A Week with the Filarmónica

So, remember that first orchestra I mentioned? The first rehearsal I attended? That was of the Orquesta Filarmónica Nacional de Venezuela, and I got to sub with them this week! The program was Mediodia en el Llano by Antonio Estevez, Rachmaninoff's 3rd Piano Concerto, and Debussy's La Mer. Great program! So, I got to live a week as a pseudo-Venezuelan musician, attending daily rehearsals and running off to teach afterwards. We rehearsed and played in the Teatro Teresa Carreño, the main theater here where I spend a lot of my time (going to concerts, that is!). I played second oboe and had a great time, La Mer in particular is quite challenging (and recently played twice here-by 2 of the other professional orchestras). It felt nice to get to play in an orchestra, I spend so much of my time here attending orchestra concerts and speaking to people who play in orchestras-orchestral performance here is assumed for just about everyone. It was lovely to have a surrogate orchestra family! My sectionmates were great, here's a picture post-concert.

This weekend I also attended a concert of Krzysztof Penderecki conducting his music, I was told by friends here that he comes often. He premiered a choral work written for Jose Antonio Abreu. The concert featured Finnish cellist Arto Noras, in performances of Penderecki's Concerto for Viola and Divertimiento for solo cello. The latter work was most everyone's favorite (as per my informal consensus taken afterwards), and used different extended cello techniques in exciting and captivating ways. It was awesome.

I have been working these last few weeks with the oboists of the Orquesta Infantil de Caracas, the most advanced orchestra of the nucleo Montalban. They're about 15-18, and all have played oboe for some time, in orchestra they're playing movements of Tchaikovsky's 4th and the Nutcracker Suite right now. The oldest and principal oboist, Jhon, is really dedicated and talented. He spends all of the rehearsal breaks practicing orchestral excerpts and comes to me every 3 minutes wanting to play me something (a Telemann sonata, solo or scale), and some of the others imitate him, too. Another, Naudi, wants to study composition and wants every spare minute of mine to be spent listening to the pieces he's composed that he's recorded onto his iphone with a cracked screen. If only there were more spare minutes! It's been fun to work with them. Meanwhile, San Antonio has been closed for construction, I'm starting to miss the Powerpuff girls and their cohorts a lot! Hopefully they'll reopen soon, they don't yet know if they will be able to have their Christmas concert.

A few pictures from a recent hike in el Avila. The first is of Fabiola and Carlos, climbing up. The second-a refreshing Cocada once we made it back down!

I will be off to travel this week. Happy Thanksgiving to all of you who are doing something for it. I'll miss it. I was in Chile last year, and I think Thanksgiving also went by uncelebrated. Yay tofurkey!

Anecdotes from San Antonio de los Altos

Hello everyone! I guess it's been a while since I've written. I think I considered writing previously, but decided to wait until I had more good stories. My life in Caracas has settled into more or less of a routine, which is on one hand rather odd, but on the other, I really like routine. It's nice to know I have some things that will most often be scheduled any given week, and I still have sufficient free time to practice oboe and investigate.

These are some of the girls I teach!

I have been spending just about three days a week (Tues, Thurs and Sat) teaching at the orchestra nucleo in San Antonio de los Altos, which I mentioned in a previous post. It's been really great to establish a relationship with a nucleo, and to get to participate in El Sistema so regularly, and learn about pedagogy that way. I really enjoy that I have 8 (!) oboe students there (and will probably have a few more students other places), and will hopefully work with them throughout the year-I sometimes feel like they've improved already. Maybe it's just because most of them are by now playing the reeds I make them ;) No, just kidding. I conduct oboe sectionals and teach individual lessons with them. It's really refreshing to be somewhere where there are lots of children playing music, and in need of teachers-it's really great experience and quite fun. The three littlest girls are referred to at the Powerpuff Girls, they have a lot of energy (and include the 2 smallest in the above picture).

This is Ana Paola with Sara, the little 6 year old. I taught her a new song last week-Merrily We Roll Along.

Today when I was teaching lessons, one of the boys I teach (who is 10, tiny and skinny but plays just about better than everyone else-he always looks like he works really hard to make any noise) needed a new reed. I gave him one, and then told him that he could pay me whenever (teachers charge a small amount for reeds, to teach the kids to be responsible about them). He said that he would as soon as he could, right now he was about $1 short. "How do you get money?" I asked. "I have to do chores around the house." He was saving up for a new reed! Adorable!

Besides that, there are always exciting concerts to go to. The Italian oboist Guido Gatti was just here giving master classes, in which I got to play. We're right now in the middle of a Young Latin American Clarinetist music festival, so I've been going to some of those concerts too. I'll be substitute teaching in a really interesting nucleo this next few weeks, so hopefully I'll have more stories soon, after that I'm going to travel for a little bit. I'd love to hear from you all soon!