trad music on the oboe

Subject: trad music on the oboe
From: Jack Campin
Date: 12 Oct 16 - 07:42 PM

Can anybody think of any traditional music (from anywhere) that they've heard played on a normal modern orchestral oboe?

Robert Burns writing about Captain Fraser, oboe player from Edinburgh with the Army:

I am delighted with many little melodies, which the learned Musician despises as silly and insipid. I do not know whether the old air "Hey, tutti, tatie", may rank among this number; but well I know that, with Fraser's Hautboy, it has often filled my eyes with tears.

Captain Fraser

(Another tune Burns appreciated Fraser playing was "The Yellow Haired Laddie", but I can't find the reference just now).

The rest of the world put together must have found a match for Fraser in the last couple of centuries.

Subject: RE: trad music on the oboe
From: Gurney
Date: 12 Oct 16 - 08:19 PM

There used to be a lass in England who played one in a Country Dance band. Around the Midlands somewhere.

Subject: RE: trad music on the oboe
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 12 Oct 16 - 09:25 PM

Well you could do well to check out Paul Sartin, who played with the recently dusbanded Bellowhead, and is in the very entertaining duo, Belshazzar's Feast.
Looking back at other bands where woodwind featured strongly, the great Pyewackett. From the 1970s-80s with Rosie Cross on bassoon, and clarinettist, Ian Blake too.
And we had a multi-instrumentalist in our ceilidh band, until he was sadly "taken from us" a couple of years back: he played whistles, oboe and Scottish Lowland pipes in the band.

Subject: RE: trad music on the oboe
From: RTim
Date: 12 Oct 16 - 10:34 PM

Sue Harris played (with John Kirkpatrick) Oboe for years and still does I believe........

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: trad music on the oboe
From: GUEST,Bloke in Groucho mask
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 04:40 AM

What's an oboe?

Kindling for a bassoon fire.

(My stock joke when my then girlfriend accompanied me on one in folk clubs many moons ago. Not too versatile to be honest. Where you think a saxophone might sound good, an oboe can do it without drowning out guitar and voice if playing acoustically. )

Last year, I opened for an Americana / blues / bluegrass type duo, Red Dirt Skinners. She plays a soprano sax. Now that DOES lend itself to good solos against a guitar.

Subject: RE: trad music on the oboe
From: GUEST,Gilly
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 06:04 AM

If I remember rightly Sue took up the hammered dulcimer when she was expecting Benji as the oboe breathing requirement was too onerous.

Subject: RE: trad music on the oboe
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 06:19 AM

Nigel Pegrum?

Subject: RE: trad music on the oboe
From: Sarah the flute
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 06:40 AM

We triple tracked my oboe on the Flying Chaucers CD "about time" to try and recreate a bagpipe sort of sound. I've now got some Scottish smallpipes, a bombarde and several cornamuses instead!

Subject: RE: trad music on the oboe
From: clueless don
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 08:33 AM

There used to be (may still be, for all I know) a contradance-type band, from New England I believe, that included an oboe player. If I'm not getting two different groups confused (never a safe assumption!), their name was Wild Asparagus.

Don

Subject: RE: trad music on the oboe
From: RTim
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 09:00 AM

Yes - Wild Asparagus does have an Oboe player, his name David Cantieni.

see -
http://www.swallowtail.com/David.html

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: trad music on the oboe
From: GUEST,Peter C
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 10:53 AM

Did not the Hardy family West gallery band have an oboe?

Subject: RE: trad music on the oboe
From: leeneia
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 11:16 AM

I have a tape where a band starts "The Buttlerfly" with an oboe solo. It's very nice.

Subject: RE: trad music on the oboe
From: Jack Campin
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 11:42 AM

The reason for the question is that I know someone who is a classically trained oboe player but now mainly interested in traditional music - she's thinking of just dumping the oboe, so I wanted to find something that would motivate her to give it a chance. But it would need to be substantial, a whole CD or a sizable YouTube channel.

What I can find so far that goes beyond the classical repertoire and comes in sizable chunks: Paul McCandless (oboe player with Eberhard Weber, ECM-school minimalist jazz) and various Hungarian players of the tarogato, doing a whole range of things with it (the tarogato is in between an oboe and a sax so somewhat relevant).

A sort of "Captain Fraser meets ECM" project would be neat but I think she needs to see some more precedents first.

Subject: RE: trad music on the oboe
From: CupOfTea
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 03:15 PM

in the 80s, the local English Country Dance band Toad in the Hole briefly had an oboe player. I lost track of her after she started dating a banjo player from Chicago.

Subject: RE: trad music on the oboe
From: GUEST,Lady Mondagreen
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 07:04 PM

Well I learnt the oboe in my youth and then abandoned it in favour of guitars and trendy modern folk.

When I wanted to sell my oboe to buy a bazouki, I just couldn't quite do it. So I dusted it off and started playing again with the band. Then I explored related instruments and got myself one of the last decent bombardes from hobgoblin. I went on to get 2 shawms from Eric Moulder, and all my recordings have included double reeds in various forms. And (though I say it myself) they are all the more brilliant for it.

So please encourage your friend to use the skills she has to play traditional music. Look beyond what is common or 'in' to what makes the music work. Why abandon all that learning and practice to 'fit in'?

I can promise from experience that turning up to a session with an instrument I can play and that I love is a million times more welcome than yet another guitar or fiddle played adequately or badly.

Oboes are great. Lots of us play them and their cousins in a folk context. Why shouldn't your friend.

Subject: RE: trad music on the oboe
From: ripov
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 07:55 PM

Isambarde had an oboe, I think it was Emily played it.
But whats the problem? Surely "traditional" music can be played on any instrument to hand, there are no rules (except in some peoples minds). And the oboe is in C, so will have no difficulty joining in. (I remember a session where someone played clarinet, obviously having practised at home, and was totally oblivious to the fact that they were a semitone out!)

Subject: RE: trad music on the oboe
From: Jack Campin
Date: 13 Oct 16 - 08:47 PM

The examples of folk-ish oboe playing I can think of all tend to the melismatic and lyrical. This is pretty good:

Bartok, Dances from Csik for oboe and piano

but even in the fast final one, it doesn't hit the stomping oomph you're likely to find in normal Scottish (or Hungarian) ceilidh band music. I'm not saying it's obligatory to play that way, but it should be an option.

Subject: RE: trad music on the oboe
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 14 Oct 16 - 08:14 AM

Collections of musicians (ie Bands) from 17C through to 20C included anybody who could play he tune - or at least get near it. Instruments included things with strings on, brass, percussion and tunes included the general cannon of dance tunes plus hymns, military tunes, tunes from the music halls.

Oboes? bring 'em on!

Subject: RE: trad music on the oboe
From: clueless don
Date: 14 Oct 16 - 09:09 AM

It's not oboe exactly, but on the "Celtic Twilight 3: Lullabies" collection there is an instrumental recording of "My Lagan Love" featuring English Horn. Very nice, in my opinion.

Subject: RE: trad music on the oboe
From: GUEST,Reinhard
Date: 14 Oct 16 - 09:44 AM

Isambarde had an oboe, I think it was Emily played it.

No, Isambarde's oboe player was Jude Rees (who joined Pilgrims' Way this year).

Subject: RE: trad music on the oboe
From: Jack Campin
Date: 14 Oct 16 - 10:19 AM

Collections of musicians (ie Bands) from 17C through to 20C included anybody who could play the tune

And they were used even when the bandleader wasn't just taking all comers, but was selecting skilled players for a definite sound. One example is Nathaniel Gow, whose largest lineup (in the early 1800s) was four violins, two oboes, cello and harpsichord. It's a great pity he never uploaded anything to SoundCloud.

Subject: RE: trad music on the oboe
From: treewind
Date: 14 Oct 16 - 10:48 AM

Charles Spicer in the Mellstock Band plays oboe and cor Anglais.

Subject: RE: trad music on the oboe
From: Jack Campin
Date: 14 Oct 16 - 11:01 AM

Still not doing too well at finding anybody who's played it in front of a microphone or video camera...

Subject: RE: trad music on the oboe
From: RTim
Date: 14 Oct 16 - 12:52 PM

Paul Sartin plays some Oboe on this track!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXby3MX2m1c

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: trad music on the oboe
From: ripov
Date: 14 Oct 16 - 02:01 PM

I stand corrected!

But they were a great band and lovely people, we met them a couple of times at Wheaton Aston FF