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 world’s 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 Campbell's classic hero saga—withdrawal, initiation, and enlightened return. 

In the book I acknowledge two powerful childhood sources of motivation—1) my older brother’s near-deafness, and 2) my first cousin’s 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 WINDED's dramatic climax is reached when I audition for the coveted first oboe chair of the New York Philharmonic!"

Joseph L. Robinson