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Dear Guests, Welcome to my blog which I treat like a creative garden where I regularly plant and change this and that be it poetry, philosophy, an Oboe Brilliance lesson, an essay of some kind, or a journal about composing. Visit every Monday for oboe coaching which is also helpful for many melodic instrumentalists. Musically yours, Kathryn
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"How do you compose?" That is the most commonly asked question I hear.
This blog is a window into my creative process and philosophies as a composer and instrumentalist. At times it may contain music, photos, and poetry as well. May you enjoy, return, and benefit!   My Archives  September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010
A Rose for Freya
Music Lessons Sergei the Beta Fish My oboe reed design Rat Race to Extinction Bass Suite April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 |
Dear Guests,
The official and final title is “A Rose for Freya” but as I worked on it before it was complete, it was “Black Rose Blooming Under Full Moon” The black rose depicts the BP oil spill, my feelings of utter horror at this prolific devastation and all it represents, and the full moon depicts my sublime love of our planet earth and my feelings of detached witnessing of the horrific destruction caused by human greed and ignorance. But great art isn’t just journalism. Digging for the clay of emotion, content and reason then depicting the ingredients isn’t enough to make great art, it is part of the process. Great art has to be alchemical transforming the contents of internal deep sea diving into a work of beauty. The deep sea diving is finding the darkness and the alchemy is shedding light onto it. I said this is in the HOPE category of my music, because it is in fact alchemical beyond journalism, it sheds light onto this despair. I titled it “A Rose to Freya” because Freya is the Norse goddess of love, fertility, beauty, tides and the sea. The oil spill being the antithesis of what Freya represents, this work of music in transformation is a rose to all she represents. It’s practically an offering and a prayer. I’m making the intellectual decision to have hope and faith in the future because I simply have to do that in order to go forward in my life. I am afraid though. I believe this piece portrays my feelings of utter horror and profound love of beauty and then some. If you listen you can hear the ever sliding spill pouring into the sea and you can hear the moon above, detached and influential. The moon sometimes fades as I imagined clouds eclipsing it and desiring to create contrast of hearing just the sea. This is what I consider to be 21st century art music. I hope you will appreciate it as I appreciate you. If you wish, you can ride the wave of 21st century art music with me by purchasing a "Composer Courtesy Subscription" - see music page - to receive the latest mp3s and accompanying blogs as I create them. Musically yours, Kathryn
Dear Guests,
I offer oboe, flute, piano, and composition music lessons in my Asheville Music Studio. $45 per hour, or $400 for ten prepaid hours. I've been teaching regularly for 18 years now. I learn so much from students and continue to love this work. I am demanding, inspiring, and delightful as a teacher. My focus is on balance - skill and expression. It's all very important to me with the priority of the student being nurtured to love music while discovering his/her "voice" via the journey of expression and self discovery through this superb art form. I teach excellent form, technique and proper style of the classical eras. I teach meditation and improvising. I compose custom music for my most involved and enthusiastic students. The following is my recipe for music lessons fulfillment, joy and success. 1) my commitment to teaching my best for which I am consistently reliable 2) the student or parent providing reliable scheduled transportation and payment 3) the student practicing regularly and participating well in lessons Well worth it! Students study with me for years, and now invite me to weddings and email me recipies and life updates. I love to mentor and liberate the individual student to use music as a way to know themselves better to be who they are in harmony with themselves. I don't try to create professional musicians, I strive to create musical/music loving people for life. Musically yours, Kathryn
Dear Guests,
Here is a sonic portrait of a beta fish named Sergei. He swims peacefully and is not to be kept company with another fish since he eats other fish. He is confined to a narrow space with several interesting areas to swim with choices of light and shadow, exposed or hidden. He receives proper amounts of good food. He is alive, he is being himself, a beta fish. He is kept safe from the cats. Beta fish normally live in mud puddles. He is beautiful and is alive, swimming almost constantly which is unusual for a beta fish. What color do you imagine him to be? Enjoy the portrait which is almost 4 minutes long. The excerpt is almost 2 minutes. Musically yours, Kathryn
Ahhhh, finally, the JOY of a GREAT oboe reed!!!!!!!!
Dear Guests, Finally, the oboe reed of my dreams. Oh yes, life just got MUCH better. : ) Since January, I’ve been revisiting redesigning the ultimate oboe reed for myself and my students. I had been playing either American reeds, or English reeds. American reeds offered this, English reeds offered that…I want a reed that does all that I need and want. I now have the design that’s the cat’s meow for me. I use an English shaper, which was Michael Winfield’s custom made spare shaper (he was principal oboist for the Royal Philharmonic in England and just retired when I began studying with him) so it’s very wide, and I now use a reed scrape that is a hybrid of English and American in styling. With this design, I have a full pallet of color – deep, dark, rich, as well as bright and vibrant. I have stability and ease in playing. I have movement in registers and a broad dynamic range. It is ideal for 21st century music which requires warmth, endurance, color, and dynamics, stability, and flexibility. I’m so HAPPY. My reed is 67 or 68 mm from bottom of tube to tip. 11 or 12 mm from thread to tip.: Tip = 3 mm long/8 mm wide – rounded inverted V, integrated very beveled descent – so just the outer arch is tissue thin 1 mm long Heart = 4 mm long/8 mm wide – well dovetailed and slightly thicker Back = 7 mm long/7 mm wide – symmetrical tall windows along the spine touch brighter in the center. back forming a V from heart to tail Tail to thread 3 to 4 mm long/6 mm wide – some cutting sometimes extending V Individual reeds call for differences in density of heart and how far out to the sides I bring the back or thinness of the tall windows. All of the reed is smooth, symmetrical and integrated. I prefer a medium soft tip and medium heart with greater versatility of thickness/thinness to suit the individual cane and player for the back. Too much out in the windows can make the bottom too flat, but just the right amount of removal deepens/darkens the sound while making richer high notes. These honkers last, they are gorgeous and I can use the one reed to play Brandenburg to Schumann, Cimarosa to Saint Saens to Britten to Potter, pp < ff, dark/bright. My students sound great too. They are responsive to nuance and I can get all the colors I want out of them and successfully play any time period of music to my satisfaction on one style of reed. FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love the English style reeds for their ease, comfort, and vibrancy, but also love the darkness and stability of the American reeds. This design/scrape style I just articulated above, does it all for me and my students. Ahhhhhhhhhh. I’m happy to sell shaped cane and blanks for my private oboe students, teach reed workshops in my music studio on reed making – this style – and sell shaped cane as long as I’m able, to students who are “alums” of my studio. Wahoo. Musically yours, Kathryn
Dear Guests,
This mp3 was originally titled "Fear of Empty Spaces" and was inspired by my friend Gidi Meir decades ago, who asked me to compose a piece with that title and idea. After over 15 years of being a music teacher and being concerned about the lifestyle of excessive activity, constant motion, keep the kids too busy to even get enough sleep lifestyle (death style), I created a piece depicting the frenzy created to avoid deep connection. I teach meditation to most of my music students. Connecting with space and silence with a focused mind makes all the difference in ones ability to be musical according to me. This piece starts with techno sounds that may seem friendly, but are really impersonal. It would be boring if sustained ( like a cut off techno only life) so I ramp it up with faster louder, creating a significant excellerando to depict and mimic the lifestyle of excessive activity/consumption. The piece crashes into decompression and stalls into an unfulling end of having ultimately gone no where. When I titled the piece "Fear of Empty Spaces" people complained about the ending. My intention was to depict that one cannot avoid feeling empty when one avoids true feeling. Instead one hits exhaustion, so I feel my ending is quite successful! - albeit ironcially This title works better, setting up a preferred psychological experience and expresses what I intend from a slightly different perspective/approach intellectually. Since this piece is created with a foundation of respect of life, it can be fully embraced. You can hear it for free as long as I keep it on the site, or buy it to keep and enjoy for as long as possible.... Musically yours, Kathryn
Dear Guests,
I composed the 5 mvmnt bass suite back in 2004 after I fell in love with Eliot Wadopian, who is now my husband. These movements were recorded by Dick Kowal back in May of 2005. They are for sale now for about a month, (not part of the Composer Courtesy subscription) then I may take them down as I am always futsing with my music page and website - which I treat like a garden. Movemnt I: The Legend of how Water Learned to Fly All the 5 movements are dream like (not to be mistaken with calm) and the first 4 can be performed out of context of the suite. This one is a fantasy taking the listener on an adventure for several minutes and tells a story sonically. It shows off the various registers and colors of the double bass - a magnificent instrument which I refer to as the purring bottom feeder of the orchestra - and shows off bowing and pizz. I think of this movement as being in C chromatic. Even now, years later after having composed it, I still really love it and although my compositional skill has become much stronger, it is a keeper and a piece I am proud to share. Of all the movements, it's a great piece to add to one's 21st century portfolio and if you ask me nicely and send a check, I'll be happy to mail you a copy of the first movement complete with Eliot's markings. It's not easy to play, so unless you're professional or good enough to audition for a scholarship at a conservatory, don't trouble yourself with trying to play the piece. It's the first solo work I wrote for bass before I knew what bass players do and don't want to see on the page, so it has all the great sounds bass lovers want to hear that don't exists elsewhere, but it is a bear to play those double stops! I intended for the double stop areas to be softer in dynamics - before I knew more about the nature of this beast. I chose to not alter it contrary to the nature of the instrument via editing in the studio. Movement II: The Drunken Bishop This movement is a short crowd pleaser and makes a great encore piece to any repertoire. Eliot likes to use it when he wants to play something fun and accessibly modern like when he's visiting schools or showing off the bass. I got the idea for this piece during a piano lesson I was teaching. It is my custom to play "pick one of the following three" with my students. I give them three choices and they secretly pick one and turn that choice into a sonic improvisation. During one of Robbie Mangone's lesson, who is Catholic, I gave him the choice of a drunken bishop which delighted him. It inspired me to write this fun movement while Eliot was off in Chicago buying his to die for Prescott bass from one of the bassists in the Chicago Symphony. I wrote it for Eliot to celebrate this instrument - In fact, I can hear him practicing it right now. It's HAPPY, because it is spring, the season it was created, and its just humid enough to close it up so it sings, purrs, and roars magnificently. Movement III: Joy I want this movement to be played as quickly as possible and now as I think of it, more like a tarrentella. Good luck! Movement IV: Spiral Labyrinth It's also a lullaby and is played, as you can hear, in a contemplative walking pace. I repeat sections and extend them over and over creating the form of a spiral labyrinth. This movement could make a good meditation. Come to think of it, I wrote an accompanying oboe part to this movement the following summer, hmmmm, I'm reorganizing my filing system this week, so I'll keep an eye out for it. Movement V: Finale This movement is a mosaic of all the preceeding movements. This movement sounds better the more you hear it, and the entire suite - it grows with your understanding of the suite and wraps up the various diverse movements creating a story, an adventure, or a journey/quest/pilgrimage as I like to think of it. One thing I LOVE about the music of Bach, is that his suites all sound like pilgrimages. I teach my music students how to discern Bach from other Baroque composers by asking themselves if it sounds like a journal entry about a pilgrimage. If the answer is yes, it's probably Bach. Being VERY fond of that, I aspire to compose some of my unaccompanied solo music as if it is a journal entry of a quest. In terms of unaccompanied solo instrumental composing, I like to rate my music in terms of skill level required to play it. I intentionally keep certain skill levels in mind when I'm composing a commission, or any work. This suite is what I'd grade as a level 5 or 6. Here's the breakdown: level 1 = beginner level 2 = advanced beginner level 3 = intermediate level 4 = semi pro level 5 = professional level 6 = virtuosic This bass suite as a whole is a generous level 5 - by my standards. Some might grade it as a 6. Thanks for visiting my blog. Musically yours, Kathryn |
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