Of course, in the beginning, no one told her that she would ultimately end up making her own reeds for the instrument.  “I thought it was a cool, fun instrument where all the reeds just magically appeared when I needed them,” she says.  Now she knows that reeds are the worst part of playing the oboe, due to the amount of time involved, not to mention the tediousness and the finickiness of making them for herself and all her students!

Natasha received a Bachelors of Music in Oboe Performance from Indiana University and then went on to receive a Masters of Music from the University of Southern California.  After grad school, she spent some time in Mexico, playing guest principal oboe with the Orquesta Sinfonica Sonora and second oboe with the Orquesta Sinfonia Sinaloa de las Artes.  She moved to Dallas in 2008 where she teaches private oboe lessons and performs with The August Winds.

One of the things Natasha enjoys most about playing the oboe is the beautiful lyrical melodies.  Her favorite concerts are ones with solos for the English horn, the mournful big brother to the oboe.  She also enjoys any concert “with my favorite quintet, and the Abbey concerts are also lots of fun!”

If she weren’t an oboist, Natasha says she would probably be a pastry chef.  Many, many rehearsals end with hungry musicians munching on her cupcakes or cookies.  We’re always grateful that she enjoys making desserts over oboe reeds!

My “day job,” like that of many musicians, is teaching music lessons.  I currently work for one of the public school districts in Texas, teaching private lessons during the school day.  I have about 35 students that meet with me once a week, plus I run the sectionals at one of the high schools.  That means that once a week I meet with the bands’ flute sections as a group, and we work on band music, chamber music, or have mock auditions for upcoming competitions.

Thirty-five students either sounds like a lot or not very many, depending on who you talk to.  This is Texas, so the band programs are HUGE (thanks to the love of football!).  Besides the actual teaching, there’s all the work that goes on behind the scenes—scheduling, answering parent phone calls and emails, replying to the student who lost their music the day before the concert, cheering up the student who didn’t place as highly as they’d hoped.  There’s a fair bit of social work that goes on being a private lesson teacher, too, as we are often the only adults that are able to see the kids in small groups week after week—so we know exactly whose parents are getting divorced, who’s stressed out over college applications, or whose boyfriend dumped them right before prom.  (FYI, you can’t cry and play the flute at the same time.  They all pretend nothing is wrong, but it becomes fairly obvious fairly quickly!)

That’s the biggest part of my week, tracking down all those kids.  In addition, I freelance in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, which is possibly the most entertaining part of my job.  A good freelancer turns down no reasonably well-paying concert, as we love to play and ALWAYS love having a good story to tell.  There is the couple who met at Disneyland, so are married wearing Mickey Mouse Ears with their tux and gown.  There are the awkward individuals who invariably interrupt to request “Stairway to Heaven.”  (Give it up folks…it doesn’t sound good on violin and cello.) There are also the hosts of large garden parties who don’t understand why you object to their dogs running in and around your music stands.  And what musician hasn’t performed a “Star Wars” medley accompanied by a Darth Vader impersonator?  But in order to be ready for any gig at any time, we have to stay in physical shape and practice regularly.  I’ve become a master of fitting in warm-ups while students change class periods.

I, of course, also juggle Astraios.  It’s not a full-time job yet (although it rapidly appears to be becoming so!).  I get to use other parts of my brain that were specifically NOT used as a music major—the parts responsible for accounting, marketing, contracting, licensing.  Unfortunately, these are subjects that are just now starting to appear in music curriculums, which means that I spend a lot of my time doing research.  But I have a lot of help, and it’s not nearly so stressful now to create a balance sheet as it was in the beginning!

And this year, The August Winds, of which I am a member, have decided to enter the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition.  (Astraios audiences hopefully remember The August Winds from our last two summers in Colorado.)  We’re all hitting the age limit this year, so it’s now or never.  To add to the confusion, four members of The August Winds live in Dallas, but our clarinetist, Marianne Shifrin, is splitting her time between Colorado and Arizona.  She flies in every few weeks for some intense rehearsals, and we’ll be recording the first week of February.  When she comes to town, we cram our students into as few hours as we possibly can and cram in the rehearsals as late into the evening as we can stand.  (Healthy?  Maybe not.  But many musicians learn to love caffeine in music school…)  While it becomes insanely intense and QUITE exhausting, we are still managing to like each other after all this time.  On the plus side, Natasha Merchant, our oboist, is an expert ice cream/cupcake/truffle maker, and enjoys trying out new recipes on us.  That’s always a happy ending to a rehearsal!

Future articles will include profiles of musicians and musings on our day-to-day lives.  If you have a topic you’d like to know more about, we welcome your suggestions!  Please email your ideas to info@astraiosmusic.org.

We know that this is a tough economic time, and money is tight for everyone.  Check out our Donation page for more ways you can help support Astraios without costing yourself anything!

Thank you for your generous support!  We’re looking forward to 2012!

Many, many thanks to everyone who came to hear our August 27^th concert! You may remember that we announced that this was the inaugural concert of “The August Winds,” even though many of you saw us perform in the summer of 2010.  Here’s the history of our 11-year-old quintet:

 The five members of the August Winds originally met as freshmen at Indiana University.  The quintet was originally formed to fulfill a chamber music requirement for all music performance majors.  After one semester of “quinteting,” we were having so much fun that we signed up again…and again…and again.  Seven semesters of chamber music rehearsals made us close friends; where one member of the quintet was, the rest were not far behind.  We shared apartments, bonded over concerts good and bad, and the bassoonist even married the flutist!

After we all completed our Bachelor of Music degrees, we went our separate ways for grad school.  In 2010, our schedules aligned and we were able reunite to present an Astraios program at the Abbey of St. Walburga.  Despite the fact that we had been in existence since 2000 and had only ever had one personnel change (Marianne Shifrin joined us our senior year at IU), we had never been able to come up with a name.  We tried names in other languages, considered “The High Lonesome Winds” and tossed around the “THE Quintet” or “The Nameless Quintet.”  It was only in the summer of 2011 that we finally thought of and settled on “The August Winds.”

Now that we’ve presented two Astraios concerts, discovered that we sound even better now than we did as undergrads, AND actually named ourselves, we think it’s time to make ourselves a permanent performing ensemble.  The August Winds are currently preparing to compete in the prestigious Fischoff Chamber Music Competition.  Wish us luck!  We hope to be back in Colorado soon.

As you’re exploring the new Astraios website, make sure to notice that we have new clips from our concerts, and that CDs from previous concerts are now for sale.  We’ve also posted new pictures from Astraios rehearsals and concerts.  We hope that you find this new website much more user-friendly and that it helps you to feel that you are a part of the Astraios network.

More soon!

In addition to being able to find the same info and music as before, in a quicker and more streamlined fashion, you’ll also have the ability to stay up to date with our current activities, with easier access to our updates on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

We’ll also be able to feature more dynamic photo and video content, as well as more detailed updates about upcoming events and other news through our blog.

Stay tuned for more updates, and let us know what you think about the new website!