Reed read

At the beginning of my seventh-grade year, my parents accompanied me to an orientation at Wilson School in Caldwell, Idaho. When the band teacher mentioned that students who take up the oboe stand a good chance of earning college scholarhips, my mother strongly urged me to, well, take up the oboe. So I did.

It wasn’t until I was almost finished with high school, by which time I already learned I wasn’t a particularly dedicated or even good oboist and that I wanted to study journalism, that I figured out the band teacher in Idaho had meant student oboists can get college scholarships as long as they’re going to study music. Hah!

Still, I played the oboe at John Carroll University, even traveling to Chicago on tour with the concert band. I packed up my oboe for good my senior year.

Maybe it’s time to get it out again. This morning, the NYTimes asks, Where have all the oboes gone?.

terribly early in the morning on 02/12/05 in "Music" | permalink

Anton, in sixth grade my school got a new band director and for the first time had a sixth grade band. He found a dusty old oboe in the band closet and asked around about who might be worthy. The answer was me! I played it for two years then gave it up. It was some kind of peer pressure. I was the only one playing the oboe! Horrors. I still regret it, even though we had to drive 2 hours to Dallas to get reeds and for sure it was never meant to be a marching instrument.
— Sally on Feb 12, 08:44 PM #

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