4-3-2-1...

Gearing up for what should be an epic New Year's Eve (which I'll - hopefully - post about tomorrow):



In the meantime, a few musings on 2009:

It's been a tumultuous year, by all accounts, and there have certainly been casualties of these troubled financial times (although one could argue that the Honolulu Symphony was in terminal condition long before the current state of the world).

Tough times force a certain amount of navel-gazing; the danger in this is the possibility of becoming stuck in pensiveness, without the possibility of action. In a year predicated on the overarching notion of Change (yup, with a capital "C"), it's encouraging to see that some major organizations have taken some actual bold steps, particularly in choosing artistic leaders; Alan Gilbert began his stint at the helm of the New York Philharmonic, weeks before the Los Angeles Philharmonic welcomed Gustavo Dudamel as its new music director.

Gilbert seems both an unusual choice (a young American less-known in his home country) and a natural fit (as the son of NY Phil musicians) - an interesting direction for a conservative organization that nonetheless seems to concede to the need for a larger cultural relevancy (witness the choice of Alec Baldwin as its radio host). On the opposite coast, the Dudamel PR juggernaut is motoring at full throttle, drumming up the kind of buzz of which other orchestras can only dream. "The Dude's" charisma is unquestionable; whether it will translate into artistic fulfillment or increased ticket sales, only time will tell.

And speaking of new appointments and charisma, that of Yo-Yo Ma as "creative consultant" to the Chicago Symphony is one that has me very interested. It's the kind of outside-the-box thinking - utilizing talent in an unconventional manner - that signals some of the most exciting development in the orchestral field.

But it wasn't the year for change - or choice - for everyone; the Philadelphia Orchestra is still rudderless, heightening concerns about one of the most beleaguered of the "Big Five" (which reminds me, how do we rank orchestras these days, anyway?).

On the personal front, change came in the form of two new jobs and moving my household to Minneapolis, all of which has been simultaneously challenging and enormously satisfying.

On the Inside the Classics front, Sam and I are busy preparing for the next set of concerts (La Mer! I've been looking forward to this one...) while, thanks to result reports from Wallace Foundation-funded focus group studies, we continue to reevaluate and tinker with format and content for upcoming seasons. As much as I like change - as I've frequently said, my favorite quote = "If you don't like change, you'll like irrelevance even less" - there are some constants I've come to rely on, like a co-host/co-writer/cohort whose inventiveness and wit and sense of vision are a constant inspiration to me. Thanks for a great 2009, Sam; now if we could only find a time for our "Four Seasons" initial script meeting...

Happy New Year to all!!

Cover Models

So, the new issue of Symphony Magazine is out! (Yeah, I know - you had no idea there was such a magazine. Marketing isn't exactly their strong suit, and besides, it's put out by the League of American Orchestras, so it's sort of a trade publication in any case.)

Anyway, the first issue of 2010 is out, and I bring it up because their lead story is all about classical musicians who blog, and, um, well...

Yah. So that happened. Which is interesting, because Sarah and I are not even remotely the sole focus of the article, which also features the fantastic online work of Nico Muhly, Stephen Hough, Tim Munro, and others. I suspect that we're on the cover because the orchestra happened to have professionally shot photos of the two of us pretending to type on a computer, and I'm guessing that none of the other bloggers in the article had such shots readily available.

Anyway, the article is interesting in that it reveals how the most popular classical bloggers seem to be the ones who realize that they should write about a lot more than just how Beethoven used deceptive cadences and how much they practice. Nico writes about exotic dining experiences as often as he writes about music, and Tim gets into all sorts of logistical stuff about the difficulty of being a touring ensemble.

I don't know what it is about blogging that makes the content more entertaining when the author is writing outside his/her actual area of expertise, but it does seem to be a genuine thing. My friend Kate, a violist in the Buffalo Philharmonic, writes a hilarious and comprehensive blog about (wait for it) the Buffalo Sabres hockey team. Seriously, she does, and guess which activity - viola playing or blogging about hockey while giving her favorite players nicknames like "Pommerdoodle" - has landed her in the pages of the New York Times?

Anyway, thanks to Symphony Mag for including us, and to anyone who's just come to our little corner of the interwebs via their link, welcome, and you should probably just go over to the right and click on the "fun" tab if you want to get a basic idea of what we do here. Unless you're one of those serious musical types, in which case, you want "stirring the pot," or maybe "elitism." Your call...

"A few moments' rest and refreshment"

Rested and refreshed from my week off (really, truly, an entire week! I have to remember how good this feels...).

To get back into the swing of things (blogging included), "rest and refreshment" in a very different context:


September 22, 1802

Gentlemen,

It was a most pleasant surprise to receive such a flattering letter from a part of the world where I could never have imagined that the products of my poor talents were known. But when I see that not only is my name familiar to you, but my compositions are performed by you with approval and satisfaction, the warmest wishes of my heart are fulfilled: to be considered a not wholly unworthy priest of this sacred art by every nation where my works are known. You reassure me on this point as regards your fatherland, but even more, you happily persuade me -- and this cannot fail to be a real source of consolation to me in my declining years -- that I am often the enviable means by which you, and so many other families sensible of heartfelt emotion, derive, in their homely circle, their pleasure -- their enjoyment. How reassuring this thought is to me! Often, when struggling against the obstacles of every sort which oppose my labors; often, when the powers of mind and body weakened, and it was difficult for me to continue in the course I had entered on;-- a secret voice whispered to me, "There are so few happy and contented people here below; grief and sorrow are always their lot; perhaps your labors will once be a source from which the care-worn, or the man burdened with affairs, can derive a few moments' rest and refreshment." This was indeed a powerful motive to press onwards, and this is why I now look back with cheerful satisfaction on the labors expended on this art, to which I have devoted so many long years of uninterrupted effort and exertion...

Your wholly obedient servant,
Joseph Haydn

Merry Happy.

I mentioned this song a couple of weeks back in the post about best/worst holiday music. I've never been much for carols, on the whole, but this Dar Williams song is Christmas to me, encapsulating all the familial gulfs and grudges that we manage to overcome every year, even if only for a day or two.



My favorite line: "But we love trees, we love the snow, the friends we have, the world we share / And you find magic in your God, and we find magic Everywhere."

Merry Christmas, y'all. And thanks for reading...

Cross-(Genre)-Pollination

I've written before about the various apprehensions that orchestral musicians feel about playing pops music, and I've also written about the need for orchestras to expand their range of concert offerings (including encouraging the development of good pops music) if we want to remain a vital cultural force. My feelings on the subject have generally boiled down to two fundamental truths: 1) Classical musicians, on the whole, need to get over the notion that we're too good/serious/important to play popular music, and 2) Bad pops arrangements (which are the vast majority of them) need to be replaced with scores that actually give the orchestra something substantial to do, if we ever want fans of popular music to embrace the orchestra as a concept.

But coming off our most pops-intensive month of the season (we haven't actually played a standard classical concert since mid-November, and won't again until the third week of January,) I've been finding reasons to be encouraged. And that encouragement comes largely from the presence on our podium of pops leaders who understand the difference between "popular" and "pandering."

One of the things that made me strongly supportive of the Minnesota Orchestra's decision to appoint Sarah Hicks as our new Principal Pops Conductor was the fact that she demonstrably understands the orchestra's proper role in a really good pops show. We don't need to be center stage all the time, especially if we've paid some famous guest artist or other a lot of money to sit in front of us and be the focal point of the show. But if all we're doing is sitting back on our heels and droning an unending series of whole notes, it's a terrible waste of resources. Sarah gets that, and she's already made a noticeable effort to find (or create) arrangements and original pieces that utilize the orchestra in a way that would be familiar to someone who's actually heard a Beethoven symphony before. (By the way, if you missed Sarah on MPR's Midmorning program last week, go back and have a listen. She was the very picture of unflappable accessibility...)

Moreover, I was reminded last weekend, as I am every year, of just how impressive musicians outside the classical realm can be, when Doc Severinsen blew back into town for his annual Jingle Bell Doc show. Make no mistake: Doc is every bit the over-the-top, flashy, leather-and-sequin-obsessed character that he was for all those years on Carson. But lurking behind that larger-than-life persona is a musical talent, drive, and ambition that put most of us in the orchestra business to shame.

Doc's always been known for bringing some of the very best orchestral arrangements in the business to the stage with him, courtesy of his long partnerships with killer musician/arrangers like Tommy Newsom and Dick Lieb. But his commitment to what he does goes way beyond that, and, I'd venture to say, well beyond nearly any other musician within 20 years of his age.

I happened to be hanging out at Orchestra Hall a few hours before our Saturday night performance with Doc at the helm. We'd had our lone rehearsal for this concert the day before, and Saturday afternoon, Sarah had led most of the orchestra in the final performance of this year's "Scandinavian Christmas" run. I had a lesson to teach, so rather than go home between shows, I stuck around, practiced a bit, and generally killed some time.

It was somewhere between 5 and 6pm when Doc showed up backstage, hustled to his practice room, and began to work. I choose that word deliberately. I was in an adjoining practice room, and he wasn't playing - he was working. Every musician knows the difference between mindless warm-up and serious practicing, and this was decidedly the latter. I actually stopped teaching my student for a moment to point out the obvious concentration that this famous 83-year-old trumpeter, with nothing to prove to anyone in the world, was putting into his preparation for a Christmas show he's led dozens of times before.

It's things like this that separate the great musicians from the merely talented, and classical music has no kind of lock on that sort of passion and commitment. I don't know how many more years I'll have the good fortune to work with Doc, but I know for a fact that he's set the bar for what it means to have a full, meaningful career in this business. And from my side of the classical/pops divide, that means everything.

Selling It

So, this past Friday night, a big group of MN Orchers made our way to the Walker for the annual celebration of salesmanship and corporate artistry that is the British Television Advertisting Awards. (For those readers not from the Twin Cities: I know. Sitting and watching 90 minutes of TV ads sounds ridiculous, and not like something a major American museum should be promoting. But you'll just have to trust us. It's awesome.) I've been going to the BTAA show for several years now, and I have to say, 2009 was one of the best reels I've seen. Very few clunkers, several amazingly poignant ads, plenty of laughs...

...and then, about midway through the show, there was this, which had everyone in the theater baffled right up to the very end...



If there is a better way to market grand opera in 2009, I don't know what it would be. And if you ask me, this is exactly the kind of thing orchestras need to be doing more of. Opera companies have gotten very good in recent years at reinventing their image, making their performances seem like not-to-be-missed events, and generally making themselves seem like the cool corner of the classical music world. And that, by extension, makes orchestras the decidedly uncool corner. They're exciting, we're sleepy, they're hip and fresh, we're stuffy and tuxedoed, they're simulcasting their biggest shows live to your local movie theater, we're stuck in a mid-20th century universe pretending that the internet doesn't exist.

You might point out that it's easier for an opera company to market itself on a visual medium like YouTube than it would be for an orchestra, but I'm not buying it. The stories behind symphonic music, even non-programmatic stuff like a Shostakovich symphony, are easily as riveting as your average opera libretto. It's just a matter of finding the part of the narrative that's going to grab people, and then retelling it in a creative way and getting it out there where people can see it. It's really not rocket science, and orchestras need to get a whole lot better at embracing that sort of idea, even if it means changing some longstanding elements of our business model...

Bassoon Christmas!

So, you may recall that my post last week about Christmas music I love and hate included a brief reference to an Oberlin Conservatory tradition known as "Bassoon Christmas." And naturally, I shot the link for that post to a few old college friends who participated in said event. And, as always seems to happen in the world of Facebook, this sparked an intense round of reminiscence, which eventually turned up more than a few old photos...

The gang's all here! That's Oberlin professor and Bassoon Xmas
mastermind George Sakakeeny in the upper right...

Believe it or not, she somehow recovered from this
to become a professional orchestra musician...

...and, more importantly, actual audio of the 1997 version of the Oberlin bassoon studio in all their dweeby holiday glory!

There's a lot more where that came from, but you'll have to go here to hear it. Anyone know of other similar holiday traditions featuring music nerds with too much time on their hands?

Holiday Video Wars

OK, Sam, that Hallelujah video was nothing short of brilliant. Here's something way short of brilliant, which I find mysterious on several levels. First of all, why does it start in major? And what's up with the shadowy Milla-Jovovich-in-"The Fifth Element" phantom overlaid for the whole video? And most of all, why??

Sounds of Silence

Everybody loves a good Hallelujah Chorus, especially at this time of year. And if there's anything more uplifting than listening to the most famous movement of Handel's Messiah, it's singing it yourself! But what if you're a devout monk (I know, I know, but stay with me) who's taken a lifelong vow of silence? Must you deprive yourself of this most simple and pure of Christmas traditions?

...Not anymore!



That is just purely brilliant. A big hat tip to my friend Susie Telsey (she's the spangly bassoonist in last week's Christmas music post, btw) for sending this my way...

Name Recognition

As I've mentioned before, a lot of the time between Inside the Classics concerts is spent gathering and analyzing data from people who attend, or are thinking about attending, our series. From the beginning, ItC was conceived to be something of an incubator for new orchestral ideas, and it does us very little good to be throwing new concepts at the wall unless we have a way of measuring which ones are sticking. Thus all the research, and the pleas for feedback, and our virtual obsession with who is coming to our concerts and why.

To that end, we're currently working with a great Chicago-based company that specializes in such research and has been running polls and focus groups for us to measure the effectiveness not only of what we do on stage, but also the various posters, flyers, ads, and mailings we put out to try to generate interest. It's always fascinating to read the diversity of opinion that gets offered up in these situations - in a room of 7 or 8 people, you're likely to have 9 or 10 opinions. (This is why we use professionals to analyze it all - they've seen it all a thousand times before, and they're expert at picking out and explaining the trends that are hiding in the mass of data.)

This past week, we had a big meeting to go over the latest focus group data, and as usual, my favorite part of the morning wasn't so much reading about the larger trends that we'll actually look at as we form our future concert seasons, but the individual comments and quips from audience members. For instance, it's abundantly clear from all the research we do that Sarah's name and identity are firmly lodged in the mind of everyone who's ever seen an Inside the Classics show. When it comes to me, however...

...not so much. It could be a function of years of pre-conditioning of audience members to make the conductor the primary focus of their attention, or it could be that I actually say Sarah's name several times over the course of any given ItC show, whereas mine might come up only once. It could even be (gasp!) that Sarah is simply a more memorable onstage presence than some dorky violist with a microphone.

But whatever the reason, the research is clear that, while people tend to be very complimentary of the role I play in our concerts, and say very nice things about the onstage chemistry between Sarah and me, they seem to have a very hard time remembering my name. Which doesn't actually bother me in the least - I'd much rather they remember the music they heard, or the fact that they want to be sure to return the next time Sarah's conducting - but it has led to my acquiring some interesting nicknames among the ItC planning team.

One woman in the most recent round of audience research referred to me as "The Other Fellow." Another went with "the character." Yet another said, "I was very intrigued when a viola player got up... because they don't get to speak very much!" (This person has clearly never seen the Minnesota Orchestra viola section in rehearsal.) And my favorite: one gentleman, after struggling to remember my name mid-sentence, finally went with "Viola Boy." (This last one so delighted our Marketing VP that she immediately dashed off an e-mail to inform me of my new nickname.)

As I say, I could actually care less whether anyone remembers my name, so long as they remember that they liked the show. And I have to admit, I've started looking forward to reading whatever new noms de spectateurs I'm graced with when new research data arrives. Not sure anyone's gonna top Viola Boy, though. I might need a superhero costume to go with that one...

Image borrowed from the awesome ViolaMan.net...

Tis holiday concert season...

Speaking of the inner grinch, Sam...

Yes, it's hard to maintain the holiday spirit while doing the umpteenth performance of some Christmas chestnut. But sometimes, the unexpected pops up, and we're reminded of how much of what we do, presenting live music, is such an astonishing and unpredictable venture.


I post it every holiday season, but here it is again, the most jarring (or, perhaps, jazzy?) end to the Hallelujah Chorus, EVER.

Fighting The Inner Grinch

One of the unfortunate side effects of being a musician at Christmastime is that it really does tend to ruin your enjoyment of holiday music. Caroling is a lovely tradition, yes, but when you're playing Sleigh Ride or the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy for the 823rd time in your career, you do begin to feel a bit Scrooge-ish.

Still, most of us in the business have personal holiday favorites, and the payoff for being a part of so many mediocre Christmas-themed concerts is that you remember the really great ones even more vividly. So, as the first major snowstorm of the season starts to wind down outside my window, it seemed like a good time to pass along the meme that prolific blogger and orchestra consultant Drew McManus dropped into my inbox this morning. Here goes nothing...

Four holiday songs/pieces you enjoy the most:

1) J.S. Bach, Christmas Oratorio (So underrated.)
2) Handel's Messiah (Still the champion.)
3) Silent Night (Even better in German.)
4) Christmas in the Trenches by John McCutcheon

Four holiday songs/pieces you enjoy the least:

1) Anything Nutcracker-related (any professional musician who claims to like it is lying to you)
2) Do They Know It's Christmas? (An utter musical abomination dressed up as charity.)
3) Winter Wonderland (Yeah, I know, I'm a killjoy. Sue me. "Snowman" should never be rhymed with "No, man.")
4) A Holly Jolly Christmas (Not only is it a terrible song, but Burl Ives was responsible for Pete Seeger being blacklisted during the dark days of Joe McCarthy's HUAC...)

Four holiday concerts (live) you enjoyed the most:

1) Back when I was in college, the entire Oberlin bassoon studio would gather in the conservatory lounge during the last week of classes before Christmas to play beautiful and hilarious arrangements of various carols, all while dressed in outlandish costumes and armed with candy to throw at the audience. It was an event not to be missed.

2) All Is Calm: the Christmas Truce of 1914. This was a collaboration between Theater Latte Da and the wonderful male vocal ensemble Cantus which told the true World War I story that John McCutcheon sang about in Christmas in the Trenches. It could have been horribly corny and overwrought - instead, it was simple, uplifting, and very, very well done. MPR's got the audio on their web site...
3) The St. Olaf Christmas Festival. It's legendary for a reason - the St. Olaf Choir is far and away the best choral group I've ever had the good fortune to perform with, and though I've only made it down to Northfield to see the Christmas Fest in person once, it stands as the best "traditional" Christmas concert I know.
4) This particular performance of Messiah. (Hat tip to Osmo for the link...)


Four holiday concerts (live) you enjoyed the least:

1) Pick a Nutcracker. Any Nutcracker.
2) And not to harp on the Nutcracker thing, but that hideous Swingin' Nutcracker show needs to be on this list, too. It's not that Duke Ellington's arrangements are bad - in fact, most of them are better than Tchaikovsky's versions. And that's exactly the problem. Orchestras mounting this show tend to play the two versions of each movement back-to-back, with boring old ballerinas dancing 90% of the kids in the audience to sleep during the Tchaikovsky, and then super-athletic swing dancers swooping in to dazzle them during the Ellington. Has ever a show been better contrived to convince children that orchestras are stodgy and boring?
3) Back in the late '90s, I played a Messiah pickup gig at a tiny church in Birmingham, Alabama. The orchestra outnumbered the choir, which consisted of 12 women and 2 men. None of them could sing in tune, and most of the arias had to be taken at half tempo when it was discovered that the two female soloists couldn't actually sing melismas. The Hallelujah chorus was the most pathetic, anemic-sounding thing I've ever heard.
4) Andy Williams. Yeah, I said it. Who wants a piece?

Four holiday CDs you enjoy the most:

1) John Prine - A John Prine Christmas
2) Turtle Island String Quartet - By The Fireside
3) Tom Waits - Blue Valentine Okay, technically, this isn't a Christmas album, but every Tom Waits fan knows what song I'm thinking of here. If you're not a Tom Waits fan, you probably shouldn't click the link.
4) Dar Williams - The Christians & The Pagans Again, not a full Christmas album - just a single track off the album Mortal City. But this hilarious and touching song does more to fill me with Christmas spirit than any Bing Crosby croon ever could.

Four holiday CDs you enjoy the least:

1) Mannheim Steamroller - A Fresh Aire Christmas This is my Uncle Jeff's very favorite Christmas album, which pains me, because he's one of my very favorite relations, and I have always viewed him as a wonderful role model in nearly every way. But he's absolutely 1000% wrong about the Steamroller. This is hideous electronic dreck that is guaranteed to stick in your head until April.
2) Bing Crosby - How Lovely Is Christmas Now, look. I like ol' Bing as much as the next guy (in fact, my grandfather's army buddies used to refer to him as "Little Bing" because he was always crooning some Crosby classic or other,) but this album, which I grew up listening to, is pure hogwash. The centerpiece is a crackpot story about some kid named Jethro who wants "an axe, an apple, and a buckskin jacket" for Christmas and is then visited in the night by Paul Bunyan, Johnny Appleseed, and Daniel Boone. The songs were impossibly catchy without actually being good, and the whole concept was beyond ridiculous. (And if you, too, owned this album as a child, my apologies for having just gotten that axe/apple/buckskin tune stuck in your head.)
3) Bob Dylan - Christmas in the Heart Admit it - you just assumed this was an elaborate joke when you heard about it a month or so ago. I certainly did, and I'm actually not quite ready to concede that it isn't. But it is a real CD, and Lord, is it awful.
4) Lynyrd Skynyrd - Christmas Time Again There is no earthly reason for this album to exist. There is no earthly reason for it to include a song called "Santa Claus Wants Some Lovin'." And there is really no reason for Amazon to have it in stock a decade after its release. But there it is, in all its holiday spirit-crushing glory.

Wow. This turned out to be a much longer post than I was expecting, but heck, it's not as if I have anything else to do on a day that the roads are impassable, and the temperature's falling fast towards the zero mark. Feel free to leave your own lists of holiday triumphs and abominations in the comments if you like...

In the crosshairs

I'm finishing up Michael Pollan's wonderful The Omnivore's Dilemma, which, I have to confess, I started back when the Orchestra was on tour in late February (I have a bad habit of reading up to a dozen books simultaneously, which often results in taking many, many months to finish a single one.) It's a thought-provoking read (who knew how corn permeates so much of what we consume?) describing four meals from four different sources - factory farming, industrialized organic agriculture, self-sustaining polycultural organic farming and hunting/gathering.

A phrase in the hunting/gathering chapter caught my eye; "the hunter's ecstatic purple". Describing his participation in a pig hunt in northern California, Pollan goes on to explain:

It was as if I'd dialed up the gain on all my senses or quieted myself to such an extent that the world itself grew louder and brighter...So much sensory information was coming into my head that it seemed to push out the normal buzz of consciousness. The state felt very much like meditation, though it took no mental effort or exercise to achieve that kind of head-emptying presence. The simple act of looking and listening, tuning my senses to the forest frequencies of Pig, occupied every quadrant of mental space and anchored me to the present.

Reading this was an "aha" moment for me, as I realized that's exactly how I feel while conducting opera.



No, I'm not comparing pig-shooting to Cavaradossi in the crosshairs of the firing squad (I just love that poster). It's more about the feeling of absolute focus on the necessities of the present, which is so all-encompassing that, as Pollan says, one forgets both the passage of time and any physical discomfort.

Opera conducting is an entirely different beast from the orchestral variety. Ostensibly, the biggest difference is the addition of singers, costuming and scenery, but practically this translates into an approach to performance that is completely divergent.

First of all, much more so than in a purely symphonic realm, one has to be acutely aware of the necessity to create a coherent narrative from a musical standpoint; it's a matter of constant attention to dramatic pacing. Which would be hard enough on its own, but the major complication of opera is that you have a bunch of singers running around on stage, and while you may have rehearsed something to perfection in the rehearsal hall, all bets are off when you hit the stage.

Conducting singers is often like herding cats (said with all love and respect for my singing friends and colleagues - but it remains fact that singers rarely have to work under the constraints of communal agreement and consistency that orchestral players do). Combine the artistic license being taken vocally on stage with a prop door that doesn't seem to want to open with a smoke machine that threatens to asphyxiate your first violin section, and you have all the makings of a disaster.

But, oddly (and that very same scenario happened to me several weeks back during the Orchestra's run of Hansel and Gretel), just as those little calamities are piling up, I feel calmer and more focused. After a particularly harrowing act in which a soprano threatened to skip over several lines of music, our principal horn Mike Gast found me backstage and asked, "Geez, doesn't that make you crazy? How do you not panic?"

Call me crazy, but I love that feeling of chaos. When it happens, I utterly understand Pollan's "ecstatic purple"; time slows down, and all those constant bubbles of subconscious thought ("'Did I feed the dogs? Will my house in Richmond ever sell? Should I call my dentist tomorrow?") completely dissipate. My attention is given fully to the task at hand (lassoing the errant soprano, holding a cue until the door can be opened, fanning the violins with a spare hand) and on nothing else. Which for me is incredibly mind-clearing, and thus intensely pleasurable. It's ironic that at those moments when a conductor should feel as if they're caught in the crosshairs, I feel the most relaxed and free - anyone have any comparable experiences in other fields?

Fan Relations

When you make your living as an entertainer of any sort, it's inevitable that you'll need to develop some degree of skill in dealing with the people who pay you to entertain them. Because whether you're a professional athlete, ballet dancer, or rock star, there are going to be fans who want more from you than just a performance. They might want an autograph, or a high-five, or maybe even a personal chat. And you have to decide what your personal boundaries are in these circumstances.

For those of us in the classical music world, of course, this is a pretty easy task. Not all that many people know who the heck we are, or care, so the demands on our time are pretty much confined to the few dozen regulars who flood the stage door after concerts. They're nice folks, for the most part, and it doesn't really take much effort to stop and have a word with them. And as for autographs, well, I'd say I've probably been asked for a total of ten in the decade that I've been in Minnesota, so there'd be virtually no excuse for my ever refusing to sign one.

For really high-profile performers, though, personal boundaries will very likely define your public image more than anything else. You might be a profoundly mediocre major league ballplayer, but if you make a point of sticking around after games long enough to sign autographs for every kid who wants one, you'll very likely develop a reputation as a great and generous guy. But push past one kid's outstretched hand, or snap at one pushy collector while a camera's rolling, and you run the risk of forever being known as a guy who thinks he's too good for the whole world.

Is it fair? Of course not. But it comes with the territory. Besides, you never know what consequences could come back to bite you later for an act of thoughtlessness today. Consider one Brendan Shanahan, retired NHL hockey legend and all-around good guy: earlier this week, Shanahan was on a radio show, and related a fantastic story about how he reacted to being rebuffed by one of his heroes...

“When I was 14 years old I was skating in the summertime at a rink in Toronto. Rick Vaive happened to be skating at an adjoining rink and we were actually in dressing rooms that were right next to each other. I went in when he was sort of settled and asked him for an autograph. I didn’t get the best response...

“Fast forward four years later and Rick Vaive is waiting for a meaningless faceoff in Buffalo. He’s now playing for the Sabres. He’s lined up next to some 18-year-old kid from New Jersey. When the puck dropped, I attacked Rick Vaive.

“It was a quiet, uneventful game. He couldn’t believe the rage I had, not only in attacking him, but it took two (linesmen) to restrain me afterwards and throw me in the penalty box.”

Now that's harboring a grudge. And it's also the best reason I've heard yet to never turn down a fan request...

Wine, Music & Snobbery

If you live in the Twin Cities, and have any interest at all in good food and the restaurants that serve it, you probably don't need me to tell you who Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl is, or that she has a new book out which purports to make sense of the oh-so-highfalutin' world of wine. She's been all over the local airwaves in the days since the book hit stores, which has been an interesting thing to see and hear, since it turns out that she speaks very differently than she writes. (Isn't it always interesting when that's the case? Because I think that most of us tend to write in much the same style that we speak in. I certainly do.)

Anyway, I bring Dara up because she's also a blogger, and she had an interesting post up shortly after her media blitz began, mentioning that not everyone seemed to be happy with her take on wine and how to buy/rate/enjoy it. She didn't really mince any words in response:

"One of my greatest anxieties in writing my book was that I’d be a magnet for what I think of as the Gotcha-Squad of Wine Weenies. Who are wine weenies? They’re those baseball-stat-nerd-like people intent on making wine as confusing and elite as possible, because it makes them feel good...

"I feel I should just get this out on the table: Look Wine Weenies, you and I are not going to be friends. You want to be right, and I want to help the people you went to high school with have less stress in their lives when they bring wine to your house. The battle is on!"

Now, that's all somewhat tongue in cheek, of course, but it did get me thinking about the way I tend to react on the occasion that Sarah and I hear from someone who attended an Inside the Classics concert and came away positively outraged by everything they saw and heard. These aren't people who disliked one element of the show, or who thought I talked too fast, or that Sarah's theory explanations were boring, and just wanted to let us know since we asked for feedback. They aren't even people who attended a show, decided it just wasn't their thing and shot us a note saying so.

No, these are people just barely containing a boiling cauldron of rage brought on by our concert format, people who believe that on the rare occasion that anyone must speak from the stage at an orchestra concert, that speech must be couched in the gravest possible language, imply nothing but the utmost respect for every note on every page of every piece on the program, and generally impart to the audience just how serious and important classical music is.

We hear from at least one of these people after nearly every ItC concert we do. Usually, they're Orchestra Hall regulars who have been coming to traditional concerts forever, have never heard of Inside the Classics, and bought the ticket accidentally because they like the piece we were featuring and didn't bother to read anything else in the brochure/ad they were looking at. And the way I've always reacted up to this point has been to be as apologetic as possible for having wasted the person's evening, to acknowledge the obvious truth that ItC shows aren't for everyone, and if necessary, to point out how few of them we do in a given season compared with all the concerts in which neither Sarah nor I says a word.

But Dara's got me thinking. Maybe what we really need isn't apologies, but pushback. We could start handing out manifestos in the lobby before every ItC concert that begin, "Look, Concert Weenies, you and we aren't going to be friends..."

Eh, maybe not. Our PR staff probably wouldn't be big fans of that approach. But the irony in both the complaints we get and the flak Dara's taking over her tear-down-the-ivory-wine-cellar approach to grape juice is that the supposed offenders are actually big fans of the traditions they're accused of sullying. Sarah and I both love traditional orchestra concerts. Dara loves great wine. What we don't love is the idea that, if you haven't spent half your life reading extensive treatises on music or wine, you aren't worthy or capable of truly appreciating the experience.

I'm actually one of those baseball stat nerds that Dara mentioned. I toss around terms like OPS, VORP, and Win Share like they mean something (which they do, actually) and I get very exercised whenever I hear a broadcaster refer to Nick Punto as "scrappy," which is stat-geek for "not very good at baseball." This is how I choose to enjoy the National Pasttime. I get a lot out of it, and objectively, my obsession with the numbers means that I probably know more about the analytics of the game than most other people at the ballpark. But it would never occur to me to think that this somehow makes me a better baseball fan than the guy who's just trying to enjoy a day game with his kid and thinks Nick Punto sets a terrific example by always giving 100%.

Basically, there's nothing wrong with being an expert until you start looking down on everyone who isn't and assuming that the only reason they're not is because they're too dumb to think up to your level. And it's a shame how many people still want to put classical music (and wine) up on that pedestal...

Anna Russell 23, Pedestals 0