Au revoir

To film composer Maurice Jarre. Jarre, a three-time Oscar winner, has scored films from The Man Who Would Be King to A Passage to India (and Ghost!); TV credits include Shogun and the theme for Great Performances on PBS. But perhaps he's best known for his collaboration with director David Lean, which yielded, in my opinion, two of the greatest film scores of all time, Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago.

Doctor Zhivago was something of a childhood fixture for me; it was my dad's favorite movie, and the first video purchased after we acquired a Betamax in the early 80's (remember those?) - I think I still have whole swatches of dialogue memorized. And the music? In a word, exquisite:





(As a personal aside, sorry for the prolonged absence from blogging. I'm slowly recovering from wrist and shoulder problems, and typing is still pretty uncomfortable - although I was getting pretty good at the one-handed thing!)

Ask A Concertmaster

Our concerts this week are being billed as "A Fleezanis Farewell," not because our esteemed concertmaster is leaving us just yet, but because this will be the last week that she solos with us before her move to Indiana this summer. (Of course, she could well return as a guest soloist in the future, but you know what I mean.) I've been looking forward to this week, not only because our audiences are always big and enthusiastic when Jorja solos, but because conductor Gilbert Varga is one of my all-time favorite batons to work under.

I'm assuming Jorja will be hugely busy this week, but it seemed an opportune time for me to begin thinking about sitting down with her for the exit interview I promised way back when she announced her retirement. My hope is to talk with her sometime in the next week or two, after which I'll have audio as well as written excerpts up on the blog as soon as I can. And I already know a lot of what I want to ask her, but I'm interested to hear what you all want to know about our remarkable leader for the last 20 years. So if you would, please post any questions you'd like me to ask Jorja in the comments, and I'll try to work as many as I can into the conversation...

Ask An Expert: Pecking Orders & Patriarchy

We always seem to get good new Ask An Expert questions right after we perform a set of Inside the Classics shows, and this month is no exception. Mark Mironer starts us off with a classic "If A>B, and X>Y, then when is X>B?" conundrum...

Q: Ok, so first violin is generally more prestigious (and difficult) than second violin, and being a "titled" player is more prestigious (and difficult) than being non-titled. So, is it better to be a titled second violinist than a non-titled first violinist? How does the pecking order work?

A great question with no clear answer beyond personal preference, I'd say. It's true that the Principal Second Violin will almost always make a bit more money than a section player in the firsts. (Emphasis on "a bit." Except for the very most prominent players in the orchestra, titled players don't make nearly as much overscale as you might imagine.)

But playing second violin can be a hard and thankless job. They play fewer melodies and more backing textures than any other instrument group in the orchestra, and that can really mess with your playing technique if you're not careful. So for many violinists, being in charge of a section is less important than being challenged every day by first violin parts, which can be wickedly difficult. Case in point: this past year, our orchestra's longtime Principal Second, Vali Phillips, voluntarily moved into a section chair in the firsts. He seems quite happy, and while his replacement at the head of the seconds, the estimable Gina DiBello, now technically outranks him, it certainly doesn't mean that my admiration of Vali's skills has diminished in the slightest.

So I guess what it comes down to is finding the right balance between the challenge of playing your instrument and the challenge of leadership. There's no single answer that works for everyone.

Moving on, Ruth Ann Marks has a question about a different sort of orchestral hierarchy:

Q: On New Year’s Day I watched two televised concerts: one by the New York Philharmonic and one by the Vienna Philharmonic. I was struck by the gender difference between the two groups as I did not see any women musicians playing in the VPO! (However, I believe that the VPO actually has at least one (?) official female member.) From the internet I have gleaned that the reason for the VPO’s lack of female musicians relates to their assumption that men produce a unique quality of sound. What is your take on this? I find this argument contrary to my experience listening to the Minnesota Orchestra; when Jorja Fleezanis is concert master, I feel that the MN Orchestra is at its best. (And Sarah Kwak is pretty amazing too!)

(Yes. Yes, she is.) Without getting too deep into the specifics of the Vienna situation (you can read the whole sorry history of their continuing exclusion of women elsewhere,) I think it's safe to say that every musician I know would laugh at the outmoded and absurd idea that an all-male orchestra is in any way preferable. Yes, the Vienna Phil is one of the world's great orchestras, and has nearly no female players. But the Berlin Phil is at least Vienna's equal, and they've got tons of women in their ranks. (As does nearly every other great orchestra in the Western world.) The one just has no connection to the other.

Interestingly, it was this argument that women were incapable of performing at a high enough level to be admitted to major orchestras that led, in part, to the process of "screened" auditions that so many orchestras (especially in America) now use. If women couldn't compete at a man's level, went the theory, then there should be no harm in having the orchestra make it's hiring decisions without being able to see the candidates. Not surprisingly, it was around this time that women started to be hired in abundance.

The Minnesota Orchestra is currently made up of 2/3 men and 1/3 women, which actually surprised me when I counted, because I thought it would be closer to 50/50. (Our orchestra admitted its first female member, violinist Jenny Cullen, way back in 1923, much to the dismay of many of the men in the orchestra at the time.) Our violin sections are overwhelmingly female, and our cello section has a solid majority of women as well. So from the audience, our band probably appears to have fewer men than we actually do. But brass sections are nearly always dominated by men, as are bass sections. (We'll be getting a new female bass player in the fall, our first since I've been in the orchestra.) And oddly, our viola section is overwhelmingly male, which is quite unusual, and I don't really have an explanation for it, except to say that it's definitely not that way on purpose.

In any case, Ruth is certainly right that Jorja Fleezanis and Sarah Kwak stand as living refutations of the notion that women lack the qualities necessary to play in, or lead, an orchestra. And eventually, even the Vienna Phil will get over themselves and join the modern world...

Perspective.

I've started to dread getting up in the morning and turning on my computer to see the latest batch of bad economic news for orchestras and the arts in general rolling off the virtual presses. Obviously, times are tough all over, and no one who works in our business would ever have expected it to be spared given the global circumstances, but there's something about the steady, seemingly endless drumbeat of bad news from all corners of the industry that makes it hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Some days, the most optimistic thought I can muster is something dark and schadenfreudian like "Glad I'm not in that orchestra."

But the fact is, no matter how bad this economic malaise gets, or how long it lasts, we are eventually going to come through it, and most of us will not have been reduced to begging on Nicollet Mall or selling apples out of a wheelbarrow to survive. Even as we see the statistics on home foreclosures and corporate layoffs roll past us on the news every day, I think it's important to remember how many of us are still okay, and more importantly, in a position to help get things back on track.

Reality is a tough thing for an awful lot of people right now. But when I take a step back from the ball of navel-gazing fear that CNN wants to turn me into, here's the personal reality I need to focus on: Barring a truly unthinkable catastrophe within my organization, I am not in any danger of being laid off. Furthermore, even if I were to wind up taking a substantial pay cut (certainly a possibility) to help stabilize the orchestra's finances, it is almost inconceivable that it would render me unable to afford the extremely modest home I own. I have relatively little personal debt. I have no children to put through college. And I've had the opportunity to put some money away for emergencies.

In other words, I'm going to be okay. I'm not remotely wealthy, and never will be, but at a time like this, I start to feel awfully fortunate to have the limited stability I do. And watching the sandbags pile up in the Red River Valley this week, I've been struck by the generosity so many people will show at the slightest hint of the need for it, even as a lot of them could probably use some charity of their own.

So here's my plan. As of right now, I am done worrying about AIG's bonus payouts, President Obama's stimulus plan, or Governor Pawlenty's LGA cuts. I'm through shivering in my little news cave waiting for the sky to fall in, and I'm also done fearing, every time an orchestra agrees to a pay cut or a temporary furlough, that it means The End Of The Music World. Instead, I'm making a commitment to seek out the people and organizations whose work makes my life here in Minneapolis worth living, and support them on a far more consistent basis than I have in the past.

Specifically, instead of hoarding every dime I bring home in preparation for the apocalypse that isn't coming, I'm committing to going out and putting some of my income to good use at least twice a week. I'll buy tickets to a theater I've never attended before, or take a chance on going to see a new band at the Entry. I'll take advantage of all the museums and galleries that the Cities have to offer (and not on the days when they let everyone in for free.) And if, some weeks, I'm just too exhausted or overworked to contemplate an evening like that, I'll go buy a few new books from Magers & Quinn, plunk down a few bucks at a neighborhood wine bar, or invite friends to join me for dinner at one of the countless locally owned, chef-driven restaurants that make Minnesota unique.

You might say this is an easy commitment for me to make, since all I'm really promising is to pay people to entertain, educate, or feed me. You'd be exactly right. It's ridiculously easy, and I don't know why I ever allowed the Voices of Economic Doom to convince me that I shouldn't be doing it all the time. Because wouldn't I feel silly if, at the end of all this mortgage-backed-security-credit-default-swap-Wall-Street-vs.-Main-Street foolishness, I was left living in a world stripped of the art, music, and literature that I value, only to realize that I could have helped keep it alive?

Admit it: you'd feel silly, too. Now who's with me?

Build A Better... um... Theremin?

When you're talking about orchestras and the instruments within them, there are a lot of legitimate questions that can be asked. (Why do we have trombones and bassoons, but no saxophones? Why clarinets but no harmonica? Why two violin sections and only one of cellos when the cello is without question a better instrument?) But I have to admit that the idea that we might be lacking some instruments that no one's even invented yet isn't something that I've spent a lot of time considering.

But apparently, someone has. And that someone has thousands of dollars lying around that s/he is willing to throw at inventors who come up with these incredible new noisemakers. Some of them are honestly pretty stupid and unpleasant-sounding (there are sound files of all the finalists on the Wired story I linked to above,) but some others (the Silent Drum and the Sorisu in particular) are instruments I wouldn't mind hearing worked into a larger ensemble.

After all, there's a history of using technology to enhance the orchestra. Messaien made extensive use of the oddly spacey ondes martenot, and the electromagnetic air guitar known as the theremin has become something of a cult favorite over the years. My only question is how long I have before someone decides that a Sorisu section would be a nice replacement for violas...

a theremin in action...

A Death In The Family

Our viola section lost a good friend and former colleague this week. David Ulfeng, who retired from the orchestra in 2004, was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known, and he was also one of the few musicians who never seemed to allow the grind of playing music for a living to diminish his love of it even for a moment. He was a walking encyclopedia when it came to viola music, and continued playing recitals even after retiring from the orchestra. He died far too soon on Tuesday, mere days after he’d been diagnosed with late-stage cancer.

Dave was legendary within our section for his sense of humor, and it was a measure of his understated personality that many of our colleagues in other sections of the orchestra had no idea that, in a viola section jam-packed with class clowns, he was by far the funniest. He could sit silently for 5 hours of a 5-1/2 hour rehearsal day, only to slay you with a single quip just when you’d begun to wonder whether he was awake. No one else committed to a bit the way Dave did, and it was his willingness to go a very long way for a very little joke that made him so hilarious.

Shortly after I joined the orchestra, we tuned up for a concert to be conducted by our then-music director, the diminutive but always energetic Eiji Oue, and then had to sit and wait for nearly a full minute before Eiji emerged from the wings. Dave was sitting with his head down, seemingly oblivious to the awkwardness for about 30 seconds, when all of a sudden he looked up to the podium and, finding it empty, whirled his head around and asked the rest of us in full voice, “Where’s the little guy?!” By the time Eiji made it to the podium, the entire viola section was in hysterics, except for Dave, who sat there as serene as ever, quietly enjoying the chaos he had created.

My fondest memory of Dave, though, is a deeply personal one from my earliest months in the orchestra. As I’ve mentioned before, new members of the orchestra are considered to be on probation for our first 18 months in the job, after which we either receive tenure, or are dismissed from the ensemble. During the probationary period, we get a number of progress reports from the music director, based on feedback from the rest of our section, and in my case, my first progress report had not gone as perfectly as I'd hoped. I got some compliments, but some pointed suggestions as well about areas of my playing that needed to improve. I remember being floored by the criticism, and also frighteningly unsure of what steps to take to correct the problems.

What followed was a period of several weeks in which I swung wildly from one playing style to another, desperately hoping that I would, by sheer luck, hit on an approach that would be pleasing to the colleagues who held my future in their hands. In the process, of course, I was wrecking the very playing style that had earned me a spot in the orchestra to begin with, and making myself a neurotic mess to boot. Nothing was working, and I began to doubt that I had any business playing in a major orchestra.

Then, one day, about three weeks after my progress report, I was sharing a stand with Dave, who was kindly pretending not to notice my desperate flailing about in search of a musical identity. It was the final rehearsal before our first concert of the week when he looked around to see if anyone was looking at us, then leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Hey, for whatever it’s worth, you’ve already got tenure in my book.” Then he turned a page in the music, settled back into his chair, and gave me a quick, conspiratorial smile before picking up his viola.

It was such a simple gesture, but it was exactly what I needed to hear, and Dave’s gentle reassurance was somehow enough to allow me to clear my head and begin the serious work I needed to do to become a full, productive member of the section. It was one of those moments of unexpected kindness that you remember forever.

I’m not the only one with a story like that about Dave. When he broke the news to us that he was retiring, during a viola party at Tom Turner’s house (yes, we have viola parties – insert your own joke,) we wound up spontaneously going around the room, telling stories about Dave’s exploits in our midst. We never did run out of them.

It’s a rare musician who can spend the better part of four decades in a single orchestra and leave with no enemies, but that’s exactly what Dave did. I’ve never heard anyone say a bad word about the man, and if anyone ever did, you’d better believe there’d be a gang of angry violists to answer to. We’ve lost him far too soon, but those stories we all carry around will keep him alive in the orchestra’s memory for decades to come. Godspeed, Dave, and thanks. For everything.

After Hours: Thursday Edition

I don't know what it is about our Thursday crowds, but you guys always have the most incredible energy! Thanks so much for coming out, and now here's your chance to weigh in. Did you like the video component? Was the balance between interview and our usual format successful on the first half? What did you think of the symphony itself? (Remember, we really do use your feedback to shape future shows.)

Most importantly, we're interested in knowing how you feel about our occasionally programming new music on this series. It's something we'd like to do more of in the future if our audience shows an interest, but we also want to hear if you'd prefer that we just stick to the core orchestral repertoire. Chime in below in the comments, and be as detailed as you'd like...

After Hours: Wednesday Edition

If you were with us at Orchestra Hall tonight for the Jay Greenberg symphony, here's your chance to tell us what you thought of the show. Did you like the video component? Was the balance between interview and our usual format successful on the first half? What did you think of the symphony itself? (Remember, we really do use your feedback to shape future shows.)

Most importantly, we're interested in knowing how you feel about our occasionally programming new music on this series. It's something we'd like to do more of in the future if our audience shows an interest, but we also want to hear if you'd prefer that we just stick to the core orchestral repertoire. Chime in below in the comments, and be as detailed as you'd like...

Because one needs a pick-me-up sometimes

I particularly enjoyed the Tchaikovsky Symphony and Chopin Prelude references half way in. A perfect pick-me-up in a rough week - I will survive!

Osmo In His Own Words, & ItC In The Strib

If you follow the Minnesota Orchestra at all closely, you're probably no stranger to our music director's biography. In his six seasons with us, he's been a media magnet, and countless articles in newspapers at home and abroad have laid out his reputation as a builder of orchestral underdogs, a tireless detail man, and a dynamic presence on the podium.

But what you probably haven't had much exposure to is Osmo himself - he rarely speaks from the podium, and journalists tend to "clean up" his quotes if he words something oddly, which takes much of the considerable personality out of the way he speaks. So I thought I'd post a link to an extended conversation an interviewer at Deutsche Welle (the English-language German broadcaster) had with Osmo recently. The interviewer has something of an odd speaking style, but he asks excellent questions, and Osmo gets to answer in as extended a fashion as he cares to.

If the link above (which should pop up an audio player) isn't working for you, click here to go to Deutsche Welle's site, and scroll down for the audio link...

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On another media-related note, if you haven't made it out to one of our Inside the Classics concerts before, Graydon Royce over at the Star Tribune has a very nice piece in tomorrow's paper detailing just what it is we do with our little corner of the orchestra's season. Click here to read it online...

Brief absence

Apologies for the lack of posting this week; as Sam has said, I'm gearing up for a ridiculously busy week.

In addition, I'm having some hand and shoulder problems - a combination of old injuries, a ton of traveling, lots of work and no time off - which makes typing painful, so you can see how my blogging would suffer.

I'll try to post later in the week as we're in the midst of our Inside the Classics concerts. For now, I'm taking some more Advil and going back to score studying!

Cutting Room Floor: Ask A 17-Year-Old Expert

Sorry for the light blogging this week. We do each have a good excuse - I'm getting ready for two big Mahler concerts on our subscription schedule this week and working overtime in an effort to get the logistics of our final Inside the Classics concerts of the season locked down and ready for our special guest's arrival next Monday evening.

Meanwhile, Sarah is frantically preparing scores for five (count 'em, five) different concerts that she's conducting this week and next. Specifically, she's leading one season preview concert, one full classical concert to be played 50 miles from Orchestra Hall, one set of Young People's Concerts, one pops show featuring two of the three Irish Tenors (one of whom made her drink a shot of whiskey onstage, mid-show, the last time he was here) and, of course, our ItC concerts. For these five shows, all of which contain different music, she has a grand total of four rehearsals with the orchestra. What was that about the glamorous life of a conductor?

Anyway, needless to say, we're very excited about Jay's impending arrival and the show we've built around his 5th Symphony. (I'm assuming you've all got your tickets already, right?) And while we'll be focusing our in-concert discussion with Mr. Greenberg primarily around the specific musical techniques he employs in his symphony, we know that all of you likely have many, many questions for him as well on a wider range of subjects. He'll be joining us for the post-concert Q&A, so you can ask him there in person, but if you can't make the show, or just prefer anonymity, go ahead and submit a question for Jay in the comments below this post, or through the Minnesota Orchestra's newly acquired Twitter account, and we'll do our best to get answers for you. If there's enough interest, we'll do an additional blog post after the concerts next week with Jay's answers...

Viola Destruction!

For your general amusement (or horror, if you happen to be a violist,) please do enjoy this video of legendary violist Yuri Bashmet enduring the scariest thing that can happen to a musician mid-concert...



And in case you're wondering, yes, that is a ridiculously valuable 18th century viola that just exploded in Yuri's hands. And no, that doesn't make it wrong to laugh - the chunk that snapped off isn't the valuable part, and is eminently replaceable...

Damn The Recession, Full Speed Ahead

As we settle back into our normal routine post-tour, I've been catching up on some of what we missed while we were overseas. (That Top Chef finale on my DVR isn't gonna watch itself, after all.) And last Friday's Wall Street Journal carried a review of one of Minnesota's other classical music organizations that is well worth a read. What makes the story newsworthy is that it's about an organization bucking the tried-and-true strategy of arts groups getting hyper-conservative in their programming the moment things turn ugly financially. Apparently, the leaders over at Minnesota Opera see a different way...

"[Minnesota Opera] has launched a $5.5 million initiative intended to infuse the operatic repertoire with new works. Spanning seven seasons, the project, called Minnesota OperaWorks, involves three commissions, three revivals of neglected works, and the co-production of a new opera... Minnesota Opera deserves enormous credit for continuing to devote resources to the future of the art form, especially now."

Now, there's a bit of hyperbole involved here, because MN Opera had undoubtedly planned this project before the global crisis really took hold. But at the same time, this is exactly the sort of project that orchestras and opera companies tend to take an axe to when times get tough (we almost lost our own hugely successful Composers' Institute to a round of budget cuts several years back,) and the Opera folks obviously have no intention of backing off their ambitious plans. For an art form that tends to be even more hidebound and artistically conservative than the orchestral world, this dedication to bringing new works to the fore could represent a major step forward, and will likely have resonance at companies around North America.

Now, wouldn't it be nice to see a few orchestras step up and announce a major commissioning project to keep a few composers off the welfare rolls in these troubled times?

Good to be home

We've done an extraordinary amount of traveling in the past two weeks, a pretty endless succession of flights:


(In the foreground; bassist Matt Frischman and percussionist Kevin Watkins)
A couple were chartered, orchestra-only flights, which generally meant both an easier check-in and the chaos of open seating:


(in the foreground; principal viola Tom Turner and associate principal oboe John Snow)
Countless airport bus transfers (expertly organized - I don't think we ever lost anyone):


A bunch of long bus rides as well, mostly conducive to catching up on a little sleep, but a perfect opportunity to get some studying in; as luck would have it, we had a whole slew of conductors on my bus (one of 4) from Frankfurt to Luxembourg:


(Bassist Bill Schrickel, also music director of the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra)


(Violist Ken Freed, also music director of the Mankato Symphony, delighting in Mahler 5)


(Brownie points for whoever can figure out what Osmo is studying - hint: it's a last movement)

For the record, my score-for-study during this 3 hour bus trip was the Greenberg Symphony we're performing at the upcoming Inside the Classics concerts. I ended up lugging around about 8 scores for upcoming performances - there's always works to do and concerts to prepare for, no matter how hectic the travel!

Goin' Home

Friday morning here in Vienna; the last concert of the Tour was last night. We're headed home for Minnesota in a few hours, and I for one can't wait to get back to my own bed! I've got a bunch of photos and videos to post, which I'll do over the weekend, so make sure to check back here on Monday for some Tour wrap-up.

Home Stretch

Just a few touring odds and ends to report as we prepare for the final concert of the run here in beautiful Vienna, Austria:

1) The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg appears, from our very limited time there, to be a somewhat strange place. The concert hall (which is awfully good, by the way) is in what looks like a 5-mile long office park on the outskirts of the city. Said office park is bisected neatly by a 6-lane highway called John F. Kennedy Avenue. There is one daily newspaper, which contains some stories in French and some in German, with no immediately available explanation as to how it is determined which stories merit what language. An advance article about our concert in said paper was headlined (translation mine,) "105 Years & Seven Music Directors," despite the undeniable facts that a) the Minnesota Orchestra has had ten music directors, and b) all ten were accurately listed in the article.

2) While we were warming up on stage before the concert, watching the extremely well-behaved denizens of Luxembourg stream to their seats, fellow violist Ben Ullery and I got into a discussion of what such folk are called. Luxembourgers? Luxembourgians? Luxembourgish? Ben eventually decided, based on their stoic manner and eerily synchronized movements, that they are, in fact, The LuxemBORG. This pretty much insured a steady stream of entertainment for the rest of the evening. Resistance was futile.

3) There is this thing that happens now and again just before the beginning of an orchestra concert, and it's always fascinating when it does. As you know, American orchestras gather on stage before the concert to warm up, and the audience generally enters the hall to a low level of musical cacophony emanating from the front which only quiets when the lights dim and the concertmaster emerges from the wings.

But have you ever wondered what would happen if the whole orchestra just happened to take a break from warming up at the same time? This is what we refer to as the dreaded "Awkward Silence," in which it is clearly not yet time for the concert to begin, and yet we have all, for one reason or another, ceased making noise, which has caused the audience to cease talking, and everyone just sort of sits there looking at each other, wondering what's going on. Most of the time, it happens because the concert start is being held up for one reason or another, and it's thrown off our internal sense of timing with our individual warm-up routines. But sometimes, it just happens because we're fatigued, or bored, or because we've been playing the same repertoire on the road for two weeks and no longer have to scramble to be sure we've gone over every difficult lick in our parts.

And so it was that the Awkward Silence descended on the concert hall in Luxembourg Tuesday night. Sometimes, when you hear the Awkward Silence coming, you and a couple of friends can forestall it by immediately beginning to play something, anything, and hope that others take the hint. But on this night, the transition from chaos to silence took place in a matter of mere seconds, and suddenly, there we were in Awkwardbourg. At this point, there's nothing anyone can really do, because no one wants to be That Guy who starts loudly playing his/her instrument just to break the silence, and besides, the audience has noticed us now, and we weren't ready for that, and it's all just, well, awkward.

It's especially awkward if the silence descends more than 20 or 30 seconds before the house lights were due to dim anyway. And in this case, as it turned out, we had settled into quiet time a full four minutes beforehand. It was, needless to say, a very long four minutes, during which The Borg stared quizzically at us, and we did our best to look as if we had no idea what they were staring quizzically at, we do this all the time, it's an American tradition to meditate quietly for a few minutes before concerts, and blah blah blah. The Borg did not appear to be fooled in the least.

Small things in the big picture

It’s easy to get caught up in the endless sweep of travel/play/eat/sleep now that we’re past the midway point in the Tour; there are more than a few bleary-eyed musicians (sometimes it seem like I'm seeing double, like the image above), and creeping exhaustion is getting to most of us. The schedule is tough – get up, eat, travel to a new city, eat, rehearse, change into concert clothes, perform, eat, sleep, repeat. But we’re also gaining a sort of collective momentum from performing repertoire over and over in different venues; what at first was jarring (“this hall sounds completely different from the one last night!”) has become a normal part of our everyday tour experience, and I think Osmo and the Orchestra have been giving fantastic performances.

It’s hard to be away and constantly on the move for so long, and the sense of unsettled unease that can arise from an itinerant schedule is compounded by the unsettled unease of the world these days. Let’s face it; these are uncertain times, and it feels like we are skirting total chaos on a daily basis. And for those of us who, during the tour, tune in to CNN or BBC at the airport or in our hotel rooms, it’s difficult no to get sucked into the vortex (although I’ve always felt that the advent of 24-hour news channels adds to – rather than alleviates – fear).

It’s not lost on me that here in Frankfurt, the financial and commercial capital of Germany and base of many international organizations, the Japanese department store, Mitsukoshi, across the street from the hotel is shuttered and empty – a sign of the times. And throughout our journey, I’ve seen more homeless on the streets since my last extended trip to Europe, just pre-9/11.

I don’t mean to overstate the doom and gloom – it is what it is. What interests me, however, is our role in all of this. So forgive me as I wax philosophical for a bit here.

We’ve been playing mostly in pretty well-sold houses – in particular, last night here in Frankfurt, the house manager said the hall was 90% full. And that simple fact, that amidst everything people still want to come to concerts, tells me something. But it’s the smaller things, the individual reactions, that speak volumes.

In Stuttgart I watched an elderly lady, prim in her widow’s black, listen raptly to the Sibelius Symphony, her eyes darting, as if taking in every detail onstage. In Berlin I watched a music student (at least I assumes he was a music student – unless everyone in Berlin walks around with manuscript paper) quietly taking notes during the Adams. And in Frankfurt I watched a bevy of young girls, thrilled to pieces after the Bruch Concerto, leaping to their feet as a group – a mini standing ovation.

The collective gasp of delight (and in Frankfurt, laughter) after the Adams tells me that the audience really gets it and is feeling the bubbling energy of the piece. The meaningful pause before the wall of applause (and curtain call after curtain call) tells me that the audience has fully taken the journey through the Nielsen Symphony.

I keep saying that concerts are one of the few live communal experiences we have left in our online/Netflix/iPod age, and now more than ever I’m aware of the need for people to gather and share in the very human experience of music. In uncertainty, we become even more acutely aware of the order, beauty and comfort of Art (with an capital “A”), because that’s what represents the best of what the human species does. Trying times will come and go, and as they say, the world keeps turning - but we cannot forget that it’s exactly that best stuff of the human species that keeps us going, what makes life something more than a mere act of survival.

I believe deeply in what I do as a musician, and I believe it even more when I feel the buzzing energy of a crowded concert hall in some far-off land and the inherent sense of commonality amidst our differences, even as half a dozen different languages are bouncing around the room. Our lasting legacy as a species cannot be enumerated simply by imposing edifices or amassed wealth – it is just as much in this organized collection of sound we call music, and its ability to bring us together in a fractured world. And it is this vitally important and uniting work that we have undertaken in our careers as musicians, and the work that we continue as our Tour draws to a close.

Können wir Deutsch sprechen? Bitte?

We've just arrived in Frankfurt, Germany's financial capital, where we'll be playing a concert tonight before heading west to Luxembourg tomorrow, and to be perfectly honest, I'm getting a little tired of bus travel. Airports may be a royal pain to get into and out of these days, but there's just something about spending 3 or 4 hours on a bus driving down some anonymous highway that makes you feel like you're wasting your day.

Still, busses it is, for now, and seeing as I got to spend a leisurely day off in Stuttgart yesterday catching up on e-mails, practicing whatever I liked on my viola, and wandering the city's relaxing plazas, I shouldn't be complaining.

Reviews of our various German concerts are steadily trickling in, but unfortunately, they're in German, and we don't have most of them translated yet. Still, if you happen to be multilingual, or just enjoy seeing the words "Minnesota Orchestra" in the middle of a mass of foreign gibberish, you can get your fix here, here, here, and here. My German isn't great, but I can usually understand the gist of most of what I read, and my impression is that we're continuing to rack up (mostly) positive reaction from the press. Certainly, our audiences have been quite appreciative at every hall we've played.

Speaking of language difficulties, one of the aspects of international touring that used to confound me was the way that Germans, in particular, seem able to sense immediately when an English-speaker has wandered into their place of business, even before we open our mouths. Try it sometime - walk into a coffee shop, bar, or food stand in Germany, and just stand at the counter for a moment. I can almost guarantee that, more than 50% of the time, you'll be greeted in English. It's uncanny.

Now, this used to annoy me, partly because I make a point of being as inconspicuous as possible when I'm traveling (in my experience, there's nothing louder on the planet than a group of Americans talking to each other in a non-English-speaking country,) but mostly because I actually do speak some German, and I'm eager for opportunities to practice. Of course, I can still try coming back in German to a barista who's just asked in English what I'd like to order, but it seems sort of pointless, especially since I usually need a moment to absorb whatever has just been said to me in German and construct my answer, and once we've established that everyone else in the joint speaks my language better than I speak theirs, I'm just wasting everyone's time.

I used to take the preemptive English greeting as a sign that Germans assume that all Americans and Brits are monolingual idiots who must be treated like small children, lest we start shouting and threatening to bomb things in frustration. But recently, I've begun to suspect that the English-speakers I encounter here are actually just as eager to demonstrate their linguistic proficiency as I am to test mine. On the occasions that I manage to slip under the Amerikaner Radar and conduct a transaction entirely in German, I rarely get as big a smile or as effusive a "thank you" as I do when I just give in and speak English. (And yes, it's possible that this is because my German is even weaker than I imagine, but I'm really not terribly stretched by placing an order at Starbucks, so I doubt it.)

In any case, my run of being able to communicate even slightly in the local tongue will shortly be coming to an end. While there is German spoken in Luxembourg, French (which I haven't a word of) is dominant, so I plan to follow Sarah around like a puppy dog while we're there. (I'm not sure she's ever mentioned it on the blog, but our Ms. Hicks is actually trilingual, fluent in Japanese, French, and English.) And while Vienna, where we'll wind up the tour, is full of people who claim to be German speakers, I've spent enough time listening to them talk to be fairly confident that they are lying, in much the same way that the Scots are lying when they claim to be speaking English.

By the way, blogging may be light for the next couple of days, because our travel schedule is about to get hectic again, and the prices that hotels on this continent charge for internet access is beyond outrageous, so we're mostly dependant on finding nearby hotspots at cafes, which we won't have time for again until at least Wednesday in Vienna...

I'm seeing stars

This unusual domed ceiling from the interior of the Dusseldorf Tonhalle, where we played two nights ago.


And here, the stage view.


This is the only concert hall I know that started out as - you may have guessed it - a planetarium. Thus the domed ceiling with the diaphanous panels (you can actually see the scaffolding and equipment behind the panels). Very "future cool". And a little bit "Space, the final frontier".

And now to tap into a different space-based cultural touchstone:


For any of you "Star Wars" geeks out there, you know exactly what this refers to . Pictured are fellow geeks bassist Matt Frischman and violist Sifei Cheng, post-concert in Stuttgart, on our way to find a late dinner.