A New Semester

I remembered today how much I like to write. And I have been meaning to start a new blog. And it's the start of another semester. So here we are.

I saw Rachel off today at JFK, which is a LONG way from Manhattan. We took public transit because we had time and it was cheap, and it took us an hour from my apartment in East midtown. Her flight is in the air now, on the way to Paris, and I am reminiscing jealously. Rachel going to France may also have had something to do with my decision to start a blog...I so enjoyed writing blog posts while I was there, and I'm thinking about France a lot these days.

This is the first time I have felt the sadness and jealousy that a lot of people seem to have felt immediately after graduation. It makes me a little bit sad that I feel more attached to Paris than I do to Brown, but I think it's true. I miss the life I led in Paris. I am so jealous that my girlfriend gets to go and start out there with a blank slate! For me, the city is filled with memories and so many different moods. I spent so much time evaluating myself and putting my life together there in the spring of 2008; the city has seen the best and worst of me. I spent a great deal of energy scraping together my life after it fell apart around me, and I think I picked up a few pieces of Paris along with the scraps. It feels like an integral part of me; it makes me who I am.

I digress. The beginning of the semester means placement auditions have just occurred. Normally, that would mean that I couldn't possibly have a rehearsal until placements had been announced, but we have an all Sondheim concert next Monday, and so assignments were made in December. I am playing Oboe/EH in about half of the songs on the concert--the reed books were split, so sax and clarinet players will be covering the other half. There's a bit of nice solo oboe writing (thanks mainly to Jonathan Tunick, Sondheim's excellent orchestrator on so many shows), but a lot of what we are doing is fast and has few wind solos.

I'll find out what concert cycles I am scheduled to play in on Monday. I'm crossing my fingers about the Mahler 2 concert--it'd be really wonderful to play in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and there are four oboes...

My next exciting gig is the Strauss Serenade, Opus 7, for 13 wind instruments with the quintet Windscape. I'll be playing second oboe to Randall Ellis, a wonderful freelancer around New York. I'm pretty thrilled about this opportunity! These are great musicians, and I'm sure the opportunity to rehearse and perform with them will be spectacular.

Now for a mini-review: Rachel and I saw Turandot at the Met last week, the famous Zeffirelli production, and we both thought it was gorgeous. The sets and costumes are SO ornate and SO elaborate! The piece itself isn't my favorite--I think Puccini could have tinkered a bit more with the libretto before he started composition. I only found two characters likable: Liù, the loyal servant, and the blind master, Timur. Both singers gave beautiful accounts of the roles. Maija Kovalevska as Liù was clearly the star of the night, as the audience applauded her loudly at all of her many curtain calls. Hao Jiang Tian's rich deep voice offered superb characterization to the role of Timur. I was not unsatisfied with Lise Lindstrom as the Princess Turandot, but I found her voice piercing and sometimes shrill in the highest register, although extremely clear. Salvatore Licitra sang Calaf, the tenor role, and although he sang convincingly throughout the piece, he cracked the high note in Nessun dorma and did not receive any applause (due to a combination, I think, of displeasure with the crack and to the audience not knowing that the aria was over). As an oboist, I think it necessary to note that Nathan Hughes sounded lovely playing principal oboe, but I also want to mention Denis Bouriakov, the Met's brilliant new flute player. The brass had a few dicey entrances, which I think were the fault of the conductor, but overall, the orchestra offered a beautiful account of Puccini's lush score.