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The Great Vibrato Debate

Friday, August 20th, 2010

Ever since musicians started caring about how we play music from different eras (taking a different stylistic approach to Bach, for example, than we use for Mahler,) there’s been a spirited debate about the use of vibrato in orchestral string sections. History tells us that players in the baroque era, for instance, used almost no vibrato at all, so today’s baroque specialists do the same, usually on authentic baroque instruments, which differ slightly from modern violins, violas, cellos and basses. But in recent decades, it’s also become standard for all musicians to pay at least some amount of attention to how we choose to apply vibrato to, say, Mozart. No professional working today would think of approaching a Mozart symphony with the big, lush, wide vibration we consider essential in music by Brahms or Wagner.

On the whole, this is unquestionably a good thing, and it’s actually quite jarring to listen today to some of the recordings of Mozart or Bach by orchestras of the early 20th century, before historically informed performance became a thing. (Imagine a herd of elephants playing Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, and you’ll have the basic idea.) But there are those on the fringes of the historical music debate who believe that we shouldn’t be using vibrato in late romantic works either, an idea that would strike most orchestra players as laughable. We think of the romantic string sound as being created largely by big, constant vibrato, but was it? Sir Roger Norrington, an eminent British conductor who led us in the Brahms German Requiem a few years back, is so convinced that we’re playing music of that era wrong that he insisted that we not vibrate a single note of the Brahms. I don’t pretend to know whether he’s right or wrong (so many of our personal musical preferences are set in stone simply because we tend to prefer the way we first heard a piece of music,) but it was definitely a very different, somewhat eerie sound – 60 string players going full bore, laying into a big romantic score without a hint of vibrato.

Anyway, I bring this up because pianist Stephen Hough was blogging about it earlier this week, and made several excellent points about why the anti-vibrato forces might be technically correct but spiritually wrong. If this is the kind of debate you enjoy, Hough’s piece is well worth a read…

Sir Roger with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony. Revelation or lacking something crucial?

Posted in orchestra culture, pointless arguments | 2 Comments »

You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby

Sunday, July 11th, 2010

Via my good friend Kate Holzemer (and the several hundred other musicians who seem to be passing this around on Facebook) I’m pleased to link you to this classic Time Magazine article from 1966 on the fab new trend of, well, um…

…oh, just read it:

Lady musicians are having a heyday. The Cleveland Orchestra now has 11, the San Francisco 17, the Houston 25 and the American Symphony 44. Trombonist Betty Glover, 43, adds class to the brass of the Cincinnati Symphony; Helen Taylor, 24, plays a mean English horn for the Houston Symphony. The rare bird in the Los Angeles aviary is Barbara Winters, 28, who, to produce the needed penetrating sounds from her oboe, must pit her trim 120 lbs. against male fellow oboists who average a burly-chested 200 Ibs. To maintain the exceptional breath control necessary to control her contrary instrument, Winters swims and works out daily at a gym. “It leaves me almost no time for social life,” she says. “I’d hate to think what I would do if I were married.”

Oh, good lord. My parents always told me that the ’60s were all about equality and progressive thinking. Guess not…

Orin O’Brien, 31, the newest member of the New York Philharmonic, scurried into Philharmonic Hall one rainy night last week and, ignoring the musicians’ locker room, got dressed in a washroom… Miss O’Brien, who is as curvy as the double bass she plays, does not mind. On tour, the men make up for it by falling all over themselves to carry her bags, and save her a seat on the bus.

As curvy as the bass she…? Wow. I’ll have to try that one out on our new female bass player and see what she thinks of the compliment. Though I think I’ll be sure to try it at something slightly greater than arm’s length. (Ms. O’Brien is still plying her trade with the NY Phil, by the way.)

As casually offensive as the author’s language seems today, the really bad stuff is all from male musicians who clearly think they’re being reasonable and acting in the best interests of working women.

Lady-Killer Zubin Mehta, 30, who appreciates a well-turned ankle as much as a well-played musical phrase, has different reasons. He has enforced a limit of 16 women in his Los Angeles Philharmonic, because “a woman’s life in the orchestra is not as long as a man’s; she is just not as good at 60 as a man is at 60…” Most musicians agree that women are all right in their place—just as long as that place is not the first desk, a position that gives them authority over the other players in their section. When that happens, egos get bruised… The majority of conductors avoid such problems by refusing to promote women to the first desk.

Ugly, ugly, ugly. And once again, this was in 1966, not 1926! No one’s ever accused symphony orchestras of being on the cutting edge of anything, but I’ll admit, this article took me aback. I was born a decade after it was written, and I’ve literally never met a musician who admitted to believing that women were anything but the absolute equal of men on the concert stage. (I have met more than a few who still seemed to think that making unsolicited passes at the attractive ones was somehow okay, but that’s a different issue. There are creeps in every line of work.)

For the record, the first female musician appointed to the Minnesota Orchestra (nee Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra) was Australian violinist Jenny Cullen, hired by the MSO’s second music director, Henri Verbrugghen, in 1923. And I’m sure that the men of the MSO reacted to the hire in a completely calm and professional manner…

…or not.

She got the job only because she was having an affair with the boss. At least, that’s what the men said — even though the boss was fond of saying she looked like “a shy vegetable.” They alleged that [Cullen] had violated immigration laws and union rules… They threatened to shut down the season.

Sigh. Shoulda seen that coming, I guess. I can, at least, report firsthand that no such sexist garbage attended the hiring of our Ms. Hicks as the orchestra’s first female staff conductor several years back. In fact, if memory serves, her selection from an impressive crop of finalists (all the rest of them male) took about ten seconds of deliberation for those of us on her audition committee. (Yes, I was on Sarah’s audition committee. Funny how life works.)

The Time article makes note of the Boston Symphony’s innovative use of screens to hide the gender of auditioning candidates from those passing judgment. It was, of course, exactly those screens that eventually allowed women to become the nearly equal (by numbers) force that they are in today’s music world. By the looks of things, they’ll outnumber us Y-chromosomers on the concert stage within a generation or two. And when they do, well… I can only hope they’ll treat us a heck of a lot more kindly than we’ve treated them over the years.

Posted in orchestra culture, women in music | 3 Comments »

Great expectations

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

I’ve written about the response to Dudamel’s first national tour with the LA Philharmonic, and noted the pitfalls of being a highly-hyped young conductor. Now the Philadelphia Orchestra has named as their new music director a young conductor who, along with Dudamel, is touted as a leader of his generation, Yannick Nezét-Séguin.

Much that’s been written about this appointment, most referencing the expected topics: his youth, his vibrant podium presence, and the possibly galvanizing effect a youthful, charismatic music director could have on an organization fraught with financial woes and (through an extended music director search) a lack of artistic leadership.

I’ve not seen Nezét-Séguin live, but I’ve heard from my Philly Orchestra friends that he’s generally well-respected by the band, and from people in the know that he’s a major emerging talent. Both of which carry cautionary statements, of course: first and foremost, because no orchestra is entirely satisfied with its artistic leadership, simply because there are too many perspectives about musicianship and personal rapport among the 90+ members of a symphony for a unified opinion to exist. As mentioned in a Philly Inquirer article an anonymous Philly Orchestra musician commented that they had stopped hoping for an overwhelming mandate to gather around a particular conductor “because of the danger of creating an ideal so perfect that no one would ever meet it.”

Second is the emerging talent part: 35 is still awfully young in conductor-years (even the most fortunate among us didn’t get to stand in front of an orchestra until our late teens, in stark contrast to the average violinist, who’s been playing their instrument since 5 or 6), and there’s always the concern that there will be a certain amount of repertoire-learning (and general music director job-learning) in the glare of an international spotlight. That being said, some artists grow gracefully, spotlight or not. Time will tell, and I hope it works out for the fabulous Philadelphians.

What irks me a little is the armchair prognosticating about how the arrival of a youthful, energetic music director will do much to revive a flagging organization; conductor as savior. No doubt, in the Philly Orchestra’s situation – artistic leadership at the helm after an extended period sans music director – this might be partially true. But to me it has the chime of an unreasonable expectation, in the end. It’s much like the Dudamel hype – this young man will change the classical music world! – hanging hopes on an individual to rejuvenate a field which needs an entire health-regime makeover, not just a touch of Botox.

I know newspapers are prone to hyperbole, but it always seems unfair to have such great expectations. Why can’t we just say that a new conductor may bring new ideas and new repertoire to a venerable old institution, without all the game-changing talk?

Posted in conductors and conducting, orchestra culture, orchestras not named minnesota, philosophical musings, the business of music | 4 Comments »

Context vs. Purity

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

First of all, apologies for the sparse posting lately. Sarah and I both have a ton of work on our plates at the moment, and for me, that won’t be changing for at least another three weeks. So if there’s less new content around these parts than you’re used to, hang in there – we’ll be back at full strength by the end of the month, I promise…

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This past weekend, I was asked by our development staff to attend a pre-concert dinner the orchestra was throwing for some of our most generous and longstanding donors. I was happy to do it – stereotypes about rich arts philanthropists to the contrary, these are wonderful folks, not just generous but friendly to a fault, big-hearted, and utterly passionate about music. (Also – free dinner at Porter & Frye? I don’t know many musicians who would turn that down.)

The routine at these dinners tends to be pretty constant – a half-hour for cocktails (not for me, obviously, since I’m about to play a concert) and mingling, then a leisurely sit-down meal with one orchestra musician assigned to each table. As the dinner begins, a board member welcomes the crowd, then introduces someone from the orchestra who speaks briefly about the music on the program we’re all getting ready to attend. I filled the speaker’s role last fall, and this time around, it was our talented young assistant conductor, Courtney Lewis, who was tasked with demystifying a marimba concerto and Mahler’s most confounding symphony.

Courtney did a great job, assuring the diners that the marimba concerto was quite accessible and giving them a few things to listen for before launching into a very well-constructed narrative about Mahler’s 7th. His talk was a blend of established historical fact (things Mahler actually said about the piece) and Courtney’s own thoughts on, for instance, why the fifth and final movement of the piece sounds so completely different from anything else in the symphony. Mahler can be an intimidating presence for even the most experienced listeners, and Courtney’s disarming style probably went a long way towards alleviating the pre-concert stress of anyone in the room who had glanced at the program and been alarmed at seeing “90 min.” listed next to a single piece of music.

Still, not everyone was appreciative of the context Courtney was providing. A very nice woman sitting next to me at our table kept sighing softly whenever he attempted to assign a specific image or event to some part of the music, and eventually said to me under her breath, “Oh, well, he’s just making all this up!” I assured her that he wasn’t, and she revised her opinion: “Maybe not, but you just don’t need all this… stuff in order to listen to the piece!”

And there it was – the great unspoken clash of concert music in the 21st century. Populism vs. elitism. Words vs. music. Context vs. purity. Call it what you will – this is the seemingly unbridgable gap between those who believe that music gets better the more you know about it, and those who believe that music should be a purely aural experience, undisturbed by explanations or images. Those in the first group are the type who roll their eyes at the various conceits of the concert hall, who constantly question why we persist in following silly traditions simply because that’s how “they” did it 100 years ago, and who tend to gravitate to offbeat concert series like Inside the Classics or casual performances at non-traditional venues. The latter group revere the tradition and pomp of the grand concert experience, and sneer at the idea that some attention-challenged people seem to need to be led by the arm through a tour of the music before just hushing up and listening to it.

In music, as in politics, most people fall somewhere in between those two extreme positions. I’ve met people who are big fans of what Sarah and I do in our ItC shows, but are also quick to say that they certainly wouldn’t want every concert to be like ours. I’ve also heard from folks who regularly attend the academic-style pre-concert lectures offered at nearly all our subscription concerts, but who can’t stand the deliberately offbeat narratives Sarah and I construct for ItC. So most of us are centrists at heart, neither dogmatic enough to be offended whenever someone dares speak from the stage, nor free-spirited enough to believe that every piece of music should have a story told in words and pictures as well as notes and rhythms.

But just as most of us who call ourselves political independents actually wind up voting for one party over the other more often than not, it’s likely that your musical sympathies lie closer to one side or the other in the Context vs. Purity debate. And just as in politics, it’s not really about right and wrong (or right and left) as much as it’s about a clash of two competing (and compelling) philosophies. The divide is partly generational, partly educational, and yes, partly political.

I’m not naive enough to imagine a world in which these two philosophies and their adherents somehow wind up aligned in perfect agreement over the Right Way to listen to music, and I’m also not enough of a culture warrior to think it’s vitally important for one side or the other to win the argument. (There’s nothing I find more wearying than the commentators on both sides of this debate who are forever insisting, on the flimsiest of evidence, that All Of Concert Music will cease to exist within a generation unless their side wins the war immediately.) But I am endlessly fascinated by the different ideas people have about the importance (or lack thereof) of placing music in a larger context. I’d love to see a study on how such viewpoints dovetail with views on, say, education, or tax policy, or climate change. Not because I think I know what the correlations would be, but because I strongly suspect that I don’t.

Anyway, your thoughts on this simmering feud are most welcome – how much context can you take before you reach overload stage? What composers or pieces do you find you need the most “preparation” for? And if you’ve been listening to music your whole life, how do you think your perception of things differs from someone who’s interested in discovering “your” music as an adult? Discuss all this and more in the comments…

Posted in elitism, music and politics, orchestra culture, philosophical musings | 2 Comments »

Heh. Heh heh. (ouch.) Heh.

Saturday, April 3rd, 2010

Normally, I’m not a big fan of April Fool’s stories in the press. They’re rarely funny, usually blindingly obvious, and generally seem to be taking needed space away from the important journalistic business of determining whether the Devil’s instrument on Earth has chosen to take the form of Barack Obama or Fox News.

Leave it to The New Yorker’s Alex Ross to buck the trend. His April Fool’s blog post, which took the form of a 2010-11 season announcement for a nonexistent Manhattan-based orchestra, is darkly hilarious, and like all great satire, the more you know about the larger unpleasant truths of the industry it parodies, the funnier it gets…

“While other orchestras retread the tired old classics, we at the [Lower Midtown Orchestra] are elated to announce a raft of world premières. The acclaimed American master John Adams is our Composer-in-Residence; in October he will be on hand to conduct a new large-scale orchestral work with the intriguing title “Sorry Guys, Much Too Busy This Season, Best of Luck .”

And don’t you hate it when conductors insist on trying to do innovative things with your favorite symphonies when you just want the performance to sound like the recording you’ve owned since 1976? Have no fear, Ross has you covered:

“Our Beethoven Cycle will consist of Beethoven’s best-loved piece, the Symphony No. 5, “Duh-duh-duh DUUUHHH,” being played over and over and over and over again. In a series of five concerts, the Fifth will be heard no fewer than twenty times, with no variation whatsoever in the particulars of the interpretation. To ensure a total lack of spontaneity, the podium at ConAgra Jiffy Pop™ [Concert Hall] will be occupied by a TV set playing a video of Lorin Maazel. After each performance, listeners are invited to a panel discussion at McGrimm’s bar, where members of the Orchestra will reflect on the experience while drinking themselves into oblivion.”

Posted in fun, marketing, orchestra culture | Comments Off

Musical Chairs

Friday, February 12th, 2010

This week, we’re playing a richly varied program of music by Sibelius, Grieg, and Mozart – meat and potatoes repertoire – and I’m sitting at the back of the section with Sifei Cheng, who was my very first stand partner when I joined the Minnesota Orchestra. And for some reason, that’s got me thinking about the benefits and drawbacks of the way we section string players drift around the stage from week to week.

Back when I first arrived in Minneapolis, in February 2000 (yup, my 10th anniversary with the orchestra comes up next Monday!), every member of the string section had a designated chair where we sat every day, every rehearsal, every concert, unless someone ahead of us was absent for some reason. Technically, all “non-titled” section players were equals, but there was no chance to move closer to the front of the section until someone ahead of you left the orchestra. In some sections, a vacancy would be filled by moving all the existing players up to fill in the gap, then placing the newest member at the back, but in other sections, any existing player wishing to move up would have to actually re-audition. Some members of our violin section actually auditioned 5 or more times over the course of their careers, just to get a better, but still non-titled, chair!

My chair was on the inside of the fourth desk of violas, with Sifei just to my left. It’s not a bad chair, actually, despite being nearer the back of the stage than the front. You can usually see both the conductor and the principal viola pretty clearly; you’re surrounded by other violists; and on a good day, you can even see the concertmaster, which is a bonus for any string player.

Also, as stand partners go, it probably doesn’t get any better than Sifei. (His name is pronounced SEE-fee, by the way – I’ve heard some amazing butchery of that name over the years.) He’s one of the calmest and friendliest people I’ve ever met, he plays absolutely effortlessly, and almost nothing fazes him. When you’re a 23-year-old kid less than two years removed from college and jumping into the first really big job of your professional life, that’s exactly the kind of player you want next to you. (It also didn’t hurt that we’re both obsessive sports fans. You’ve gotta have something to talk about when the guest conductor’s horrible and the music is easy.)

I’d been in the orchestra for a little over three years when everything changed, and we voted to scrap our fixed-chair tradition for a mildly complicated system of revolving seating for section players. It was strictly voluntary for existing members of the orchestra (so as to protect those players who really had spent years painstakingly working their way up through the ranks,) but mandatory for anyone joining up after the system was enacted. The rationale for revolving is simple: sitting up front is better in almost every way. You can hear more accurately, see more clearly, and generally feel far more important to the ensemble blend than you do sitting thirty feet back on last desk.

Then, there’s the undeniable fact that not everyone in a fixed seating system gets along as well as Sifei and I did. In my first professional orchestra, the old-timers loved to tell the story of the two bass players who sat together for decades without speaking, each with a single earplug stuffed into the ear that was turned towards the other. So the chance to switch seats every couple of weeks can be a lifesaver.

On the other hand, weeks like this one remind me of just how comfortable I used to feel with Sifei always on my left. It wasn’t just that he was (and is) a monster player; it’s that the permanence of a single stand partner allows you to build chemistry over time, the same way that members of a string quartet do. When you know instinctively how the person you’re sitting with reacts to any musical situation, there’s a comfort level, or at least a heightened awareness, that comes over your playing. Basically, it feels more like a partnership, at least when things are going well.

So while I don’t quite miss the days when my career as a violist began and ended at “fourth stand inside,” I feel lucky that I got a chance to try out both systems. It’s still better at the front, but it’s nice having a slightly deeper musical partnership that you get to revisit every now and then. Best of both worlds, if you ask me…

Posted in inside the orchestra, orchestra culture | Comments Off

Double Standard

Sunday, October 25th, 2009

One of my favorite young composers, Nico Muhly, was writing last week about the marked differences between working with instrumentalists and singers (specifically, opera singers,) and his take made me think about the seemingly widening gulf between the concert hall and the opera house.

Muhly’s post was mainly about rhythmic accuracy, or the lack of it, which he experiences very directly as a composer working both with orchestral-type musicians, who prize rhythm above nearly everything else, and rely on accurate counting to hold the ensemble together, and opera companies, where singers (who control the ensemble in the end) focus more on the overall shape of musical phrases than on the specific rhythms that have been written for them.

But orchestras and opera companies have been growing apart in less musically specific ways, too. I wrote a bit about this a couple of weeks back, after the Met’s new production of Tosca was roundly panned by critics and audience alike. What I was thinking (but didn’t write) at the time was that I really am in awe of the ability of major opera companies to turn literally everything that happens to them, good and bad, into a buzz-generating event that somehow makes opera yet more popular at the end of the day. Those downright lousy reviews of Tosca might have led a few people to stay away from the production, but I’d be willing to bet good money that the larger impact was to once again place the Met squarely in the center of New York’s cultural life as the Most Important Classical Music Institution In The Greatest City In All The World.

To extend this idea, let’s think about those wildly popular high-definition simulcasts the Met’s been doing at movie theaters around the world for the last couple of years. From a PR perspective, this has been a dramatic and hugely successful extension of the company’s brand – the movie theater shows, which are priced at more than double the rate for a normal movie ticket – sell out almost everywhere, and in some cities, you have to get your tickets days in advance of the Saturday afternoon showings.

But from a fiscal perspective, it’s been written that the Met is actually losing untold millions on these simulcasts, and doesn’t really have a plan for making them financially sustainable in the future. Now, imagine that this were a symphony orchestra doing this – beaming their concerts all over creation and charging $25 a head for people packed into a theater in Las Vegas or Paris to watch us play. Then imagine that the New York Times found out that said orchestra was going to run a multi-million dollar deficit this season because of the cost of production. Can you imagine what the reaction would be?

I can. The orchestra would be roundly blasted by everyone from critics to consultants to its own board members for behaving as if money grows on trees, the simulcasts would most certainly be canceled immediately, a feeble plea for funding to save them would go out to the usual corporations and foundations, and in all likelihood, would fall on deaf ears because there’s a massive recession going on, donchaknow. And I can’t really say that this wouldn’t be a defensible reaction from all involved.

But because we’re talking about the opera world, none of this seems to happen. Opera (at least grand opera presented by large companies) seems to get a near-total pass from the folks who are constantly harping on orchestras for being clueless, elitist organizations who pay their musicians and conductors too much and can’t seem to make a budget sheet balance. Maybe it’s that our vision of opera is so bound up with images of opulence and wretched excess that it somehow seems okay for opera companies to shoot for the stars even when it’s dangerous from a bottom-line perspective.

I could go on for quite a while about the orchestra vs. opera double standard. (Just for instance, why is that when an opera company deigns to commission a new opera to squeeze in between their 187th and 188th production of Rossini, it’s talked about breathlessly in the press for months, but orchestras which commission multiple new works every season are still regularly lambasted by composers and critics for a perceived lack of commitment to new music? Why was it okay for the musicians of a certain high-profile opera orchestra to flatly refuse this summer to redo their contract to save the organization some money in the worst fiscal crisis America’s seen in 70 years, but orchestras around the country which did reopen their contracts and take substantial pay and benefit cuts are still portrayed as greedy and short-sighted for deigning to draw a salary at all?) And I’ll admit that a lot of this comes down to basic jealousy on my part – I often think that it must be nice to work in a corner of the classical music world that isn’t constantly being told how useless and stuffy and culturally irrelevant it is.

But my larger frustration is that I just don’t see a way out of the current paradigm. Orchestras are treading water furiously right now just to stay afloat, and no one sees that changing for the better anytime soon. And if the public perception is that opera companies are supposed to spend gobs of money and orchestras are supposed to be frugal, well, spending a lot of money on some splashy new project probably isn’t going to change anyone’s mind.

Posted in opera, orchestra culture, state of the art | 3 Comments »

Sick Daze

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

I should be backstage at Orchestra Hall right now, warming up for the concert that begins in 24 minutes. I was there this morning for the last rehearsal of the week, and even stuck around afterward for a chamber music rehearsal. Now, I’m slumped on my couch, sipping jasmine tea, watching a hockey game and feeling alternately cold, shaky, and generally lame. The thermometer says the fever that set in a few hours back is fairly mild, and when I called our personnel manager to let her know that I’d be staying away tonight, I also guaranteed that I’d be back tomorrow. With any luck, I’ll be right.

I hate – hate – calling in sick to work. I hate it more than I hate actually being sick, which I also hate. In fact, when whatever this is that’s currently attacking me (and you may keep your swine flu jokes to yourself, thank you very much!) was gathering steam last week, I went to work on a couple of days that I probably shouldn’t have, just because I couldn’t stomach the idea of wussing out and staying home. Part of it is that my job really is the most important thing in my life, and missing a day when my hands and arms still technically work makes me feel like I’m not pulling my weight.

Another part is that there are some people in my orchestra with real and serious medical issues that make my little cold seem like a hangnail. In particular, one of our violists suffers from an incredibly painful joint disease that sometimes leaves him doubled over with his eyes screwed shut or flat on his back in the locker room – and even on his bad days, which are frequent, he makes a superhuman effort to show up and at least try to get through the day. With colleagues like that around, the idea of missing a service for any reason just makes me feel, well, lame.

Of course, the flip side of that coin is that, unlike most people, I work literally shoulder to shoulder with my officemates, and no one likes the idiot who straggles into work on death’s door only to pass his Martian Death Flu on to everyone else in the building. You think bugs spread quickly in your kid’s elementary school? You should see how fast a virus can sweep through an orchestra. Not only are we breathing down each others’ necks in a figurative sense, we’re doing it literally as well. Everyone in an orchestra is more or less constantly breathing hard, spitting, sweating, and generally being at least vaguely unsanitary in the act of playing our instruments. So if I had shown up for tonight’s concert, I’m guessing I would not have been a popular guy.

So it’s tea and hockey for me, and a very early bedtime as well, in the hope that I’ll be good as new tomorrow morning. Which is sort of important, because I’ve got four Kinder Konzerts to play starting at 9:30am on Friday, and because I’m the only violist in the group, and the only one who’s rehearsed the repertoire, there’s no one I can call to sit in for me. And yes, I promise to stay far, far, away from all of the kids…

Posted in music and health, orchestra culture | 5 Comments »

Not too cool to care

Monday, June 1st, 2009

One of the few pleasures of travel these days is that the endless flight delays at least afford me the luxury of catching up on my reading. At the top of the stack this afternoon is the most current edition of Harvard Magazine (insert Ivy League joke here), which includes an article on John Adams’ recent autobiography, Hallelujah Junction (which will soon be at the top of my reading stack!).

Although certainly one of the most respected and recognized composers of his generation, Adams has often taken a critical bashing. A minimalist aesthetic isn’t for everyone, I know (though it would be unfair to say that Adams is simply a minimalist – it’s merely a jumping-off point for him); but it’s hard to deny that, beneath the surface gloss, there is a distinct and direct musical voice at work.

Adams frequently cites his early musical influences – Rodgers and Hammerstein, Joni Mitchell, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Otis Redding, Janis Joplin – influences not just from a stylistic standpoint but from a pedagogic one as well: “I made more progress in my command of harmonic practice by reproducing these pop songs [by the Doors, the Beach Boys, and others] from memory at the piano than I ever did by my forced marches through the figured bass treatises.”

But, as Adams himself says, “I am not a vernacular composer”; rather, he’s a classical composer with multiple points of reference. To him this is an important distinction, as he finds that much contemporary classical music is “complex and self-referential. For me, though, inspiration comes from trying to connect with an audience. Music is fundamentally the art of feeling.”

Which, for those espousing a more European/avante garde aesthetic, might be a radical statement. Emotion in music should be an obvious given, but it’s a complex premise for both composers and performers. From a composer’s perspective, the question might be, should one simply try to express a personal feeling? Or is the duty of a creative artist to tap into a more universal zeitgeist? How does the expression of a personal emotion translate when put into a performers hands? From the performers viewpoint, does one’s expression of the music need be tied to the (assumed) original emotional intent of the composer? Or does one inject one’s own personal sentiment? And how does that all translate to the listener – the emotional intent of a composer filtered through the prism of meticulously organized (and notated) sound and interpreted by yet a separate entity?

In times of emotional crisis, the old adage has it that it’s not as important to know exactly what to do as it is to simply care, and that maxim holds up well in this exchange as well – or, as Harvard Magazine puts it:

One spring night in 1976, Adams was driving his Karmann Ghia convertible through the Sierra foothills and listening to “Dawn” and “Siegfried’s Rhine Journey” from Götterdämmerung. “I said out loud, almost without thinking, ‘He cares.’” It was a matter of the sensual and emotional power of harmonic movement; for Adams, it was also a matter of sincerity.

“Caring”, on the surface of it, seems so wide-ranging and ambiguous, particularly from a performer’s perspective. Music-making is certainly a visceral experience, and there are those who throw themselves into it with extreme physicality – a way of showing that one “cares”. Yet for some musicians, this very visible expression of caring smacks of insincere showmanship. Grandstanding is a disservice to the actual music; by the same token, many concertgoers find it engaging from a purely visual standpoint, which then perhaps makes them “care” more about the performance. But is this really the kind of “caring” we want to encourage?

Some artists, however, while equally physically demonstrative, are not so to the detriment of the music; it’s hard to qualify what makes the difference, but for me it goes back to that matter of sincerity. I’ve long admired Yo-Yo Ma for his utter involvement when he plays – there’s something both selfless and intensely personal at the same time. And for me, he’s one of those rare artists who is clearly engaged not just with the music but with everyone else on stage, and with the audience as well. It’s a kind of total immersion in the experience of music that results from sincerely caring.

A sense of caring applies not just to individual artists, but to ensembles as well. I had a recent guest conducting experience where an oboist was playing, during a concert, with legs crossed (a big no-no – it’s kind of an “I couldn’t care less” stance). Needless to say, the playing wasn’t so engaging.

The quality that I love most about my home band, the Minnesota Orchestra, is that it collectively throws itself into every performance, be it the first concert in a subscription run or the last concert in an 6-Young-Peoples-Concerts week. The level of commitment and engagement is always inspiring; it’s absolutely tangible to the listener, and it’s a constant reminder to me that when we care about what we do onstage, the audience mirrors the sentiment right back to us. And that wonderful, wordless communication is why we all chose a life in music.

Posted in composers, orchestra culture, philosophical musings | 3 Comments »

The Uncertainty Principal

Monday, April 6th, 2009

It goes without saying that times are hard in the orchestra business, although there are modest signs that we may have gotten through the worst of it in a larger sense. (Then again, I’m just an eternal optimist…).

What makes it more difficult is the built-in lag time for any large non-profit organizations; the current season is largely based on funding that was either pledged or collected last season, before the bottom dropped out of the markets last fall. The market collapse, which has a detrimental affect both on corporate and individual donations (as well as endowments), will be felt much more acutely next season (‘09-’10), when, perhaps (again, eternal optimist speaking), the economy might be staggering back onto its feet.

It all creates a tremendous amount of uncertainty – which then got me thinking about volatility and change versus normalcy and routine on a more personal level in the orchestral field.

An orchestral musician’s life is predicated on a high amount of certainty; rehearsal and concert schedules are largely set by the beginning of the season (and if there are additions or alterations, there are rigid requirements about lead-time before the proposed changes), most repertoire for an upcoming season is set by spring of the previous season, musicians work with the same colleagues every day with little variation, and, except for a guest conductor the ensemble has never engaged before, one has a pretty good idea what to expect on the podium all year. The tenure process assures musicians lifetime employment barring extraordinary circumstances (career-ending injury, bankruptcy of the orchestra or diminishment of playing ability that is severe enough to necessitate a review process – an infrequent and often controversial occurrence). In an era of rampant job insecurity, orchestral musicians in a well-run organization have a enviable level of professional certainty.

I’m pretty well acquainted with this perspective on musical life, as a vast number of my friends (as well as my husband) are full-time orchestral musicians. I’m also acutely aware of how a conductor’s life is on the opposite end of the certainty spectrum.

First and foremost, conductor don’t have any sort of tenure system (unless you’re working in academia, which is a world unto itself). This means there’s a built-in endpoint for every conductor/orchestra relationship. From an artistic standpoint, this makes a good amount of sense; most conductors have a preferred repertoire (or at least certain composers they are most comfortable with), favorite guest artists, a particular approach to music-making, etc. Which can all provide new perspectives, deepen understanding of certain repertoire, encourage artistic growth in particular areas, etc. There is a perceived point, however, at which music directors no longer stimulate this sort of growth and discovery, because they have imparted all of their individual expertise to their orchestra (or so goes the belief).

The average tenure of music directors these days seems to hover in the 8-12 years slot – in stark contrast to, say, Ormandy, who after a brief stint with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra (now the Minnesota Orchestra) went on to helm the Philadelphia Orchestra for 44 years. As Sam has discussed, selecting and hiring a music director is a complicated, multi-year process. What this means, practically, for conductors is that once you’ve landed yourself a music directorship and settled in after the first couple of years, you have to start thinking about what your next gig is going to be. For staff conducting positions, where the average tenure is more frequently in the 3-5 year range, this means that the minute you’re named to a position, you’re already job-hunting again.

It’s a strange position to be in, and the built-in job insecurity can be really wearing on the psyche. A conductor’s life tends to be a complicated matrix of current positions, future positions, potential positions and guest conducting that could be a potential position (and then perhaps a future position!). The jet-setting maestro who spends little time with their home band has been much bemoaned, but in a way, how can they be blamed, if they need to secure future employment, which is what it all basically boils down to? Because, in the end, we’re just free agents. (Osmo, to his defense, spends a lot more time at home with the Minnesota Orchestra that do music directors of similar stature).

No grand point to make here, save the personal reflection that built-in uncertainty in one’s work becomes exacerbated by global uncertainty. My question to you; what do you think of “term-limits” for conductors?

Posted in conductors and conducting, orchestra culture | 4 Comments »