“It’s not uncommon to find Melanie Fisher hunkered down at her kitchen table with supplies spread out around her,” writes Ellen Fike in Sunday’s (4/8) Wyoming Tribune Eagle (Cheyenne). “The hours Fisher spends here are essential for her job as a musician in the Cheyenne Symphony Orchestra as a co-principal bassoonist…. She has to make her own reeds to play it…. Fisher notes that making her own reeds is vital to being a professional woodwind player. However, the struggle of spending hours upon hours hunched over trying to perfect these little pieces of cane … can take a toll… One of the reasons CSO Conductor William Intriligator decided to go into conducting was because of the strain making reeds for his oboe was putting on his neck and back…. That doesn’t mean he stopped playing the oboe altogether…. He buys homemade [reeds] from his friends and colleagues, instead. His main supplier is CSO Executive Director Lindsey Reynolds, who has spent decades perfecting her methods of making reeds for her oboe. Reynolds was the oboe professor at the University of Wyoming for 13 years, during which she spent many evenings making reeds not only for herself, but her students too.”
Posted April 9, 2018
