After Hours: Friday Edition

Well, now. Two shows and one abjectly terrifying live radio broadcast in the books, and here we are at After Hours. Your turn, Friday crowd: whether you attended tonight's concert at Orchestra Hall, or listened in on Minnesota Public Radio, let us hear your reaction down in the comments. (One caveat for you radio listeners - please let us know that you heard the show on MPR rather than in person, just to help us gauge how we did at adapting what is normally a highly visual concert experience for radio.)

We really have been blown away by how strong the support for this series has been, especially this year, when money is tight everywhere and we're all looking for ways to cut back on spending. So whatever you thought of our take on Beethoven, thanks for being a part of it, and I hope we'll see you all back at Orchestra Hall in January...

After Hours: Thursday Edition

Okay, Thursday crowd, here's the place for you to let us know what you thought of tonight's Beethoven Pastoral show. This concert was a bit of a departure for us - fewer visual gags (mainly because of the radio thing,) a bit more of the in-depth music stuff - but we hope it was a fun night out for all of you that joined us.

We really do want every kind of feedback to help us plan future shows, so let fly in the comments, and tell us what you loved, what left you cold, what flew a mile over your head, and what hit you square in the solar plexus. And as always, thanks for buying the ticket - in times like these, that simple act means more to those of us on stage than you can possibly imagine.

Beethovening

Yes, Sam and I are hours away from our first Inside the Classics show - we finished our second rehearsal this morning and now I'm home for a few hours of script touch-ups and last minute prep. As Sam said, we've been too busy to even talk about the show this time 'round! I promise I'll have some thoughts for you next week.

In the meantime, I couldn't let this bit of arts news go, because I can't think of a stranger combination (Lady Gaga and the Bohsoi? Really??). Can anyone out there think of a stranger mash-up???

Gratitude, With A Dash of Hucksterism

I don't know whether it's the hectic pace that this fall seems to have brought to Orchestra Hall, or just the fact that Sarah and I are three years into our Inside the Classics careers at this point, but we've done shockingly little blogging about our season-opening concerts coming up this week.

Actually, a big part of the reason for the lack of pre-concert promotion is that we're feeling less pressure to personally beg people to come to our concerts this season, and for that, we have all of you to thank. In what is arguably the toughest year in several generations for performing arts organizations, you guys have boosted us to a whopping 95% subscriber renewal rate, and a better than 15% boost in subscription sales year over year! And that's before we even begin to count the single-ticket sales for our Beethoven show, which are looking unprecedented for this series. So before I say anything else, I just want to say that y'all are absolutely the best, and we're blown away by the support you continue to show this orchestra in general, and Inside the Classics in particular.

That having been said, we've still got some seats left for this Thursday and Friday (yes, Friday - it's a little experiment we're trying,) and if some of you who haven't made it out to a concert before wanted to snap those up in the rush line, well, that'd make our day. We can promise you a broad take on Beethoven that you likely haven't heard before, a very unexpected detour into the early days of the American avant garde, and one of the sweetest coloratura soprano voices that you've ever heard at Orchestra Hall. And now that my beloved Philadelphia Phillies have pretty much sewn up a second consecutive World Series title, there's clearly no need to waste your time staying in and watching Game 2...

If you can't join us in person, however, we're very excited that, for the first time ever, an Inside the Classics concert will be carried live by Minnesota Public Radio (KSJN 99.5fm in Minneapolis/St. Paul, or find your local affiliate here) and you can listen in across the Upper Midwest, or online at Classical MPR's website. This is a live stream only, so tune in Friday night at 8pm Central (9E, 6P) and help us make our first broadcast the kind of event that MPR will want to repeat!

As always, we'll be soliciting your feedback after each of the concerts in our After Hours blog posts, and this week, for the first time, we'll also be asking you to chime in at the concert hall, as our videographers will be scouring the lobby for comments at intermission and after the shows. And for those of you who'd rather produce your own video feedback, we've set up a special page for you to upload your comments. (There are even prizes! And I'm pretty sure you're eligible for them even if you upload a video laying out everything you hated about the concert.)

All kidding aside, we really do take the comments we hear about ItC seriously, and we've used a lot of your feedback to develop the always-evolving feel of the concerts. So thanks again for all the support you've shown us up to this point, and we'll see you at Orchestra Hall this week to start it all over again...

Sad songs say so much...

A busy, busy, busy week (and last week was, too!). We opened our US Bank Pops series with Broadway Rocks last Friday, a Sampler on Saturday, and numerous Inside the Classics meetings scattered throughout the week. On deck this week; more meetings! And of course, our first Inside the Classics concerts of the season.

I don't know how Sam is finding the time to post so much; I'll simply leave you with this, the funniest musician want ad I've ever seen:

Ask An Expert: Looking For Lyrics

Roger Connolly sent in a question that I was somewhat surprised to realize I might know the answer to:

Q: Was there a popular song based on Tchaikovskys 5th Symphony, 2nd movement, other than Moon Love by Glenn Miller? I am looking for the lyrics "questions and answers" or something like that. This has been bugging me for 50 years.

Hmmm. I actually had to look up Moon Love, but you're right that Miller did base it on Tchaikovsky's famous theme, which, by the way, goes like this...



And here's Glenn Miller and his orchestra...



Now, I don't know of any particular song that uses that theme along with a lyric about questions and answers, but the most famous pop version that I know came courtesy of Mr. John Denver...



Personally, I'll take Tchaikovsky's or Miller's version over Denver's, but Annie's Song was definitely a favorite of a whole generation of listeners. I'm not 100% sure that this is the song Roger's looking for (especially since it wasn't written 50 years ago,) but in poking around, I haven't been able to find reference to any songs based on that theme other than these two. If anyone else knows different, chime in down in the comments...

Double Standard

One of my favorite young composers, Nico Muhly, was writing last week about the marked differences between working with instrumentalists and singers (specifically, opera singers,) and his take made me think about the seemingly widening gulf between the concert hall and the opera house.

Muhly's post was mainly about rhythmic accuracy, or the lack of it, which he experiences very directly as a composer working both with orchestral-type musicians, who prize rhythm above nearly everything else, and rely on accurate counting to hold the ensemble together, and opera companies, where singers (who control the ensemble in the end) focus more on the overall shape of musical phrases than on the specific rhythms that have been written for them.

But orchestras and opera companies have been growing apart in less musically specific ways, too. I wrote a bit about this a couple of weeks back, after the Met's new production of Tosca was roundly panned by critics and audience alike. What I was thinking (but didn't write) at the time was that I really am in awe of the ability of major opera companies to turn literally everything that happens to them, good and bad, into a buzz-generating event that somehow makes opera yet more popular at the end of the day. Those downright lousy reviews of Tosca might have led a few people to stay away from the production, but I'd be willing to bet good money that the larger impact was to once again place the Met squarely in the center of New York's cultural life as the Most Important Classical Music Institution In The Greatest City In All The World.

To extend this idea, let's think about those wildly popular high-definition simulcasts the Met's been doing at movie theaters around the world for the last couple of years. From a PR perspective, this has been a dramatic and hugely successful extension of the company's brand - the movie theater shows, which are priced at more than double the rate for a normal movie ticket - sell out almost everywhere, and in some cities, you have to get your tickets days in advance of the Saturday afternoon showings.

But from a fiscal perspective, it's been written that the Met is actually losing untold millions on these simulcasts, and doesn't really have a plan for making them financially sustainable in the future. Now, imagine that this were a symphony orchestra doing this - beaming their concerts all over creation and charging $25 a head for people packed into a theater in Las Vegas or Paris to watch us play. Then imagine that the New York Times found out that said orchestra was going to run a multi-million dollar deficit this season because of the cost of production. Can you imagine what the reaction would be?

I can. The orchestra would be roundly blasted by everyone from critics to consultants to its own board members for behaving as if money grows on trees, the simulcasts would most certainly be canceled immediately, a feeble plea for funding to save them would go out to the usual corporations and foundations, and in all likelihood, would fall on deaf ears because there's a massive recession going on, donchaknow. And I can't really say that this wouldn't be a defensible reaction from all involved.

But because we're talking about the opera world, none of this seems to happen. Opera (at least grand opera presented by large companies) seems to get a near-total pass from the folks who are constantly harping on orchestras for being clueless, elitist organizations who pay their musicians and conductors too much and can't seem to make a budget sheet balance. Maybe it's that our vision of opera is so bound up with images of opulence and wretched excess that it somehow seems okay for opera companies to shoot for the stars even when it's dangerous from a bottom-line perspective.

I could go on for quite a while about the orchestra vs. opera double standard. (Just for instance, why is that when an opera company deigns to commission a new opera to squeeze in between their 187th and 188th production of Rossini, it's talked about breathlessly in the press for months, but orchestras which commission multiple new works every season are still regularly lambasted by composers and critics for a perceived lack of commitment to new music? Why was it okay for the musicians of a certain high-profile opera orchestra to flatly refuse this summer to redo their contract to save the organization some money in the worst fiscal crisis America's seen in 70 years, but orchestras around the country which did reopen their contracts and take substantial pay and benefit cuts are still portrayed as greedy and short-sighted for deigning to draw a salary at all?) And I'll admit that a lot of this comes down to basic jealousy on my part - I often think that it must be nice to work in a corner of the classical music world that isn't constantly being told how useless and stuffy and culturally irrelevant it is.

But my larger frustration is that I just don't see a way out of the current paradigm. Orchestras are treading water furiously right now just to stay afloat, and no one sees that changing for the better anytime soon. And if the public perception is that opera companies are supposed to spend gobs of money and orchestras are supposed to be frugal, well, spending a lot of money on some splashy new project probably isn't going to change anyone's mind.

No kidding

Speaking of acoustics, here's another interesting bit on sound and hearing. Although it comes as no surprise!

One caveat; musicians sometimes have to contend with the very real possibility of hearing loss associated with instrument-induced damaged.

Arguing Acoustics

Washington Post music critic Anne Midgette has an interesting post up on her blog today concerning concert hall acoustics and how much of a difference they really make to an orchestra's sound. Specifically, she mentions that the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, home to D.C.'s National Symphony Orchestra, has long been said to be an extraordinarily difficult place for an orchestra to hear itself. Some believe that the NSO has more trouble playing with good ensemble than comparable orchestras who make their homes in better halls. (Midgette doesn't seem to be buying this, and claims that visiting orchestras frequently play better together than the house band.)

This is a familiar discussion point for most orchestras, and certainly one that's a frequent topic of conversation here in Minneapolis, where Orchestra Hall delivers a big, booming sound to the audience, but forces those of us onstage to rely on a lot of visual cues and the vague hope that the few colleagues we can hear clearly are in the right place and therefore reliable to follow. (Those colleagues are, of course, hoping the same thing.)

When Osmo first took up his post as music director, I remember a lot of questions being shot his way about what could be done, short of building a new hall, to improve our cross-stage hearing. Over the years, we've tweaked things here and there - for instance, we now play with the winds, brass, and percussion on risers, whereas the entire orchestra sat on one level when I first joined up ten years ago - but there are definitely still audibility issues that we all deal with on a daily basis.

Still, Midgette's point seems to be that there are very few orchestras that don't have to deal with an imperfect hall, and the great orchestras find ways to turn even a downright bad hall to their advantage. (The classic example is Philadelphia, where the orchestra's famous string sound, which is big, rich, and full, almost certainly developed as a response to playing their concerts in the now-retired Academy of Music, which, I can tell you from personal experience, was like performing in a concrete bunker lined with lead curtains.) Suck it up, in other words. Yes, it would be great if we all got to spend our lives playing concerts at the Musikverein every week, but it ain't gonna happen, so make the best of what you have.

Speaking of which, I remember a funny story that Osmo told in rehearsal once, when we were having trouble playing something or other as tightly together as we needed to, and some of us were clearly getting frustrated by not being able to hear far-flung sections of the ensemble accurately. He told us that he'd recently been conducting at the world-famous Berlin Philharmonie (considered by some, including me, to have the finest concert acoustics in the world,) when he stopped the orchestra and pointed out that something was not quite together. The concertmaster of the Philharmonic replied without a hint of irony, "Well, you know, in this hall..." The grass really is always greener on the other side, I guess.

We Have A Winner!

Wow, you guys! When I put up that little contest that week, I had no idea how many of you would take the time to enter, and I never expected submissions of the quality we got! Good on all of ya - you made picking a winner awfully difficult.

Speaking of which, here's how we went about that. Rather than discuss each submission, Sarah and I each made up a list of our three favorite entries, then checked to see if anyone had made both of our lists. Someone had, and that someone chose to identify himself as Cary Grant's character from The Philadelphia Story. So congratulations, CK Dexter Haven! Here were his five programs...

Program 1
Handel: Water Music in D, HWV 349
Handel: "Let the Bright Seraphim" (Air from "Samson", HWV 57)
Stravinsky: “No word from Tom. . . .” (Recitative, air, recitative, and cabelleta from “The Rake’s Progress”)
(intermission)
Handel: “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth” (Air from “Messiah”)
Handel: “Rejoice” (Air from “Messiah”)
Stravinsky: Symphony in Three Movements

Program summary: Juxtoposing well known Handel pieces with neo-classical Stravinsky. In addition, all the soprano arias & airs are sung in English. And I'll take any excuse to get to listen to Manny Laureano play "Let the Bright Seraphim."


Program 2
Adams: Naïve & Sentimental Music
(intermission)
Rodrigo: Concierto de Aranjuez
Debussy: Iberia, from Images pour orchestre (or alternately . . . Rimsky-Korsakov: Capriccio Espagnol)

Program summary: The Rodrigo concerto serves as the anchor. Before it, the 2nd movement of the Adams includes a very prominent guitar solo, thereby tying it back to the Rodrigo. More importantly, I think the Adams piece is not only one of his most accessible, it is one of his best. I'd prefer to end it with the Debussy, but in case that scares the box office, the Rimsky should be more user friendly. The two pieces after intermission share the Spanish theme. This kind of puts the OCIS design on it's head, and I think that SICO is NOT psycho . . . (sorry, couldn't resist the obvious pun)


Program 3
Mozart: Serenade No. 13 for strings in G major ("Eine kleine Nachtmusik"), K. 525
Barber: Adagio, from String Quartet in B minor (transcribed for string orchestra)
Herrmann: Suite for Strings, from “Psycho”
(intermission)
Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. 77 (alternately . . . Brahms: Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77)

Program summary: the whole first half is devoted exclusively to strings. The Mozart is the biggest crowd draw, and is paired with the Barber (another well known piece) and the Herrmann which people know, but not in the concert hall context. After all the string music, end with a concerto highlighting the violin; the Shosty is not exactly new, but it is a great piece and is certainly more challenging to the typical audience than Mendelssohn or Tchaikovsky. Plus the Shosty maintains and builds upon the tension that started with the Barber and flows on through the Herrmann, and it starts with an extended passage limited to the strings and soloist. That said, if it's too scary, substitute with the Brahms since it is similar in scale/length.


Program 4
Debussy: Preludes for piano (orch: Colin Matthews)
Beethoven: Piano Concerto in D (transcribed from Violin Concerto), Op. 61
(intermission)
Mussorgsky/Ravel: Pictures at an Exhibition

Program summary: This is the lone OCIS concert; my take on the theme is to make all the programs transcriptions. The Debussy transcription is new, the concerto is Beethoven with a twist, and the finale is a well-known warhorse.


Program 5
Lutoslawski: Paganini Variations for Piano & Orchestra
Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
(intermission)
Lutoslawski: Symphony No. 4
Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances, Op. 45

Program summary: Probably the most challenging of the five programs, but still reasonable. The Rachmaninoff gives you the big draw, with the Lutoslawski as the foil. I think the music pairs very well. Even though the Lutoslawski isn't melodic in the traditional sense, it has a clear structure so it is fairly easy to follow, with a lot going on throughout and eventually offering up the de riguer big ending.

-------------------------------------------

We don't have a runner-up, but did want to give a very big honorable mention to Minnesota violist Jen Strom for her anonymously-submitted "Women On Fire" program. Since Jen plays with the orchestra many, many weeks every year, she wasn't eligible for the prize (and she wouldn't have a lot of use for tickets to concerts she plays in anyway,) but Sarah and I both loved her submission.

Oh, and I almost forgot: Mr. Dexter Haven, sir, if you would be so good as to e-mail me at sbergman@mnorch.org and tell me which prize you prefer, and where it can be sent, I'll get right on that. Congratulations again, and thanks to everyone who entered!

Don't get me started...

I'm always surprised what passes for "news", particularly in our corner of the music industry. For instance, I've mentioned in past posts, every now and then we get yet another piece about the "phenomena" of female conductors, few of which draw any new conclusions (if they draw conclusions at all).

So, in view of all the talk of orchestras slashing budgets and struggling on the fiscal front, I guess it's time to trot out another "conductors are overpaid" article, this one from the Guardian.

To say that pieces like this one - written with little apparent understanding of either the business of music, or, more importantly, the artistic process of music – frustrate me to no end is an understatement.

First off, I don't deny that there are some conductors who demand exorbitant fees by anyone's standard (“rockstar fees”, they say, but even rockstars are taking fee reductions in this recession). But I really object to using those very few to judge the majority. One can find people with extreme salaries in all walks of life - athletes with contracts worth well over $20 million come to mind. If you leave the big leagues and look at rank-and-file, however, salaries are nothing to write an article about; the starting salary for a minor league ball player, for instance, is in the $25-35K range. Should we judge athletes' salaries by the few that make astronomical figures? No. Neither should we for conductors.

Then comes the bit that really rubs me the wrong way:

But how much difference does the average conductor make? What can be said is that music, given players sufficiently accomplished, speaks for itself. Even in the case of the talented few maestri, the skills on offer are subject to an indefinable alchemy of charisma and self-belief. And as is the case with any dictator, what seems paramount is the ability to inspire confidence in their powers.

You do not have to be a musician to wonder if such a nebulous yet omnipotent job description might be dangerous.

To say that “music speaks for itself” defies a bit of logic; one needs only to hear five or six examples of the opening of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony (try it on iTunes, it really is illuminating…) and one begins to understand how any decent conductor puts a distinct imprint on the score at hand. The notes on the page, everything printed in the score, might hypothetically “speak for itself”, but how that translates to an actual sonic world is entirely the responsibility of a conductor.

As for “the ability to inspire confidence in their powers”, let me tell you this; musicians are acutely aware of whether a conductor is full of musical knowledge of simply full of it. An orchestra will have little confidence in an overbearing podium personality if a seriously studied understanding of the score and inherent musicality is not there. Charisma counts for very little (at least from the musicians’ perspective – audiences are more easily fooled) if a conductor doesn’t have the goods to back it up.

The article's premise seems predicated on the notion that the major job of a conductor is to cut a dictatorial figure on the podium, acting as a symbolic figure that players don't even pay attention to:

The truth is that almost the last place you look as a musician is towards the conductor. There simply isn't time. The notes fly past and the brain is in overdrive, busy processing vast amounts of information on the page...

To assume that the conductor is largely responsible for the music is a bit like believing an air-traffic controller should take most of the credit for a Red Arrows display.

Any player or conductor will tell you that it's impossible to have eyes glued to the podium. That would be both impractical and nonsensical. Furthermore, people who make these kinds of observations assume that what they see and hear in a concert is the be-all and end-all of a conductor’s role. ANY player (and any good conductor) will tell you that the most significant work a conductor does is in rehearsal.

As for the argument that orchestras could play conductor-less; yes, some specialized ensembles do (and they tend to be chamber orchestras), but they take a great deal of extra rehearsal to be able to coordinate and to come to artistic agreements. Apply that working model to a large modern symphony – 80+ players – and just imagine the artistic differences, never mind the practical hurdle of working on ensemble with so many people. With the number of extra services needed to accomplish that, you could hire an “overpaid” conductor several times over, and save everyone hours, to boot.

But that's just assuming a conductor is merely a glorified metronome. The most important function of a conductor is to give a focus and unified vision to the repertoire being played. And that focus and understanding comes from 1) long hours of study of a score (20 hours per actual hour of music, minimum, to really begin to understand a score) and 2) the ability to communicate the knowledge gained from this study, by both physical gesture and verbal explanation, whether it be the largest of musical ideas to the smallest detail of tuning a tricky wind chord or fixing an inner rhythmic figure.

Perhaps I take umbrage in this article simply because it insults what I do for a living, but the larger issue is that when obviously one-sided rants like this one hit the mainstream media, it casts a negative light on the classical music business as a whole. And we certainly don’t need that right now. If it’s just muckraking and stirring controversy so one can be self-righteously indignant (and it’s easy to get people worked-up about money in an economic downturn), so be it. It’s simply perturbing to come across an article that the average reader with little knowledge of classical music might take as fact, when it is clear that the author has a very specific bone to pick.

And that’s my rant for the day!

Overstuffed Schedules

You know how you occasionally have one or two of those days when, even though you're at work, it seems like there's not enough to do? And then, just when you're starting to get used to that, a year's worth of projects seem to come due all at the same time?

Well, that happens to musicians, too, and it doesn't always come from overscheduling ourselves (though that does happen.) I bring it up because I think it's safe to say that Sarah and I are both finding ourselves gasping for air this month, trying desperately to get our first Inside the Classics concerts of the season ready for prime time, while simultaneously planning the 2010-11 season, moving halfway across the country (her), orchestrating a pretty large fundraising party for a music-related non-profit group (me), dealing with a busted furnace in a newly purchased home (her), fighting off the piggy flu (me), being named principal pops conductor of a major orchestra (duh), and trying to squeeze in enough practice time to still be able to claim that one plays the viola for a living (me).

Our October ItC show is a bit trickier than usual, too, because the Friday concert will be carried live across the region on Minnesota Public Radio, who were kind enough to agree to this without technically having ever seen one of our concerts before. They're very trusting people, those MPR folk, and we're hoping they won't need to regret that fact, so we're taking the unusual step of sharing our work with them as we go. The radio thing, of course, also means that we can't do any purely visual gags on this program, which is a bit limiting, but also makes it easier to focus in on the sound world we want to create on the first half.

At the same time, as I said, we're starting to work on next season, which means a lot more that just picking repertoire. Thanks to the grant we received last year from the Wallace Foundation, we've been able to gather a rather stunning amount of information from people who've attended our concerts, and the fruits of that labor contribute to a very wide-ranging discussion about the continuing evolution of the series. I make a point of saying at each concert that we really do listen to all the feedback we get from our audiences, and this is the time of year that that pile of info comes most into play. Everything, from what time the concerts should start to what days of the week they should be held to how many sets of concerts we ought to be doing, gets batted around at this time every year, and this year, with a 95% subscriber renewal rate and a hefty increase in overall ticket sales from this time last season, we've got a lot to talk about.

Still, tired as I might be tonight, these are nice problems to have. The Beethoven show is really starting to come into focus (though, as usual, it's gonna need about 10-15 minutes chopped between now and October 29,) and I'm starting my now-traditional transition from fearful/stressed to excited/stressed. And on the planning side, I'm still somewhat incredulous at the audience support this series has garnered in two short years, which makes the job of figuring out where we go next enticing rather than intimidating. And that fundraising party I'm planning - I'm sure that'll mostly just take care of itse...

....

...oh, lord. the invitations.

gotta go.

-------------------------------------

CONTEST DEADLINE: You guys have been unbelievably creative in your submissions for the contest we launched on Monday, and we've got nearly 20 entries as of this writing. So here's official notification that we'll close the contest Friday night, accepting any entry submitted before midnight. Sarah and I will take the weekend to reach a consensus on a winner, and with any luck, we'll have the big reveal early next week. (Those of you who entered anonymously will, of course, need to contact us to claim your prize...)

Bottle Music

Several things can be deduced from this clip: 1) Some people have a lot of time on their hands; 2) The "Toreador Song" from Bizet's Carmen is firmly entrenched in popular culture; and 3) David Letterman sounds to be tone deaf.

Fighting The Paradigm (Contest Alert!)

Our program this coming week is what a lot of people might call "comfort food" - a good old-fashioned meat-and-potatoes orchestra program featuring a flashy overture, a well-worn concerto, and a proven audience-pleaser of a symphony. Others, of course, might call such a program boring and unimaginative, and while I wouldn't agree in this particular case (simply because of the quality of all of the works on the program,) it brings up a much larger issue that orchestra programmers grapple with every year.

I'm usually the first to roll my eyes at yet another overture-concerto-intermission-symphony program, mainly because I just think there are so many better options available in 2009. And no, they don't all have to include some thorny world premiere that half the audience hates. Look at last week - we played the warhorse to end all warhorses, but spent the first half on a collection of almost-forgotten early-20th century Russian works, each of which was guaranteed to take the audience to a different place and time. Was it the world's most daring program? Certainly not. But it was damned effective, I thought.

By major orchestra standards, we actually don't do a whole lot of overture-concerto-intermission-symphony (hereafter referred to as OCIS) programs these days, mainly because of Osmo's apparent predilection for tone poems and ballet scores. That's not to say that our week-to-week programming is particularly daring (especially compared with the leading progressive orchestras like the LA Phil,) but it does mean that you're a lot more likely to hear ten minutes of rolling, undulating Nielsen as a curtain-raiser on our stage than you are to hear The Marriage of Figaro or The Barber of Seville.

Still, all the research I've ever seen indicates that audiences pick the concerts they attend based on two things: repertoire and soloists. (Conductors have an impact, especially if the orchestra has a popular music director, but for the most part, audience members aren't familiar enough with the conducting world to really have an opinion one way or another on most guest conductors.) And since the word "soloist" implies "concerto," you're simply going to be locked into 1/3 of the OCIS paradigm for a lot of the weeks of your season.

And since most concertos aren't long enough to fill out an entire half of a program on their own, you need another shorter work to play, and there's your overture, or some facsimile thereof. (This is where a lot of orchestras, ours included, try to buck the OCIS model by picking a curtain-raiser by a living composer or even commissioning an entire new work. But this practice is now so widespread that composers have begun to resent always being asked to write little 10-12 minute miniatures, rather than full-length orchestral works.)

And honestly, audiences just seem to expect a big, climactic piece after intermission, so whether you're playing an actual symphony, a Strauss tone poem, or a Stravinsky ballet, you've just pretty much committed to boring old OCIS. And when you've got 20-30 weeks a year of traditional orchestral concerts to program, it gets awfully difficult to fight your way out of the paradigm.

Throw in the additional facts that a) a lot of fairly imaginative programming ideas are going to get you into hot water with your musicians (Exhibit A: ask 100 orchestra musicians what they think about playing film scores instead of Beethoven,) and b) truly daring programming (like what Esa-Pekka Salonen did in Los Angeles for much of the last two decades) is likely to scare off a good chunk of your crowd unless you're fortunate enough to be located in a gigantic metropolis with an industrial-strength hype machine, and you've got a long uphill climb to escape the malaise of OCIS. (And that's before we even begin to get into regional considerations like the fact that Minnesota audiences demonstrably hate Mahler, or that Philadelphia's concertgoers still consider Bartok avant-garde.)

Still, I believe firmly that OCIS is the past, not the future, and that the sooner we make it the exception rather than the rule, the sooner we'll discover our path to future success as an industry. So here's what I want to do. We're going to have a little contest down in the comments: I want you to come up with five separate concert programs (preferably without an overarching theme,) no more than one of which adheres to the strict OCIS model. And I don't just want these to be your personal dream programs, either - put yourself in the shoes of a music director, and take into account all of the roadblocks and conundrums I've laid out above. Give me five programs that we ought to be able to sell tickets to, but that point the way forward for orchestras in the 21st century.

If we get enough entries (I'm gonna say five or more, and one entry per person, please,) we'll make this a real contest, and I'll come up with an appropriate prize for the entry Sarah and I like best. Also, I'll pass along every reasonably good entry we recieve to Osmo and the rest of our programming braintrust, so you might even wind up having an impact on our future programs!

Sound good? Okay - get to work...

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Late addendum: Wow, less than 24 hours in, and the ideas are rolling in! This is now officially a contest with prizes - the winner, as chosen by Sarah and myself, will have his/her choice of either four prime seats to a Minnesota Orchestra concert of his/her choice (anything in the 2009-10 season,) or the newly released complete box set of all nine Beethoven symphonies recorded by Osmo and the orchestra in digital SACD quality. We'll even get Osmo to autograph the set before we send it off. I figure having a choice of prizes should cover us even if the winner is an out-of-towner.

Now that we have prizes, we need a cutoff for submissions. So let's say get your ideas in by this Friday, October 16, and Sarah and I will pick a winner over the weekend...

Sick Daze

I should be backstage at Orchestra Hall right now, warming up for the concert that begins in 24 minutes. I was there this morning for the last rehearsal of the week, and even stuck around afterward for a chamber music rehearsal. Now, I'm slumped on my couch, sipping jasmine tea, watching a hockey game and feeling alternately cold, shaky, and generally lame. The thermometer says the fever that set in a few hours back is fairly mild, and when I called our personnel manager to let her know that I'd be staying away tonight, I also guaranteed that I'd be back tomorrow. With any luck, I'll be right.

I hate - hate - calling in sick to work. I hate it more than I hate actually being sick, which I also hate. In fact, when whatever this is that's currently attacking me (and you may keep your swine flu jokes to yourself, thank you very much!) was gathering steam last week, I went to work on a couple of days that I probably shouldn't have, just because I couldn't stomach the idea of wussing out and staying home. Part of it is that my job really is the most important thing in my life, and missing a day when my hands and arms still technically work makes me feel like I'm not pulling my weight.

Another part is that there are some people in my orchestra with real and serious medical issues that make my little cold seem like a hangnail. In particular, one of our violists suffers from an incredibly painful joint disease that sometimes leaves him doubled over with his eyes screwed shut or flat on his back in the locker room - and even on his bad days, which are frequent, he makes a superhuman effort to show up and at least try to get through the day. With colleagues like that around, the idea of missing a service for any reason just makes me feel, well, lame.

Of course, the flip side of that coin is that, unlike most people, I work literally shoulder to shoulder with my officemates, and no one likes the idiot who straggles into work on death's door only to pass his Martian Death Flu on to everyone else in the building. You think bugs spread quickly in your kid's elementary school? You should see how fast a virus can sweep through an orchestra. Not only are we breathing down each others' necks in a figurative sense, we're doing it literally as well. Everyone in an orchestra is more or less constantly breathing hard, spitting, sweating, and generally being at least vaguely unsanitary in the act of playing our instruments. So if I had shown up for tonight's concert, I'm guessing I would not have been a popular guy.

So it's tea and hockey for me, and a very early bedtime as well, in the hope that I'll be good as new tomorrow morning. Which is sort of important, because I've got four Kinder Konzerts to play starting at 9:30am on Friday, and because I'm the only violist in the group, and the only one who's rehearsed the repertoire, there's no one I can call to sit in for me. And yes, I promise to stay far, far, away from all of the kids...

Meformer, youformer

An interesting blurb on categories of internet social networking users (although, I mean, come on, couldn't they have come up with something a bit catchier than "meformer"?). Basically, social networkers break down into 2 categories - people posting about their current activities/emotions (80% of users) and those sharing non-personal information (news links, for instance).

In my downtime (or if I'm procrastinating on score-studying/script-writing), I can become a Facebook junkie, and I'm Twitter a few times a day - often to check up on tweets from the several dozen people/organizations that I follow, from the Berlin Philharmonic to Nico Muhly. Certainly any arts organization that's halfway with the times maintains an online presence on the major social networking sites, but sometimes it feels like this is done through the need to pay lip service to new technologies rather than to actually use them to the advantage of the organization.

Then there are those who consider utilizing the online medium to its fullest advantage; some progressive thoughts here from the new CEO of the Columbus Symphony (which has just weathered a particularly trying time) about live streaming (with which, coincidentally, the Berlin Philharmonic has been experimenting).

I'm particularly interested in the proposed collaboration with InstantEncore (full disclosure; a friend is COO of the company) and the various services it provides. I firmly believe that establishing this kind of wide presence (and wide access of product) is crucial to the future or symphonic concert music.

I guess I often feel that arts organizations need to think beyond meforming and informing and focus instead of youforming (can I coin that phrase?) - it's not enough to give information about upcoming concerts or share industry news; it's more about finding a way to directly engage potential (and current) audiences online. Which I definitely see some organizations doing. What's the next step we should take in this brave new world?

Ask An Expert: Starting Late

Let's start off the week with an Ask the Expert question I hear a lot. In this case, it came from TJ...

Q: I'm currently 27 years old and I have been playing guitar since I was 9 (well... intermittently). I guess you could say I have played rock/blues style music mostly by ear since I started. I don't plan on becoming a full time professional musician, but I would love to learn how to play really good jazz piano. What disadvantages/ advantages do I have? What am I in store for in terms of time (assuming the law of averages)? Why am I so intimidated? I know as professionally trained musicians, you may scoff at those of us who don't fully understand what we are playing, but having a decent ear should help me learn right?

Well, first off, I would never scoff at anyone who plays music for any reason. And yes, having a decent ear and prior musical experience is always helpful when picking up a new instrument. In fact, I'd go a step further and say that having played guitar, which is a chord-based instrument (as opposed to single-line instruments like clarinet or violin,) should also make some aspects of learning another chord-based instrument (piano) easier.

That's the good news. The bad news is that the reason you're intimidated is that, with your experienced ear, you've probably detected that jazz, like classical music, is a heck of a lot more complicated than rock and blues. The beauty of blues is rooted in its simplicity, and much as I love rock music, the vast majority of it just doesn't contain all that many twists and turns, from a music theory standpoint. Just mastering the basics of jazz can take years, and that's before we even begin to discuss the whole improvisation thing.

Also working against you, TJ, is the fact that you're an adult. The adage that youth is wasted on the young is never more true than in music, for the simple reason that kids' brains are basically giant sponges capable of absorbing new information and hard-wiring it into the system at a rate that puts us 20- and 30-something geezers to shame. Which is irritating, because when you tell a 7-year-old something new about his instrument, you can just see that he hasn't the faintest idea what you're talking about, or why, for instance, it should matter whether his bow is pulled perfectly perpendicular to his violin's fingerboard. But with a couple of weeks practice, that 7-year-old will create new connections in his brain which will cause his right arm to be able to pull a straight bow, no problem. Most of the time, he won't even have to think about it.

Meanwhile, an adult who understands immediately why a straight bow is important might never actually be able to hardwire that importance into his/her brain, and will forever have to go through the laborious mental process of noticing that the bow isn't straight and telling the arm to fix it. It's like the difference between Googling something and looking it up in an old-school library card catalog. Both approaches will eventually succeed, but one is a helluva lot less work.

None of this is to say that you shouldn't start taking jazz piano lessons, of course. You don't have to be Dave Brubeck or Thelonius Monk to enjoy the act of playing, and if you're willing to put in some serious (and I do mean serious - a couple a day, and there are no days off) hours of practice, there's no reason that you couldn't become a pretty decent player eventually. I studied jazz for a couple of years in college (yes, there is such a thing as jazz viola,) and despite the fact that I am a profoundly mediocre jazz musician, I still like playing it. You could definitely shave some of the edge off the learning curve if you decided to learn jazz guitar instead of piano, but like I say, if you're willing to put in the work to learn a new instrument, there's no reason not to find a good teacher and go for it. (This is, of course, assuming that you already own a piano. Those suckers are expensive.)

Old friends

I'm back in the Twin Cities and settling into my new house - the movers arrived yesterday with several tons of belongings (pianos and scores are very, very heavy), and with the cable installed I finally have internet access! I managed to unpack most of my books today and am in the midst of the arduous process of reordering, recataloging and reshelving several hundred scores.

Often, hearing just a few moments of an old, familiar song on the radio (80's nostalgia, anyone?), we're taken back into a particular moment in life - the summer of a first love, a memorable high school dance - (for me, 50 Cent's "In Da Club" takes me back to a difficult couple of months during the messy dissolution of an orchestra with which I was working, but that's a whole other story...) . I experience something similar when I merely glance at certain scores, because they bring back powerful memories of when I first encountered them.

Dvorak - Symphony #8: the first piece I ever conducted, at 16. My high school orchestra director handed me a baton and took off to take a phone call. I was both utterly enthralled and completely terrified; it's the moment I got totally hooked.

Chausson - Symphony in Bb Major: on the podium at the Monteux School in Maine many years ago, being yelled at by Charles Bruck. One of the very few times I've had to fight back tears on the podium.

Bach - Brandenburg Concerto #1 onstage at the Curtis Institute with an all-star cast of classmates; extraordinary music-making, but more importantly, an extraordinary sense of cameraderie and a unity of purpose that one rarely experiences. The death of one of the performers several years ago only adds to the poignancy of the memory.

Brahms - Symphony #4: a subscription debut with a professional orchestra during my final student years; I had carefully annotated my own parts, and the concertmaster and I came to loggerheads with the bowings for the third movement. "It's backwards!" he said; "But it puts the accent and the long note in the right place!" I replied. I won the argument - after several rehearsals, I finally won the concertmaster's approval.

Strauss - Egyptian March: one of the pieces I conducted on a concert the night after my father died. I've done everything else on the program since then; subsequently, the memory of that awful period has been erased from them. But this is a piece I've not encountered since, and hearing it takes me back to a very dark time.

Stravinsky - Petrouchka: first heard as a young kid on "Dance in America" as part of a tribute to Nijinsky featuring Rudolf Nureyev. I had never been so mesmerized in my (at that point, very short) life, and hearing the whirling exuberance of the opening carnival tableau always reminds me of the sense of thrill and wonder I felt then.

It's been a ridiculously busy couple of weeks moving my household (and husband) half-way across the country, an effort not without it's stresses. But there's a deep reassurance in opening box after box of my old friends, a flitting memory accompanying each, as I ease each volume onto the shelf.

Schadenfreude

I know it's wrong to take pleasure from the pain of others (especially when "others" are an opera company which employs several of one's friends,) but something about the mini-firestorm that's been enveloping the Metropolitan Opera this week has been highly entertaining to me.

At the center of the controversy is a brand spanking new production of Tosca that America's premiere opera company has chosen to open its season. Opera audiences do not, on the whole, tend to be big fans of change, so it's always risky to replace a well-worn production with something new and innovative. (Opera audiences also tend to be far more willing to make their displeasure known immediately than the audiences we see at Orchestra Hall. I attended a perfectly decent production of Eugene Onegin at the Vienna State Opera last winter at which the director and set designer were roundly booed during the curtain call.)

Still, music critics today are a gentle lot, on the whole, and it's relatively rare that you read a truly blistering review. So I can only imagine that the Met's new Tosca must have indeed laid quite an egg last week to inspire this absolute demolition by the estimable Alex Ross at The New Yorker:

"It takes a certain effort to suck the life out of Tosca... [Director Luc Bondy] delivered an uneven, muddled, weirdly dull production that interferes fatally with the working of Puccini’s perfect contraption. Karita Mattila was miscast in the title role. No one else sang with particular distinction. By the end of opening night, [Met Opera General Manager Peter] Gelb had on his hands a full-blown fiasco, with boos resounding from the orchestra seats, the upper galleries, and even the plaza outside, where people had watched on a screen for free... While there is nobility in an ambitious failure, there is no glory in ineptitude."

Dude. That is a serious takedown. But Ross sees a bright side in the rare Met misfire, too...

"Opera being a delightfully paradoxical medium, this whole debacle left me in an upbeat mood. The Met is refusing to repeat itself and is seeking, by trial and error, a new theatrical identity... The audience was, at least, paying attention. If I’m not mistaken, someone shouted “Vergogna!”—“Shame!”—when the production team shuffled onstage to face the firing squad. I doubt that mass revulsion is part of Gelb’s marketing plan, but a scandal has its uses: the Met made the evening news."

Good point, and one that further underscores the different cultural positions occupied by orchestras and opera companies in America today. Can you imagine the New York Philharmonic being booed at Lincoln Center? And even if you can, can you imagine any media entity beyond the arts press caring about it?

Somewhere along the way, we seem to have decided that opera companies are populist and orchestras are elitist. (Which is odd, since the trappings of each experience would suggest exactly the opposite to me.) That's a problem for those of us in orchestras, of course, but I'll admit - there are times when it's nice to be ignored. I'm guessing the Met would take some of that treatment right now...