gem of a post<\/a>, which has one of those paragraphs that I simply had to share:<\/p>\nDutoit stayed for another week to lead us in Petrushka<\/em>, along with the Grieg piano concerto and the aforementioned Suite from Karelia<\/em>, bringing some elan to the Stravinsky, reminiscent of nail-biters from the Solti era, with ‘excitement’ as the byproduct of a spasmodic modal expressivity, and the hyperbolic extraneosity of gestural vectors emanating from the vicinity of the podium. Anyone scratching their head trying to follow that last sentence has taken the first small step on the road to empathizing with the occasional plight of an orchestral musician.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I love the musings of Michael Hovnanian, who is a double bass player with a Major Midwestern Orchestra (in Oprahtown). He has written yet another gem of a post, which has one of those paragraphs that I simply had to share: Dutoit stayed for another week to lead us in Petrushka, along with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[299,2],"tags":[2635,2636,2634],"class_list":["post-6131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conducting","category-the-orchestra-world","tag-bass-blog","tag-conductors","tag-michael-hovnanian"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8kC-1AT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":569,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/12\/07\/stage-atlas\/","url_meta":{"origin":6131,"position":0},"title":"stage atlas","author":"Charles Noble","date":"December 7, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Michael Hovnanian, of the erstwhile CSO Bass Blog (now just the Bass Blog due to some flap over whether he can use the CSO name in a blog), has just published a great post on the habitual nature of the orchestral musician and the troubles it can cause. In most\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "music"","block_context":{"text":"music","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/orchmap3.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":873,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/03\/23\/gigs-gone-wrong\/","url_meta":{"origin":6131,"position":1},"title":"gigs gone wrong","author":"Charles Noble","date":"March 23, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Bass blogger and Major Midwest Orchestra member Michael Hovnanian writes about a Good Friday gig gone wrong - horribly wrong.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, no one was physically hurt during this gig, but I'm sure the mental scars will last quite some time.","rel":"","context":"In "freelancing"","block_context":{"text":"freelancing","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/freelancing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1284,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/10\/16\/pesky-string-players\/","url_meta":{"origin":6131,"position":2},"title":"pesky string players","author":"Charles Noble","date":"October 16, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Bassist Michael Hovnanian, member of a Major Midwestern Orchestra With a Notably Loud Brass Section, wrote a hilarious description of guest conductor Jaap van Zweeden rehearsing Bruckner's Fifth Symphony: The Dutch violinist turned conductor spent more rehearsal time than normal dealing with the strings; in a work such as the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "bloggers"","block_context":{"text":"bloggers","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/bloggers\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":310,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/05\/05\/orchestral-sandwich-construction\/","url_meta":{"origin":6131,"position":3},"title":"orchestral sandwich construction","author":"Charles Noble","date":"May 5, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The Chicago Symphony bassist Michael Hovnanian writes a delightful blog, and here is one bit of terminology that I've not heard used before. He refers to the classic orchestral programming scheme known as the \"shit sandwich\". I'll let him explain in this excerpt from his blog: The program of Strauss,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "the orchestra world"","block_context":{"text":"the orchestra world","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/the-orchestra-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"875316close-up-of-sandwich-posters.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/05\/875316close-up-of-sandwich-posters.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":665,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/01\/17\/harder-than-it-looks\/","url_meta":{"origin":6131,"position":4},"title":"harder than it looks","author":"Charles Noble","date":"January 17, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"So, should musicians have input into the programs that the orchestra presents? It's not an easy a question to answer. With orchestras, it's always as many times complicated as there are players in the orchestra - plus the artistic administrator and the music director, oh, and the audience. Esteemed \"the-orchestra-that-shall-not-be-named\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "labor issues"","block_context":{"text":"labor issues","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/labor-issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5800,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2011\/02\/13\/from-the-mouths-of-bass-players\/","url_meta":{"origin":6131,"position":5},"title":"from the mouths of bass players","author":"Charles Noble","date":"February 13, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Just read a great paragraph on why having all ages and levels of experience in an orchestra is so important, and why being ignorant of this is simply to be stupid: Like fibers of a rope, not a single one of which runs the entire length, the overlapping career spans\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "bloggers"","block_context":{"text":"bloggers","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/bloggers\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6131\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}