Long Winded: An Oboist's Incredible Journey to the New York Philharmonic

You have led a storied life and I am glad you are telling it now in print. Bill Moyers I have conducted the worlds greatest orchestras for almost sixty years and can say that oboist Joseph Robinson is one of the finest musicians I ever met. His natural musicality always inspired me whether he was interpreting a Mozart Concerto a Strauss tone poem or one of the Brahms symphonies. Zubin Mehta LONG WINDED reveals in the story of my own musical pilgrimage the three principal elements of Joseph Campbells classic hero saga--withdrawal initiation and enlightened return. In the book I acknowledge two powerful childhood sources of motivation--1) my older brothers near-deafness and 2) my first cousins imprisonment for seventeen years in an iron lung because of polio; and I describe the unbelievable instrumental training I received in a North Carolina public high school band. Much of my book deals with the two great quests of young adulthood--i.e. choosing a vocation and finding a mate. Along the way I struggle to overcome racial ethnic and economic biases as well as homophobia--all part of growing up in the Jim Crow South. I describe riding the wave of the so-called Culture Boom in America as well as another force that impelled me named John Mack! And if Marcel Tabuteau was my Yoda being an English major was my magic light saber. LONG WINDEDs dramatic climax is reached when I audition for the coveted first oboe chair of the New York Philharmonic! Joseph L. Robinson