Post-Game Wrap: Jackson

There are a few things that are the same on every one of our tours, regardless of whether we're in Cologne, Germany, or Cloquet, Minnesota. One is that at some point, in whatever room has been designated as the men's dressing room, our principal flutist, Adam Kuenzel, will haul out a device known as The Insultinator, which crafts loud, obnoxious pejoratives at the push of a few buttons, and start broadcasting electronic phrases like "You're a totally gross, boring nerd!" to the entire room. He rarely does this in our locker room at Orchestra Hall, but there's something about being on the road that causes "You're a completely bonehead!" (sometimes he forgets to push the middle button that supplies adjectives) to make us feel comfortable.

Another thing that never changes about touring is the routine of getting used to an unfamiliar concert hall in an uncomfortably short length of time. On these outstate tours, we play mainly in civic halls and high school auditoriums, so we're very fortunate that we live in a state which clearly believes in building deeply impressive school facilities. (In fact, I'm beginning to think that many of the newer high school auditoriums we play in were designed by the same architect.) Still, you just never know what the sound in a given room is going to be like until the first time our bows hit the string in the touch-up rehearsals we have before each show. Once we hear ourselves in the room, we've got only a few minutes to adjust before concert time.

The hall at Jackson Senior High School is, I can confidently report, absolutely bone dry. This means a couple of things to musicians. First, it means that we're going to be able to hear every tiny little bit of sound that gets made on the stage, and hear it cleanly and clearly all across the stage. That's the good news. The bad news is that the audience can hear every scrap of sound as well, and the acoustic insures that they'll be hearing it without even a bit of the reverberation that we count on to smooth out our collective sound in a larger, warmer room. So you've got to be extremely careful to keep the blend even, and to not let the energy of the group dip for even a moment, lest the sound die six inches in front of the stage and leave the audience wondering how so many musicians can make so little noise.

The first half of tonight's concert, which included a Sibelius tone poem and a double bassoon concerto (I know! Who knew such things existed?) by something called Dietter, came off well, although it was a bit difficult to assess whether the audience was enjoying it. Sometimes our outstate audiences are as effusive as those in Minneapolis, but sometimes, they're so exceedingly polite in their applause that you have to actually talk to a few of them to find out whether they're enjoying themselves. (Tonight, the uncertainty was heightened by the fact that only a miniscule number of audience members left their seats at intermission, while most remained sitting patiently, as if waiting for us to finish our break. It was sweet, in a somewhat disconcerting way.)

Backstage at intermission, while I was getting myself mentally ready to play Beethoven's 7th for the first time in a month and a half, a nervously smiling girl in a polka dot party dress appeared next to me on the arm of our board president, who had apparently met her in the audience. "She's a violist," he said, "from Worthington. She wants to get a few autographs from the viola section, if that's okay." It was definitely okay, and the girl, whose name was Naomi, quickly collected a page full of signatures in her copy of our program book, and spent a few minutes talking shop with our co-principal viola, Richard Marshall.

Back onstage, the Beethoven was vintage Osmo: crisp and energetic, as we used pure adrenaline to make up for the lack of reverb in the hall. When we finished, the applause was still polite, but I saw broad smiles on a lot of faces throughout the audience. As we retreated backstage and stowed our instruments for the trip to Marshall, I saw at least a dozen audience members collaring musicians to thank us for coming to their town, which still never fails to make me feel as if things are backwards: we really ought to be the ones thanking them.

As I changed back into my street clothes, I suddenly realized that I'd forgotten completely to snap a picture of the polka-dot girl for the blog - so typical of me, to miss the real highlight of the night while wondering what I should write about after it was over. But as I headed back out from the dressing room (actually the school library) to the lobby, who should be standing there, proudly holding the door for every male musician in the orchestra as we stampeded toward the bus, but Naomi, smiling far less nervously now. I quickly collared fellow violist Ben Ullery as he headed out the door, and snapped a shot of the two of them. Naomi tells me that she doesn't have internet at home, so I don't know if she'll see this or not, but just in case: thanks for coming, kid. You made my night.