Random Tuesday: Bonus Goodies

• Inner strength
  One of my favorite blogs is Mind Hacks. This writing on the quiet mind vs. the quiet brain is fascinating.

• Emeritus
  First-chair French horn player Donna Oselka of Countryside is retiring from the West Suburban Concert Band after 53 years. She is the last of the group’s founding members.

• Getting it right
  A lot of wrong (or even unintentionally comical) information can be found in informal Yahoo Answers groups. This one though, about playing notes in the upper middle register is pretty good. And I am not just saying that because they linked to Horn Matters.
  

• Getting it wrong?
  1.) Not sure why I show up here.
  2.) Star Wars. 2 stanzas. “The video is dark but it is the beautiful sound that matters.” (Hilarious, especially when paying attention to the fingerings on the underside of the horn.)
  3.) Not getting paid as an intern.

• Sucking the air out of the audition room
  From The Wall Street Journal, “The Superstar Effect” reminded me of the occasional audition where one player really stood out for one reason or another. Their heightened presence had an effect – on the me and perhaps the competition too.

• Mahler re-defined
  At Musical Perceptions a humorous look at Mahler’s expressive terms.

• She’s the boss
  A nice profile of LA Philharmonic Executive Director Deborah Borda. If only every director in this position had these well-rounded qualifications.

• The woes of motherhood
  From from the heart:

And when Jacob stomped out of the room giving me the stink-eye and muttering at how mean I was for refusing to sign his French horn practice sheet when he didn’t practice the French horn, I’m sure he was planning to come right back and say, “Thanks for driving me back and forth all summer to French horn practice, to track practice, to basketball practice, to my friends’ houses, and to the ten thousand other places I will need to go before I leave home, and sorry for scaring the crap out of you by climbing onto the roof last week and not answering when you called me, and for generally doing things that I know you hate because I enjoy exerting my independence.

Sorry and thanks.