Author: Fiona Slaughter Major: Music Performance (Oboe) Country: Canada 

My name is Fiona Slaughter, and I am an oboist from Arkansas.  I just completed my undergraduate degree in performance at the University of Arkansas, and this fall I am beginning my masters degree at the University of Michigan.  I have been fortunate to stay busy this summer. For two weeks in the second half of June, I attended the Pacific Region International Summer Music Academy, an orchestral festival for young musicians.  Next, I went to the International Double Reed Society Conference in Tampa, Florida for a week in July and performed in two masterclasses. I am moving to Michigan in two days, and three days later will depart for the British Isles Music Festival, a chamber music festival in Surrey.  This has been a lot to process! However, I am extremely grateful to have these opportunities to study music. I would like to share my experience at PRISMA in this blog post. 

I attended PRISMA last year, and my favorite things about the festival were the immersion in great repertoire, the beautiful scenery of Powell River, British Columbia, the kindness and enthusiasm of the locals, and the inspiration I got from the students and faculty.  I was looking forward to coming back this year, and the experience was wonderful again. 

The schedule was quite similar to last year–in the mornings we had orchestra rehearsals between breakfast and lunch time.  In the afternoons, we would participate in masterclasses, private lessons, chamber music, sectionals, and mock orchestral auditions.  After dinner, there were workshops or concerts to attend. The orchestra prepared about two large programs per week, and played two or three concerts per week.  There was one free day, so my friends and I went to Powell Lake to go swimming and cliff diving. 

Although the schedule was similar, my experience this year was different, mainly because of the challenges presented by the repertoire and my roles in the repertoire.  The works I played principal oboe on were Mahler’s Symphony 4 and Shostakovich’s Symphony 10, and also the Mosolov Harp Concerto. I also played 2nd oboe/English horn on the Cossart Suite for woodwinds and harp. I was delighted and somewhat apprehensive to have this wonderful opportunity.  I had never played principal oboe on a symphony at a festival before, and also had never played symphonies by Mahler or Shostakovich before, so I was honored and excited for the challenge. 

I had many solos in the Mahler and Shostakovich, and though playing those pieces was challenging, I enjoyed the challenge and the intensity of the music very much, and I learned a lot about myself from playing those pieces and getting feedback from the faculty.  My main concern going into the festival was that I would be unprepared, or that I would mess up a solo. I practiced the music for a couple of weeks before the festival and listened to the symphonies several times each (I even studied the scores a bit). I think I achieved my goal of knowing these symphonies before I arrived to PRISMA, but through the whole process I also realized that next time I have an opportunity like this I need better goals.  I could play the right notes in the Mahler, but hadn’t infused them with the right inflection. There were also some technical passages that I struggled with in the Shostakovich.  After getting some insight from the faculty at PRISMA, I believe my struggles with these pieces relate to a problem with efficiency in practicing. I had spent plenty of time preparing the works, but hadn’t been thorough enough. 

Roger Cole, principal oboist of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, helped me understand how to add more expression to my solos in the Mahler.  I hadn’t ignored the dynamic shapes and articulations Mahler had written when I practiced, but I hadn’t made the shapes exaggerated and consistent enough for them to come through either.  Roger also helped me with breathing and phrasing in the Strauss concerto exposition, another piece which I played for him in a masterclass. Roger also encouraged me to stop experimenting so much with my reeds.  There are many variables which can be changed with reeds, and I enjoy changing some variables almost every time that I make new reeds, just to see if I can discover something new that sounds better. I think he is right that I do this too much sometimes.  I also appreciated how Roger’s reeds seemed to want to be in tune in the high register. Mine seem to be unstable sometimes (although this could relate to a problem I recently discovered with the top joint of my oboe- that is a whole other story, and fortunately I am getting a new top joint). I do think that if I were more consistent with my reeds, I could spend more time worrying about actual music. 

The next week, Pauline Oostenrijk, who was principal oboist of Residentie Orchestra of The Hague for 25 years, helped me with the technical passages in the Shostakovich.  It was the same situation with this piece- it was well prepared but not consistent all the time. Pauline thought it was important to practice the “unimportant notes.” She said that if we didn’t know the unimportant notes, we didn’t really know a whole passage.  Pauline encouraged me to attend the horn professor’s lunchtime lecture on practicing efficiently. 

I enjoyed Fokke Van Heel’s lecture very much.  He explained that when we practice, actually, we are training our nervous system to produce a substance called myelin which is responsible for muscle memory.  It’s important to practice carefully and avoid practicing mistakes to be sure that our myelin is helping our muscles remember how to play properly. However, one shouldn’t practice too carefully– Fokke also said that when we practice, we are like children in a sandbox experimenting with building sand castles.  So, there must be some experimentation and mistakes in order to discover the best ways to play. Fokke recommended a book to us called “The Talent Code” by Daniel Coyle. I didn’t get around to reading this book until this week, but I am glad Fokke recommended it to us–it’s fascinating! Coyle discusses myelin and how it affects various talented people, from soccer players, to the Renaissance artists, to musicians.  Furthermore, he explains how someone can achieve “deep practice” and be a good teacher.  I’m looking forward to changing my approach based on this book and the advice I received at PRISMA. 

Clearly I spend most of my time thinking about things that could be improved, but I am proud of the work I did and grateful to have played again under the baton of Arthur Arnold, conductor of the Moscow Symphony Orchestra.  He has a talent for creating a very positive environment for the orchestra to learn and take risks. It was a pleasure and inspiration to play in such a talented orchestra–in fact, I find it difficult to blog about an experience like this because much of the experience just came from playing and hearing the music.  There were too many memorable moments to mention, but I also loved listening to the soloists who collaborated with the orchestra and to all the brilliant students who played in the concerto competition. 

I would also like to mention the kind people of Powell River, who have created a welcoming environment like nowhere else.  There were many donors and volunteers who helped make the festival happen, and I am thankful for that. There was also a lady who asked my friend and I “Are you in the orchestra?” when we were standing in the ice cream line, and subsequently bought us ice cream.  That pretty much exemplifies how the people in Powell River are. 

Finally, thank you to everyone who has supported me and helped me to get through my undergraduate degree and to have wonderful summer experiences.  This includes the Honors College, Kelly Carter, Dr. Delaplain, Dr. Panayotova, and my family. Thank you for helping me get this far, and I will miss you when I’m in Michigan! 

Sincerely, Fiona