A place to play

Speaking of my oboe I have a funny story from my lesson last Friday. I celebrated my 2 month anniversary of playing oboe last Wednesday (the 9th), by the way. Everybody say, "awwww". Awww.

Anyway so for the last couple of weeks I've noticed that my teacher is no longer rushing through my lesson and seems a bit more pleased to listen to me. I guess it's sounding less like a dying duck and more like, hmm, music. I did really quite well the lesson before that one and so I had tried practicing extra hard to impress him again, but I was playing on my new rental which I'm not entirely used to yet. I did ok I think but could have had better control of my embouchure.

So this conversation takes place at the end of the lesson:

TEACHER: Now all you need is a place to play.

ME: (thinking inside: Damn! I sound so bad that I need to find a practice place away from my neighbors. WAH!) Oh, I practice at home and it's been working out so far.

TEACHER: (laughing) I mean an orchestra! This school has a mentoring orchestra and I think you're near ready to play 2nd or 3rd oboe there. Call the school up and see if they let the adult students in.

ME: (eyes well up and I almost fall back on my chair) Oh . . . wow . . . err . . . yay!!


Ok I still can't believe he said that. As you can see from my naive response that was the last thing in my mind. Me? Playing with others so soon? When I first started I figured it would take 10 years to play even in an amateur orchestra. Then after I started I brought my figure down to 5. But now he's making me think it can happen this year. He said I'm playing in tune and that my prior musical experience is helping me a lot. All I need to work on is getting that infamous dolce oboe sound and I'll be good to go. He's even going to start me on making reeds soon. I've been sent to get some of the equipment. You normally don't start doing this until you've been playing a year so I'm happy that he thinks I'm ready/serious enough to start on this essential part of my training.

Mentoring orchestra. Wow! So what if I will be old enough to be some of those kids' mom. I can't even think about how gratifying it will be to play!

Do I have to wear pigtails to fit in?