Greetings to all, especially to you new members who may be receiving your first issue of The Double Reed. We welcome you.
First of all, I note, as I hope you will, the large number of Contributing members, who feel that IDRS is worth more to them than just the regular amount of our dues. It is most gratifying.
Werner Schulze in Vienna, who is coordinating the Graz, Austria convention, August 11-15, has already organized what undoubtedly is the most distinguished and varied program of performers and speakers of double reeds ever assembled. To mention only a few: Gunther Joppig (Germany), Milan Turkovic (Vienna), Otto Oremszegi (Budapest), Wm. Waterhouse (London), Woodwind Quintet from Estonia, Paul McCandless (NYC), John Mack (Cleveland), and Sol Schoenbach (Philadelphia). Players from Russia and Czechoslovakia have been invited.
Schulze, member and manager at the Austrian Quintet, has a Ph.D. from the University of Vienna, is a successful composer, has published several books, is music editor for Doblinger and Schott, and holds numerous awards for his compositions and his scholarship.
Graz, Austria's second largest city, is described to me as one of Europe's most beautiful and interesting cities and is not often visited by tourists since it is not the "regular" path. Hotels are very reasonable in price, close to our activities and the food is good. The orchestra of AIMS (American Institute of Musical Studies) will be assisting soloists on some of the concerts.
If you have not yet made your reservations) please do so at once. For the tour of Austria, Switzerland and Venice August 1-11 contact Gateway Travel Service, One Leader Building, Cleveland, OH 44114, (216) 696-4400. If you can only attend the convention and wish to make your own travel arrangements, for hotel and convention reservations contact our Librarian, James Prodan, School of Music, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC 27419, (919) 379-5889.
Our 1985 convention will be in August at the University of Colorado in Boulder with Robert Olson and the College of Music as our hosts.
We are still open for offers for the 1986 meeting. While we would prefer to meet in the eastern USA we will consider offers from other schools. I'll be delighted to send you guidelines for hosting a convention and names of previous hosts who can give advice and help.
Lastly, I think we would all like to see more profiles and biographies of notable bassoonists and oboists of the recent past. One fears that eventually some artists will only be names, and no information about them will be available. May I suggest that you read George Conrey's excellent account of the career of Alfred Barthel in the recent issue of The Double Reed and please supply our editors with a similar biography and pictures of your teachers or an artist whom you can research and biograph for those who may read in some time to come.
I hope to see many of you in Graz, but in any case, remember that reed players with all of our problems have one great advantage over flute and brass players. We have always the hope that the next reed will be good, and that cane will get better.