Marguerite LaCroix
Oboe Sucks Webmaster
Someplace, in MA
https://www.angelfire.com/music4/oboesucks/
oboesucksezralite@lycos.com
https://www.angelfire.com/music4/oboesucks/
oboesucksezralite@lycos.com
My Musical Life, in brief
PAST: Born October 3, 1980. By age 5, would play godparents' piano in their big house in New London, CT, with little sister's assistance composed a musical version of the "Three Little Pigs".
Hated elementary school music festivals. It is hypothesized that I could not tolerate the out-of-tune singing. Church children's choir in second grade.
Started playing flute in fifth grade, was the last one admitted into band that year. That year, watching the school chorus at that concert, I heard an oboe accompanying the Welsh song The Ash Grove. The lust for the oboe was ignited that night.
I was in a production Godspell at Church in eighth grade. I had a recorder solo in the song "All Good Gifts".
Then I joined high school marching band on the flute. Couldn't march for beans, was switched to pit as an auxilliary percussionist in sophomore year and forever after. Marched flute on street.
I also did church folk choir with many Godspell folks, and I did that all through high school and over the summers for the first 2 years of college.
I was in 3 high school musicals, in chorus roles: Camelot, Fiddler on The Roof, and Oklahoma!, in which I had the line "I'm so hungry I could eat a gatepost."
In the spring of my junior year, while the rehearsals for Oklahoma! were going on, I started learning to play the oboe. I was taught my good friend/fellow pit member/two-time prom date, Tommy, who was already playing and taking lessons.
The band director had always passed me over whenever he wanted a new oboist. Many were drafted involuntarily, and many got pissed off and quit. I took the oboe against his wishes, and 4 years later, I still play. Isn't that ironic?
I told the band director I wanted to play the oboe in the fall, and I'd even audition and prove I could play. The band never had auditions. Over the summer, for various reasons, the band director resigned abruptly.
His sucessor was his assistant band director, and percussion instructor who knew me well from pit. This new director, who deserves a big shout-out and thus SHALL NOT remain nameless, Chris Constantine, had faith in me, and let me play the oboe in the fall, and while the rest of the band did non-repertoire stuff, Tommy and I had private lessons in the practice room.
Mr. C. took the demise of the oboe well. To begin with, it was a piece of shit--actually, worse--a piece of resonite plastic, and one that needed almost-monthly visits to the repair shop. After a sucessful winter concert, right before break, in rehearsal, a draft came in, and blew my music off my stand. I went to catch it. The oboe rolled off my lap. I checked to see if the reed was OK. The reed was OK. But half of the oboe was still on the floor. There were shards and metal bits. Mr. C. told me not to beat myself up over it (though I did anyway) and that would give him an excuse to write a new one into the budget (which never happened).
Notably, this was the second instrument I had destroyed that year. The first was my flute, which fell out of its case when the loose clasps came open while I was running for the bus. I stepped on the body, and the end crunched shut. The repair estimate said that the cost of repair would exceed the value of the flute and "it would be a MISTAKE to repair this flute". (Mistake was repeatedly underlined.) But that's a flute, and there are too many of those around anyway.
Instrument starved, I bought someone's old flute from them that Spring. That girl smoked, so the headjoint had tar residue in it, and it reeked. I cleaned it out with a baby wipe.
I entered Clark University not wanting to be a flute-girl again. And if that's the instrument I had, that would be what they thought I was (as my reasoning went). I found out from some band-o's at an open house that the school had an oboe. (And they were glad to see an oboist, too.) I went to ask the music secretary about it. She found the box in the closet. She told me it was old. (No kidding, it looked like it had to be from the 19th century.), we opened it up, and she explained it had cracks, and needed repair. About a minute passed, and then it dawned on me that it was a clarinet, because it was shaped wrong to be an oboe. The music secretary, henceforth known as the wonderful amazing goddess called Anna, then commenced the oboe search. By October, an oboe had been found. An adjunct instructor who also worked at a local high school borrowed it from that high school. I named this oboe Delores, after this adjunct, whose surname was Delorey. I picked it up again and started to re-teach myself from a fingering chart. The next semester, I started lessons with Joe ("Oboe") Halko, who had to undo some of what I retaught myself. I took these non-credit lessons for three semesters. In my junior year, I took them for credit, and did abysmally, thank you very much.
Meanwhile, in my course work, I had done well in the remedial-type theory class called "Rudiments of Music". I was perhaps the best recorder student in there, mostly because I actually took it seriously. I knew there had to be a reason why I packed the recorder. I finally learned to read music, after just letting myself slide along in band. The B+ there gave me a confidence boost. Really, I had taken that course because I hadn't placed into the theory course that would fulfill the math requirement and I dreaded math. I figured I'd work my way up to the theory class, taking Rudiments as something like a prerequisite.
I had always loved music, but seemed so inept. I stated my intentions to be a music major when I met up with Mr. C. at a concert at Mechanics Hall. Tommy had taken me (with tix he'd gotten from Mr.C. who has connections) to see Simon Dent, Oboist, with Warsaw Philharmonic. Mr. C. cringed. It looked like that cringe hurt. We met up again later, and he said I'd be good at music history. The next semester, I got an A+ in 20th century music history (that prof. does grade generously, though), despite my fears of flunking when I heard the word "atonal" for the first time in my life. I still remember how an upperclassman explained it to me "If it sounds bad, it's atonal."
The summer after my freshman year, I bought my current oboe, Annelies, from eBay, for $475.00. I returned Delores in the fall, and she was supposed to go back to her high school, though I recently spotted her in a storage closet at Clark.
Sophomore year was chock full of ensembles: concert band, jazz vocal, and a duet with a pianist who was matched with me based on ability. Unfortunately, I got better, she didn't. I took a jazz history course with the resident jazz-deity, James, who'd also taught my Rudiments class. It was riveting. (A!) Theory was a rough spot, and that spring I swore I was flunking Theory II. (I've heard that's the hump.) I pulled a B-.
I also took more music history classes: medieval/renaissance/baroque in the fall, classical/romantic in the spring, both with Jerry (who is a very nice old man).
Junior year was hell, so I'll gloss over it quickly. I was in concert choir and chamber chorus, and was always sick from choir diseases. (Though having a studly young new choir director was cool.) Concert band I just let everything slide. (Having a stunt double overachiever freshman oboist come in during the spring semester was a blessing for everyone.) I had convinced myself for a while that I should be a band director. That must have been a delusion of grandeur sparked by working with the kids' lesson program the past spring. The accompanist and I didn't get along, which made life really awful. And I was just a plain old spoiled pissy brat. It was, indeed, all my own damn fault, and karma is still getting back at me for it...And I look over a sea of bad grades for that stretch of my transcript. C's and with a few A-'s and B's floating in it like ironic buoys.
My senior year. The goddess secretary who done good at raising me right, Anna, retired. Without her nurturing and occasional chastisement, I was bereft. Since Jerry's retirement, only 1 of the 3 full-time professors has been there longer than I have. That's my advisor, who has put up with way too much shit from me. One was new this fall, one just came in a year ago. I am the lone music major due to graduate this year. At least band has gotten bigger. (It hit a new high last year.) And I quit choir, but still managed to get every plague college has to offer.
PRESENT:Graduated with a double major in Music and Comparative Literature. 6-year-plan music major returned from hiatus to graduate along with me.
Still unemployed, broke, and squandering what I do have on grunge albums. I'm into Nirvana a decade late.
Luckily, I have the love of my life, Chris, to be with (unfortunately only on weekends), and a website to maintain to make it look like I'm doing something while I'm waiting for my job search to be successful.
FUTURE:The great unknown.
The future stretches before me...and it curiously resembles Saskatchewan.
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