Have a little faith in me...

Well, the day has finally arrived, and we'll be kicking off our new Inside the Classics concert series this very evening at Orchestra Hall, dissecting Stravinsky's Firebird, poking fun at the patently absurd plot that accompanies same, and generally trying to justify the faith that's been placed in us by our bosses, not to mention our long-suffering colleagues in the orchestra.

That last one is an aspect of launching a new series that we haven't really talked about on the blog so far, but the more I think about it, the more I'm amazed that Sarah and I ever came to be in this enviable position. Generally, when an orchestra is launching or revamping a concert series, it looks around at what other orchestras are doing, tries to locate a conductor who does that sort of thing as a specialty, and if a host is required, recruits one from the local public radio station or something. The emphasis is always on safety - why take a chance that the wheels could come off when, instead, we could just follow a proven formula that dozens of other orchestras have already field tested?

That's not what happened here. Sarah certainly has experience with unconventional concert formats (in addition to regularly conducting the Richmond Symphony in a nightclub, she stands as the only staff conductor in Minnesota Orchestra history to throw back a whiskey shot in the middle of a performance, said shot having been proffered by legendary Irish tenor John McDermott, who was not going to take no for an answer) and I've spent enough time with a microphone in my hand to know how not to trip over my own tongue, but never before has either of us done anything quite like what we'll be doing tonight. So it took a tremendous leap of faith for the people in charge of the orchestra to tap us as the right pair to revamp, reinvent, and relaunch an already much-loved series of concerts.

Equally amazing to me is how little we've been interfered with in our preparations. Several times this fall, in the course of conducting the seemingly endless meetings that go along with any concert series (artistic planning, logistics, guest artists, etc.) Sarah and I found ourselves tentatively asking if the Powers That Be wanted to, y'know, actually see some of what we were planning to do in our first show. The answer was always the same: Nah. We trust you. Knock 'em dead.

That level of trust (which is quite literally unheard of in the management structure of other major orchestras, by the way) extends to the orchestra itself, too. As Sarah mentioned, we get only a single rehearsal for these concerts, and for us, that rehearsal was yesterday morning. We had just under an hour to prepare our full performance of Firebird, and another hour and a quarter to work on all the excerpts, extras, and shenanigans that we've planned for the first half. This is generally the acid test for any show - orchestra musicians, even our fun-loving bunch, do not like having their time wasted even a little bit, and while they're certainly rooting for us to do well, they are not interested in spending their rehearsal time listening to me talk into a microphone. (To be honest, since they're sitting behind the speakers that project out into the auditorium, they won't be able to understand half of what I'm saying during the show, anyway...) So you've gotta work fast, and efficiently, and know going in what the orchestra needs to be told, and what can be left out. The upshot is that, while my fellow musicians now have a firm grip on what they'll be playing during the first half of the show, and in what order, they have literally no idea of how I plan to tie the thing together. They just do their job, and trust that I'll do mine.

All that having been said, Sarah and I have been designing, writing, and prepping this show for months now, and we can't wait to actually walk out on that stage tonight. If you haven't already made plans to join us, it's not too late - you can get tickets online here, or just stop by the box office at 11th and Marquette in downtown Minneapolis. I can't claim to know for sure just exactly how everything will unfold onstage over the next two nights, but hey - you can trust us, right?