Strike Up The Band And Play Ball!

It's snowing heavily in Minneapolis today, which ought to be illegal, because as every baseball fan knows, today is Opening Day. It could be worse, I suppose - our local team still plays in a dome (which will mercifully change in 2010, when the Twins open their beautiful new limestone ballpark in the warehouse district,) so their first game of the year will go on as scheduled. Can't say the same for those cornerstones of the MLB hype machine, the Cubs and Yankees, who are both in extended rain delays as I type this.

(This kind of thing seems to happen a lot more to Opening Day games in recent years than it ever did when I was a kid, and as big a baseball fan as I am (I make and keep my own scorecards, and have since age 15; I obsess over every new issue of Baseball Prospectus as if I got paid to do so; and I actually pay money to read Bill James's latest screeds as soon as they're available,) I can't help thinking that the season would be better served by being a week shorter on both ends.)

Baseball is one of those games that inspires such love and devotion in its fans that it becomes something larger than itself, and transcends sport to become the symbol of an entire specific country. (Hockey, my other favorite pasttime, is the only other sport I know of that has this distinction.) Novels, poems, songs, and even symphonies are written about it, without the slightest hint of irony intended or received. To be honest, a lot of these cultural tributes leave me cold, not only because of their often painfully overwrought tone, but simply because I love the game of baseball more than I love the idea of baseball. I am not bored by pitchers' duels, and I do not find the seventh inning stretch more entertaining than a second inning at-bat in which the #8 hitter fouls off six straight breaking balls. I do not need a 45-page meditation on the smell of freshly oiled leather and the crack of ash against horsehide to remind me of what appeals to me about baseball.

Still, the writers, poets, composers, and songwriters keep churning out the paeans to the game, as well as to athletics in general, and that brings me to the reason for this post. In addition to my hosting and writing duties for Inside the Classics, I also serve as a semi-regular host of our orchestra's Young People's Concerts, and our education department is kind enough to give me a hand in helping to choose repertoire and design the programs I host.

At the moment, we're just starting to plan a show scheduled for spring 2009, and our focus is music's role in sports. After all, what would Monday Night Football be without that famous four-note theme that serves as its audio signature. Up north, Hockey Night in Canada has been using an even more widely known symphonic theme for more than forty years. Our very own Minnesota Wild commissioned a team anthem before ever taking the ice for the first time back in 2000, and it remains a tune that I am physically incapable of not singing along with. John Williams's Olympic March, written for the 1984 Los Angeles Games, is one of his best-loved orchestral works, and the orchestral swell Randy Newman penned to accompany Robert Redford's legendary home run at the end of The Natural is as familiar as any piece of movie music ever written.

So we've got a few ideas for what to do with this show. But I'm always looking for more, so I'm throwing this one open to you guys. Do you have any favorite sports memories that are tied up with specific pieces of music? Any works that you think perfectly encapsulate the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat? I'd love to hear 'em, so while you wait for the snow to stop and the first pitches to be thrown, fire away in the comments...

Glass

Part of the trailer for "Glass: A Portrait of Philip Glass in Twelve Parts", a new film by Scott Hicks (no relation) premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last September. I was struck by the expression on his face in this clip - he looks alternately gleeful and terrified on the Cyclone, like a ten year old boy, which is just delightful.

Ask An Expert: Revolving Winds & Resting Cellos

We have a double dose of questions this weekend, both concerning what we as an orchestra do with ourselves and our instruments on stage. Firing first is Gail:

Q: I thoroughly enjoyed last nights "Dvorak & Rachmaninoff" program - kudos to all involved! I wondered why there were so many personnel changes in the woodwind section from one piece to another - it seemed like there was a revolving door for the flutes and clarinets. Thanks again for a memorable evening.

Well, first of all, thanks for coming, Gail! It's definitely a fun program to play, and the audiences have been great all week. The reason for the wind and brass changes is twofold: first of all, the instrumentation is not exactly the same for all three pieces on the program. (For instance, there's a saxophone in the Rachmaninoff, and there are differing numbers of winds involved in the two pieces on the first half.)

Secondly, it is traditional in most orchestras for principal wind players to divide up the duties on long programs, simply because there is a physical limit to the strength of the human lip, and if a principal flute, for instance, tried to play every single piece on every single program, s/he would likely do serious physical damage by the end of the season. Sometimes, a principal will play the entire program one week (as our principal oboist, Basil Reeve, is doing this week) and then not play at all the next week. Other times (as you saw with our flutes and clarinets,) the principal will sit out one of the pieces on the program, and be replaced by the assistant principal. The non-principal wind players may shift around as well, but since their parts tend not to be as physically taxing, they are more likely to play everything on the program.

And just for the record, we string players, who of course play more notes in more pieces than anyone else in the orchestra, also have a system of "relief" services, whereby each of us takes a certain small number of concerts off each season to allow us to preserve our muscle strength. Unlike the winds, we don't swap out from piece to piece within a single program, but we do each sit out one or two programs a year. (Usually, these relief services aren't scheduled for our weekly subscription concerts, but on weeks when we're playing multiple sets of Young People's Concerts or pops shows.)

And speaking of strings, I believe Katie had a question about our cello section...

Q: Hello! I've noticed that at your concerts, the cellists put their cellos a certain way on the chair when there is intermission or something. They put the scroll on the chair, and then just kind of rest it there. I haven't seen that too much and so I was just wondering, is it safer to put my cello like that on a chair, or to have it sideways on the floor?

Ah, yes, the cello blockade! Katie is absolutely correct that our cellists rest their instruments at an angle against the seats of their chairs during intermission, rather than take them offstage or lay them on the floor. According to our principal cellist, Tony Ross, the main reason for this is that, since only the cello's endpin touches the floor when they lean the scroll against the chair, it's less likely that the varnish will be scratched by coming in contact with the stage.

Additionally, anyone who's ever played cello in a youth orchestra can tell you that non-cellists are absolutely horrible at noticing cellos resting next to chairs, and are forever walking into them, knocking them over, or at least coming close to doing serious damage. So by resting their cellos against the chairs, our cellists have not only made their instruments a lot more visible to the rest of us than they would be at ankle height on the floor, but they also effectively create a barrier that makes it impossible for the rest of us to even consider walking through the cello section. Safer for everyone, really...

A personal note

I’ve been struggling over how to begin this post, or even whether to write it at all (an unusual bit of indecision for someone who counts on their ability to make lightning-fast decisions under pressure on the podium as a matter of course!). But as a musician I am as much a communicator as an artist, and if words can illuminate or aid, they are worth expressing. I know that was a bit oblique; bear with me here…

The reason I am a conductor is something my father told me when I was 17. The whole story (or, at least the salient bits) were outlined by Sam in this previous post; suffice it to say, I was a teenage pianist struggling with tendonitis, and it was my father who took me aside and told me that even if my fingers stopped working in the way I wanted them to on the keyboard, I could still hold a stick.

Dad had always been my greatest musical support: he started me on the piano at the age of 5; he was an accomplished amateur pianist who delighted in acting as accompanist in my endless succession of auditions and competitions; he was a supporter of the Honolulu Symphony who took the whole family to every Sunday subscription concert. He helped me incorporate the orchestra I created and conducted during my summers home from college, beamed with pride at my first concerts at Harvard and sent a hothouse full of flowers for my first concerts at Curtis. Despite the differences we had (and there were many), I always knew he believed in what I was doing; and in a way, I was fulfilling his dream of making a life in music (he had taken, after college, what he called the “safe course” and gone to law school, eventually becoming a successful lawyer).

Dad took his own life on March 28, 2001. He was a young 60, in good health, happily married for 32 years with two grown children flourishing on their own, enjoying career success and the love of countless friends and colleagues. In retrospect, perhaps the warning signs were there: the tendency towards deep melancholy; the long solitary trips he took to exotic locales (as if he were trying to find something outside of himself that he couldn’t find within); the insistence, in the year before his death, to get his financial matters into meticulous order.

I was, ironically (at least in my mind), guest conducting as part of a job audition when I heard the news. The phonecall came early on a Friday morning. The concert was that night, and I chose to go through with it rather than fly immediately to Hawaii. Some questioned that decision, but for me there was no other option; for myself, I needed to know that I could still go on as a musician without my father, and I needed to be in that hyperfocused, strangely calm zone that one enters when on the podium before I returned to the chaos at home. I completed what I set out to do that week, and I think my father wouldn’t have expected any less of me.

My life was irrevocably changed. One cannot pass judgment as to whether it is a purely negative change – or maybe I just refuse to contemplate that possibility, because it would be far too painful. Apart from the usual grief that follows the loss of a loved one, there was the nagging sense of both guilt and betrayal, along with a pervasive feeling of abandonment. I never felt as lonely as I did those first few years after Dad’s death, even with my husband holding my hand, next to me on the couch, or in a roomful of friends.

But by the same token, the magnitude of loss and the feeling that I had been blind to the anguish of a person so close to me has made me far more aware of and connected to those around me. I find that I have a greater empathy for other people, for everyone’s struggle to navigate through life, for the inherent connections we all share. And I think that empathy and connection have nourished my musicianship. If anything positive came out of my father’s death, it was that I learned to cast a much gentler, more sympathetic eye on humankind, if not myself.

Suicide is still somewhat of a taboo topic, although it’s becoming less and less so. When I tell my story to people, I still get uncomfortable/stunned silences; few are prepared to respond because we are not taught how to do so, which distresses me. Suicide is the 11th leading cause of death in the U.S., with over 32,000 people a year taking their own lives. Over 80 people take their own lives every day, with nearly 1,500 additional people attempting to do so. It is a part of human society, a part of life; my hope is that by writing about it I can help remove some of the remaining stigma.

I wanted to write this post not just to tell a personal story, but to also reach anyone who may have been touched by suicide, or knows someone who may be contemplating taking their own life, or is thinking of it themselves. Over 60 percent of those who take their own lives also suffer from major depression, which is one of the most treatable psychiatric illnesses (with 90 percent of people having a positive response to treatment). There are a number of excellent organizations who address all aspects of suicide, from prevention to survivor support groups, notably one based in Minnesota, SAVE (Suicide Awareness Voices of Education), and other organizations such as the AFSP (American Foundation for Suicide Prevention).

I fervently hope that no-one will travel down the path that Dad chose, although I know I am hoping beyond reason. The best I can do is to keep at my work, making music, which has the power to provide both deep solace and extraordinary joy, reminding us of the profound privilege of being alive.

Inflammable

A real (unretouched) picture of jazz pianist Yosuke Yamashita playing a burning piano, a stunt he also pulled back in 1973. He says it's his way of showing appreciation for an old piano he no longer uses; to me it's oddly compelling and utterly inflammatory (pun intended) performance art. Check out the movie of the 1973 burning here (click on the top thumbnail clip); you be the judge.

Rode Hard And Put Up Wet

Just because I love it, here's a clip of Brooklyn Rider, a great (and more than slightly unconventional) New York-based string quartet playing an arrangement of the classic Mexican folk song, La Muerte Chiquita. The arrangement is by Osvaldo Golijov, the Argentinian-born Israeli composer who now makes his home outside of Boston, and may well make the history books as the preeminent composer of this era.



Brooklyn Rider, by the way, is made up of brothers Colin and Eric Jacobsen on violin and cello, respectively, with violinist Johnny Gandelsman and violist Nicholas Cords. The ensemble grew out of Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble, and has been making some serious noise in various locales in the Northeast. They also inaugurated a recital series in Stillwater, Minnesota two summers back, and this summer, they'll be in residence at Minneapolis's MacPhail Center for Music for a couple of weeks in June.

There seems to be an ever-growing number of small ensembles like this one out there in the music world these days, seamlessly blending the worlds of classical, folk, rock, and who knows how many other genres. It may seem far removed from what those of us who make our living in the big granddaddy ensembles do, but the reality is that some fusion of what we do and what they do could well represent the most likely future of the professional music world. At least we can hope so.

Want more? I thought so...

Robin Hood, Ticket Broker?

Wow, there's been a lot of inside baseball-type talk in this space lately! I suppose this is what happens when you give musicians a couple of weeks with no evening concerts to play - we start to navel-gaze and argue amongst ourselves about the business. (This is one of the reasons that musicians tend to hang out with/date/marry other musicians: we're almost genetically incapable of choking off our tendency to talk shop all the time.) But we'll try to get things back to matters of interest to a broader readership this week.

I did spot a piece in last Thursday's Guardian (my favorite UK daily) that qualifies as being of interest to anyone who regularly attends or plays in a concert hall. It concerns London's Royal Opera House, which has, for the last couple of years, been trying to bring down its average ticket price. They've kept a large block of tickets under £30 ($60), which isn't bad by London standards, and half the house is priced under £50. Next season, they'll also be screening filmed versions of many of their productions in movie theaters around the country (as the Metropolitan Opera has been doing to great acclaim in this country,) and charging only £12 a head.

The problem of ticket prices is one that nearly every performing arts organization is highly sensitive to. We talk a pretty good game concerning our desire to bring our music to everyone, but the reality frequently is that our ticket prices make it very difficult for a family on a budget, or anyone under the median national income level, to afford to attend on anything approaching a regular basis. Now, we're hardly alone in this - have you tried taking your family to a Minnesota Wild game for under $200 lately? - but as cultural organizations that are supposed to serve the broader public, not just line our own pockets, we're seen as having more of a responsibility to strive for accessibility than a for-profit entertainment industry would. And that's as it should be.

To that end, the Minnesota Orchestra offers severely discounted student tickets, a hefty number of cheap rush tickets that anyone can queue up for an hour before showtime, a series of free family concerts where tickets are apportioned by lottery, and various other discounts and specials that we hope will allow those who otherwise might not be able to afford a ticket to attend. However, the sad reality is that, for our core weekly concerts, our average ticket price still hovers somewhere north of the $50 mark, for the simple reason that we would go out of business if we charged everyone $15 a head.

In striving to keep a large number of tickets in the affordable range, the Royal Opera House has run into the same conundrum we have - namely, finding ways to make up for the revenue lost when ticket prices are dropped. And starting next season, the ROH will be trying out a solution that few American orchestras would dare attempt. Basically, they're asking their higher-end ticketbuyers to subsidize the lower-end tickets, hiking the top ticket price for their most prominent productions to a whopping £210 ($420!) By comparison, New York's Metropolitan Opera's top ticket remains under $300 - hardly pocket change, but a far cry from what the ROH's high rollers will be shelling out.

The theory here, of course, is that, for operagoers who actually buy the top tickets, money is clearly no object, and the very act of spending lavishly on such an extravagance may even be part of the allure. Therefore, why not make the passes even more expensive if it will help make other tickets more affordable to those who can't afford much luxury? The danger is that every consumer has his limit, and that latest price hike might just cause some of your most loyal audience members to scale back their attendance.

Furthermore, while egalitarianism still sells fairly well as a concept in Europe, Americans asked to give up some of what they have so that others less fortunate might benefit have a tendency to start muttering about socialism and redistribution of wealth, and we in the American arts world are terrified of being seen as ungrateful to the wealthy elites who, quite frankly, keep us in business with their generous annual donations.

Since the ROH and other UK arts institutions receive much of their funding from the government (which effectively means that all Britons are contributing, not just the wealthy,) they don't have exactly the same pipers to pay that we do. (Which is not to suggest that their road is any easier than ours: as I'm sure our orchestra's British CEO would tell you, being beholden to the whims of politicians who know little to nothing about the arts is at least as tough as being beholden to individual private donors who, by definition, like and appreciate what we bring to the community.)

The ROH's Robin Hood pricing plan, as the press are calling it, likely won't provide any broad answers for the rest of the global music industry. But in an era when it's harder and harder to get the average person to leave the house and spend money on live music, there will definitely be eyes on London, looking for signs that the public is embracing the concept. Meanwhile, I guess we'll just keep handing out those rush tickets and student vouchers...

More cheery news!

A new report commissioned by the Andrew W. Mellon foundation has been causing a bit of hoopla in the last couple of days; here is a choice bit:

Most major symphony orchestras in the United States regularly spend more money than they take in, and some dip so far into endowments that they risk their long-term survival, according to a new report commissioned by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

'The industry should realize that there is an inherent long-term economic challenge,' said Robert J. Flanagan, the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of International Labor Economics and Policy Analysis at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the study’s author. 'Nowadays, even if symphonies filled their halls for every concert, the vast majority would still not be able to cover their performance expenses.'

Tell me something we haven't been discussing for years.

Read more here.

I was constructing a reasoned response to yet another study/report/article heralding the demise of the symphony orchestra when I came across this reasoned response by Henry Fogel, president of the League of American Orchestras (of which I am posting highlights, read it in its entirety here).


In the 45 years that I have been professionally associated with symphony orchestras in America, I have lost count of the number of times an alarm has been sounded about the state of crisis in which they exist, sometimes with warnings of the imminent demise of the industry. So far, at least, those alarms have proven to be false ones - and for the most part, symphony orchestras are more vibrant, healthy, and vital now than they have ever been...

The latest alarm bell is a study produced by Prof. Robert J. Flanagan of the Stanford Graduate School of Business. The report was commissioned by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and it studied statistics from the largest American orchestras between 1987 and 2003...

Prof. Flanagan's study provides an opportunity for orchestras to continue to discuss, as they have been doing, the value of understanding the dynamic environment in which they exist, and adapting to it. It confirms what we already know: that orchestras do not operate in a vacuum but are intimately tied to the health of our communities...

The study reaffirms what was suggested by a study done by Baumol and Bowen in 1966, which noted that symphony orchestras do not enjoy the productivity gains achieved in the private sector. It took about 80 musicians 45 minutes to perform Brahms's First Symphony when he wrote it, and it still does, and always will. In the absence of the private sector's productivity gains (like making five times as many widgets in one-half the time), it is logical that operating costs may rise faster than earned revenues...But orchestras have continued to exist and in many cases even thrive by changing the mix of income streams, through endowments and annual fundraising.

The final two-to-three years of Prof. Flanagan's study (2001-2003) coincided with a severe economic downturn, and the psychological damage done to our country by the events of September 11, 2001. No one will dispute that a majority of our non-profit organizations in America suffered economic troubles in that time. It is unfortunate that the post 2004-05 period did not comprise the final period of the study, because the trends were far better in those years. Over the past few years not only have fundraising and overall fiscal performance improved, but ticket sales have as well. After a few years of flat or declining ticket sales during the early 2000s, there was an 18% increase in ticket sale income to orchestra concerts between the 2004-05 season and 2005-06. And, equally encouraging, paid attendance at classical concerts for American orchestras in 2005-06 was 11% up from the previous year, again after a few years of flat or declining attendance...

Prof. Flanagan points to the fact that musicians' wage increases outpaced inflation during the period of his study. I think it is important to note that the 3.8% average annual increase in the salary of the orchestras he studied is 0.1% over the rate of increase for liberal arts college faculty during that same period, 0.2% under the rate of increase for employees of hospitals, and precisely the same rate as other health-service industry employees (these figures are from the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). Thus, musicians' salaries track extremely well with those of other employees in the non-profit sector...

Orchestras that are attentive to changing demands and the very nature of their audiences are not only maintaining but increasing attendance. Orchestras attentive to their entire communities (beyond just their subscribers) are also raising more money, and operating in fiscally balanced ways. As I said earlier, Prof. Flanagan's report is a valuable addition to the research that has been done about orchestras, and will provide the field with useful information that will be of use in continuing to adapt to our environment as it changes. But anyone who draws from it the conclusion that orchestras are in peril runs the risk of subjecting themselves to Mark Twain's famous quote: "The report of my death was an exaggeration."


What would have been tremendously helpful is a comparison of the 17 orchestras who posted surpluses in the timeframe of the study, however: "Flanagan said the study’s scope did not try to identify similarities among the 17 symphonies that usually did have surpluses." Which, to me, is the deepest mystery of all - wouldn't it be nice to identify how some organizations are flourishing (so that others could benefit from their success) rather than publish another round of doom and gloom?

Ask An Expert: Getting Around To Copland

Just in time for us to begin ramping up the marketing efforts for our last Inside the Classics concert of the season, Bill Stroud checks in with this latest Ask An Expert question...

Q: What instruments are used in the orchestral version of Copland’s Appalachian Spring? I think that I hear a piano and a Xylophone, and is a piccolo (as opposed to a flute) used for some of those extremely high notes?

One of Copland's specialties was doing more with less, especially when it came to orchestration. In fact, the original version of Appalachian Spring was written for only 13 musicians (flute, clarinet, bassoon, piano, and strings) and it has a sparse, lonely sound that fans of the more popular full orchestra version might find jarring. Copland's choice of a small ensemble was dictated not by musical considerations, but by the fact that the pit at Washington, D.C.'s Coolidge Auditorium, where the ballet premiered, could only accommodate a small number of players, especially if a piano was to be in the mix.

The fully orchestrated ballet suite, which is eight minutes shorter than the original score, premiered almost a year after the 13-player version, and Bill is pretty much right on in his assessment of what he's hearing in its fuller, more integrated mix. The instrumentation is as follows:

2 flutes, with the second flute doubling on piccolo
2 oboes
2 clarinets (in both A and B-flat)
2 bassoons
2 horns
2 trumpets
2 trombones
harp
piano
timpani
xylophone
snare drum
bass drum
cymbals
tabor (long drum)
wood block
claves
glockenspiel
triangle
full orchestral strings (violin, viola, cello, bass)

Phew...

...we've been having some intense and interesting discussion here lately, so I thought we'd go for a little bit of levity for today. I find it odd that they bleep out "fa" only when descending. Is the perceived "dirty-wordness" of "fa" merely contextual? And if so, what does it say about the person perceiving that context?

And having taught it for so many years I giggle at the notion that solfege might "hurt [you] mentally".

Radical Within Reason

Okay, Hicks, you caught me. In the course of trying to write an even-handed, reasonable post about the difficult choices orchestras and their supporters face, I did, as you suggest, offer up the somewhat radical notion that not every city needs a full-size symphony orchestra. (And before anyone gets the idea that I'm suggesting that Columbus is one of those cities, let me state unequivocally that I'm not. As of now, I'm officially taking this discussion entirely into the hypothetical realm, and leaving the Columbus debate behind.) This is an idea I've been toying around with for years now, and without going into a ridiculous level of detail, my thinking on the issue more or less breaks down this way:

Most large and medium-sized cities (let's draw an arbitrary line and say we're talking about metro areas of more than a million people, of which the US has roughly 50) have the population and resources available to sustain a professional symphony orchestra of some description, if one is desired. How large a musician complement and how sizable an annual budget that orchestra will operate with is determined by how much money the local board believes it can raise. Conflicts will, of course, arise over these funding levels, but it can be safely assumed that the resources to support a cultural organization of the size and scope of an orchestra are there to be mined.

Still, in many of these cities, an orchestra seems to exist for no other reason than that cities are expected to have orchestras, just as they are expected to have museums, theaters, and professional sports teams. And just as with museums, theaters, and sports teams, the value of an orchestra to its community is only as great as the creativity and commitment those in charge bring to the table.

(I'm including musicians as part of "those in charge," although in many orchestras, the rank-and-file musicians are effectively shut out of all decision-making processes, and in many others, a majority of musicians believe that their only job is to play their instruments, and that tasks like marketing the group, planning for the future, and creating a sustainable organization should be left to others. I find both of these kinds of situations to be exceedingly backward, so I'm just taking it as read that musicians should be given a voice in the leadership of an orchestra, and that they should accept that role. If you disagree, that's fine, but my larger argument is based on an assumption that musicians are not just drones with instruments and batons, and that managers and board members are not just bean counters who happen to like Mozart.)

So here's the problem: not every city is the same, yet we seem to think that orchestras can be one-size-fits-all organizations, shoehorned into any urban area and made to thrive. This is why symphony orchestra performances tend to look exactly the same in every American city. There's no effort to create an orchestra that fits the community, because the word "orchestra" is thought to be a static one, implying precisely that there will be musicians dressed in white tie and tails holding instruments, looking dour, and playing serious music for a serious audience of serious people, who will be expected to stay seriously quiet and react to the performance only at pre-approved times. So a city like Minneapolis, which wholeheartedly embraces indie rock music, avant garde visual art, and theater of all kinds from classic to downright subversive, has an orchestra that, on most nights, offers roughly the same concert experience you would get in a city with far more conservative artistic tastes, like Philadelphia.

I could speculate for hours about the reasons behind this bizarre addiction to sameness. Musicians tend to be averse to large-scale change and fearful of anything that might appear to dumb down the art we've dedicated our lives to. Wealthy concertgoers in many cities, especially smaller ones, value the stilted formality of the concert experience, because they believe that it makes them seem more cosmopolitan. And because orchestras are so expensive and so dependent on the financial support of the community, no one in charge is ever eager to rock the boat by asking fundamental questions about why we do things the way we do.

All of this brings me back to what Sarah called my "radical bit of thinking." Granting that orchestras are a commodity that many cities desire and support, why are we so determined to foist them on cities that clearly would like something else better? Why do we insist on calling a paltry group of 25-30 musicians a "symphony orchestra," as so many US cities now do, and hemming them in to everything that description implies when they could do far more interesting and relevant work as a chamber orchestra, a loose musical collective, or something else entirely?

The conundrum of the professional musician in our era is essentially this: if you want the security of a steady paycheck, health insurance, and the knowledge that your job will likely still exist next week, you need to find an orchestra to play in. But if you want the opportunity to have a real say in your musical life, to create new and interesting art and find an audience for it, you have to forgo that security and lead the life of a freelancer, supplementing your art with an endless succession of wedding gigs and teaching jobs.

What I'm proposing, basically, is an amalgam of those two extremes for cities where an orchestra has either failed to sustain itself or just never gotten off the ground. In larger cities, or places with a deep and abiding love of all kinds of music, there's no reason that such an organization can't exist alongside a larger orchestra, and many already do. New York's Orchestra of St. Luke's and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra are two of the more famous examples. You could make the argument that, in recent years, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra has been moving in exactly this direction, too, offering an ever-wider diversity of concerts, partnering with the University of Minnesota, involving its musicians with the community in new and interesting ways, and still maintaining their more traditional concert offerings at the Ordway.

Somehow, though, this kind of thing never seems to get tried in cities that don't already have a large and successful orchestra. Traditionally, smaller musical groups in small cities operate as cheaply as possible, paying their musicians as freelancers and just keeping their fiscal heads above water. But wouldn't it be great if the moneyed interests in a small or medium-sized city decided to throw themselves into creating and sustaining a really fantastic group of resident musicians who could create dozens of different performance experiences every year, yet be paid a reasonable wage, given benefits, and put down serious roots in the community? And wouldn't that be better than those same moneyed interests engaging in an endless battle over how big their symphony orchestra can be, and how much it should be paid?

Halfway to what?

Part of the fun of having a writing partnership on this blog is the built-in diversity of opinions. So, let me make sure to first direct you to Sam's most recent post before I proceed to play devil's advocate (or just raise some more interesting questions).

OK, read "No such thing as halfway"? Let me lay some observations on you (and in no particular order of chronology or significance - we are on orchestra vacation this week and I feel unencumbered by the need for hyper-efficiency, organization and protocol usually required of a conductor!).

First, the comments. The two reader comments concentrate on details that Sam had used just to clarify a point by making a comparison. While I'm all for journalistic accuracy (and Sam does clarify where he got the figures), I'm utterly fascinated by the fact that people have responded to these particular facts and figures (not the main thrust of Sam's argument) without commenting on the message as a whole. And unless I'm reading this whole post wrong, it's quite a message:

"Cities and their residents have to set priorities and make decisions, is what I'm trying to say in my typically long-winded, roundabout way. Not every city is going to be able to boast of having every conceivable entertainment and amenity. So there shouldn't have to be a lot of civic shame if a populace decides that it just doesn't want to spend millions every year to sustain a specific sports team or cultural group. But trying to keep such an organization floating on the cheap, as a shadow of what it ought to be, strikes me as taking your citizenry for a long walk off a short pier and asking them to pay for it."

In short, and, please, Sam, correct me if I'm wrong, my friend, the suggestions is that some cities will not be able to or simply not be interested in sustaining a full-time orchestra. Or, perhaps, any orchestra at all. And if they do, at present, sustain that larger orchestra, but with increasing difficulty and growing budget crises, it is doing a disservice to try to maintain only a portion of that orchestra, because it is not longer an "orchestra"; and, in fact, there should be no orchestra at all - because otherwise you're "taking your citizenry for a long walk off a short pier and asking them to pay for it."

Which I find to be a radical bit of thinking, and which is why I'm kind of surprised that the comments argue over the aforementioned minutiae (as important as those details may be).

Now, let's go back to that radical bit of thinking and revisit. City X is having a difficult time supporting its full-time orchestra. What do you do? (Full disclosure here for any readers who might not be privy to the inner workings of the classical music world; orchestra musicians and orchestra "management" (to which I would lump in orchestra boards as well) have an uneasy relationship, on the whole. And musicians tend to lump conductors into "management" (read: only interested in the bottom line, artistry be damned) as well. "Management" tends to think of conductors as "musicians" (read: only interested in artistry, the bottom line be damned). Which often puts conductors into an uncomfortable in-between netherworld of "damned if you do, damned if you don't".)

Sam is not the only person suggesting that it might be better to have no Orchestra X at all rather than have a vastly reduced ensemble playing for far fewer weeks. According to the Columbus Dispatch article link, discussing the Columbus Symphony situation which sparked Sam's thoughts about the matter:

"On Jan. 17, after walking out of the board's first attempt to explain the restructuring, union President Doug Fisher and other musicians said they'd rather see the symphony die than be downsized."

On one hand, I understand a union leader's stance on an organization of his constituents; the purpose of a union is power in numbers, the leverage of collective bargaining, etc. Makes sense, then, to have an all-or-nothing attitude. But at what cost?? We're talking permanent loss of all possible positions versus loss of 20 positions (not a majority). My own instinct (and again, like Sam, I would stress that I'm not responding directly to what's happening in Columbus, but to a hypothetical similar situation) would be to preserve what's possible to preserve; I would rather see a majority of musicians be able to keep doing what they're doing that see all of them out of work.

And here comes my second question, based on these assertions:

"But on the most general level, I've just never understood it when executives and board members of arts organizations propose to save their companies by slashing them beyond recognition. Orchestras are particularly inflexible in this regard, because they really only come in two sizes: symphonic, and chamber. Symphonic orchestras only work if they look and sound like orchestras, so proposing to serve your local public with a "symphonic orchestra" of 31 players is not only odd, it's making a fairly large assumption about what sort of hogwash your public is going to be willing to buy into."

Doesn't that depend on what we consider "symphonic"? Under the 21st century model, OK, yes, we could make these divisions of "symphonic" and "chamber" - but only because we consider the average Mozart-sized (or early Beethoven-sized) "symphonic" orchestra to be "chamber" sized by modern comparison.

But it also reminds me of organizations that consider themselves "symphony orchestras" that have a core ensemble of 30-some-odd players, such as the Richmond Symphony. (Full disclosure - I was associate conductor of the Richmond Symphony for a couple of years, and my husband is still acting principal horn there.) The structure of this ensemble allows then to perform as a smaller "chamber" sized ensemble, add on per-service musicians to perform (regularly) with a Strauss- or Mahler- or Bruckner- or Prokofiev-sized orchestra and present actual chamber groups (mostly in schools, occasionally for special functions). No-one considers this product to be diluted or "hogwash". In fact, this ensemble enriches the community immeasurably, particularly through its outreach efforts.

Now, given a large orchestra's financial woes, from a purely community perspective, my own feelings are that it's always better that some performing ensemble be maintained (it's the "something is better than nothing" viewpoint). Because there are artistic and social services that only an orchestra, as a prominent arts organization in any community, has the ability to provide. Because a sustainable smaller ensemble could maintain a musical presence and retain employment for a majority of the currently employed musicians. Yes, downsizing would require a tremendous and at times onerous paradigm shift, but why go for such an extreme all-or-nothing attitude?

This is what all of these conflicts, in my limited personal experience, always boils down to: musicians typically view management as never being able to fulfill their charge to secure the funding adequate to run orchestras as the musicians see fit ("Why can't they just raise some more money, isn't that their job?"); management typically view musicians as having no idea of the complexities of keeping an unwieldly non-profit organization financially afloat, particularly on the cusp of a recession ("Why can't they understand how long-term economic volatility is affecting our endowment, not to mention our donors?"). Deep differences in perspective, both of which touch on truth, from disparate points of view. But often I feel it's some sort of fundamental inability (unwillingness? I don't know) to bridge those gaps that leads to all-or-nothing statements, threats and deeper discord. Is it misunderstanding, mistrust? From my perspective, neither party is ever completely right (and, hey, neither are conductors, who, in an effort to appear diplomatic, attempt to stay out of any conflict whatsoever), and so it begs the question, what can we do to allay this general and ingrained antagonism?

No Such Thing As Halfway

In the five months since Sarah and I began writing this blog, I've refrained from commenting in any sort of specific way on the internal crises that all too frequently plague American orchestras these days. My reasons for remaining silent are twofold: first, I think that the issues and problems surrounding the proper care and feeding of major arts organizations are in general far too complicated to be unraveled in a blog setting.

Second, and more to the point, I'm a professional orchestral musician, which gives me a vested interest in any battle between musicians and orchestra managements, and yet I'm posting to a blog hosted by the official website of the Minnesota Orchestra. (See here for our official policy on what gets written in this space.) No one in our management has ever told me or Sarah what we can and cannot write, but it would obviously put everyone in a bad situation if we were to start tossing bombs around in our own house. (I'm also in no position to speak for my colleagues here in Minneapolis, so I try to be careful not to use this blog in a way that would give anyone the impression that I'm representing anything more than my own views.)

All that having been said, there are events currently unfolding at Ohio's Columbus Symphony that I think are worth getting into, in the most general possible way. Basically, the CSO, which has a long and venerable history among mid-tier American orchestras (for an Upper Midwest comparison, think of it as being somewhat comparable to the Milwaukee Symphony,) is facing a financial crunch which apparently has its management and board stymied.

Those in charge of the organization have become convinced that the orchestra simply isn't sustainable in its present form, and have announced a plan to "save" the ensemble by laying off 22 full-time musicians and slashing 12 weeks off the current 46-week season. If the plan is implemented, the orchestra would have 31 musicians remaining in its ranks. Presumably, it would continue to call itself the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, despite the fact that it would employ fewer musicians than the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. (For comparison, the Minnesota Orchestra's full complement is 98 musicians, including 3 librarians, and we are one of 18 American orchestras that pays its musicians year-round.)

Now, I'm not closely connected to the situation in Columbus, and I wouldn't presume to speculate on whether the city can afford to sustain its orchestra (although it's worth noting that the CSO musicians believe fervently that it can.) The state of Ohio is home to two major orchestras (Cleveland and Cincinnati) despite also being home to some seriously depressed economic circumstances. Columbus, despite being large, is basically a huge college town, which makes its economic calculus different from a city built on industry or finance. So I'm not going to stand here and declare that I know the truth about Columbus from 750 miles away.

But on the most general level, I've just never understood it when executives and board members of arts organizations propose to save their companies by slashing them beyond recognition. Orchestras are particularly inflexible in this regard, because they really only come in two sizes: symphonic, and chamber. Symphonic orchestras only work if they look and sound like orchestras, so proposing to serve your local public with a "symphonic orchestra" of 31 players is not only odd, it's making a fairly large assumption about what sort of hogwash your public is going to be willing to buy into.

Consider it from another angle: let's say that the Minnesota Timberwolves, plagued for years by slumping ticket sales, underperforming teams, and a deeply unpopular general manager, decided that they just could no longer compete in the hockey-mad winter sports marketplace of Minneapolis/St. Paul. But rather than move the team, or fold completely, or sell to a new local owner who could try to succeed where others had failed, let's say that the team announced that it would be laying off five of its twelve players, and playing only 65 games per season, rather than the customary 82. (They'll keep the unpopular GM on, of course, just like in real life.)

You know, of course, what would happen. This plan would be a non-starter, both with fans and with the NBA, because basketball teams have twelve players and play 82 games. That's just what they do. I suppose you could own a team with seven players and play 65 games, but the Boston Celtics are not going to show up to play you, and your local fan base is certainly not going to shell out $50-$200 a ticket to watch your little experiment.

Now, orchestras are a bit more flexible than that: there are successful symphony orchestras in this country with as few as fifty full-time musicians - they just have to bulk up with a lot of extra players if they want to do something like a Mahler symphony. But there really is a limit to how far you can pare down the ensemble and still call it an orchestra and expect people to pay for it.

The reality is that not all cities are equal, either in terms of their relative wealth, or in the needs and desires of the populace. The Seattle area is comparable in size to the Twin Cities, yet it lacks an NHL hockey team, and it doesn't have a theatre company with anything like the budget and national profile of the Guthrie. Minneapolis and St. Paul are renowned for our embrace of arts and culture, yet we don't have a single full-time large scale ballet company. Phoenix is the sixth-largest city in America (soon to be the fifth,) yet its symphony orchestra pays a base salary that's in the neighborhood of that earned by orchestra musicians in Birmingham and Kansas City.

Cities and their residents have to set priorities and make decisions, is what I'm trying to say in my typically long-winded, roundabout way. Not every city is going to be able to boast of having every conceivable entertainment and amenity. So there shouldn't have to be a lot of civic shame if a populace decides that it just doesn't want to spend millions every year to sustain a specific sports team or cultural group. But trying to keep such an organization floating on the cheap, as a shadow of what it ought to be, strikes me as taking your citizenry for a long walk off a short pier and asking them to pay for it.

Again, let me stress: this isn't really about the Columbus Symphony. I'm just using their situation as a catalyst for a larger discussion, because this is hardly the first time that an American orchestra has proposed a cost-saving scheme like this, and it surely won't be the last. Orchestras are big, expensive, unwieldy beasts, even by non-profit arts standards, and they're an absolute bear to manage, fund, and maintain. In tough economic times, some are bound to be unable to sustain themselves, and while that's sad, it is the way of things.

I just don't think we ought to be lowering expectations, either of what cultural institutions can be, or of just how much work it takes to create and sustain them. If you want an orchestra, by all means, have an orchestra. If you want a basketball team, have a basketball team. But don't organize a 5K race and then try to tell everyone you're hosting the Olympics. People aren't that stupid.

Dr. Angelou

This afternoon we rehearsed with Maya Angelou for the Target Free Family Concerts tomorrow. Here's the scenario; we've been performing the piece, "On the day you were born", all week in our Young People's Concerts. We had already performed it twice this morning (six times over three days) with a different narrator, and we are reconvening onstage after a brief lunch break. It's a long day for the orchestra, and there is a distinct lack of energy. And then come the usual issues of working with so many technical elements - the teleprompter needs to have some of its text altered, the sound levels needs to be adjusted, Dr. Angelou doesn't have the stool she requested...the minutes tick by. Tiredness and tension onstage is palpable. Finally, we get going.

And then, as sometimes happens, everything just falls perfectly in place. Dr. Angelou hits every cue, the teleprompter is scrolling at the right velocity, the sound system is adjusted, the piece is unfolding as it should. The relief from the orchestra is palpable. And Dr. Angelou's rich, deep voice and poetic cadence imbues the text with a wonderful spirit - musicians respond in kind. When we are done, she smiles, turns to the orchestra, and, bowing slightly, says, "First, to you, thank you... thank you... thank you... thank you..." (this, done turning to almost everyone in the orchestra), and then to me "Thank you, thank you" - everyone is nodding and smiling and saying "No, no, thank YOU, thank you" - a sincere mutual admiration. It's a little bit of lovely feeling during a long day, and a reminder to me of how fascinating my life's work is.

Best Parental Bail-Out Ever

Here's a fun story from out East, where the Boston Symphony's young assistant conductor Julian Kuerti was making his subscription debut last week. It seems that piano soloist Leon Fleisher was taken ill at the last minute before Tuesday's concert, leaving no time for a replacement to be flown in from out of town. Fortunately, conductor Kuerti is the son of famed Canadian pianist Anton Kuerti, and dad was in town to see the kid's big night. It didn't take much convincing to get him to hop up onstage and fill in, allowing Julian to join the tiny (and probably slightly uncomfortable) fraternity of conductors who have led a concert with a parent on stage alongside.

(I should mention that Julian's an old friend of mine. We've known each other since we were teenagers in the early 1990s, long before he traded his violin for a baton, and it's been a lot of fun to watch his career start to take off in the last few years. A couple of summers back, he actually filled in as conductor of the orchestra at the New England music camp where fellow MN Orch violist Ken Freed and I work, and that gig garnered him my favorite review that he's ever received. Writing on the camp's private wiki page after the summer was over, one 12-year old stated emphatically, "He's the only sane conductor I've ever met." High praise indeed.)

Anyway, the Kuerti double bill reminded me of a great story that was first reported in the New York Times a couple of years back, when the New York Philharmonic's now-music director designate Alan Gilbert was making his much-anticipated debut. Gilbert is the son of two NY Phil musicians, one of whom still plays in the orchestra, and during a rehearsal, she apparently blew an entrance. Now, this kind of thing happens all the time in rehearsals, and unless there's a larger problem or the mistake happens more than once, conductors tend to ignore it out of respect to the offending musician, who presumably can be counted on to correct the problem without having it pointed out to the whole band. But Gilbert, realizing who had dived in this particular hole, stopped the orchestra, whirled around to the first violin section, and hollered, "MOM!"

According to the Times, the whole Philharmonic broke up laughing, as Gilbert remarked, "I've been waiting my whole life to do that."

Let slip the tubas of war

You kind of half-expect an enormous foot to descend, Monty Python-like, to squelch these odd looking instruments, but this is no joke. These Imperial Japanese military acoustic locators (sometimes known as "war tubas", not for the way they functioned but for the way they looked) were used to detect enemy aircraft early in World War II, before radar rendered them obsolete.

Another inadvertent war/music connection here (who knows what Wagner would have made of this scene and his music's role in this iconic bit of pop culture?).



"O peace! how many wars were waged in thy name."
~Alexander Pope

Words & Music

Jazz writer Howard Mandel, one of the bloggers over at ArtsJournal.com (my "other" employer,) spent a couple of days last week ruminating on the uneasy relationship between musicians and music critics. The catalyst for the discussion was the New York-based composer John Zorn, who is (in)famous for requesting that critics not review any of his premieres. Mandel's take on Zorn's aversion to press: "He's of the opinion. I'm afraid, that music journalists are ill-informed and demeaning, unnecessary and maybe parasitical, not just unsupportive but actually obstacles to the realization of musicians' potentials."

Now, Zorn may be unusual in that he is brazen enough to actually attempt to block writers from writing about his work, but I would have to say that his low opinion of critics as expressed by Mandel is shared by a large number of performing musicians. To make matters worse, with newspapers slashing their budgets for cultural coverage and Americans getting their news from an ever-broadening array of sources, many arts writers are enduring a painful discussion of whether they are rapidly becoming irrelevant. (You won't hear many musicians offering sympathy in that regard, either. Since these are the same writers who have spent decades writing lazy, repetitive, uninformed articles predicting the coming irrelevance of classical music, which has yet to occur, it feels somewhat appropriate that they should be forced to face the prospect themselves.)

Still, for musicians to dismiss the role of those who write about music is to write off one of the best methods we have of communicating about an art form that is notoriously difficult to explain. I'm not really talking here about concert reviews, per se, since I do tend to come down on the side of those who believe morning-after reviews to be largely irrelevant exercises, unread and unregarded by an increasingly large percentage of our audience. I'm talking about the sadly dwindling number of serious music writers who seek a broader perspective than those of us on stage can afford to have, and who make our listening richer with their insights.

Writing about music is an exceedingly tricky business, not least because of the widely varying degree of expertise of the modern audience when it comes to listening. Write too technically, or with too dry and academic a tone, and you'll insure that your work is never read by anyone outside a conservatory classroom. Take the opposite approach, and you'll likely be accused by musicians and other writers of either talking down to your readership, or dumbing down a serious art form. It's a delicate balancing act, and a dilemma that goes a long way towards explaining why musicians find it so easy to dismiss their local critic.

Still, in an age when the most sensationally self-promoting blowhards find it absurdly easy to score book deals, there remain a number of writers pumping out intelligent, eminently readable essays and books on music. Minnesota's own Michael Steinberg has been reliably producing beautifully written primers on symphonies, concertos, and the like for years now. (Full disclosure: Michael is a good friend, an occasional Inside the Classics co-conspirator, and he is married to the concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra.) Justin Davidson, formerly of Newsday and now on staff at New York magazine, churns out fantastically readable reporting and analysis of the music world as seen from the Big Apple. And the indispensable Alex Ross of the New Yorker has blown away the field this year with his recently released tome on the music of the 20th century, The Rest Is Noise.

Ross has a knack for the kind of writing that makes you feel as if someone has reached into your brain and finally arranged your own thoughts and feelings into a coherent verbal form. He doesn't imply that you're a craven idiot because the music of Milton Babbitt sounds to you like a wall of impenetrable noise; instead, he calmly explains what that wall of noise sounds like from a different mental angle, and leaves it to the reader to decide whether the new angle is interesting enough to prompt a reexamination of the music itself.

This type of music writing - let's call it accessible intellectualism - is, to my mind, far more valuable than the overly simplistic, conversational tone adopted by a lot of American critics in an effort to engage readers that have never stepped inside a concert hall. (Why they feel the need to engage such a demographic is beyond me. It's as if a baseball beat writer wrote every article with an eye towards insuring that cricket fans would understand every word.) It's also a lot more fun to read than the endless petty sniping that passes for music criticism in places like London, where the professional critics are increasingly indistinguishable in tone from the shrieking bloggers who are so reviled by "real" journalists.

I guess the bottom line is that I understand why John Zorn doesn't see any upside to having his music reviewed in print. (To be perfectly honest, I live in fear of the day that one of our two local dailies sends someone to review one of our Inside the Classics concerts for much the same reason. A good review probably wouldn't result in more than a handful of additional ticketbuyers, whereas a review from an old-school critic that accused us of ruining classical music with silly jokes and a lack of appropriate respect could do a lot of damage.) But rather than shut out the press entirely, it seems like it would behoove us as musicians to instead find ways to encourage more and better writing about the music we play.

Brendel thoughts #3

Part 3 of my trilogy on the great Alfred Brendel, our guest artist for the week. Brendel, at 77, is one of the truly esteemed elder statesmen of the keyboard, and his two concerts with the Orchestra this week will be his last in Minneapolis; he has announced that he will stop performing in public after 2008 and has embarked on what is essentially a "farewell tour" (although he himself does not call it that).

I've been pondering the idea of a musician's career coming to an end. Oftentimes it is logical; particularly for brass and wind players, who rely on the small muscles of the embouchure more prone to the wear and tear of use and age, the decision to retire is purely physiological (although it does not preclude them from continuing to play, just for the pleasure and familiarity of it). String and keyboard players are more likely to be able to maintain their technical skills long into life (I'm reminded of violinist Aaron Rosand whose 80th birthday was feted last fall at the Curtis Institute - as part of the celebration, a bevy of his former students (accomplished soloists and concertmasters from around the world) played together with him and felt as intimidated and humbled by Rosand's playing as when they were his students decades before.) And, of course, conductors are notorious for their longevity - Leopold Stokowski's last performance, in 1975, was undertaken at the age of 93!

From what I heard this week with the Orchestra, there is no discernible diminishment of Brendel's technical skills, and his musical mastery is beyond reproach. Although he does admit that he has a bit of arthritis, he is obviously still an artist in full use of his expressive powers. Why, then, retire? Perhaps to pursue other interests - he is an informed and witty writer, having published two volumes of music essays and a collection of absurdist poetry. Perhaps the rigors of the road have become too much to bear (take a look at his upcoming performances at the "forthcoming events" link - he has a spring schedule that exhausted me just looking at it, with a recital in a different city every 3 days).

Or perhaps he knows that bowing out on a high note - all of his performances have been highly acclaimed - strengthens his legacy in the echelons of great artists. This week has been such a privilege and a pleasure, hearing this extraordinary musician in his last appearances in this city. Every time he began the slow movement of the Beethoven Concerto, it was hard for me not to give an audible sigh of delight - the sound he elicited from the instrument, the stately grace of his phrasing. And the encore, a Schubert Impromptu of poignant simplicity, made more moving, perhaps, by my own thought that this is the last time I will hear him perform live. It reminded me that music is ephemeral - a performance, once finished, can never be duplicated - its very fleeting nature making live music truly an exquisite experience, brief in span but held forever in memory.

Brendel thoughts #2

My second installment of reflections on the Orchestra's week with Alfred Brendel focuses on the relationship between a player and their instrument. Most orchestral musicians (except perhaps for percussionists) own their instruments, as do solo artists (although I suppose you could argue that those who play expensive string instruments provided for their use by wealthy philanthropists, consortiums and various organizations don't actually "own" their instruments - although they play, use and travel with those instruments as if they were their own).

The one exception are pianists, who, by practical consideration, are for the most part unable to always perform with their personal pianos (unless, say, all concerts took place in their living room/studio). It is neither ideal nor really pleasant (sometimes) to show up to a concert venue and play a keyboard which may simply not be suited to you or, worse still, not a good instrument. The mechanism of the piano is easily manipulated so that the keys may be weighted or lightened (affecting the "touch") and certain registers brightened. Soloists have definite preferences as to what works best for them, so of course, the optimal option is to always have your own instrument, which is adjusted to your liking...

...which Mr. Brendel does (and at considerable expense to the presenter!). And what an instrument! With a tone that is crystalline without any sense of brittleness, fluid and honeyed but with the greatest clarity, it is a lovely medium for Brendel's finely-honed musicianship. And it is clearly HIS instrument - you can tell by the way he rests his hands on it for several moments before beginning to play, the sureness with which he draws sound from the different registers. It is an intimate relationship that an artist has with their instrument; it is not enough that an instrument is beautiful or that a player is exquisite - there is an alchemy in the right combination that creates an extraordinary whole.

During tonight's concert I had fleeting thoughts of my childhood instrument - a Baldwin grand, a very serviceable, if unextraordinary, instrument - that, for many years, I faced for at least 3 hours a day. I knew that piano inside and out - the low F# that always spoke a split second late no matter how many times the technician tried to adjust it, the way the pedals engaged about half and inch depressed, the slight pingy-ness of the highest register. It was imperfect, but with a wonderful roundness of sound; it was the instrument that I lived and breathed music with for over 12 years, until I had to turn away from a life at the keyboard. But I still remember the comfort it gave me when I rested my hands on its keys, and the delight it gave me when I knew how to draw its best sound. In an odd way, that Baldwin grand was my first true love, and as they say, true love lasts a lifetime.

Brendel thoughts #1

Alfred Brendel joins the Orchestra tonight as part of a "farewell tour" that caps a distinguished 60-year career. Listening to rehearsals over the last several days, I was struck by a couple of observations which I thought I'd share over the course of the next few days.

Thought for today: why do some instrumentalists vocalise when they play? All players, to varying degrees, make occasional sounds as they ply their craft (and sometimes a loud exhalation can actually help produce the desired sound). Mr. Brendel falls into the category of performers whose "singing" is audible not just to those orchestra members close to him, but to the audience as well.

Conductors, in rehearsal, will sometimes sing how they want something to be played in lieu of trying to explain the desired effect (it's a remarkably efficient way of getting across a point), and sometimes in performance I catch myself humming those very same sections under my breath as the orchestra plays (I trust a first stand string player would tell me if it became loud enough to be distracting!). Part of it, I think, is getting swept up in the moment, and part of it is how external the creation of sound is to a conductor - produced by a mass of other people, not ourselves - and how we occasionally give in to the primal need to participate in some way with that resonance.

That might explain the vocalising of conductors, but what about pianists? I wonder if part of the issue is not the nature of the piano itself, a percussion instrument that, despite its "sustaining" pedal, produces sound that, after the finger-strike, decays immediately. Yes, the best pianists can make the instrument sing, but that is an aural illusion; each note fades exponentially to time, so different from a string or wind instrument that can sustain a pitch as long as a bow or breath will bear. Maybe singing at the keyboard is an attempt to make up for the limitations of the piano.

The other thought I had is how, when we are deep in the music, musicians are communing with something other that our conscious selves. In the best moments of music-making, we are not thinking coherent thoughts, or at least nothing that one could put words to. Instead, we are carrying on a profound discourse with others and the innermost part of ourselves. And when we are so engulfed in this state of musical being, it seems natural to let our voices, the original musical instrument, to lend its sound.

Speak No Feeling

By my count, in the last two posts I've written, I churned out nearly 2,000 words in trying to figure out what gives the human voice such a powerful ability to entrance and enthrall us in a way that instruments rarely seem to. That's a lot of typing, and I don't know that I've really gotten any of us any closer to an answer.

So today, I'm trying the opposite approach. Rather than tell you about some powerful experience I've had with vocal music, I'll just offer you the same experience. The video below is of a British singer-songwriter named Imogen Heap, whose music you may have heard on the radio, especially if you're in the habit of listening to The Current. The song she's singing is called Hide & Seek. The first time I heard it (I won't tell you where and when, because it shouldn't matter, other than to note that I was not in the least paying attention to the radio before it came on,) it absolutely stopped me and the friend I was with cold. The conversation we'd been having came to an abrupt halt, and we both just sat there listening until the song ended.

One caveat before you click play: If you're of my generation, you will undoubtedly have trouble getting past the fact that the video makes Imogen Heap look a lot like the evil ancient god that tried to vanquish the Ghostbusters on top of a New York skyscraper. It's distracting, I agree. Just look away and listen.

Ho ho ho?

No, not St. Nick, actually; it's Finnish conductor and composer Leif Segerstam. But you must admit, the resemblance is striking, yes?

Coco's Song

It may seem a bit far afield to kick off my exploration of recent encounters with vocal music by talking about a play, but hear me out. This past weekend, I went with a few friends (Sarah included) to see the newly created "Fishtank" at Minneapolis's Tony award-winning Theatre de la Jeune Lune. I've been a Jeune Lune fan since I first arrived in Minneapolis eight years ago, and the fact that the company is currently experiencing some very trying times has only made me more determined to drag as many people as possible to every one of their productions, lest we lose one of the brightest stars in the Twin Cities cultural scene. (To that end: if you're planning to see Fishtank before it closes in late March, be aware that the following paragraphs contain a few spoilers. On the other hand, since the show doesn't really follow a standard storyline, you may not consider them spoilers.)

Anyway, Fishtank. I'm not going to bother trying to explain what the show is about, because we'd be here all day. (Those of us who attended together have yet to agree on what it was about, anyway.) Plot is really rarely the point at Jeune Lune, because this is a company that believes in creating a stunning visual and aural impact first and foremost, and worrying about such niceties as linear plotlines only when it becomes absolutely necessary. The show was created by the actors during the rehearsal process, which is how Jeune Lune often works. (The program describes the creative process behind Fishtank this way: "Free as cows at pasture, we roamed the rehearsal room looking for a fence so we could wonder what's beyond.")

Fishtank has four characters - Harry, Jim, Jules, and Coco - and they all spend the entire show on stage in front of a giant glass tank, with only a couple of other minor bits of set design to complete the environment. Again, what happens between them isn't as important as what happens to the way they interact. What begins as clearly casual contact between four individuals who know each other but are not obviously close develops over two hours into an almost frantic collaboration between four parts of the same unit, all of whom are desperate to get at the truth of... something. We don't know what. They don't know what. But whereas such a quest might have seemed clichéd and Beckett-like had it been introduced full-force at the beginning of the play, we in the audience are lulled by the pace of the thing into feeling the same eventual urgency that the characters feel as they try desperately to keep their heads above water, metaphorically speaking.

I should mention (by way of not completely derailing my self-imposed theme for the week) that there is singing of one sort or another throughout Fishtank. Jules, Jim, and Harry are prone to using French karaoke to cheer up Coco when she appears distraught or annoyed, which happens a lot. And late in the show, the boys persuade Coco to favor them with her own voice, which they clearly love, and which is, in fact, so aggressively hard to listen to that I almost had to plug my ears. (The fact that Coco is played by the well-known Minneapolis singer and actress Jennifer Baldwin Peden makes Coco's bad singing even more astonishing. Making music badly when you make your living doing it well is extremely hard work.) I don't remember everything Coco tries to sing, as her three cohorts smile beatifically in the background and a boombox nestled in her lap accompanies her, but I know that the world's most uncomfortable version of Musetta's aria from La Boheme was in the mix.

As the show builds to a climax, however, something remarkable happens. While the characters become more and more desperate to discover the meaning of the limited world in which we are seeing them, and the action gets ever more frantic, a recording of the first movement of Henryk Górecki's Symphony No. 3 begins to play softly in the background. The piece is a seemingly endless slow loop of the same material, layered from ultimate simplicity to ultimate complexity by an ever-expanding string orchestra. It's a deeply emotional thing to listen to for the first time, but since a) I know the piece quite well, and b) I was wrapped up in the action on the stage, I didn't really think anything of the music initially other than to note its presence and try to remember when I'd last played it.

At some point, Coco begins singing along in her tuneless way as the action on stage continues, and her voice provides an unsettling counterpoint to Górecki's smooth textures. But then, as the complexity and pressure of what's been occurring between the characters becomes too much for her exceedingly literal and routine-obsessed mind to handle, she opens her mouth wide and, in an instant, becomes the true operatic singer that the actress playing her really is. As the three men look on in stunned silence, Coco overwhelms the orchestra, singing the top melodic line in full voice with a warm, lush vibrato.

It's meant to be a show-stopping moment, clearly, and it is, as the action on stage literally freezes around the suddenly golden-throated Coco. And here's the thing: I totally saw it coming. Once she was murmuring along with the Górecki, I knew there was at least a chance that we'd be hearing Jennifer Baldwin Peden's actual singing voice at some point during the scene. Furthermore, as I said, I know this piece. No part of its melody will ever be surprising to me. And yet, the moment the first notes of "real singing" burst forth... I choked up. I did. And I had no idea why. It didn't seem to be a sad moment in the show, particularly, nor was Coco expressing any sort of wailing anguish. It was just the simple beauty of the human voice, heard after more than 90 minutes of uncertain speech and halting song, that somehow stopped my brain in its tracks and instructed raw emotion to take over.

"God, I'm glad to hear you say that," said my friend Anne over a couple of beers after the show, as I sheepishly admitted that I'd had to wipe away a tear. "Because the same thing happened to me, and I could not figure out why it was happening!" I doubt we were the only two wondering.

I hate to make assumptions when it comes to music - there's always plenty that we haven't heard yet, and can't imagine hearing until we do - but I've thought about it a lot since that night at Jeune Lune's warehouse home, and I simply can't imagine such a visceral reaction being provoked in me in that same situation by anything but the human voice. Had Coco suddenly begun to play along with the music on a cello, it would have been beautiful and satisfying, but I can't imagine that it would have provided the emotional slap in the face that I got.

I'm not sure why that is, exactly. And since I'm not generally one who chokes up easily at plays and movies and concerts, I'm curious to know what switch in my brain was tripped by that moment. I'll probably never know, but I know this much: I'll be back to see Fishtank again soon, to see whether the moment has the same impact when I know for sure that it's coming.

Prokofiev and profiteroles

A rare evening off tonight allowed me a foray to Broders' Pasta Bar for a tasty Sunday dinner. I went with my friend Steve Copes, concertmaster of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and admitted foodie. He's a great restaurant guide as well as a terrific cook - the kind who whips up homemade gnocchi, pressed herbed chicken and poached pears for a random weeknight meal, just because. We bumped into MN Orchestra violinists Dave Brubaker and Aaron Janse enjoying a leisurely meal. As they were leaving we compared our dishes and Aaron waxed poetic on the marvels of guanciale, which made me smile.

I've always wondered about the strong correlation between being a musician and being a foodie. Part of it comes, I'm convinced, from a musician's understanding of careful preparation yielding an aesthetically pleasing result; we appreciate the composition of beautiful ingredients under skillful hands into an artistic expression of flavor and aroma. It's a creativity that we grasp innately as something very close to our own work.

It's not surprising, then, that many musicians are also quite accomplished cooks. MN Orchestra bassist Dave Williamson is infamous for his "cooking parties", where he opens his home to dozens of colleagues to cook up a storm in his kitchen (often emptying his pantry in the process). In fact, many members of the bass section are excellent cooks - give acting principal bass Fora Baltacigil any ingredient and he'll come up with some toothsome concoction fragrant with spices and redolent of his native Turkey. Violinist Mike Sutton makes a mean Ethiopian wots, complete with injera. And Sam makes some of the best roast chicken ever (thanks for bringing me some that day, Sam!).

I read far more reviews for restaurants than I'll ever be able to actually go to, impatiently wait for new episodes of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations and devour (pun intended!) books like Bill Buford's Heat. Maybe musicians' foodie tendencies come from our intense focus on our work, which is most often a long-term venture (the results of practice can take weeks to manifest) and our need to have a hobby that is visceral, where the results are immediate and gratifying. Or maybe it is simply the pleasure of sharing a table with our friends and colleagues, and the delight of good food, good drink and good company that often continues far into the night...

Rise Up Singing

I've been thinking a lot lately about the power of singing, and of those who sing. Minnesota is home to an almost shocking number of amateur and professional choirs, and our orchestra never goes a season without performing with at least one or two of them. Audiences here simply go nuts for the sound of the human voice, and we can always be assured of an enthusiastic response whenever we program something that includes a couple hundred singers. (This goes double if there is a children's choir involved.)

That having been said, those of us who play instrumental music for a living have a bad habit of regarding vocalists as something less than ourselves. It's a prejudice borne mainly of stylistic differences, I suspect, as well as from the simple contrast between amateur musicians (of which most large choirs are made up) singing purely for the love of music, and professionals who rely on music for both artistic satisfaction and a steady paycheck. To those of us in the orchestra, chorus people often seem unnaturally enthusiastic about absolutely everything, as if they're perpetually on the edge of either laughing or crying hysterically. To them, I'm sure we seem perplexingly casual about and unaffected by the great music we're performing together. It's an uneasy relationship, at best, and I'm sometimes amazed that our performances of choral works don't reflect that unease.

Additionally, even professional singers, vocalists who can shake the foundations of the largest concert halls with their powerful human instruments, do not share much of the musical culture that instrumentalists are brought up in, and we've been mistrustful of each other since our conservatory days. Where we spent hours in school locked away in practice rooms slaving over details, the singers always seemed to be laying about in the lounge, sipping bottled water with lemon, wrapping scarves around their necks in 70-degree weather, and whispering to each other lest their delicate vocal cords be damaged by the act of conversing normally on top of their whopping 45 minutes of daily practice. They were the divas to our backup singers, the porcelain figurines to our homemade rag dolls, the - forgive me - Truman Capote to our J.D. Salinger.

Even Osmo, at the press conference at which he was introduced as our music director back in 2002, betrayed a bit of this musician bias when he was asked by a member of the media who also sings in the Minnesota Chorale whether he planned to expand the number of choral works we play every year. I remember vividly the slightly evil smile that played across his face as he first acknowledged the importance of maintaining the orchestra's commitment to great choral music, then added slyly, "However, I don't know whether we will do more choral music. To be honest, sometimes musicians can feel that working with singers is sometimes not worth the trouble." The whole room broke up laughing, except for the reporter/singer who had asked the question.

But as I say, I've had a number of recent experiences, both as a performer and an audience member, that have gotten me thinking more deeply about singers and singing. Rather than restrict the subject to a single post, I'm planning to spend this coming week blogging about each of them in turn, just to see whether my own biases and preconceived ideas change at all during the process. As my mother would remind anyone who cared to listen, I have a long and mostly undistinguished history with singing myself, so clearly, I could stand to reengage the form. We'll see what, if anything comes of it...