After Hours: Wednesday Edition

Here's your chance to let us know what you thought of Wednesday night's Inside the Classics concert! We had a nearly full house, which was great to see, and as always, you guys are a fantastically responsive audience! So chime in down in the comments, and let us know what you liked, what you thought we could have done better, and what you'd like to see more of in future shows...

(Also, if you'd like to learn more about Copland and Appalachian Spring, you can read all the stuff we didn't have room for in the show in our Cutting Room Floor posts...)

Last-minute touches

Well, our final set of "Inside the Classics" concerts start tomorrow evening, and Sam and I are obsessively putting the final touches on the script, timing out sections, rehearsing a complicated mixed-meter schtick and generally getting ready for what promises to be a great show (if I may say so myself!). It's a gratifying process to finally see the result of individual work coming together into a coherent whole that is, we hope, as moving as it is illuminating.

I've been toying for a couple of weeks with the idea of conducting "Appalachian Spring" from memory. I'd mentioned in a previous post that this is one of those pieces that I know well enough to have done memorized in the past, and am theoretically prepared to do so now. In fact, this morning, mid-plane ride, I checked my memory by going through it a couple of times in my mind sans score, making sure I knew every entrance, every tempo shift, every metric change, every dynamic, etc. While I feel pretty confident in my knowledge of this score, I've decided to go the safer route and keep the music on the stand for the shows.

Going scoreless during a concert, although it does have it's nerve-racking qualities, is actually quite liberating. As musicians we constantly refer back to the written note to make sure that we are accurately executing the intention of the composer. Even when I know a piece backwards and forwards, I'll catch myself glancing down at the score more than I need to because I don't want to miss a single detail. When the score is removed, in a way I feel untethered. But by the same token, sometimes it forces me to be more engaged in what's happening in the moment because my focus has been shifted away from what I feel I should be accomplishing.

My final decision to use a score for the concerts stemmed from the fact that we have a single rehearsal to prepare this show. That's just a little over 2 hours to rehearse "Appalachian Spring" in its entirety, as well as the over 20 minutes of musical excerpts we'll be presenting in the first half. It's really not a lot of time to get the work done, and not an optimal amount of time for myself (and the orchestra) to be utterly comfortable with our take on this piece. If we had several hours over the course of a few days (as would happen in preparation for, say, a subscription concert), I think it would make much more sense.

So, for tomorrow, I'll start the second half with an open score on my stand. I do wonder, however, if I'll be turning all of the pages, or going for large swatches without referring to the score.

Ask An Expert: Danger Pay

Whenever I have occasion to visit a school and take questions about what I do from the kids, it's never long before the question, "How much money do you make?" comes up. It's as predictable as adults asking why we never seem to be watching the conductor, and about as tricky to answer. Since we are entertainers, and we collectively bargain our contract, our salaries do tend to find their way into the public record, but I usually find some way to answer the kids with a comparative to another profession, rather than a specific dollar amount. (This is mainly because kids tend to think that any number followed by the word "thousand" is huge, because they've never had a mortgage or a family to support.) This usually results in the kids being visibly unhappy with my answer. Bill in Dallas is about to be similarly disappointed...

Q: What is the range of premium pay for a player (such as Mr McGuire) who is a member of the orchestra but is selected to play a featured solo (like a concerto) on a subscription or other concert?

The short answer, Bill, is that I've no idea, and there's no realistic way for me or anyone else to find out. While the base salary of a Minnesota Orchestra musician is collectively bargained by our union representatives within the orchestra, individual musicians who are asked to play a concerto (or, for that matter, to host a concert as I do on a semi-regular basis) negotiate their own pay scale with our management. (I have a dim memory of there once having been a minimum rate for a soloist from within the orchestra buried deep inside our master agreement, and that it may have been roughly twice the amount we get paid for a chamber music performance, but having just scanned the most recent contract, I can't find such a rate anywhere.) The range, I assume, varies with the nature of the performance, the relative profile of the musician involved, and of course, the negotiating skill on both sides of the table.

As an example of how these things can vary, I host two different concert series for the orchestra at the moment: Inside the Classics, and our Close to Home series at St. Andrew's Church in Mahtomedi, Minnesota. The latter series is a far more casual and unscripted affair than Inside the Classics, and my duties basically involve doing some nominal research, chatting with Osmo in the week before the concert to see what he wants included, and then showing up in Mahtomedi and talking almost off the cuff for 10-15 minutes over the course of the concert. Inside the Classics, on the other hand, takes weeks of preparation for each concert and a pretty extraordinary amount of research, consultation, writing, timing, blogging, interviewing, rewriting, and organizing to pull off. As you might imagine, I'm paid considerably less for the Close to Home series than I am for Inside the Classics.

I have no idea what Peter McGuire was paid for his performances on our January concerts, nor do I know what our concertmaster, Jorja Fleezanis, received for her performances of the Elgar violin concerto last week. They're almost certainly different figures, and it's probably a safe assumption that Jorja made more, but it's between the soloists and our management. However, I would point out that the outlandish figures that you hear tossed around with reference to top-tier soloists like Yo-Yo Ma and Joshua Bell are to our solo fees as Justin Morneau's salary is to Burt Hara's. You may safely assume that no orchestra musician playing a concerto is getting rich off the event...

Rattling The Cages

Big news out of Germany this week, where the musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic (widely considered the world's best orchestra) are reportedly considering a vote to oust their music director, Simon Rattle. Rattle arrived in Berlin amid much fanfare in 2002, but there have been widespread reports of conflict between conductor and orchestra, and some European critics have been unimpressed by the collaboration.

Now, I haven't heard Berlin under Rattle, myself, and as noted in previous posts, I take a somewhat dim view of most music critics, so I don't really have an opinion on whether he ought to continue in his post. But what I find interesting about the story is the unique management structure of the Berlin Phil, under which the musicians actually have the power to hire and fire their boss.

I've written extensively about the audition process musicians go through to win our jobs, and a big part of the equation is that American music directors typically have full hiring and firing authority over us, although we do have a tenure system in place to protect us from capricious action. Music director hirings are far different. While the musicians are usually given input into the search process for a new artistic leader (and I stress usually - believe it or not, there are orchestras whose board and management leaders actually believe that the musicians shouldn't have any role in selecting their primary conductor!), the final hiring decision is made by the board of directors, after taking into account not only musical factors, but such considerations as whether the candidate is likely to be popular with the public, whether s/he will command a salary that is affordable for the organization, and whether s/he is willing to commit to all the gladhanding and fundraising duties that have become standard in American orchestras.

When it comes to getting rid of a music director who has overstayed his welcome, or one with whom the desired chemistry with the orchestra just never developed, the musicians generally have even less input. We can, of course, have our elected committees speak to management and board figures about our artistic concerns, and we can even suggest that it might be time for change at the top. But suggesting is where our role begins and ends. We have no power to compel a conductor to leave our employ, and the board is free to ignore our concerns. The reasons for this are fairly obvious, if you consider an orchestra the way you would consider any other workplace: no one likes their boss all the time, and if the person in charge could be dismissed every time s/he ticked off the employees, there could potentially be chaos.

Because of the way business is conducted in the music world, you rarely actually hear about a music director being fired. In fact, music directors are almost never technically fired. What tends to happen is that, once it's clear that the relationship is going nowhere, both sides agree to some sort of separation, which often comes in the form of the music director signing a contract extension with a fat raise attached, but announcing at the same time that s/he will be leaving the post after the extension is up. It's a version of the golden parachute, I guess - allowing the executive to exit with dignity (and no small amount of cash) in exchange for relative organizational tranquility. With luck, the orchestra will have found a new music director to take over by the time the old one departs, and the transition can be a smooth one.

Occasionally, something goes horribly wrong, of course. A few years back, disputes between the musicians of Orchestre symphonique du Montreal and their longtime music director, Charles Dutoit, exploded into public view when a musicians' union official wrote a public letter calling Dutoit a "tyrant" and accusing him of treating the musicians unfairly. It quickly became clear that a) the union official had somewhat misinterpreted the manner in which the musicians had asked him to intercede on their behalf, and b) that not all the musicians of the OSM were angry with Dutoit, but the damage was done. Dutoit swiftly resigned his post, pronouncing himself shocked and shaken by the charges, and the OSM spent several years with no one at the artistic helm before landing Kent Nagano as their next MD. (That the OSM also went through a brutal months-long strike in 2005 is not directly connected to the Dutoit debacle, but it does point up the fact that when an organization isn't functioning well, all manner of difficult situations are likely to crop up.)

Meanwhile, in Berlin, an entirely different business model is in use. The Berlin Philharmonic is funded entirely by the government, as are many German orchestras. A general manager is charged with overseeing the day-to-day operations of the group. But it is the musicians who hold nearly all of the power in the organization, including the power to hire and fire the music director. To date, they have never used the firing power. Every music director Berlin has ever had has either left of his own accord, or actually died in the post. So it's understandable that the possibility of a no-confidence vote in Rattle is attracting a lot of attention. That his famously high salary, granted at a time when the city of Berlin was literally going bankrupt, was widely reported in the press has added ammunition for his critics over the years, and his predilection for programming difficult composers like Stockhausen has hurt him with some percentage of musicians and public alike.

Now, even if Rattle were to be shown the door in Berlin, he'll be just fine. (Minnesotans can think of him as the Paul Douglas of conductors.) There's already speculation that both the Chicago Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra would be chomping at the bit to sign him as music director (Rattle has a long history with the Philadelphians,) and he commands some of the highest guest conducting rates in the world. Plenty of orchestras love working under him, and as a general rule, a conductor's failure to connect with Orchestra X is irrelevant to whether s/he will work well with Orchestra Y. And his reputation as an innovator and builder of orchestras (he famously brought England's City of Birmingham Symphony to great prominence during his whopping 18-year tenure in the East Midlands) will remain intact regardless of whether he comes to a bad end with the Berliners.

But as a matter of professional interest, I find the whole situation fascinating. Most American musicians probably believe that we should have the primary voice in hiring and firing decisions concerning music directors. But would we actually want that kind of power? If we were sitting in the Berlin Phil's place today, what would we do?

Classical pinups?

A fashion spread on Esquire.com features, refreshingly, handsomely be-tuxed classical musicians, from Joshua Bell to members of the New York Philharmonic.

Cutting Room Floor: Validation & Legacy

Some musical works that we think of as masterpieces today were given a decidedly rocky reception on their first performance. (As we demonstrated in dramatic fashion at our January Inside the Classics concerts, Tchaikovsky's violin concerto was one such piece.) But Copland's Appalachian Spring was not only an instant hit on the concert stage, it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1945. Which got me wondering what else had won the Pulitzer during the musically tumultuous 20th century.

The music Pulitzer was awarded for the first time only two years before Copland won it, and William Schumann was the first recipient. (Schumann's music is not frequently performed these days, but he was extremely popular with orchestral audiences in the mid-20th century.) In 1944, it was Howard Hanson (another too frequently forgotten composer) taking the prize for his fourth symphony. (Hanson's best known symphony was his second, which the Minnesota Orchestra will coincidentally be performing next season.) Other familiar names capturing honors in the Pulitzer's first decade included Charles Ives, Gian Carlo Menotti, and Walter Piston.

If the initial ten or fifteen winners have anything in common, it's that the majority of them fell outside the musical avant garde that was fast overtaking concert music at the time. Germany's Arnold Schoenberg, whom we'll be discussing at next week's Inside the Classics concerts, had thrown down the atonal gantlet with his system of 12-tone composition decades before, and by the 1950s, composers had well and truly splintered into multiple movements, some of which clung to traditional models of tonality even as others disdained anything that average audience members might actually enjoy listening to.

The avant garde may have been fighting their way to the fore of the compositional profession as early as the 1940s (or even earlier, if you count such luminaries as Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Berg as members,) but it took the Pulitzers a while to catch up. The first significant work of seriously atonal music that I see on the list is from 1960, when Elliott Carter won for his second string quartet. (In general, I'm not a huge fan of a lot of the atonal music that was written mid-century, but Carter's string quartets, like Bartok's, are truly masterworks, and did a lot to advance both composition and performance of chamber music.) Interestingly, the 1962 award went to Robert Ward, who rejected 12-tone and atonal music as "boring," for his operatic version of The Crucible, which is still regularly performed by companies the world over. And while the Pulitzer committee toyed with the avant garde a bit in the '60s (Leslie Barrett won in 1967, George Crumb in '68,) it stayed largely away from the most "out there" compositions of the era.

But then, in 1970, the committee decided to jump headfirst into the new, and gave the award to Charles Wuorinen, for his synthesizer symphony, Time's Encomium. There are those in the music business who will tell you that this was the moment when concert music in America truly went off the rails and lost popular audiences forever. (I may not disagree - I generally despise Wuorinen's music, and most of what he stands for as a composer.) There are others who would insist that it was only when Wuorinen was legitimized in the eyes of the musical establishment that those of us in the hidebound, old-fashioned orchestra world finally began paying attention to the important changes underway in our profession.

For most of the 1970s, the Pulitzer would go to an avant garde composer; not a surprise, given what was going on in America's larger culture during that decade of experimentation and rebellion. (One of the exceptions to the rule was Minnesota's own Dominick Argento, a staunch melodist who won in 1975 for From the Diary of Virginia Woolf, a song cycle premiered at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis.) But in the '80s, things throttled back a bit as composers began to emerge from decades of intense pressure to reject any idea that reeked of the past. By 1987, when John Harbison won the Pulitzer for The Flight Into Egypt, it seemed that tonality and atonality were on their way to a reconciliation.

The last couple of decades have firmed up that idea, at least as far as the Pulitzers are concerned. A new generation of American composers, from Aaron Jay Kernis to John Corigliano, won the award for compositions that embraced traditional melody and harmony without sacrificing intellectual content. Some composers who had never gone away during the decades of experimentation (John Adams, for instance, who won in 2003 for a symphony inspired by the 9/11 attacks) experienced career resurgences. And in 2007, there was an even more positive sign: a jazz score, Ornette Coleman's Sound Grammar, won the Pulitzer for the very first time. (Jazz legend Wynton Marsalis had won the award in 1997, but it was for a classical composition.)

A lot gets made these days about the collapse of traditional barriers between musical genres, and certainly, embracing jazz in 2007 doesn't exactly make the Pulitzer committee a risk-taking bunch. But just as orchestras (the biggest, costliest, and most unwieldy ensembles of the music world) are generally an important bellwether of which trends are truly here to stay in the classical world, the Pulitzers tell us a lot about which composers may (and I stress may) stand the test of time. The full list of winners is here if you want to peruse it yourself, and I'd love to hear about any winners that leapt out at you, or any you find incomprehensible...

Preparation throes

As Sam is furiously reworking the script for next week's "Inside the Classics" concerts, I've been busying myself with revisiting "Appalachian Spring". Conductors end up performing much of the standard repertoire dozens of times in their careers, and I, even as a (relatively!) young conductor have certain pieces that I've repeated often. The Copland is one of those pieces; I've done the original chamber version twice and the full version twice. So it's a very familiar piece (and one of the dozen or so I've performed memorized, without a score).

That's not to say preparation is any easier, because "App. Spring" is one of those pieces that will knock you off the podium if you aren't absolutely sure of everything there. Particularly unforgiving is the amount of rhythmic variety in this piece; Copland will present a theme one way and then repeat it with a slightly altered rhythm in it's next iteration, so if you haven't really carefully studied, one is prone to make stupid mistakes. There's also that middle section (starting at rehearsal 35, if you're interested) that presents a mixed-meter extravaganza, where the time signature changes nearly every measure. There's really no time to get lost for a split second in the midst of the excitement of performance.

There are a lot of ways to learn complex meter changes, the most obvious being counting it out over and over, then conducting and counting over and over. But I find that what helps me (and every conductor is different - there are those with alleged photographic memory, for instance, who have only to look at something once to have it permanently imprinted on the brain!) is to create a "graphic" representation of a piece, how its sections are laid out and how its meter groupings work together. Below is an example of a few sections of the Copland:



In my personal "notation", each graph square represents a measure. Meter changes are indicated, as are rehearsal numbers. Longer lines indicate phrase divisions (I also occasionally show micro-divisions within larger phrases) and notations above remind me of an important dynamic, instrumental entrance/melody, structural feature or tempo change. I don't do this for every piece, but I definitely find that it helps me develop an more in-depth understanding of how the music is put together, to see it laid out like this on graph paper. It might look oddly sparse - when I do this with pieces I don't know as well, I'm more prone to notate actual melodies to remind me what they are - but I have most of this piece in my head anyway, and I simply need a mental organizational aid.

When I was a kid I was obsessed with a Bernstein/LA Phil recording that I listened to so much that I can pretty much just "turn it on" and listen to it in my mind's ear. I try to avoid recordings because I find that if you listen to them more than once or twice they start influencing the way you hear a piece of music - not a problem if you're just listening for the pleasure of it, but a huge problem if you're preparing a score for you own performance.

I'm pretty conscientious about putting in adequate time to score preparation, regardless of the concert. Conductors get a bad rap for over-extending themselves and showing up to the first rehearsal only marginally familiar with new repertoire, and over the years I've occasionally watched rehearsals where this was achingly obvious. When conducting a subscription run, one usually has the luxury of multiple rehearsals so that there's a built-in "learning period", albeit on the podium. But when you're allowed a single rehearsal, as we have for Inside the Classics, Pops, outdoor and Young People's concerts - the bulk of my work with the Orchestra - you have to be completely on the ball from the first downbeat, which means I'm concert-ready even before that first rehearsal. Stressful, yes, but it has definitely reaffirmed the good habit of always being prepared!

Cutting Room Floor: Behind Every Great Composer...

The music world is full of behind-the-scenes figures without whom none of us on stage would have a prayer of making a living at what we do. These devoted music fans contribute the money that keeps us going, and some of them contribute countless hours of their time, as well. Some are board members of orchestras big and small; some devote their free time to helping keep organizations like Minnesota's Schubert Club aloft; and a select few go their own way, commissioning new works, finding and paying musicians to play them, and generally carving out a small niche in the music world that would otherwise not exist.

Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, was one of this last group. Born in Chicago in 1864, she would become one of the most influential figures in the then-developing American music scene, and while her name wouldn't ring a bell with the vast majority of musicians and music fans today, composers and musicians across the 20th century musical landscape (including Aaron Copland) owe her a debt of gratitude.

That such a prominent patron of the arts in the early 20th century could have been a woman might seem surprising, given the societal restrictions of the period. But a quick glance back through Western musical history reveals that an inordinately large number of patrons of the arts have been women, and this remains the case today. (Just off the top of my head, I could name nine or ten women who are major powers on the Minnesota Orchestra's board. I'm refraining because many of them are famously averse to public recognition for their charitable works, wanting only the music and an occasional conversation with Osmo in return for their tireless efforts.)

Sprague Coolidge's contributions to music were many, but she may be best remembered for having started the rural summer festival in the Berkshire mountains of western Massachusetts that would later become known as Tanglewood. The Boston Symphony's idyllic summer home, to which listeners from around the world flock each July and August to hear grand symphonies while lying on a vast lawn sipping wine, began as an outgrowth of Sprague Coolidge's Berkshire Music Festival.

She was most passionate about chamber music, that connoisseur's genre so often ignored by the general public, and in her adult life, she commissioned some of the great works of the era: Bartok's 5th string quartet, Anton Webern's lone quartet, two quartets by Arnold Schoenberg, and (you knew this was coming) Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring. (While our Inside the Classics concerts next week will be focusing on the orchestral version of Copland's masterpiece, remember that it began its life as a ballet score, to be played by just 13 musicians in an orchestra pit. At it's core, Appalachian Spring is a work of chamber music.)

Sprague Coolidge's role as a patron of the arts was a delicate one at times. In 1919, she famously held a competition for composers to create a new sonata for the viola, one of her favorite instruments (and mine, obviously.) Several prominent composers entered works, and eventually, the jury deadlocked between two distinctive pieces. One was by the eminent Swiss-American composer Ernest Bloch (his Grand Suite for viola,); the other was by Sprague Coolidge's neighbor, a British-born composer and violist named Rebecca Clarke. Aching for her friend, but mindful of the necessity of not allowing her competition to be sullied by accusations of favoritism, Sprague Coolidge broke the tie in Bloch's favor. (Both the Clarke sonata and the Bloch suite have since become standard repertoire for violists.)

Many of those responsible for music's creation and preservation toil in obscurity, and as I said, many of them wouldn't have it any other way. (To be honest, it's likely I'd never have heard of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge were it not for the fact that my connections to Western Massachusetts run particularly deep.) So it's somewhat apropos that you won't be hearing anything about the woman who commissioned Aaron Copland to write a ballet for Martha Graham in our concerts next week. Her name doesn't appear on the score, and even hardcore Copland fans frequently assume that it was Graham herself who paid for Appalachian Spring to be written.

But without her, 20th century music would have been quite different. She understood the importance of encouraging innovation, even if she didn't always like what she heard. Her perspective on the importance of new music is one that all of us in the music world would do well to remember: "My plea for modern music is not that we should like it, nor necessarily that we should even understand it, but that we should exhibit it as a significant human document."

Performance enhancement?

A blog post by Matthew Guerrieri today (4/18) reminded me of a conversation I had recently regarding musicians and meds, specifically Inderal, the beta blocker most often used for performance anxiety.

It’s safe to say that performance anxiety is an inescapable fact of life for any professional musician - regardless of preparation or experience, everyone feels some surge of adrenaline, some sharpening of the nerves every time they walk onstage. There are those who find a way to channel this energy in a positive and productive way, while others are beset by what can sometimes be crippling stage fright. I’m always surprised by the number of well-known performers who have battled nerves all of their lives – Vladimir Horowitz left the concert stage for a decade because of stage fright; Glenn Gould took Valium; Barbara Streisand stopped giving live performances because of it; the list goes on and on.

Musicians, creative creatures that we are, have found a variety of ways to cope with performance jitters, running the gamut from deep breathing and visualization to a pre-concert cocktail (or two). The irony of it all is that nerves are part of what creates excitement in a performance and gives live music it’s “edge” – and it’s part of what makes it thrilling for those of us on stage as well. The problem lies in when the personal edginess becomes so overwhelming as to become debilitating, or when it prevents you from approaching optimal execution.

The use of Inderal, which is intended for angina, hypertension and migraines, as a musician’s performance aid started quietly in the late ‘70’s and has become fairly commonplace in the business. Studies from as early as the late 80’s show that nearly 22% of musicians polled took beta blockers in one capacity or another; I would venture to guess that this percentage is far higher now, particularly in audition situations.

By blocking adrenaline receptors in various organs, beta blockers slow one’s resting heart rate, lowering both blood pressure and cardiac output. What it can do is allow one to focus on music making by minimizing the physical effects of anxiety; what it cannot do is help you play well if you haven’t adequately prepared or are unable to control your psychological state. There’s a lot of back and forth about it out there on the internet/blogosphere, with passionate opinions in both directions.

I’ve never been able to figure out why this is such a terribly controversial topic and one which musicians are often reticent to discuss (I’ve always been of the “do what you need to do” school of life). Maybe it’s our general societal sensitivity to what might be considered to be a performance enhancing drug. I certainly know colleagues who have found great success in Inderal use for high-pressure situations. By the same token, I’ve had friends who found it to be emotionally detaching and terribly unhelpful. As with anything in life, it's up to each individual to figure out for themselves what works best for them, or, as the French say, chacun a son gout.

Beta blockers are a regular feature of my life; I hate (HATE) flying, and it’s something I have to subject myself to at least 3-4 times a month, if not more. I was initially prescribed Valium for air travel (there was a period of time when simply walking onto a plane was panic-inducing), but Valium's not really a viable option if I have to get off a flight and conduct a rehearsal 2 hours later (which is not so infrequent a situation) – it just make me terribly sleepy and apathetic, neither of which are acceptable to an orchestra. Inderal at least keeps my heart rate from going out of control every time we hit an air pocket and lets my brain calmly reason with itself (“Flying is statistically safer than driving”, etc.). I still have to deal with what’s going on internally, but at least the physical manifestations are suppressed, and that makes it infinitely easier. I don’t think I could really make a living as a conductor if I couldn’t cope with air travel, so in a way beta blockers really do help me career-wise!

Cutting Room Floor: This Is A Dance, Isn't It?

As I mentioned in a previous post, finding enough material to fill the first halves of our Inside the Classics concerts is never a problem - the challenge comes in deciding what will have to be left out due to time constraints. In fact, after each of our first two concerts this season, Sarah and I have had several people ask, "Why didn't you talk more about...?", and the answer is always that we simply ran out of space in the show.

However, since we have no such limitations here on the blog, I thought I'd spend the next week or so offering up bits and pieces related to Appalachian Spring that we're not going to have time to explore in our upcoming concerts. These "cutting room floor" posts will have their own tag, so if you want to wait until after the concerts to read the extra material, you'll be able to click cutting room floor in our list of tags over in the right-hand column, and you'll get everything on one page.

The most glaring omission from the concerts is going to be any sort of prolonged focus on the fact that Appalachian Spring was originally composed not as a work of concert music, but as a ballet score written for the revolutionary 20th century choreographer Martha Graham and premiered in 1944. Those who attended our Firebird concerts last fall know that we spent a good chunk of time examining the interaction between Stravinsky's score and the dancing that it was written to accompany, but for various reasons, we decided not to do that for the Copland concerts. The major reason is simply that, while Stravinsky's ballets told a very definite story and managed to revolutionize the world of ballet as well as the world of music, Appalachian Spring is somewhat vague in its storyline and was more or less forgettable as a ballet. The piece took on a second life in the concert hall once Copland rewrote it for full orchestra in 1945, and it's that version that we'll be focusing on.

Still, anything choreographed by Martha Graham can't be dismissed entirely, and while the ballet version of Appalachian Spring is rarely performed these days, Graham's influence on both classical and modern dance is with us everywhere. Her signature style is unmistakable, whether accompanying Copland's wide-open scores or, as in this clip from "Night Journey," the sharp, angular sounds of William Schumann.



I find Graham's commentary on this clip fascinating. She talks about "the weight of the body against the floor" being emphasized, rather than minimized, as it would have been in an earlier era. Think about a 19th-century ballet like Swan Lake, in which all the dancers seem to be doing their best to convince you that they are, in fact, weightless, floating about the stage as easily as if they were on the moon. Weight is most decidedly the enemy in traditional ballet, and an almost ethereal style of movement is the goal. Graham turned that philosophy completely on its head, demanding that audiences embrace the raw humanity of her dancers, warts and all. People are heavy. Gravity weighs us down. Deal with it.

This, of course, is why Graham's choreography tends to make some viewers uncomfortable, just as attending a production of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? makes us squirm in recognition of the everyday malevolence of people just like us. Rather than offer a vision of human movement that seems godlike and idealized, Graham gives us humanity as it is: endlessly complex, frequently awkward, but beautiful in a raw, earthy sort of way. To me, it's a fascinating contrast with Copland's idealized musical view of America, which we'll be getting into in depth at the Appalachian Spring concerts.

For more on Graham's technique (as well as a few musical clips from the original chamber version of Appalachian Spring,) check out this short clip from the Martha Graham Legacy Project. (They've disabled embedding on this clip, for some reason, so I can't include it on the blog.)

Forget the Berlin Philharmonic...

...I want to conduct THIS ensemble, particularly in a concert of "Beethoven and Hank Williams"...

Rooting for the home team

I have to apologize for the sparser-than-usual blogging; I've had a busy week in Philadelphia, and the culminating concert at Curtis is tonight. I did, however, have a day off yesterday, which allowed me the great pleasure of hopping a train to New York to catch the Minnesota Orchestra concert at Avery Fisher Hall.

It's always interesting to hear an orchestra out of their usual context. In my 18 or so months with the Minnesota Orchestra I have heard them almost exclusively in Orchestra Hall, which has an incredibly live acoustic. It's a remarkably resonant space and one that our players are accustomed to - they've figured out how to sound their best on that particular stage. The way the Orchestra sounds in Orchestra Hall is what my ears have become used to as well, so it was a surprise to hear them in the very dry acoustic of Avery Fisher.

The players I spoke to after the concert noted that unlike in Orchestra Hall, where sound tends to "swim" a bit because it's so resonant, there was a clarity in Avery Fisher which was almost unnerving, because each player (particularly in the strings) could hear their own sound so well. I had a similar sense from sitting out in the hall; I could actually pick out the sound of individual players and could clearly hear the occasional "crunch" of bow hair attacking strings. For me, there was a greater intimacy to the sound, but I wonder if it's not where I was sitting, 15 rows in on the floor (I tend to sit somewhere in the tiers when listening in Orchestra Hall).

I'm hoping that Sam might have a word or two to share from his perspective as well. As for myself, it was a pleasure to root for my home team from the audience, particularly at the instantaneous standing ovation at the end of the Mahler.


ADDENDUM: A rather nice review from the New York Sun.

ADDENDUM 2: And yet another glowing review, this from the New York Times. Go team!

It All Depends On Where You're Sitting

We're now just over two weeks away from our final Inside the Classics concerts of the season, and that means I'm spending most of my time writing, researching, revising, and mercilessly cutting down the material to fit within a reasonable length of time. As usual, there's a lot that we want to cover in depth, but that we'll only have time to touch on briefly. (I'm planning to use the blog to get more deeply into some of the stuff that won't be in the show over the coming weeks.) One of the themes we'll definitely be zeroing in on throughout the show, though, is the idea of Copland as the quintessential "American composer," and of his music as the embodiment of a vague but immediately recognizable concept known as the "American sound."

Because I'm spending so much time on this, I've found that much of the day-to-day news and comment in the wider classical music world is getting filtered through the Copland discussion in my brain, and as a result, I've started to realize just how different the view of almost everything music-related is in America as opposed to the UK or continental Europe. (I'm sure it's just as widely varying in Asia, Australia, South America, and Antarctica, but my sources of music news aren't as strong there.) Especially when it comes to determining which composers and specific pieces rise above others, our criteria and assessments of import seem to be wildly divergent on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Copland, for instance, is often seen in the UK as an interesting if limited composer who wrote the same piece over and over again while pandering to American audiences incapable of engaging more intellectual music. This, of course, more or less describes the way many American scholars and audiences view Elgar, whom the British revere as one of their national treasures. The Germans and Austrians tend to dismiss both of them as artists of relatively slight consequence, but then, it's easy to dismiss the musical titans of other countries when your own gets to claim Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss, Mahler, etc.

Two recent examples of this parting of the musical ways caught my attention this past week. One had to do with New Yorker critic Alex Ross's book tour, which has generally resulted in fawning press from American music critics thrilled to finally have a devastatingly intelligent, yet eminently readable, tome on the subject of 20th century music to endorse. But appearing on a BBC radio talk program, Ross found himself the target of some fellow writers who felt that his book represented a viewpoint severely limited by Ross's nationality. Specifically, they weren't happy with the large number of pages devoted to (surprise!) Copland. Also, the Brits thought that another of their local heroes, Ralph Vaughan Williams, got short shrift, and that Ross's supposition that 20th century American musical innovation overwhelmed a more conservative and emotion-free compositional approach in Germany and Austria (see also Stockhausen) was both naive and insulting. (New York composer and blogger Kyle Gann wrote an excellent rebuttal of this argument shortly after the interview aired.)

The second noticeable transatlantic disconnect I spotted concerns the Argentinian-born, American-educated Osvaldo Golijov, whom many American musicians and critics consider to be the preeminent composer of our time. In fact, the love of Golijov's music runs so deep in American new music circles at the moment that it is almost startling to discover that the Brits and Euros are, on the whole, not terribly impressed with him. Some even slap his music with the dreaded "crossover" label, and see his embrace of folk themes and eclectic influences as a threat to "serious" composition.

(To me, this seems like an odd criticism, since European musical heavyweights from Brahms to Bartok used folk music in their work to great effect, and it's not as if Golijov is sampling Miley Cyrus choruses or anything. In fact, since many of the folk elements Golijov employs are Jewish in origin, a cynic might even wonder whether there is a more sinister undercurrent to some of the criticism from central Europe. But that's not a path I'm particularly interested in walking down.)

To be fair, Golijov's European critics fault him less for using material that isn't strictly classical than they do for supposedly failing to bring the influences into a wider musical context. To some, this might seem a largely semantic argument, but it's the type of thing that scholars can quite literally discuss for days. If you care about that sort of thing, it's fascinating stuff. But most people would rather just listen to the music and decide whether it sounds good to them.

I don't really see any need to take a side in either of these debates (although it's probably evident that I do tend to enjoy Copland and Golijov more than Vaughan Williams and Stockhausen,) except to note that a lot of people in the music world hold very strong opinions, and that we tend to present those opinions as if they are objectively formed, rather than shaped by our particular musical upbringings.

All politics is local, Tip O'Neill used to say, and I'm convinced that much of music is the same way. The issues might seem global, but the answers you get to the questions you ask will often come down to a decidedly provincial mindset of one type or another. That's as true in New York or London as it is in Minneapolis or Bucharest, and I don't see that it really matters whether we ever achieve a global (or even semi-global) consensus. The fun is in the arguing... and, of course, the listening.

Hat #3

Another day in my itinerant musician's life, this time in Philly, for a week at the Curtis Institute of Music where I'm staff conductor (even though I'm here only a few weeks a year). It's always interesting for me to move between what are often wildly divergent weeks of work. It strikes me that I wear quite a few hats; there are certain expectations of me as the assistant conductor of a major orchestra, a different set of expectations when I'm guest conducting, and a whole different protocol when I'm in a conducting/teaching role as I am this week at Curtis.

I generally enjoy teaching, although I find it to be the most taxing thing I do. Part of the stress has to do with the responsibility I feel when trying to impart information and perhaps a different perspective to a group of young people. Another part lies in the necessity, when teaching, to not only understand that information and perspective internally, but to also be able to coherently express it. Teaching forces me to both organize and formalize, and in the process I often find that I inadvertently clarify, for myself, my own viewpoints.

I spent 6 years teaching at Curtis (I was hired the Monday after graduation, so for a long time it felt like I had never left the place!), and it's an experience for which I'm tremendously grateful. I taught a conducting class for all non-conducting majors, a required course for a bachelor's degree, which meant I saw almost all of the enrolled students at one point or another in my class. We discussed the history of the art of conducting, orchestration and analysis, as well as the physical aspects of conducting. Teaching analysis forced me to be acutely methodical and disciplined in my own studying; teaching technique pushed me to find a more systematic physical vocabulary. Professional orchestras often thank me for the clarity of my beat; I would in turn thank my teaching years. When a student asks you how to achieve an accent on an off-beat, you need a very compact and specific answer. The absolute understanding and clarity of intent one needs to be a proficient teacher in turn has helped me in my conducting.

The teaching comes back to me in another way as well; many of my students have gone on to successful careers as soloists and orchestral musicians, many of whom I've encountered over the years. And when they tell me that they can still recall from memory the Haydn symphony movement I had them conduct, or that they remember how to give a neutral preparation beat to an active upbeat, I feel that little flutter of pride; something I'd taught had made enough of an impact to remain in their memory, to become a part of them.

More Random Sports Nonsense (Now With 100% More Osmo!)

Sorry for the sparse posting this week. I've been kept extra busy by my side job as the assistant news editor over at ArtsJournal.com while the site's managing editor is away in Europe, and on top of that, we're playing a pretty big concert this week, which we'll be taking to New York for a Sunday matinee performance at Lincoln Center this weekend.

But I have to confess, another thing keeping me from the keyboard this week is that I'm a huge hockey fan, and as any red-blooded Minnesotan knows, it's playoff time. I'm one of those obsessive fans who actually buys the NHL Center Ice TV package, knows the names of the play-by-play guys on Hockey Night in Canada, and reads John Buccigross's column every week. There are more than a few of us puckheads in the orchestra, and this time of year, we're all more or less giddy with excitement, stopping each other in the halls to lament Martin Skoula's latest horrific defensive lapse or argue about whether Jacques Lemaire (the Osmo Vänskä of hockey coaches) mixes his lines too much.

Osmo's a big hockey fan, too, which is why I'm bothering to bring this up at all. Way back when he first arrived in town, Osmo was asked to be one of the local celebrities who the Minnesota Wild use to lead the crowd in chanting "Let's play hockey!" just before the puck drops. He already knew a fair amount about the game, and since the Wild have always had at least one Finn on the team, he has a natural rooting interest. (One of the highlights of Osmo's life as a fan was sitting in one of the "on the glass" seats down by the penalty box, and getting noted antagonist Ed Jovanovski, then with the Wild's arch-rival Vancouver Canucks, to shout at him while serving a penalty.) He's been known to hand out free luxury box seats to Wild games to members of the orchestra and their families, and I must admit that I've spent many a night sitting next to him at the Xcel Energy Center, screaming at the referees and needling Osmo to explain one more time how Niklas Backstrom can be Finnish when he clearly has a Swedish name.

He was at the Wild's first playoff game of the year last night as well, and he'll reportedly be there again next Thursday for Game 5. And as you can see from this picture I took backstage at intermission of our concert this morning, he's definitely playoff-ready...

That's right. Our music director has grown a playoff beard. See, to me, that's dedication. He's never had a beard in his life, but his team - our team - is in the playoffs, racked by injuries, and fighting desperately to prove they deserve to at least occasionally get mentioned on SportsCenter, and Osmo is showing solidarity in true old-school fashion!

(Okay, fine. Technically, Osmo claims that the beard has nothing to do with the playoffs, and that he just got lazy about shaving while on a composing retreat in the Lapland a couple of weeks ago. I told him that my version sounds better, and he seemed okay with it. So we're going with playoff beard. And if the Wild somehow manage to make it to the Cup finals, you'd better believe he'll be looking for a chance to slip the State of Hockey anthem in as an encore to one of our late-season concerts...)

Foodstuff, part deux

Remember the Dudamel Dog menu I posted a few months back? Here is the 'dog itself, in its full glory. Check out the whole story here.

Sticker Shock

The news came over the weekend that yet another Stradivarius violin was sold at auction for over a million dollars. In this case, it was the so-called "Penny" Strad (named for the first woman to play in London's Royal Philharmonic Orchestra) which went for $1.2m at Christie's auction house in New York. Barbara Penny died last year, and her heirs decided to sell the instrument, which is, of course, their absolute right.

These sales always provoke a sort of admiring gasp in the arts press, as if to say, "Look how valuable these fine old Italian instruments have become! They must truly be great works of art!" To which a musician would reply: Yeah, art, that's great, but who bought it, please? Because I'd be willing to put down a month's salary on the bet that it wasn't anyone who plans to play it. (The buyer has asked to remain anonymous, which is allowed under auction house rules, just so long as the check clears.)

There's a reason that Strads, and Guarneris, and Guadagninis and other select Old World instruments made a few hundred years ago are so highly valued, and it's this: they're rare, they sound (arguably, it must be said) better than modern instruments, and no one alive knows how to make any more of them. They will, by definition, be expensive, and I don't know any musician who would argue with any of that.

But how expensive should they be? Market forces are all well and good, but the presumption of a market-based model would be that prices for the best violins, violas, cellos, and basses would rise to the highest possible level at which they would still be affordable to the wealthiest or most resourceful professional musicians who want them. And this is exactly the problem with the current market for old string instruments, which has been exploding out of all proportion to reality for the past couple of decades. They aren't affordable to any musicians anymore (okay, fine, Josh Bell and Itzhak Perlman could still afford one, but they've each already got at least one,) because the market has been overwhelmed by collectors, many of whom are acquiring the instruments to display them as art objects, or simply as an investment.

This drives musicians absolutely crazy. Purely as a matter of practicality, a string instrument that sits unplayed for years or decades will inevitably lose much of its quality of sound, meaning that one of the great instruments ever made is effectively destroyed because some wealthy collector thinks it makes a nice conversation piece. At the very least, a Strad in a glass case is a Strad that is not being played anywhere in the world. It's an indefensible waste of a precious resource, and yet there seems to be no stopping it.

There are, of course, silver linings. Many owners of high-end instruments are philanthropically minded, and they "lend" their acquisitions for years at a time to promising young musicians (usually violin soloists) who are just starting out, can't afford a great fiddle yet, but need one to take the next step in the ultra-competitive field they've chosen. Some buyers wind up selling a whole collection of valuable instruments at a discount to their favorite orchestra. (The Minnesota Orchestra's bass section plays on just such a collection, and the New Jersey Symphony famously bought, and then resold, a huge collection from a well-known East Coast financier who was promptly arrested for tax fraud.)

Furthermore, I've talked to a number of string players in the last few years who think the absurd escalation of prices on old Italian instruments is a blessing in disguise, that it forces us to abandon any hope of acquiring one and focus instead on the multitude of talented luthiers producing high-end instruments right here, right now. They may have a point.

But it still bugs me that a tool that I have to have to do my job can be made absolutely unavailable to me under any circumstances, because someone with too much spare cash thinks it might bring an 8-12% annual return while squirreled away in his safe.

The Big Reveal: Inside The Classics '08-'09

A number of you have been asking whether we're ever planning to make public our plans for the Inside the Classics series beyond the current season, and at long last, we have answers! The official press announcement concerning our 2008-09 season of concerts went out a day or two ago, and those of you who are subscribers and/or longtime patrons of the series should be getting the new brochure in your mailbox within the next few days. Still, we wanted to get the first official word on the new season up on the blog before it drops anywhere else, so here it is.

The first thing to tell you is that Sarah and I will be continuing in our respective roles as conductor and host of the series in 2008-09, and that we will also continue to write and produce the shows ourselves (along with the Minnesota Orchestra's invaluable artistic administrator, Kari Marshall,) as we have in this inaugural year. We'll also be preserving the format of the concerts, whereby we spend the first half delving into the music and the people who bring it to life, and then give the second half of the evening over to a complete performance of a single featured work.

We've spent a lot of time this first season experimenting, both musically and verbally, to try and get our points across in as many creative ways as possible, judging our success levels by what we hear from both our colleagues in the orchestra, and you in the audience. Some of this feedback came in the form of blog comments, e-mails or phone calls, but the bulk of it came simply from taking the measure of the room at the moment one of our "bits" connected - or failed to.

Essentially, this series has been, and will likely continue to be, a work forever in progress, as we attempt to nurture new ways of connecting people to music. To that end, the 2008-09 season will be all about starting you off with some music you're likely already comfortable with, and then asking you to trust us to introduce you to something completely new.

Our theme for the year is "Young Wonders," composers who became masters of their craft at a shockingly young age. One of them is probably obvious, another will be quite familiar, and the third you are likely never to have heard of - but we guarantee that you'll never forget him. So without further ado, here's the rundown on next year's concerts...

Concert 1 - November 19 & 20, 2008
Featured Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Featured Work: Symphony No. 41, Jupiter

Well, we really couldn't do a season on prodigies and leave him off the list, could we? Mozart was the quintessential stage kid - paraded around Europe like a circus act, playing spectacular piano and violin solos while blindfolded as a party trick, and generally living out his father's dreams of musical stardom. In his 20s, he quickly developed into one of the most beloved composers of his day. But he never really outgrew his youth, and his inability to deal with the adult world on its terms is something that we'll definitely be getting into. Musically, we'll spend the first half taking you from his earliest works through his early adulthood; then, on the second half, you'll get to hear Mozart at his most mature - the last symphony he ever wrote, full of energy and bombast, but also perfectly paced and beautifully orchestrated, as only he could do.

Concert 2 - January 28 & 29, 2009
Featured Composer: Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
Featured Work: Symphony No. 4, Italian

Everyone knows about Mozart's prodigiousness, and that he died in his late 30s, leaving us to wonder what might have been had he lived a few more decades. Few listeners, however, realize that Mendelssohn's lifespan was as short as Mozart's, or that his early compositions were even more impressive. Mendelssohn was penning legitimate masterpieces in his mid-teens, as a member of one of Europe's most celebrated musical families. We'll trace the lineage on the first half, and bring you, among other things, a movement of his spectacular Octet for Strings, written at age 15. Then, on the second half, you'll get a full dose of what many believe to be Mendelssohn's greatest orchestral work, jumping with energy and unmistakably tied to the youthful enthusiasm that defines so much of his music.

Concert 3 - March 18 & 19, 2009
Featured Composer: Jay Greenberg
Featured Work: Symphony No. 5

Unless you are a devoted viewer of the CBS News program, 60 Minutes, or are seriously plugged into the American new music scene, you probably have never heard of Jay Greenberg. That's okay. Until about two years ago, I'd never heard of him, either. Of course, two years ago, he was 14 years old, and had just completed his fifth fully scored, fully realized symphony. A year later, that symphony, which we're featuring as our season finale, was recorded by no less a luminary band than the London Symphony Orchestra and released by Sony Classical. Jay describes the symphony as "a counter-stereotypical work combining a Romantic melodic sweep with... methodical mathematical thinking." One prominent composition teacher at Juilliard has declared the soft-spoken kid from New Haven, Connecticut to be "a prodigy of... the likes of Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Saint-Saens." That's quite a hefty description for a teenager to bear on his shoulders, and we'll spend our first half asking him about it in person, as Jay Greenberg joins us live on stage to talk about his life and his music. Then, after intermission, we'll give you a complete reading of this remarkable piece, by this remarkable young man.

So there it is, at long last. Sarah and I could not be more excited about these shows, and we're thrilled that Jay will be able to join us for the third set of concerts! (As you may have guessed, his participation was the important confirmation we mentioned a few weeks back that we were waiting on before announcing the new slate of concerts.) It should be an awfully fun ride, and we hope that all of you who've joined us at the hall or on the blog this year will make it out for all three concerts, and bring your friends!

Ask An Expert: Musicians Run Amok!

It's not often that one Ask an Expert question leads immediately to another, but I thought one of the comments left on our last question about section leaders was worth its own post:

Q: Orchestra positions are tenured?? So once you're in, you basically have to run amok to be out?

Well, it's not quite that rock solid a deal. Basically, the tenure system in orchestras was evolved to replace the system that was in place in many orchestras during the first half of the 20th century, under which conductors had omnipotent hiring and firing authority, and were sometimes known to dump one musician in order to bring in a crony, or a girlfriend, or a relative, or whatever. Since the musicians had little to no employment protection, they would usually just have to accept the nepotism and find another gig. Musicians also had no real recourse against a conductor who claimed they weren't living up to his musical standards, even if the real reason for dismissal was something far more personal.

These days, in most major orchestras, hiring and firing is still largely the job of the music director - even though we have audition committees, the committee is, in the end, serving in an advisory capacity to the MD - but there are a lot more rules governing the process. The rules differ slightly from orchestra to orchestra, but basically follow the same formula across the US.

Here in Minneapolis, every new hire is considered to be on probation for the first two years of employment, during which time s/he will have several meetings with the music director and his/her section leaders to assess progress and identify any musical concerns. (In other words, no fair firing someone for an ostensibly musical reason after a year or two if they've never been told there was a problem and given a chance to at least try to correct it.) Six months before the end of the probationary period, the player's section, audition committee, and the music director meet to decide whether the player will be granted tenure, have their probation extended for an additional year, or be dismissed from the orchestra. These are the only three options. A non-tenured player cannot remain with the orchestra after his/her probation expires.

Once you have tenure (and the vast majority of musicians hired by major American orchestras do receive tenure,) it simply becomes more complicated for you to be dismissed - for musical reasons, anyway. Like anyone working anywhere else in the world, we can be dismissed at any time "for cause." Since I don't work in HR, I'm not sure what legally qualifies as cause these days, but I would imagine that things like slugging a co-worker, stealing cash from someone else's locker, or leaping up in the middle of a concert to shout abuse at the conductor or the audience would be the kind of things that would qualify. Missing a high A-flat in Ein Heldenleben would not.

It's still entirely possible for a tenured musician to be dismissed from the orchestra for musical reasons, too. It gets a bit complicated, but it would be easiest just to say that, once a tenured musician is officially informed that the music director has begun the process of dismissal, the musician has the right to ask his/her colleagues to weigh in on the situation, and final dismissal cannot occur until the process, which includes ample time for the musician to attempt to rectify the stated problem, is complete. Under our contract, this process can be as long as 18 months, which seems like a long time, but is the same amount of time that a probationary musician has to prove that s/he is worthy of tenure in the first place. And in the end, if the music director really wants a specific player out, he'll be able to make that happen. Whether it's worth it to go through the whole process rather than attempt to find a compromise of some sort is another question.

So, yes, running amok would indeed get a musician fired, I would think. But the tenure system isn't there to guarantee lifetime employment - merely to level the playing field in what is often a highly combustible artistic situation.

"Orchestrating Possibility"

Conductor Benjamin Zander was in the news recently, though not for the usual reasons (Grammy nomination, North Korean tour, etc.). Instead, Zander made the papers for giving the closing address at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Though it may seem initially odd to contemplate a conductor addressing a roomful of executives, economists and politicians, the connection becomes immediately obvious, particularly when he delves into a revelation he had several decades ago about his position as a conductor:

"I had this amazing breakthrough, this realization that the conductor doesn't make a sound. So he depends, for his power, on his ability to make other people powerful."

He espouses a plural approach to leadership that has really resonated with the global business community. A good segment of his speech is available here; it's worth watching to the end, if just to catch his audience being turned into a motley international chorus singing "Ode to Joy". Alle Menschen werden Brüder, indeed.

Zander is clearly of the glass-half-full school of thought, which is a comfort in these dark times. But it made me wonder, instead of contemplating a dour fiscal outlook by battening down the hatches, circling the wagons, and otherwise just trying to go about business as usual, just with even greater conservatism, why not look at adversity as an opportunity for innovation and thinking outside the box?

I'm no Pollyanna - Sam, back me up, aren't I as cynical as any musician (and we are a cynical bunch)? But I always feel that this cynicism prevents all of us from doing our very best thinking - or as Zander puts it, we're going into a "downward spiral versus radiating possibility."

Look, I know I've been railing against doom and gloom a lot lately, but it's because all the glum news, particularly in our industry, is not solution-based. It makes me wonder if there's a business guru out there who might give a motivational speech to a bunch of musicians and orchestra managers; if the response is akin to what Zander received in Davos, maybe THAT would finally get us into a more productive train of thought.

Ask An Expert: Principal Principles

So, Don's got a question that could get me in trouble in several different ways...

Q: Are the "titled" seats in the various string (or other) sections always the most skilled musical performers in that section, or do the auditions consider other factors, such as leadership abilities?

Oh, Don. You and your innocently voiced queries that secretly mask a host of pitfalls just waiting for me to step into them and insult half the people I work with! Why not just ask me who the best musician in the orchestra is? (Okay, fine, it's probably Burt Hara. But there are many, many contenders.)

The truth, as you might imagine, is that principals and other titled players are certainly expected to lead their sections by example, and that means that, in an audition situation, we are likely to be far more choosy when selecting a principal than we might be in choosing a new section player. This isn't to say that winning a section job is an easy task - I've blogged before about the brutal process we all go through to win our positions - but whereas we might be willing to assume that a talented but imperfect young musician will grow into certain aspects of a section job, principals need to be fully formed, mature performers and leaders the day they start. Those of us in the section need to have absolute confidence in their abilities, because it's our job (especially in the strings, where as many as 16 musicians are all playing the same part at the same time) to follow exactly what they do, and rely on them not to lead us in the wrong direction, even for a moment.

Now, is it possible that there could be a better pure musician in a given section of the orchestra than that section's principal? Sure. We don't reshuffle the deck chairs every time a new player comes aboard, so if we hire a fantastic player to fill a section position, that player might well be principal material, but if the job isn't open, it isn't open. Some outstanding section players who want to make the leap to titled status but are "stuck" in sections where all the leadership positions are likely to be filled for decades to come wind up taking auditions elsewhere. This actually happened to us recently, when cellist Joe Johnson, a wonderful player in a section that already boasts three well-respected titled players (none of whom are anywhere near retirement age,) left Minneapolis in 2007 to become principal cello of the Milwaukee Symphony.

You also asked whether we consider leadership abilities when choosing a titled player, and the short answer is that we do. But leadership skill is almost impossible to assess in a traditional audition situation, in which the candidates are playing alone. Sometimes, we'll have an additional round added to our final auditions, in which the candidates play a piece of chamber music with members of the orchestra, but playing a string quartet, while it does require you to work with others, really isn't anything like leading a section.

So the scenario that many orchestras follow when hiring a new principal player is to go through the usual audition process, choose a couple of candidates who seem qualified for the position from a musical and technical standpoint, and then ask them to come and play as "guest principals" with the orchestra for a week or two. That gives the whole orchestra a chance to test the chemistry of the situation, and for all the members of the section to weigh in before a final decision is made. And of course, principals are subject to the same two-year probationary period that we all go through before being granted tenure in the orchestra, so if a principal just isn't working out for whatever reason, we've got plenty of time to correct the mistake.

So, did I manage to get through all that without saying anything that's likely to result in an angry e-mail from an aggrieved colleague? [quick scan...] Yup. I'd say so. +1 for me!