educated brain. I just absolutely love them.

So - come hear us this Saturday night. We’re playing Rhapsody in Blue with THE MAYOR at the piano, for crying out loud! He rehearsed with us tonight and sounds better than any sitting public official I’ve ever heard. We have singers coming in to do Porgy and Bess, and I promise you’ll cry and I haven’t even heard them yet. And American in Paris makes me wish desperately that I played the trumpet.

I love my life.

Details HERE.

Getting Older, Getting Better

2013-02-08T11:35:00.001-05:00

So we have a concert tonight in Northwest Indiana, and may I say, I am so happy to be getting older. I distinctly remember a time when it would have stressed me out to be playing Daphnis and Chloe, with its 12 pages of awkward solos and WICKED hard technique, or Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, with the fiendishly delicate high solos and scary rhythmic holes to fall into and WICKED hard technique, or the Korngold Violin Concerto with lengthy complex rests to count and nonintuitive exposed entrances - but not now.

If I am not actually playing EVERY note of the Ravel, I’m coming close, and if I don’t hit EVERY one in the moment, at least I know that I can do it in my practice room. I am able to sit back a bit and think about musical choices and tone colors in the solos, instead of merely hoping and praying that the notes will speak. I can enjoy the presentation of our soloist, the excellent Corey Cerovsek, instead of counting with all of my might and all of my conscious mind to get to my next entrance. I can notice the shifting pitch centers in the orchestra instead of always being caught up in them and swept away from reality, and I can make choices to join or to resist when the group rushes or drags against the pulse.

It’s hard to describe just how liberating it is to know that I know what I’m doing. It’s not exactly that I won’t make a mistake or play something out of tune or miss a note - but that it feels like it’s all in perspective. I probably won’t be the sole reason the concert is ruined, and probably the concert won’t be ruined at all but will go just fine. Our rocky dress rehearsal last night doesn’t make me anxious for tonight. It’s great music and we have rehearsed plenty and it will be fun.

I think this is different from being cocky or overconfident. I still know that I suck, and I am always working to improve. But playing in the orchestra? I can do that. Doesn’t matter if it’s hard. I can do that. And that’s a feeling I didn’t have when I was 22.

Everything has gotten easier over the course of nearly twenty years of professional work. I remember being terrified and traumatized by Kodaly’s Dances of Galanta the first time I played it, but last week in South Bend we had simply a blast doing it. The Lutoslawski Concerto for Orchestra, similarly, was a maze of hard notes when I encountered it 12 years ago, but now as a grown-up I can grasp the compositional techniques, the formal structure, and the patterns within the technical passages, and nothing feels as hard.

The fact that my life is overwhelming, with far less time for practice and reflection than I would like, does not take away from the fact that I am MUCH more competent at my job than I used to be, and it’s a great feeling. I love my life.

Northwest Indiana Symphony Concert tonight! Details HERE.

SPEECH!

2013-02-01T16:02:00.000-05:00

What a week. It's been busy in a lot of ways, but the evenings have been particularly intense as the South Bend Symphony gears up for a serious Masterworks program. The work ethic in our rehearsals has been very high, and everyone has brought their A game - and still it's a hard program. I can't wait to present the Lutoslawski Concerto for Orchestra, Kodaly's Dances of Galanta, and Liszt's first Piano Concerto. Saturday night at the Morris. Details HERE.

The symphony Board threw an event last night for current, former, and hopefully future members and donors, including a Young Professionals Network, and they had some cocktails and then sat on the stage for our rehearsal to enjoy being up close and personal with the orchestra. I was asked to speak at the event, and to introduce people to the concert experience, which I did with pleasure. Here's the text of my speech, which I PRETTY MUCH remembered all of as I spoke...

Hello, Everyone.

My name is Jennet Ingle and I am the Principal Oboist of the SBSO. As such, it is my job to tune the orchestra, and I get a lot of questions about it so I thought I’d start by telling you all about this activity, which opens every concert and rehearsal.

Although the principal oboe gives the tuning note, we speak about the concertmaster tuning the orchestra, and this is a holdover from early ensembles. Traditionally, the first violinist acts as the leader of the orchestra whenever the conductor is not on stage, and since a conductor cannot be bothered by such a mundane thing as tuning, this task falls to Zofia Glashauser. At the beginning of every session, she will stand up, which is our signal to be quiet, and then she asks me for an A.

We use the note A because all string instruments have an open A string, so it’s the most efficient choice to get everyone onto the same page. We use the oboe NOT because I have some sort of magic always-correct A, and not because, as myth would have it, oboes can’t tune their instruments so everyone needs to tune to us. The sound of the oboe is easy for everyone to hear, and the tone is very clear and pure, so that’s why the job has traditionally fallen to us.

Now, I don’t necessarily know where a perfect 440 A is every time, so I do use a tuner on my stand. My instrument is very flexible so I could place the note HERE, or HERE, or HERE. The tuner keeps me honest, and the orchestra appreciates that. Because the A is the first note an audience hears, it is sometimes the most stressful solo on the concert. I want the attack to be pleasant sounding, not like THIS, and I want the tone to be beautiful, of course. I have to give the right A but I don’t want to be fishing around for it, in public, like THIS. So I have to hear it in my head before we start, and place it where I want it, and hope that the reed cooperates.

Once I play the note, the winds will tune first, adjusting their instruments by pulling their joints in and out. The brass take the second A, moving their tuning slides to match me as closely as possible. Finally the strings will tune, using tuning pegs at the scrolls of their instruments as well as fine tuners on the tailpiece. You’ll see this happen at the rehearsal, and at every performance we play. We could do it backstage, or individually in private with our own tuning devices, but this public tuning has been a part of the ritual for hundreds of years, and probably won’t change this year, at least.

As you attend our rehearsal tonight, take the opportunity to really unabashedly watch us. I think that the most inspiring thing about a full orchestra is seeing this mass of humanity - 80 or so people - all working as hard as they can for a common goal. To play these instruments at a high level has taken us years and years and tens of thousands of hours of work.

Look at how hard we are concentrating on this difficult music. Watch the strings, and how physical their activity is. Notice how fast their fingers move in technical passages, and how hard they work with their strong bow arms to create loud dynamics.

Take a look at the winds and brasses, and notice how differently each person relates to his instrument. Watch how much we have to fiddle with them when we aren’t playing to keep all of the delicate mechanisms functioning - we are on-the-fly mechanics, sometimes, as well as musicians. Now realize that all the sound you hear is created by the breath, and what it must mean to have that much control. Notice the extremes of loud and soft and ask if you could ration your air through a long pipe with that much power, for two and a half hours.

Realize that the brass instruments only have a few valves each - so that every note they play is created by one of a very few combinations of fingers and a precise amount of tightening or loosening of the lips and facial muscles. Think about being kissed by a brass player and how much strength and control he must have in all those tiny muscles.

Totally independent of the music we are playing, which is indeed great, I think I could watch an orchestra for hours, just marveling at the feats a human body is capable of. I hope you enjoy and are inspired by our rehearsal today. I hope you come back on Saturday to hear the polished, completed, thrilling performance of four difficult and beautiful works. I hope you’ll come over and over, because it is our pleasure to have you here, and we need you here. Without an audience, we are just practicing.

Thank you so much.

Consistency and Variety

2013-01-25T19:30:00.001-05:00

I love the kind of gigs that inspire. They don’t even have to be good gigs, particularly - I don’t have to enjoy myself (though I almost always do) or make a lot of money to be encouraged by what I hear or see.

Yesterday I played in the backing orchestra for Jackie Evancho at Symphony Center in Chicago, and I had almost nothing to do - page after page of tacet numbers and an occasional harmony line or English horn solo. Although I didn’t really feel like I was earning my keep, I love having the chance to play second oboe. It’s a treat to be able to really pay attention to another player’s approach and see what I can learn - a little voyeuristic, maybe, but we are, after all, in a performance profession. The oboist expects to be heard, and hopes to be paid attention to, and I am glad to oblige. And it’s no burden when the oboist in question is such a consummate professional as Jelena Dirks. Her playing was lovely, perfectly pitched, and effortlessly controlled throughout the rehearsal and concert we played, and I resolved to work for more beautiful consistency in my own playing - in the absence of a dramatic need to allow my sound out of the box, it might as well stay there, and do so as attractively as hers. That lesson would alone have been enough, but I was able to draw inspiration from our featured artist as well.

Jackie Evancho sounded great - much more mature than her twelve years would indicate. A lovely voice and a smooth and well-coached performance, and the audience loved her. The programming of the concert played to her strengths exclusively, which is of course what it needed it to do. Well done, Jackie’s handlers! All of her phrasing was gentle, heartfelt, intimate, and elegantly behind the beat. There is nothing in the world wrong with that, but by the end of a two hour concert I was itching for an up-tempo number, or something belted, or something with at least a little momentum to it.

Immediately I knew what I wanted to do in my next practice session. It’s time to make sure that over the course of my upcoming recital I play something loud and something soft, tempos fast and slow, intimate phrases and rousing ones. Those contrasts are all built in already, of course - that is part of the programming - but I hadn’t yet worked through seeking the energy arc of the program and how to find and intentionally exaggerate the different elements, and that’s what I felt Jackie, bless her heart, was missing, and that’s what I couldn’t wait to do.

It’s a project that I normally hit around this time in the cycle, but for some reason I had to be reminded this winter. I explore, section by section, movement by movement, piece by piece, what the feel of the work is. What the basic color palette will be. Within that, where the peaks and valleys of tempo and dynamic are. Within that, the overall high point and low point of the movement, of the piece, of the recital.

I was needing this. We’re a month out from an exciting set of recitals, and I have been treading water in my music for a little while now. Able to play it, not thrilled by it, and not really clear on what to do next. This morning, though, I had a great and productive session, working on both consistency of sound and variety of approach. I can’t wait to get back at it tonight or tomorrow - that’s how satisfying the practice was. Thank you, Jackie and Jelena!

While I’m on the topic, may I point out a person who is EXPERT at this balance of beautiful timbral consistency with color and variety? Trevor O’Riordan, that’s who. Our fabulous principal clarinetist is featured this weekend in the Copland Clarinet Concerto and I cannot wait to hear him play it. If you are in the area or can get to the area I strongly recommend attending this Sunday’s matinee concert. Details HERE.