(This article first appeared in the Detroit Free Press i n February of 1985. It is reprinted here with permission.)

When Donald Baker brings his lips, lungs and innate musicianship to bear on his chosen instrument, the sound that sets its double reeds vibrating, descends through its conical bore and emerges from its nether regions dazzles the car like desert sunsets dazzle the eye.

Baker's chosen instrument is the oboe. He has been the Detroit Symphony's principal oboist since 1973, and he produces a sound that ranges across such a variety of tonal characteristics it is best described by a string of contrasts: pure and sensual, solemn and saucy, refined and earthy, energetic and relaxed, opulent and slender, plaintive and jolly, sophisticated and innocent.

Physically, that beauty is born out of a fashioned piece of reed cane and eye-popping breath control.

"The difficult thing about playing the oboe is that it takes air pressure rather than air volume to play it," Baker said. "The opening is so small that you're actually suffocating from having too much stale air left in your body.

"It's the only instrument where you have to exhale before you inhale. It's really unnatural. Either you don't have enough air or you have too much.

"When you're singing or talking and reach the end of a phrase or sentence, you breathe in and go on. With the oboe, you have to breathe out first because you have all that stale air inside.

"Because of that oxygen imbalance, you're always seeing stars while you're playing."

Baker first started playing the oboe when he was in the seventh grade, and at the time he was more intrigued with making reeds for it than he was with playing it. Today, like most professionals, he continues to make his own reeds.

"The reed thing never goes away," he said. "Day in and day out it is the most difficult thing about the oboe. You find some people who can't play the oboe simply because they don't have the technical skills to make a reed. "

Oboe reeds are made from reed cane, a round, jointed member of the grass family that grows to a height of about 16 feet. It is cultivated in various parts of the world, including Spain and Egypt, but the prime crop, according to Baker, comes from fields in southern France.

"I tried to grow my own cane while I was in Dallas," Baker said. "The Texas highway department plants it along the highways for erosion control because it has really strong roots. A bassoonist in the orchestra had collected some and planted it in his backyard. He used it all the time, and when he left for another orchestra he let me use it. It was always too soft for me, though. "

There are dealers in this country who procure French cane and sell it, but Baker said he and most other major oboe players know some of the French cane farmers themselves and buy it direct.

The reed maker starts with a round piece of reed cane about 10 inches long ("It looks like a piece of bamboo sawed out of a fishing pole," Baker said), and shapes it into a fairly flat piece several inches long, with a very tiny opening at the top.

It is not an easy task. "The more advanced you are, the closer you go to the original plant, " Baker said. "The cane is 10. 5 millimeters in diameter, and that's ideal. You go from there. You split it, gouge it out, vary the thickness, shape the mouthpiece and so on. I have machines and instruments to help me do that.

"We all use the same materials, but the results vary. You're swimming in a sea of variables here. "

Baker said he can get two to three days out of one reed, providing it's from a really good piece of cane and the weather doesn't change radically. Otherwise, one day is about the limit.

"You have to have several different reeds at one time," he said, "because you use them for different purposes. Some are louder, some softer, some are just right for concertos, others are right for orchestral pieces. The main thing is to have a selection at any given moment. "

"One might readily wonder why anyone would take up an instrument that fills you with stale air and requires time-consuming reedmaking skills." Baker says he chose the oboe on the spur of the moment, back in the sixth grade in Pittsfield, Mass., where he was born.

"The junior high school band director came around to the grade school with a truckload of instruments," Baker remembered. "He was recruiting and he played something on each instrument.

"When he played the oboe everybody laughed, including me. I thought it was a pretty funny sound, but I signed up for it. I definitely wasn't very serious about it at the time.

It didn't take long for Baker to get serious about the oboe, though. By the time he was in the ninth grade he had decided that he wanted to be a professional oboist.

That decision took him to Ohio's Oberlin Conservatory, from which he graduated in 1964. He spent the following summer in Europe, where he studied with legendary French oboist Marcel Tabuteau. Then it was on to New York City where Baker got a job as an unskilled officer worker and primed himself for the annual influx of orchestra representatives holding auditions.

There were only two openings for first oboe that year, in the Milwaukee and Dallas orchestras. Baker played badly at the Milwaukee audition but aced the Dallas audition and was offered the job. He was 21 years old.

Nine years later, at the urging of Detroit Symphony principal flutist Ervin Monroe, a classmate from Oberlin days, Baker came to Detroit as one of 50 oboists auditioning for the first oboe position. Once again, he got the job.

Baker comes across in conservation as a somewhat shy, soft-spoken person, gentle and private, but who becomes open and animated when describing his love affair with his instrument. He is 42 years old, but looks and acts at least a decade younger. Despite the fact that his livelihood depends to a great extent on his lungs, he regularly smokes 10 to 12 cigarettes after each concert, but he never smokes elsewhere.

In a time when orchestral musicians flit about from job to job almost as readily as some conductors do, he has spent the 21 years of his professional life playing first oboe in only two orchestras. He is divorced, and while he says he never intends to marry again, he enjoys what he calls "steady female accompaniment."

Baker's oboe is usually the first thing Detroit Symphony audiences hear immediately before a concert begins, since he sounds the "A" to which the rest of the orchestra tunes up. At standard pitch, that "A" vibrates 440 times per second.

"Dorati had us tune to A-441 because he thought it would be more comfortable for the strings," Baker said. (The difference between the standard 440 vibrations and 441 vibrations is one of brightness rather than pitch.) "You have to be ready for anything. With professional musicians, though, tuning should be a mere formality. "

Baker does not have perfect pitch (the ability to name a specific pitch simply by hearing it). He said he usually tunes his oboe at home to a tuning machine before he leaves for a concert.

As first oboist, Baker leads the rest of the oboe section, and according to oboist John Snow, who has played in the section since 1979, he is an admirable section leader.

"He's terrific, " Snow said. "There's an old story that principal players are hard to get along with and very demanding. He's not that way at all. He treats me as an equal, and that's unusual. I really appreciate that. "

Baker's section also includes the English horn, whose current player, Treva Womble, was his wife for six years while both were members of the Dallas Symphony. Womble, now married to Robert Williams, the orchestra's first bassoonist, came to the Detroit orchestra several years after Baker did, and as first oboist he was on the committee that auditioned her. He said it was not easy to do.

"When Treva showed up to audition here, I had mixed emotions," Baker said. "Since I run the section, the others on the audition committee wanted me to say who played best. I thought she did, but I didn't want to say anything because if she got it everybody would say I had gotten her in, and if she didn't everybody would say I kept her out.

"Finally I had to say that I thought she played best, because she did."

Baker said he has a good relationship with Womble.

His off hours are filled with practice, working crossword puzzles, giving private lessons (he currently has two high school students and is regularly sought out by oboe students at area colleges who are gearing up for professional auditions) and after-concert wind-down sessions with colleagues at downtown watering spots.

It was while he was at such a session recently that the $2,500 oboe he purchased last summer was stolen, along with its leather case and nine reeds. Baker contacted the FBI, as well as local pawn shops, but the oboe has not yet shown up. He is offering a reward. Meanwhile, he is using John Snow's spare oboe to continue to work his musical magic.

That magic draws praise from everyone who hears it, including two current residents of the orchestra's podium.

"I have great respect for Mr. Baker," said Antal Dorati, the orchestra's conductor laureate, who worked with Baker during his fouryear tenure as music director and continues to do so in his new position. "He is a very fine artist. He accomplishes everything he sets out to do. He played many solos with me and he has also performed my own music beautifully. He is really a great asset to the orchestra."

"I appreciate Mr. Baker very much," agreed Gunther Herbig, the orchestra's current music director. "He is truly an experienced musician and a fine instrumentalist. "

Over the years Baker has appeared as soloist with the orchestra 25 different times, and he often appears in recitals with area chamber groups. While his life includes other activities, it is clear that playing the oboe gives him a sense of value and purpose.

,,It's a very fine job, " he says simply. " I feel lucky to have a job of this caliber at all. Very few of us get to do this, and I'm very thrilled to have it."

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