About "Bassoon With a View"

Greetings all who have chosen to read these words! 

Welcome to my blog - my "professional" blog - and my thoughts as a professional musician.  I know that blogging has gotten very popular and everyone and their reed has a blog these days.  I have spent many hours reading the blogs of fellow musicians and bassoonists.  Sometime they are great!  Sometimes you spend 10 minutes reading about the taper of a bassoon shaper and experimental hand profiling and you think to yourself, "Oh my gosh!  Why am I reading this?"

Those same thoughts may cross your mind while reading this blog. 

But I hope not!

First, allow me to draw your attention to all my labels featured on the right-hand-side column.  I wrote, in real time, a 17-part series about my quest to win an audition.  If you are currently on the audition circuit, I invite you to experience my auditions as I did.  All the dark and horrid thoughts that accompany too many losses.  If you think you are the only one eating a 1/2 gallon of ice cream in a cheap hotel room whilst watching a Lifetime movie and obsessing about the note you cracked in your Brahms excerpt...well...YOU'RE NOT! 

I've been there, I've done that.  Read it and weep.  More importantly, read my audition posts and learn some valuable lessons about taking and managing the ups and downs of many auditions.  Read them and gain hope!  This industry is not always about who is most talented, it's often about who works the hardest and sticks around the longest. 

I also posted my notes from the fantastic panelists I listened to while attending the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival in 2012.  These seasoned professionals gave invaluable advice about navigating the highly competitive world of classical music.  You can find them under the label IWCMF.

Finally, I will be posting new content regarding my work here in the Wild West, being a bassoonist, and the field of classical music in general. 

My hope for this blog is to be part of a positive campaign for classical music and classical musicians.  I feel like we, as a field, have generated a lot of negativity in the past few seasons with bad press and horrible labor disputes.  At the core of what is wrong with our industry is the horrible realization that the average American doesn't know what we do for a living and certainly doesn't value it. 

I want my story, found in this blog, to share the facts of being a professional musician and the joy of being part of a truly unique profession.  I believe the best thing we can do as musicians is educate, educate, educate!  Whether training young students, creating the next generation of concert goers, or just taking the time to explain to your dental hygienist what a bassoon is; we have a responsibility to create VALUE in what we are doing and in so doing, keep our profession alive.

To that end I present to you my blog, full of my views, Bassoon With a View!

Happy reading and best wishes,
Elizabeth

No comments:

Post a Comment