John Mack, 78, Renowned Oboist Taught at Juilliard

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John Mack, who died Sunday at 78, was an oboe teacher at the Juilliard School who retired as principal oboist for the Cleveland Orchestra in 2001 after 36 years in the job.

Considered by many to be the outstanding oboist of his generation, his teachers were the finest of the previous generation, including Harold Gomberg at Juilliard and the French master with whom he studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and assisted at the Casals Festival in Prades, France, Marcel Tabuteau.

In addition to years of touring and performing with the orchestra, Mack leaves a legacy of recordings, as well as outstanding students, including the principal oboists of the Cleveland Orchestra, Boston Symphony, and Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.

In 1976, Mack founded the John Mack Oboe Camp in North Carolina, a rural retreat where accomplished oboists of all ages gather each summer to play music, swap reed-carving tips, and glory in tales of oboists past. Mack was especially fond of recalling Tabuteau, who was prone to uttering koan-like advice, as in,”Put the notes on the wind.” Mack tended toward more direct formulations, as in “The Tchaikovsky 4 solo is like rocking the baby to sleep, only the baby’s dead.”

Mack grew up in Somerville, N.J.,the son of an amateur oboist who played with the Plainfield Symphony. Mack took up the oboe in the sixth grade, and attended Juilliard and Curtis. His first job was with the Saddlers Wells Ballet orchestra, in 1952. For 11 years he was first oboist of the New Orleans Symphony, during which time he auditioned several times for the conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell, who finally hired Mack in 1965.

Working under the exacting Szell could be exasperating to some, but Mack loved telling his summer campers about a time he was rehearsing Haydn’s “Miracle” Symphony. Hearing something he didn’t like, Szell stopped the rehearsal, turned to Mack.

“No, John,” the conductor said, “we’re not going to use the house sauce on this one.”

Another time, Szell called Mack into his office, an event which could portend a tongue lashing for some musical sin. But in this case, the conductor grilled Mack on his golf handicap, having heard that the oboist shot a round of 71 the day before.

Mack was also an unusually talented reed carver — although most American oboists carve their own reeds, talent for the craft is independent of virtuosity on the instrument. He liked to regale listeners with tales of his favorite reeds — one that had “everything you could possibly need but a fastball,” another,”The Great Reed of 1978,” which he said made him feel “the way a woman must feel when she slips on a $35,000 sable coat. Its glories lasted about six days.”

Mack was chairman of the oboe department at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and sat on the Cleveland Orchestra’s board of trustees.

“My fondest wish is that Mozart should be alive and well 400 years from now,” he told the Cleveland Plain Dealer, when he retired due to failing eyesight. “The passing on of knowledge is the only thing I can do anything about.”

John Wilfred Mack
Born in 1927 in Somerville, N.J.; died July 23 of brain cancer at a Cleveland hospital; survived by his wife, Anne; sons David and John Richard; four grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.


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