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Faith In The Oboe.
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Perhaps no one in New York plays
the oboe better --
or more -- than Stephen Taylor
does. He is the principal oboist of the Orchestra of
St. Luke's, he has been a member of
the St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble since its inception
in 1974, and he's a member of the
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, as well as Speculum Musicae
and the American Composers Orchestra, among others. Perhaps then his mother
can be forgiven for mistaking a photograph of an also-bearded David Shifrin
on the cover of the Chamber
Music Society's brochure for a picture of her son. Mr. Taylor, a graduate of The
Juilliard School and a member of the faculty of the
Manhattan School of Music and
SUNY Stony Brook, has been an Artist of the Society
since 1989. Active in the
contemporary music scene, he performed in the premiere
of Elliot Carter's Trilogy. He
can be heard on hundreds of recordings as well as on
such film scores as The Cotton
Club and several Spike Lee movies. He is the father
of seven-year-old Jesse -- who wants
to be a fireman -- and the husband of Rosalyn, a cellist.
His thoughts are never far from
the subject of reeds, which oboists must constantly
fashion in order to make music.
"Reeds are a main issue for an oboist because we have to make our own; you figure three hours on each reed and you get two out of ten that you can play a concert on; it's a lot of wasted time. You can usually get two or three rehearsals and one or two concerts out of a reed. I put on Bonanza reruns while I make them; it makes me feel comfortable and sort of normal.
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| "I put on Bonanza reruns while I make reeds to feel sort of normal." |
"You start with a strip of
bamboo-type stuff --
French cane -- and you have machines
that process it; you fold it and scrape it just so with
a special knife so it's aerodynamic.
It's very tiny, hand-cramping work with little satisfaction
unless you get a good one.
When you get a great one everything falls into place
in life; you just feel great about everything because you know when you
pick up your instrument you're
going to sound really great -- it's going to be easy
and fun. I'll feel really low if my
reeds aren't going well and the concert's on Sunday
and I don't have anything I'm happy
playing on. I've made about 20 in the past two days.
"Cane is like wine... if grapes are happy, cane is happy. California has reasonably good cane, Spain reasonably good, France the best. It grows about ten feet high and it's harvested at certain diameters. The larger is clarinet cane; the smaller, about the size of my finger around, is for oboe. They hack it in pieces, throw it in boxes and sell it for huge quantities of money by the pound. Oboists have a really good sense of humor; you have to if you're going to do the reed thing. It's so devastating to spend all those hours and have such disappointment on a regular basis that we have to find the humor in everything. "The oboe chair in the orchestra is a real prima donna chair; when you play, you're heard, so a lot of oboe players are a bit full of themselves.
"At Juilliard, I studied the American school of
playing with Robert Bloom and the
European school with Lois Wann. Lois really brought
out what you had to say, your
own voice, and encouraged us to listen to recordings.
I'm kind of a mish-mash of
European and American playing because of all that. The
European school tends to be a
very fat, woody, gorgeous, rich sound filled with life
and buoyancy. The American
'Cleveland/Chicago' sound is a little tighter; it has
a very dark, smooth quality to it, very
covered and very liquidy and smooth but smaller. I combined
this rebel, gypsy
gorgeousness with something a lot more controlled and
ended up with something I felt
expressed me. |
| "Cane is like wine... if grapes are happy, cane is happy." |
"I started on the trumpet and switched to the French
horn. When I was 15 I had a crush
on Faith Levine, who played the oboe in High School
band. One summer I heard the
oboe played really well and I thought, Boy, that sounds
great. Really hearing it for the
first time, and having a crush... I switched to oboe
right away. Fifteen's kind of late for
the oboe but I took to it; the support and the blowing
seemed to be very natural. Faith
and I were together for four and a half years after
that. "I tend to get more nervous if I play for eight ladies in a church service than if I play for five thousand people and the TV cameras. The idea of standing up on stage and playing on an instrument that might not be as comfortable as one would wish is a very frightening thing sometimes. So it often surprises me that I'm able to deal with it. "To me Bach and Mozart are the two gods of music in general, and certainly both of them understood the oboe really well. I don't think Mozart wrote one note that is unoboistic whereas some great composers wrote things that are a bit awkward. But Mozart just knew -- it was as though he played the oboe; it always lies beautifully and makes sense. Bach wrote a concerto for Oboe d'amore -- between the English horn and the oboe -- that's one of my favorite pieces. Crumb's Ancient Voices of Children is a wild piece that shows off the beautiful richness of the oboe.
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| "Watching my little boy be born was the most profound moment of my life." |
"I grew up around fresh water lakes in Vermont.
I bought a 1952 mahogany speed boat
a couple of years ago and I'm trying to keep it in good
shape. We have a place up in
Maine next to Sebago Lake -- Panther Pond in Raymond
-- that the whole family thinks
about all the time. Just to swim and be on my boat or
go sailing.... I like science fiction
movies if they're well done. Alien was a great movie;
the second Thing, not the first
one. Omega Man. That escape is important to me. My favorite
books: the Horatio
Hornblower books. "My wife and I often get to do jobs together and that's really great. The problem is tours: anything more than a week and a half. When things are really busy and I'm gone all day, it's disappointing if I can't see Jesse except to say goodnight. I think I'm a pretty good daddy. I get pretty crazy with my little boy and I think he likes it. I haven't grown up yet myself; I surprise myself whenever I'm an adult. Watching my little boy be born -- he came out with his eyes wide open and looking around -- was the most profound moment of my life. "A musician can hear a phrase... something will happen in five seconds and it's just, Oh my God, I have to go get the recording and listen to it over and over. That's one of the most incredible things about being a musician; not that you understand it, just that you can be around it so much. I want to make the audience feel what I feel, and that's hard to do. Ultimately I want to keep music alive because it is so amazing. The rare occasion when I make myself happy playing the instrument the way I think it should sound -- that's a great achievement. A lot of work goes into it and there'll be that three times a year when it really happens. I'm on more than 200 recordings; only four or five really represent the way I play. The Bach Oboe d'amore came out well, and one I did with Fred Sherry of the Wolpe Oboe Quartet. "It means a great deal to me to be a member of the Society. We all love to work together, it's a very prestigious job and I'm glad to have it. When I was at Juilliard this was the Chamber Music Society... there's a certain worship there. It was a big deal, a real ritzy, glitzy thing; it still is. Leonard Arner was the oboist, Paula Robison was the beautiful flutist. When I was a kid I never dreamed.... Only one oboe player is allowed to be a member. I played on and off with them for a few years and in 1989 I was asked to join. I was thrilled; I still am."
"Of anybody who ever lived, I'd like to have dinner with Mozart. I'd just want to listen to him talk. I would be equally happy eating with Bach; what a gas that would be. A Pharaoh would be pretty amazing... I'd really rather have dinner with my little boy but I'm sick of Spaghetti-Os."
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