do i have to like harbison?

I think my years at calarts made me delusional.

Apparently, there are (many) musicians in this world who don't care for experimentation and i don't understand why. I'll admit that when i went to calarts, i was nervous because i knew the school was known for the avant-garde (ooo, how daring) and that my soon to be oboe teacher was a baroque nut (how boring). Big surprise, i graduated 4 years later, totally in love with everything baroque and having participated in (almost) every kind of performance art you can think of, including nudity.

I left with such a desire to create something new (playing baroque and other early music well counts as new, by the way) that I detested my master's degree experience and all those "mainstream" music geeks at USC and i ran away to mexico before I finished.

I never really had the opportunity last year to figure out if anyone here cared for the types of things i left calarts with: to do new and different things on stage, to challenge the audience, to make people scratch their heads sometimes. also to strive for something like period authenticity in baroque music performance, even though it may be impossible to attain. I yearn for the time when I can return to practicing my eichentopf oboe replica regularly. my dream career would basically include playing first oboe (modern or baroque... or both) in a mainly baroque orchestra (i like mozart too), and gigging in the performance-artsy-experimental-modern stuff as well.

ok what i meant to say is, I guess i always thought that everyone in this world is exactly like me, post-cal-arts. And i am finding out that they aren't! How can it be!!?? We have come to the time in this orchestra's season when we play chamber music. the schedule is f-ed up, though, and my quintet only gets to play part of one concert... don’t even get me started on how i feel about that. Anyway, i guess we are going to play 3 movements from the harbison quintet and although even I take a while to warm up to a piece sometimes, it really bothers me to hear people talk about how awful and weird all music is after about 1930. I just don't understand. Yes, i agree that most music has gone downhill in one way or another since Bach, but c'mon... there were riots at the premier of the right of spring, gosh darnnit! Why are so many people unwilling to even try new music? And because I find myself always being the defender, I can't even say what i really think... which is... i don't know if i like the harbison quintet. ok? so shoot me.