Excuses, Dick Dorsey, New Job, and a Minor Concert Review
First: excuses.
My laptop was recently overhauled–it is basically a whole new computer, but with the same hard drive I had before. I am so pleased, because it means I can actually carry it places without fear that it will fall apart! The only downside is that all of my software needs me to re-register it. This works out fine for a few things, but I can’t for the life of me find the registration for my copy of Photoshop CS2. I have a keygen, but it only runs on Windows, and I keep forgetting to borrow my housemate’s laptop. The POINT of the excuse is: I use Photoshop to edit my comics. Therefore: no comics until I get it all taken care of. I have a whole bunch scanned and sitting in a folder on my desktop! Unable to be seen because they are huge and scratchy and unpresentable.
Now: stories!
I have begun school, you guys, and there is News! First off, I am taking an overload this term – for good or bad – but I am ‘termined to get my English minor and this is the only way I can see to do it. I got into Creative Writing (hooray!) which is going to be more like Creative Editing (hooray!) and seems like it is going to be a smashing course.
I am studying with Dick Dorsey (former principal of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra) this year. I told Dick, when he asked me what I wanted out of the year, that I want to learn to be a flexible, jack-of-all-trades oboist. 
I still want to play when I’m done school, but I’m not stupid: I haven’t the discipline to be a professional symphonic player. What I’d really like to do is play in new music ensembles and improvise, and fill in for people when they can’t make it to rehearsals and stuff. So Dick said, “we will look hard at the basics and make you into an oboist lots of people will want to play with.” The one lesson I have had was great; I felt like I was sounding and playing better by the end. Dick has a much different teaching style than Jim, mostly in that he breaks things down into sections and makes you play them in different ways. For example: I played a two bar section of Barret Study 6 with HUGE dynamic changes, and Grand Study 1 all tongued, and then all slurred and then the way it’s written. What’s more, Dick always has his oboe in his hands while he’s teaching, and he will play what he has in mind. This works tremendously well for me, because I like to match tone and pitch, and when I hear something played in a certain way it is much easier to make those sounds. So I am enthusiastic about it! And Dick has a phenomenal list of oboe students: Sarah Jeffrey, Lief Mosbaugh…and Lief has done a lot of the stuff I’d like to do, so it could happen to me!
Thirdly, I have a new, second job. 
I’m still working at Chapters (which I love most of the time even though it has a sorry habit of making Final-Fantasy-Concert-Attendance impossible), but I am also working at the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony! I am doing Patron Services at concerts, which means setting up outside and helping people with their ticketing issues. I’m also running a Street Team for the Symphony, and doing some marketing stuff on the side. It promises to be intense (like camping), but also great experience in the arts that will prove valuable later on in my life.
Finally, I started at this job officially on Friday night which was the Frederica von Stade concert! It was not *nearly* as chaotic as the entire staff of the symphony thought it would be, they loved my student volunteer team, and the music was beautiful, sweet, and delicious. Much like dessert. When I write a for real review, I am going to say, “Friday’s concert was three courses of dessert, but absolutely delicious dessert, with no regrets after.” Sometimes it is nice to have cake for dinner. By that I mean all the music was sweet and delicate, the arrangements were saucy and intricate, there was nothing meaty on the concert. Lots of oboe excerpts though! Jim did a great job on Carmen and Saint-Säens’ Bacchanale. (Although I have finally come to a realization about why all of Jim’s other students think he is a god among oboists and I do not – he has a super-refined sound, and it is lovely and perfect for things like Mozart, but like Mozart has no soul – and I like voices and sounds that have a little quirk to them, personality and emotion and maybe even imperfection and this is why I prefer Chad Van Gaalen (who had better win the Polaris Prize or I will bust a cap woo nested quotes) to Josh Groban. RUN-ON SENTENCES FOR EVERYONE.)
Frederica sounded lovely in everything she sang; I love that her vibrato (while I still don’t really like opera-vibrato) seemed to come from inside her voice rather than being superimposed on top. She sang a Rossini duet with Kimberly Barber “Duet for Two Cats” or something, which was *wonderful* because Kim Barber let out all the stops and put everything into being dramatic and hilarious rather than perfectly musical, and she inspired Frederica to as well. I very much enjoyed Nat Stookey’s piece, too, for which F wrote the lyrics, but once again, it wasn’t serious the way I was expecting, just light and humorous and delicious. I should very much like to hear something that Nat Stookey 
(another side note: he is a singularly floppy man: gangly legs and arms, floppy hair, and a relaxed, shambling sort of walk. He was in the symphony offices the other day and I guess he’d had a long night because he had sprawled haphazardly over the couch.) has written without words – so far I’ve only listened to ‘The Composer Is Dead’ and ‘Into the Bright Lights’, both of which had similar light, idiomatic accompaniments. I suspect he does other things as well.
A bunch of us went to the post-concert party, which was fun! There was a swing band and a free martini and lots of glittering people milling about. I made a Bad Shoe Decision (high heels) and so took them off for much of the evening (a little less than professional, I’m sorry). It was a good night, though! I think everyone was pleased with the proceedings.
Et c’est ça.
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