Quick turnaround

Apologies from me as well for being a spotty blogger, although I can't claim Aho as an excuse. Instead, it's been a couple of days that reminds me how flexible and versatile my job requires me to be.

This weekend found me in Atlanta with a whole bevy of shows with jazz trumpeter Chris Botti and the Atlanta Symphony (three in two days). I first worked with Chris when he came to play with the Minnesota Orchestra; we hit is off from day one, and he immediately booked me for upcoming shows.

This kind of work poses challenges very different from, say, conducting Lutoslawski - jazz requires a different kind of timing than what classical training prepares you for, and without a feel for it, it's impossible to set the right mood orchestrally. It also requires a flexibility that's no longer a part of the classical sphere - in the middle of a chart, the band might go off on a riff or elongate a solo. I guess the closest equivalent might be playing a different cadenza every night, but that doesn't begin to explain the improvisatory nature of what goes on onstage, and what I need to do to make sure everything's going to fit correctly (at one point on Friday night I was trying to figure out how to mime "B3" - a rehearsal number - to indicate to the orchestra that we had to repeat back to a certain section - all while keeping track of where the band was going. Challenging, but so much fun, for some reason...).

Of course, the rockstar aspect to these shows is undeniably fun - cheering, adoring fans, stage-shaking set playing, roving spotlights, pre-concert cocktails, etc.

I flew home yesterday on 2 hours of sleep (the rockstar behavior continues post-show, of course...), took a nap, drank a pot of coffee and started back to work on a 27-minute world premier for narrator and orchestra that I'm performing this week with the National Symphony Orchestra for a set of Family Concerts. Which is about as divergent, both musically and generally speaking, from this past weekend as one could get!

I'm used to switching gears on a weekly basis (and, as Sam points out in his post below, orchestra musicians are pretty adept at it), but this switch is a particularly extreme juxtaposition of the very disparate kinds of concerts I do. It highlights for me the flexibility I need, both as a musician and as a stage persona, to create a concert experience for divergent audiences. But it's also what makes my job endlessly challenging, and I sure do love a challenge.