Ask An Expert: Music That Won't Let Go

On the heels of last week's ItC concerts that featured music of Claude Debussy, we got this excellent Ask An Expert question from Pat O'Regan...

Q: When I leave the concert, almost invariably... I am born away by the music. Walking to the car, phrases of the evening’s performance resound in my mind. The feeling can be summed up as “Oh, the music!” Very often, this continues through the rest of the evening. Even waking in the morning, shaking off sleep, my first thought is, “Oh, yes, it was the music. What a wonderful evening.”

But Debussy was another matter altogether. I found the pieces strangely captivating, but I was not moved by them. (I am not talking about the Orchestra here, but about Mr. Debussy.) Leaving the concert, I could think of nothing to remember, and being “born away” was reduced to “well, that was interesting.” Isn’t this a demerit to Mr. Debussy? Doesn’t the failure to stir the soul – at least this one – make him a lesser composer than those other guys? Do you hum Debussy from time to time? Am I wrong to think that he is not in the same league as, say, Mozart, and might this lack of impact on the listener be the reason? Or is there no lack, and it just takes a fine musical mind to appreciate this music – in which case, my case is hopeless. What I am asking is: Does the man stir you as much as those other guys?

Well, first of all, musical taste is obviously highly subjective, so this is not so much an Ask An Expert situation as it is Ask Another Random Human Being Who Likes Music. In other words, I would never denigrate someone else's musical taste simply because a composer I like doesn't do much for him/her. There are undeniably great composers whose music does very little for me, even as I can recognize their skill.

That having been said, my short answer to Pat's core question would be that yes, Debussy stirs me every bit as much (and in fact, more than) most of your standard-issue classic and romantic era German composers. However, I would steer firmly away from the notion that this is because I have a "fine musical mind" and Pat somehow doesn't. Personal taste issues aside, I've long theorized that the most important variable shaping our taste in music is when we were first exposed to it, and how often.

Now, I grew up playing a lot of chamber music, and was lucky enough to be introduced to the Debussy string quartet while I was a teenager. It blew me away (and still does - just tonight, I slogged through the snow to watch some friends playing it at the Southern Theater, and it's as viscerally exciting a piece for me now as it was when I was 15,) and set in motion a larger interest in this decidedly un-German style of music. It didn't make me appreciate Beethoven and Brahms any less - it just made the universe a little bigger for me.

On the other hand, I did not play a lot of orchestral music while I was a teen, so I wasn't being directly exposed to a lot of stuff that other young musicians my age were. As a result, when I got to college and started playing in orchestra every day, I found that my tastes were a lot more conservative than most. The Rite of Spring, which everyone assured me was a mind-blowingly great piece, did quite literally nothing for me for years, and the massive symphonies of Gustav Mahler and the great tone poems of Richard Strauss felt similarly unaffecting. It wasn't that I questioned their greatness - I just didn't personally derive much pleasure from playing or hearing them.

Eventually, the light bulb went on for me regarding Mahler, Stravinsky, and Strauss, but it took many years, and a lot of performances. And I'm sure that, had my first serious, prolonged exposure to those titans of the orchestra world come earlier in my life, it wouldn't have taken nearly so long for me to feel personally attached to them. We form connections so easily as kids, and as adults, it can be frustratingly difficult to take the same pleasure in new experiences that we take for granted when we're young.

Of course, some composers (and authors, and painters, and foods) we never learn to like, no matter how many other people are obsessed with them. And that's fine, of course - if Debussy isn't your thing, at least you know to avoid him in the future. But you never know: if you'd asked 20-year-old me if I thought I'd ever become a fan of Stravinsky, you'd have gotten a pretty confident, and utterly wrong, reply. So Pat, it might be worth your time to give Debussy a few more chances to move you...

Ask An Expert: Downbeats and hand waving

A question posed in the "Ask an Expert" feature on our site. Bethany Holt wonders:

"How does the orchestra conductor keep the tempo? Perhaps its because I'm used to high school band, but I see no downbeat--just a lot of hand waving that miraculously guides the musicians."

First of all, Bethany, sorry it took me two months to get to this question!

Second of all, excellent question, and one that, in many different guises, gets asked frequently. The simple answer is that all conductors give some sort of tempo indication (including downbeats), just in very different ways, and depending on the circumstance.

With a highschool band, you're talking about a group of young musicians who are at the very beginning of their ensemble playing experience; in this situation, clarity of beat (downbeat is ...HERE!) is of primary importance, and simply keeping tempo/ensemble is probably the primary function of a conductor.

When dealing with a professional orchestra of the level of, say, the Minnesota Orchestra, while establishing tempo and aiding ensemble is important, it's rarely the singular focus of whoever's on the podium. In fact, as Sam and any other member of the Orchestra will tell you, there are large swaths of music during any performance where the musicians don't really need a conductor acting as a metronome. At that point, the conductor's job becomes more about indicating articulation or dynamic motion or phrase direction or overall mood. And when you're trying to do that, indicating tempo in a very vertical way (ie, with big downbeats) can get in the way.

The more complex answer is that this all depends on the conductor as well. There are those who are very insistent on beat patterns (or large beats); there are those who rely less on points in a beat and more on velocity of movement to communicate tempo; there are those with a completely ambiguous physical vocabulary that still somehow get their point across. It's all a matter of intent, as well as every conductor's individual way of relaying that intent. And it always amazes me how orchestras can adjust, week to week, (or occasionally day to day) to different conductors.

So, yes, Bethany, I guess, in the end, there's actually something pretty miraculous about it!

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...

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.)

Ask an Expert: New Leaders and Weekly Paychecks

Two timely questions dropped into our inbox this weekend. One has an easy answer, and the other is more complicated. To start with the easy one, Jean wants to know...

Q: When will we hear who is going to be the new concertmaster? Have there been any try-outs yet? Can the existing violin players apply?

There has, in fact, been an audition, just a few weeks ago, which included both internal candidates and violinists from outside the orchestra. However, unlike with most auditions, concertmasters are almost never hired without first spending a few weeks playing with the orchestra. So at this point, we have two excellent finalists for the job, both of whom will be playing as guest concertmasters in the coming months, after which a final decision will be made. I've been asked not to name the finalists at this time (which is sort of weird, since everyone will see them on stage next fall, but whatever, not my call,) but I can tell you that both of them are dazzling violinists and wonderful individuals besides (I happen to know both of them.) I can also tell you that neither is currently a member of the Minnesota Orchestra. Stay tuned...

Moving on to a question I'm surprised we haven't been asked before, Liz is wondering...

Q: How much does someone in a professional orchestra typically earn in a year?

Liz, you simply would not believe how much it can vary, depending on everything from the prominence of your orchestra to the number of weeks in your season to the fundraising capability of your board, and even to the country you make your living in! (For instance, musicians in the very best orchestras in America, Germany, and Austria can expect to earn a comfortable living, while musicians in orchestras of similar quality in the UK and Holland earn shockingly little money.) Also, orchestras have payment structures for things like recording and broadcasting that can differ wildly, and some orchestras have set salary numbers for principal players while others allow each titled player to negotiate his/her own contract, so even putting a baseline number on a musician's salary can be tricky.

But to give you a general idea, I'm looking at a wage chart put out annually by the International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians, which comprises the 52 largest orchestras (by budget size) in America. The most recent chart I have is from the 2007-08 season, and the base annual salary of a rank-and-file musician that year ranged from $25,162 (Virginia Symphony) to $122,720 (Boston Symphony). And even that's misleading, because only the very largest orchestras pay their musicians year-round. (There are also hundreds of smaller regional orchestras around the country, which pay even less than Virginia. The Shreveport Symphony, in Louisiana, recently slashed the base pay of its musicians to less than $10,000 per season.)

The Minnesota Orchestra's base salary for that season was $93,002. That made us America's 11th-highest paying orchestra at the time, just behind the Detroit Symphony, and just ahead of the Cincinnati Symphony. Those rankings have shuffled a bit since then, because not every orchestra negotiates their contracts at the same time. Also, as you've probably read, a lot of orchestras, battered by the effect of the stock market collapse on their endowments and the overall dismal economy, have been asking musicians to reopen contracts and take pretty hefty pay cuts to stabilize their organizations, and musicians are, by and large, doing just that. So no one is quite sure what the "new normal" will look like when it's all said and done.

All in all, the answer to your question is that music is no way to make a good living, except when it is. If you make it to the very top of the profession, you'll be doing about as well as a college professor at a major school, and that's plenty good for most people - none of us got into this line of work because we wanted to be millionaires. But the vast majority of professional orchestra players will never earn anything like a substantial paycheck, and that's without even considering all the musicians who never manage to win a full-time orchestra job, and cobble together a living on the freelance scene, subbing with an orchestra one night and playing a wedding or two the next. And no one knows coming out of music school where they're going to wind up on that continuum...

Ask An Expert: Musical Chairs

It's been two months since we last did an Ask the Expert post, and season ticket holder Judy Kinsey has a question that I'm actually surprised hasn't come up on the blog before now:

Q: I noticed, but didn't really pay attention, a few years ago when the orchestra's seating - the placement of sections on the stage - changed. The cellos moved to the middle and the double basses to the left. And maybe more that we didn't recognize. A friend who hadnt been at a concert for awhile attended a concert recently and was very surprised. She asked me when that happened, and why. I didn't remember when exactly, and I didn't know why.

Well, Judy, first of all, thanks for being a subscriber! People like you make our marketing department very, very happy. As for the seating, you're exactly right that we underwent a major change in how our string section sets up on stage a few years back. Prior to the switch, we sat in the configuration that's most familiar to American audiences - first violins on the outside edge of the stage at stage right, second violins just to the inside of the firsts, violas on the inside stage left, and cellos on the outside edge at stage left, facing the first violins. The basses were arrayed behind the violas and cellos at stage left. It looked like this...

(click the photo for a larger view)

Shortly after Osmo took over as music director, however, he started experimenting with a different seating, which was actually widely in use in the 18th and 19th centuries. Under this system, the two violin sections face each other across the stage (with the seconds where the cellos used to be,) the cellos jump to the inside spot next to the firsts vacated by the second violins, and the basses shift to stage right to stay near the cellos. Violas and first violins stay where they were. So the new seating looks like this...

(I know you can't see the first violins, but trust me, they're just left of the cellos...)

The rationale behind this seating is twofold: first of all, since much of the repertoire we play was written by composers in the 18th and 19th centuries, it makes sense to arrange the strings the way those composers would have expected. Secondly, by separating the violin sections, you create a very cool stereo effect in the concert hall, especially when you're playing music by a composer (Beethoven, say) who liked to play the violins off each other frequently. Some reviewers have even claimed that they can hear the effect of the antiphonal violins on our Beethoven recordings. (A third benefit could be that, by moving the cellos to an inside position, their soundboxes are facing out at the audience, but I don't know whether that actually makes a huge difference in the sound.)

Initially, Osmo had us sit this way just when we were playing Beethoven symphonies, and he then quickly amended that to "Beethoven and anything written during Beethoven's time or earlier." I think it was less than a year later that we switched to using that seating full-time, unless there's a compelling reason not to. (For instance, we almost never use it for pops shows, in which the orchestra tends to be spread further apart on the stage and the violins need to be close enough to hear each other.)

The switch wasn't without controversy: the cellos have a lot less room in their inside position, which has been a source of concern. And of course, it can be very difficult for the violins to hear each other across the stage, so we sometimes have to spend extra rehearsal time tightening up the ensemble. But we did take a poll of the orchestra a couple of years back, and the results were strongly in favor of sticking with the new seating. We're not the only US orchestra using it, and it's fairly common in Europe.

There have been other changes on our stage in the last decade, too. When I joined up in 2000, for instance, we didn't have any risers on stage, so the winds and brass just sat directly behind the strings, with everyone on the same flat level. This tended to result in a lot of complaints from the strings that the brass were trying to kill us with volume, and from the brass that the strings were a bunch of whiny princesses. It was also a problem for the back of the winds, where percussion instruments might be inches from the head of a horn player.

We started using risers immediately when Osmo took over, and these days, the winds and brass are arrayed at three different levels above the strings. We've also experimented with miniature risers for the back desks of violins, who are the furthest string instruments from the podium and therefore benefit from an assist in seeing over the players in front of them.

Basically, there's no right answer to the seating question. I would argue that there is a wrong one, though, and it's a model that a number of orchestras still inexplicably use. This model uses our old seating, with the violins together at stage right and the basses at stage left, but flips the violas and cellos, placing the violas on the outside edge of the stage. (When I played in the Alabama Symphony in the late 1990s, this was the seating we used.)

So basically, you've just done two nonsensical things: 1) placed the violas - the one string section guaranteed to basically never be in charge of things like tempo and harmonic flow, a section whose main job is to listen as carefully as possible to everyone else and bind together the top and bottom of the ensemble by following - in a location on the stage where they will essentially not be able to hear anyone else clearly; and 2) turned the softest instrument group on the stage to have their soundboxes directly facing the back wall rather than the audience. (Insert hilarious viola joke here.) That seating drove me up the wall, and I've never heard any adequate justification for it, but like I say, you still see it. (I'm pretty sure the New York Philharmonic even uses it, but let's face it, there's no accounting for New Yorkers.)

So, Judy, there it is: more than you probably ever wanted to know about where we plunk ourselves down on stage. Next time, maybe we can get into opera pits...

Ask An Expert: Pecking Orders & Patriarchy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ask An Expert: Climate Control

Regular commenter Emily Kroeck asked a good question about Sarah's last post, so I thought we might as well make it a tour edition of Ask An Expert. Emily asks:

Q: How is instrument temperature and humidity controlled on tours where flying is involved? I'm particularly curious about the big and numerous instruments like basses and cellos. Do musicians with smaller instruments carry them on in flight, or is every instrument stored in one temperature-controlled parallel universe that the stage crew then taps into at each destination? Also, does [the orchestra] bring along all of its own instruments or do you borrow some from host venues (I'm thinking of percussion instruments?)

Long before we ever leave on tour, our staff distributes to each musician a questionnaire on which we must, among other things, declare whether each of us will be hand-carrying our instrument from city to city, or placing it in the care of our crew, which has dozens of specially designed and built trunks ready to accommodate them. For those who play instruments too large to carry onto planes, the answer is obvious, but for those of us who play smaller instruments, it's a tough call. The downside of "trunking" your instrument is that you usually won't have access to it between concerts, leaving you only an hour or two of warm-up time to get reacquainted each night.

But hand-carrying can be a real problem, too, since many airlines are none too pleased to see dozens of bulky instruments taking up the overheads, and technically, they don't have to let us bring them on board. (On this tour, we're actually doing a fair amount of bussing between cities, so this is less of a concern.) Furthermore, if you're hand-carrying, your instrument is subject to whatever changing weather conditions happen to be around at the moment, whereas the trunks travel in special climate-controlled trucks and cargo planes. For instance, it's about 15 degrees warmer and a lot drier in Stuttgart, where we've just arrived, than it was in Cologne, which we left 5 hours ago. Temperature and humidity can really affect the sound of string instruments in particular, so you have to set your own priorities.

However, despite the logistical difficulties, we do bring all our own instruments from Minneapolis, even the percussion equipment. (The lone exception is pianos, since Steinway grands are standard equipment in every major concert hall in the Western world.) You might think all percussion is the same, but our own Kevin Watkins was just telling me the other night that he'd gotten a look at the Berlin Philharmonic's xylophone, and was shocked to see that it's two "keyboards" lay parallel to each other, whereas American xylophones have one layer elevated above the other, like uneven parallel bars. It would be pretty hard to adjust to something like that on the fly.

Emily's comment also included the following: The artist's bar thing is COOL. Never mind that I'm not in an orchestra nor have aspirations to be in one - I'm jealous anyway.

This is not, technically, a question, but I'm taking it as the perfect excuse to post some more video of my very favorite part of the European concert hall/backstage cafe experience. Specifically, the clip below was shot in Cologne, in the very moments after our concert ended on Thursday night, as I made my way from my seat onstage into the wings, where I partook of a Cologne Philharmonie tradition that really ought to catch on in every concert hall in the world...



That's right. In Cologne, you have a glass of beer in your hand before you put your instrument down. Not only that, it's a local brew - Kölsch - which, while not exactly a highfalutin' beer (I once had a Surdyk's worker sneer at me for asking if they had any,) tastes excellent when you've just spent 35 minutes sweating your way through Nielsen's 5th Symphony...

Ask An Expert: The Bottom Line

To pick up where we left off on Wednesday, Mike had asked a series of excellent questions about the various roles that money plays in the orchestra business. We answered two of them to do with musician pay in that post, and now we turn to the thornier issue of how dollars in and dollars out affects programming decisions. Here were Mike's questions:

Q: How do financial matters impact the particulars of performances at Orchestra Hall? Do performances change based on attendance, interest, funding? Do finances have a role in deciding what/how performances are given?

For the answers, I'll turn things over to Kari Marshall, the artistic administrator for the Minnesota Orchestra. Kari is involved in nearly all of our programming decisions, and she is also the staffer who Sarah and I work most closely with in developing our Inside the Classics concerts. (She also once won the orchestra's wildly popular NCAA March Madness pool despite not caring one bit about basketball, which was awesome if not terribly relevant to this blog.) Here's Kari's response:

Mike’s question about financial matters is one of those that all arts organizations, no matter their size, grapple with regularly. How does one balance fiscal responsibility with artistic mission? I remember many a late-night conversation about this very topic with my classmates in graduate school!

My role at the Minnesota Orchestra involves working with the Classical subscription series as well as Inside the Classics, so my answer refers to those areas of the Orchestra. In general, we do our best to make sure we are responsible with the finances while also providing a worthwhile and artistically satisfying experience for everyone in the concert hall. If you follow the blog regularly, you may recall that Bob Neu, our vice-president and general manager, contributed to an Ask An Expert inquiry just over a year ago. In that answer, Bob explained the process of planning a Minnesota Orchestra season.

Another stage of the planning cycle involves coordinating the entire season’s schedule with our marketing department. The classical subscription season, for instance, is a complicated puzzle of two, three or four concerts per week. The process of putting that puzzle together includes discussions about how each week may impact the organization’s financial situation. At the same time, we strive to offer a balanced variety within the program choices we offer.

Once a season is set, we do not change the Inside the Classics or Classical concerts based on attendance, interest or funding. The financial implications have more of an impact on future planning than the week-to-week programs that occur in a season. For instance, if a performance sells really well and the audience raves about their experience, we want to analyze why in order to make informed decisions. If a performance does not do well, we look for an explanation. (Was it the time of year? The weather? The repertoire? Or something else?) Hopefully this knowledge helps us provide the best experience for players, funders, and most importantly audience members.

Ask An Expert: The Money Shot

It's been a while since we answered an Ask The Expert question around these parts (remember, if you have a question about anything music or orchestra-related, you can click the Ask An Expert button to submit it, and we'll do our best to find someone who knows the answer,) but Mike is about to more than make up for lost time, with a record batch of five related questions:

Q: How do financial matters impact the particulars of performances at Orchestra Hall? Do performances change based on attendance, interest, funding? Do finances have a role in deciding what/how performances are given? ([For instance,] we originally thought the smaller size of the orchestra at the Mendelssohn concert was due to economic conditions.) How are the musicians paid? Do they typically have other jobs?

That's a lot to answer in one shot, and they're all excellent questions, so I think the best thing to do is to break this up into two separate blog posts. I'm qualified to answer Mike's last two questions, so I'll do that here, and then we'll have someone involved in the orchestra's programming process answer the rest in a later post.

Musicians in a major orchestra like Minnesota are salaried, and paid year round. (There are, at the moment, 16 or 17 American orchestras that do the same, and dozens more that pay regular salaries to their musicians, but don't pay them year round.) For players in ensembles like this, the orchestra is our full-time job, and our contract more or less compels us to put our orchestral duties ahead of anything else we might choose to do on the side. (So the answer to Mike's last question is no, musicians in the Minnesota Orchestra typically don't have other jobs, although many of us teach, coach chamber music, or play in summer music festivals when we have the time.)

Small orchestras (small by budget size, that is) can sometimes be what's called "per-service," which means musicians are paid a set amount for each rehearsal and concert they play, and they may be guaranteed a minimum number of services per year, but it is generally not possible to make a living solely from a job in a per-service orchestra. One example of this type of orchestra would be the Minnesota Sinfonia.

Salaries in the orchestra business can range from less than $10,000 per year to well over $100,000. (Certain crucial players, like concertmasters, can even make multiple hundreds of thousands, if they're considered among the very best in the field.) There are a handful of bands at the top of the field (ours included) in which it is entirely possible to make a very comfortable living and support a family without a second income, but the vast majority of orchestral musicians never land one of those plum jobs. There are a lot more $30,000 a year jobs than $80,000 jobs in this business, and whenever a major orchestra announces an open spot, you can count on there being dozens or even hundreds of candidates lining up to audition. (In 1999, when I auditioned here, there were 122 violists competing for two chairs in the section.)

It's interesting that some people assumed that our cut-down orchestra for last week's Inside the Classics concerts was a budget decision. There's a pretty strict rule against that sort of thing - we play the music we play with the number of musicians it was meant to be played with, and leaving someone out to save money would not be acceptable under any circumstances. In Mendelssohn's time, orchestras were smaller than they are now, so we cut back our string section, and of course, didn't include any wind, brass, or percussion players unless Mendelssohn wrote a part for them. (Besides, since the orchestra's 98 full-time musicians are on salary, we wouldn't save any money by cutting players from a given show.)

Of course, we play excerpts from works other than the featured one at Inside the Classics shows, and those of you with sharp eyes last week may have noticed that our tuba player, Steve Campbell, was on stage to play the very first excerpt of the night, from Mendelssohn's overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream, and that he then left the stage, never to return. I apologized to Steve before the show for making him come in to work just to play 4 minutes of music and then leave, but he gave me the same response you pretty much always get from musicians in that position: "Hey, no problem. It's my job."

We'll finish up answering Mike's questions tomorrow or Friday...

Ask An Expert: Think of the Children

We got a great question this week from Chris Larson, who may or may not be aware that his query ties in perfectly with our ItC season theme of child prodigies, boy wonders, call 'em what you will...

Q: Many of the most successful performers (and composers) start seriously pursuing music at a very young age, often at their parents urging. Do you think it's fair for parents to push their young children towards a career in music so early on? And conversely, do you think there's a certain age at which it is "too late" to start a career in music?

Back when I was a kid, a violin teacher named Kay Slone, who specialized in the popular Suzuki Method of childhood music instruction, wrote a book called They're Rarely Too Young and Never Too Old To Twinkle. (The Twinkle part refers to the tune, "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," which is the first actual piece of music every Suzuki student learns to play.) The book reflected the inherent optimism of the teaching method, which was developed by a Japanese teacher in the dark days following World War II, as a way to put smiles on the faces of traumatized Japanese children struggling in a war-ravaged country.

In developing his method, Dr. Suzuki, who had been trying to learn the German language as an adult with great difficulty, latched onto the realization that infants and young children grasp their mother tongue with a speed and cognitive strength that adults can never match. He reasoned that many of the complicated muscle movements and cognitive abilities required to play a musical instrument could, perhaps, also be taught more readily to children if the style of teaching approximated the way a child learns to speak. So Suzuki students learn to play music before they can read a note of it, and they learn to memorize entire books of short songs and play them on command before ever learning what a major triad or a hemiola might be.

The relevance of all this to Chris's question is revealed in the Wikipedia entry on the Suzuki Method: "Suzuki believed that every child, if properly taught, was capable of a high level of musical achievement. He also made it clear that the goal of such musical education was to raise generations of children with 'noble hearts' (as opposed to creating famous musical prodigies.)" He also believed that in order for children to be successful in learning music, their parents needed to be deeply involved in the process, even to the extent of learning their instrument of choice alongside them, and practicing with them daily.

And this, of course, is where things can go off the rails. Parents may all be well-meaning, but not all of them are good at distinguishing between what their children want, and what they want for their children. And as a teacher myself, I can tell you that it's never hard to spot the parents who are already thinking of the day their child will be a star even as they're still struggling to learn Song of the Wind.

I don't think there's anything wrong with a parent nudging their child in the direction of studying music, even at a very early age. I also don't see anything wrong with a father teaching his son to catch a baseball while he's still in kindergarten. However, I might raise an eyebrow if I saw a father forcing a kid that young to spend three hours a day taking batting practice and running fielding drills in the hope that he might grow up to be the next Joe Mauer. I'm not a parent, but that strikes me as bad parenting.

I tend to believe that kids find their own level in the world, and while I think it's great for parents and teachers to expose them to as many new experiences as possible (how will they find out what they love to do if no one shows them the choices they have?), I've known too many brilliantly talented young musicians who burned out before they turned 20, or became deeply depressed and socially inept adults as a result of having had their childhoods effectively stolen from them by overly ambitious parents. (26-year-old superstar pianist Lang Lang is just out with a new autobiography in which he details a harrowing childhood spent nearly chained to the piano bench by his seemingly monstrous father.)

But I also know just how many of the young musicians I've known began playing music either because their parents did, or because their parents suggested it. And with few exceptions, no one forced them into some foolish pursuit of stardom, and no one made them practice 8 hours a day instead of having friends and hobbies. We grew up playing because we loved it, and to be a kid who didn't play an instrument seemed unthinkable after only a couple of years at it. Our closest friendships were forged at weekend youth orchestra rehearsals and summer music camps.

Most of us didn't turn pro, ever. Music was a hobby, a path to friendships and partnerships, but not a career goal. And that's good, because music is not only a damned hard way to make a living, but too many professional musicians find their love of the craft diminishing with the daily grind. And that's where the second part of Chris's question comes in and clashes with the first part: yes, you can be too old to have a realistic shot at a career in classical music. And if you're a string player, the cutoff age, when you absolutely need to have gotten a good start, is probably around age 10. (It's a few years later for winds, brass, and percussion, but starting earlier is almost always better.) Most of us who play in major orchestras started way earlier than that - I was 4 when I got my first violin. (My parents would want me to add that it was entirely my idea.) And that's where Dr. Suzuki was dead on: it's just far, far easier to learn the basics of playing an instrument while your brain is still conditioned to be learning everything about the world.

Ask An Expert: Of Tuners, Oboes, Employers, and Missing Musicians

A three-pack of quick hit questions for you this time around. First off, Hoa wants to know...

Q: Who, exactly, does a philharmonic orchestra musician work for?

Well, it depends on which orchestra the musician plays in. In America, most orchestra musicians are employed by the non-profit corporation that runs the orchestra. (For instance, our orchestra's musicians are employed by the Minnesota Orchestral Association.) The corporation is run by a volunteer board, which oversees the organization and hires managers and music directors. There is no single owner of an orchestra the way there often is for, say, a baseball team, since we are not operated as for-profit concerns.

Next up, Steve Curnow was wondering...

Q: What's the reasoning behind the orchestra tuning to the oboe?

Well, they tried tuning to a viola once, but the guy couldn't remember how to play his A-string from memory...

...[crickets]...

Nothing? Really? Fine. Basically, the oboe is a loud, piercing instrument that we can all hear even when everyone is tuning. Also, the tuning A sits nicely in the middle of its register, and oboes are capable of sustaining steady pitches for an extremely long time without much strain.

Finally, our old friend Don Picard is back with this complicated query...

Q: How are concert assignments handled? I.e. which concerts do permanent members of the Orchestra play? I noticed (I think) that Burt Hara wasnt playing at the ITC concert Thursday, but Jorja Fleezanis was, whereas (if I remember correctly) in an earlier ITC concert, Ms. Fleezanis wasn't there but Mr. Hara was. Does the union contract require X number of concerts per year, and the musicians can choose which? Or is it up to the conductor who plays? Or...

There are actually entire pages in our contract devoted to sorting this type of thing out, and you'd all be bored to tears if I reprinted them here. So the simple answer is that every musician gets a certain number of "services" (a service is a rehearsal or a concert) off each season. For most of us, it's not very many, since we also get several paid vacation weeks per year. The number of "relief services," as they're called, varies from musician to musician: strings get more than winds and brass (because we play on nearly every piece of every concert,) titled players get more than section players, veterans get more than rookies, etc, etc.

As for when each of us gets to take time off, we have the right to make specific requests for our relief assignments, and they tend to be granted unless there's a compelling reason that they shouldn't be, such as several other members of the same section already having been granted relief for that time period, or the request falling during a week when the music director wants as few substitute musicians as possible in the ranks. Most of us wind up taking our relief on weeks when the orchestra is playing something other than a regular subscription concert, since Young People's Concerts, pops shows, and such often don't require the full orchestra complement.

Ask An Expert: Danger Pay

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

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

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

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

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

Ask An Expert: Musicians Run Amok!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ask An Expert: Principal Principles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ask An Expert: Revolving Winds & Resting Cellos

We have a double dose of questions this weekend, both concerning what we as an orchestra do with ourselves and our instruments on stage. Firing first is Gail:

Q: I thoroughly enjoyed last nights "Dvorak & Rachmaninoff" program - kudos to all involved! I wondered why there were so many personnel changes in the woodwind section from one piece to another - it seemed like there was a revolving door for the flutes and clarinets. Thanks again for a memorable evening.

Well, first of all, thanks for coming, Gail! It's definitely a fun program to play, and the audiences have been great all week. The reason for the wind and brass changes is twofold: first of all, the instrumentation is not exactly the same for all three pieces on the program. (For instance, there's a saxophone in the Rachmaninoff, and there are differing numbers of winds involved in the two pieces on the first half.)

Secondly, it is traditional in most orchestras for principal wind players to divide up the duties on long programs, simply because there is a physical limit to the strength of the human lip, and if a principal flute, for instance, tried to play every single piece on every single program, s/he would likely do serious physical damage by the end of the season. Sometimes, a principal will play the entire program one week (as our principal oboist, Basil Reeve, is doing this week) and then not play at all the next week. Other times (as you saw with our flutes and clarinets,) the principal will sit out one of the pieces on the program, and be replaced by the assistant principal. The non-principal wind players may shift around as well, but since their parts tend not to be as physically taxing, they are more likely to play everything on the program.

And just for the record, we string players, who of course play more notes in more pieces than anyone else in the orchestra, also have a system of "relief" services, whereby each of us takes a certain small number of concerts off each season to allow us to preserve our muscle strength. Unlike the winds, we don't swap out from piece to piece within a single program, but we do each sit out one or two programs a year. (Usually, these relief services aren't scheduled for our weekly subscription concerts, but on weeks when we're playing multiple sets of Young People's Concerts or pops shows.)

And speaking of strings, I believe Katie had a question about our cello section...

Q: Hello! I've noticed that at your concerts, the cellists put their cellos a certain way on the chair when there is intermission or something. They put the scroll on the chair, and then just kind of rest it there. I haven't seen that too much and so I was just wondering, is it safer to put my cello like that on a chair, or to have it sideways on the floor?

Ah, yes, the cello blockade! Katie is absolutely correct that our cellists rest their instruments at an angle against the seats of their chairs during intermission, rather than take them offstage or lay them on the floor. According to our principal cellist, Tony Ross, the main reason for this is that, since only the cello's endpin touches the floor when they lean the scroll against the chair, it's less likely that the varnish will be scratched by coming in contact with the stage.

Additionally, anyone who's ever played cello in a youth orchestra can tell you that non-cellists are absolutely horrible at noticing cellos resting next to chairs, and are forever walking into them, knocking them over, or at least coming close to doing serious damage. So by resting their cellos against the chairs, our cellists have not only made their instruments a lot more visible to the rest of us than they would be at ankle height on the floor, but they also effectively create a barrier that makes it impossible for the rest of us to even consider walking through the cello section. Safer for everyone, really...

Ask An Expert: Getting Around To Copland

Just in time for us to begin ramping up the marketing efforts for our last Inside the Classics concert of the season, Bill Stroud checks in with this latest Ask An Expert question...

Q: What instruments are used in the orchestral version of Copland’s Appalachian Spring? I think that I hear a piano and a Xylophone, and is a piccolo (as opposed to a flute) used for some of those extremely high notes?

One of Copland's specialties was doing more with less, especially when it came to orchestration. In fact, the original version of Appalachian Spring was written for only 13 musicians (flute, clarinet, bassoon, piano, and strings) and it has a sparse, lonely sound that fans of the more popular full orchestra version might find jarring. Copland's choice of a small ensemble was dictated not by musical considerations, but by the fact that the pit at Washington, D.C.'s Coolidge Auditorium, where the ballet premiered, could only accommodate a small number of players, especially if a piano was to be in the mix.

The fully orchestrated ballet suite, which is eight minutes shorter than the original score, premiered almost a year after the 13-player version, and Bill is pretty much right on in his assessment of what he's hearing in its fuller, more integrated mix. The instrumentation is as follows:

2 flutes, with the second flute doubling on piccolo
2 oboes
2 clarinets (in both A and B-flat)
2 bassoons
2 horns
2 trumpets
2 trombones
harp
piano
timpani
xylophone
snare drum
bass drum
cymbals
tabor (long drum)
wood block
claves
glockenspiel
triangle
full orchestral strings (violin, viola, cello, bass)

Ask An Expert: Conductor Skill Sets

Our latest question comes from Don Picard, who asks...

Q: From your two perspectives, what skills mark the difference between an average orchestra conductor, a good conductor and a truly great conductor?

Don, you may or may not know it, but that is the kind of question that just begs a musician to give back a smartass answer. Honestly, I thought of six punchlines before I even began to consider that you might be serious! However, as part of my continuing effort to behave as if I am older than 14, I have searched high and low to find the definitive answer to your query.

To start with, we should let Sarah have her say, which is likely to be far more erudite and (let's face it) informed than anything I might come up with...

Sarah's Answer: Here are the essential proficiencies that any conductor must master to be able to conduct at any level at all: a strong background in theory and harmony; a highly developed ear (the ability to hear discrete pitches, harmonies and individual voices within larger textures); the ability to read and analyze a score (including score reading at the keyboard); mastery in one or more instruments and an excellent grasp of the mechanics and proclivities of all orchestral instruments; knowledge of the core orchestral repertoire and the stylistic elements contained therein; a gestural vocabulary that is reasonably clear and instructive; and an essential understanding of musical phrasing and the ability to communicate it. The average conductor would have all of the above skills and qualities.

Now here's where it gets a little more nebulous, for me, at least. A good conductor would fulfill (and really excel at some of) the above. In addition, they possess the ability to inspire (a real intangible!), a strong musical viewpoint (and not of the "because I feel it" variety - it comes from an intimate knowledge of the score), and leadership skills (another intangible - a good conductor can, in many different ways, coax and cajole an ensemble to their musical viewpoint - inability to do so means the inability to express that viewpoint at all.)

Even more ambiguous are those qualities that make a conductor great. For me, the essential element is the existence of an overarching individual musical aesthetic that comes from deep understanding of scores and the innate grasp of larger musical structure. The best conductors, in other words, have an incredible understanding of music and of the flow of music within the flow of time - they can take the audience (and orchestra) on a real voyage over the course of a piece of music. Many very good conductors will give you an exciting performance full of peaks and valleys, but for me, this is an episodic approach to making music that ignores the larger viewpoint, the one that makes it feel "right" when you reach the last chord, that takes you somewhere and brings you back.

It's all kind of ambiguous, isn't it? Great conductors have "It", and "It" is hard to describe. The greatest conductors aren't bound by some of the conditions of basic conducting, either - conducting technique itself seems less relevant when there is a truly powerful musical viewpoint behind it, because the force of that viewpoint can overcome any technical shortcomings. And then there is the tricky issue of charisma - some conductors are charismatic because of their musicality (usually in the "good" or "great" category) while others are personally charismatic (and musicianship can be anywhere on the spectrum), so this is not necessarily a good measure.

Okay, it's Sam again. Contrary to my earlier flippancy, it turns out that musicians have some pretty good answers to this question as well. So last week, while the orchestra was recording a couple of Beethoven symphonies, I began accosting people backstage more or less at random, and asked for their thoughts. The result, in podcast form, is here...

Ask An Expert: Talent Scouting

It's been a while since we caught up on our Ask An Expert questions, mainly because I got a batch of them around Christmastime, and promptly forgot about them in my post-holiday daze. Here's a good one from Lakisha Jones:

Q: When there is an event such as someone singing with the orchestra, does the orchestra get to pick who they want to sing with? And if so, how do they choose who they perform with?

Ohhhh, Lakisha, you are about to get a longer answer than you probably wanted. See, glancing through my schedule book, I see that the Minnesota Orchestra will play host to no fewer than 56 soloists (instrumental and vocal) in the 2007-08 season alone! (And that doesn't include Sommerfest - which typically tacks on another dozen or so - or the various guest speakers, choruses and children's choirs that we bring in for several shows each year.) Where do all these people come from?

The short answer is that no, the musicians of the orchestra do not get an official vote on what soloists are engaged to play with us, nor, I think, would we particularly want one. The music world changes so fast, and incredible young musicians turn up in our profession so frequently these days, that those of us making our living within a large ensemble in a single city could never hope to keep track of them all. Certainly, when we play with someone we love, many of us make a point of telling those in charge that we'd like to see them again, and in the rare event that we feel a soloist is perhaps not up to our standard, there are channels through which we can make that clear as well. Our management is pretty good about being responsive to our concerns, but there's no question that booking soloists does not fall to those of us in the band.

That job is actually shared by a number of people, but the guy at the top of the list is our vice president and general manager, Bob Neu. I asked Bob to summarize just exactly how he goes about choosing soloists and planning our seasons, and his response follows:

Bob's Answer: The process is one that is on-going and ever-changing. Our future planning is quite far out and in various stages. For example:

2008-'09 season - Completely finished.

'09-'10 - All conductors hired, most soloists hired, touring planned, most large projects in place

'10-'11 - Schedule is laid out, Osmo's weeks are secured, a couple of major artists tied to major projects are in place.

'11-'12 - Just laying out the schedule.

As Music Director, Osmo has the final voice in the guest artists that are engaged. I try to serve as his sounding board, editor and organizer. To that end, I keep all kinds of lists reminding us of who needs to be brought back, who we're curious about, who's just starting to emerge as an important artist, and who might be an interesting gamble. Part of my job is to stay on top of this by keeping in touch with the industry - daily reading includes The New York Times, Financial Times of London (great arts reporting), and the London Times. Monthly reading includes Opera News and BBC Music Magazine, lots of internet monitoring, and talking with my colleagues around the country and in Europe. I don't actually listen to a lot of recordings but strongly prefer hearing potential soloists in a live performance situation. You learn a lot more that way! I also spend a great deal of time being sure that the artists' managers are connected to the Orchestra and feeling positive about us. Most of the managers are located in New York and London so this entails lots of phone and e-mail time and I make a point of going to both locations at least twice a year to make personal calls on these companies, essentially serving as an ambassador for Osmo and the Orchestra.

In planning a season, we try to have a mixture of established talent, artists who are emerging with major careers, and artists who are perhaps not so well known but whom we think show enormous potential and deserve opportunities. Osmo also believes very strongly in featuring our own musicians as soloists. We also consider a mix of instruments - by virtue of repertoire, this tends to be weighted towards pianists and violinists, but we try to add variety. (An amazing percussion ensemble from Sweden, Kroumata, will be with us later this season.) And like pretty much everyone else, I work within a budget, so that is an additional consideration. Happily, I work with a Music Director who understands that and appreciates the balance of "art vs. commerce."

Last but not least, one has to actually engage the artist by making sure he/she is available for the period we're filling, as well as determining if they're offering compatible concerto choices (sometimes we suggest a concerto, sometimes the artist does), and finding out if the artist wants to come to Minneapolis to perform with the orchestra and conductor. The latter is never a problem given the quality and reputation of the Orchestra and of Osmo. In fact, a good amount of my time is spent (tactfully, I hope) NOT engaging artists who clamor to be here but that we aren't able to engage for one reason or another.

I can't really say how long it takes to plan a season since we're always working on several seasons at once and things move around and change up until sometimes just day before a season is announced. It's very much a jigsaw puzzle, but yet it all has considerable thoughtfulness behind it. It's great fun to tackle, and Osmo's leadership in the process is fantastic. His tastes and preferences are specific and strong, and that makes my job a lot easier.

Ask An Expert: Leadership Qualities

Here's an excellent question from Emily Kroeck, who asks:

Q: What are the titled players roles and responsibilities? Does each titled player have a unique leadership role? Once a musician accepts a titled position, what must they do to maintain it?

So, let's define our terms first. A titled player in an orchestra is any musician who holds a title like principal, associate principal, co-principal, etc. These are the leaders of the orchestra, and though their roles do differ from instrument to instrument, I went to one of our most prominent titled players, Principal Cellist Tony Ross, for a deeper explanation...

Tony's answer: Well, the principal, of course, is the leader of the section, and the associate or assistant principals are there to take over when the principal isn't there. The main role of the principal starts long before the first rehearsal, with putting bowings and other markings in the parts, and making decisions with other principals about how certain things should be played. We also make decisions in rehearsals, and try to know what the conductor will want before he asks for it.

Occasionally, principals also deal with what you might call artistic enforcement, making sure that everyone in the section is on the same page as far as quality of sound and style. If an individual in the section isn't playing something the way I think it should be played, I take it as part of my job to address that. Aside from all that, we're basically the figureheads for the orchestra.

Sam's addendum: As far as maintaining their positions as titled players, this is a bit tricky, and varies widely from orchestra to orchestra. Here in Minneapolis, all members of the orchestra spend our first two years of employment on probation, during which time we get feedback from our colleagues as to how we're doing, and what could use improvement. At the end of that probation, musicians are granted tenure (or not, in which case the musician must leave the orchestra,) which provides a heavy measure of job security.

However, while a titled musician may have tenure, the tenure does not extend to his/her title, which can be revoked at any time by the music director. In other words, while the music director cannot dismiss a principal from the orchestra for artistic reasons without following a long and deliberately difficult process, he can strip the principal of his/her title, thus demoting him to a less prominent position within the section.

Generally, it is expected that titled players will maintain a good relationship with their sections, keep their skills sharp at all times, and be responsive to other principals in the orchestra, as well as to the music director. The stripping of a player's title has occurred only very rarely in Minnesota Orchestra history, and it has never happened under our current music director. It should also be noted that some titled players choose to give up their titles late in their careers and step back into the section, if they are concerned that their skills might be diminishing.

Ask An Expert: Better Know A Bassoon

Our latest Ask An Expert question comes from Wallett Rogers, who wants to know...

Q: ...what bassoons (Heckel, etc.) do your bassoon section players play in concerts?

Okay, now this one requires a bit of explanation before we get to the answer. Unlike string instruments, which are handcrafted by thousands of different expert luthiers around the world, bassoons are produced in something more akin to a factory setting, and nearly all professional bassoonists play on one of only two main "brands" of instrument. According to Chris Marshall, one of our four bassoonists in the Minnesota Orchestra (and the only one ever to have played a starring role in a Prairie Home Companion sketch, I might add,) the granddaddy of professional bassoons is the Heckel, made by a 175-year-old company based in Wiesbaden, Germany. Heckels have a long and distinguished history in the bassoon world, but you'd better know what you're getting into before you start planning a purchase: a new Heckel will run you a cool $50,000 or so.

The main professional-caliber alternative to the Heckel is the Fox bassoon, made by an Indiana company which was started back in 1949 by Hugo Fox, who had just retired from his post as principal bassoon of the Chicago Symphony. Fox wanted to create bassoons that were comparable to Heckels in sound and strength, but somewhat more reasonably priced. (According to Chris, they'll still cost you $30,000 or more for a new model, though, so "reasonable" is obviously a relative term.) For the first couple of decades, Fox wasn't exactly a power in the orchestral world, but gradually, as the quality of their instruments improved, a few high-profile bassoonists were convinced to try out a Fox in a professional setting. One of the first to agree to play on a Fox was Minnesota Orchestra principal John Miller, Jr. John obviously liked what he heard, because he still plays on a Fox to this day, its distinctive black color contrasting with the other bassoons in his section.

As for the rest of the section, co-principal Mark Kelley plays a Heckel, as does the aforementioned Mr. Marshall. Contrabassoonist Norbert Nielubowski plays on a Fox contra, and also owns a Fox bassoon.

Ask An Expert: Conductor Prep

This week's Ask An Expert question comes from Cinda Yager, who asks:

Q: How far in advance of rehearsals/concert does a conductor begin preparing/studying the scores? Is most of the preparation done at the piano or on the road?

This one, clearly, is right up Sarah's alley. So here she is, live from Seoul (and somehow still awake!)

Sarah's Answer: It really depends on the situation (and on the conductor! For the ease of answering, I'll speak for myself and not for all of conductor-kind, although most people I know have similar score-preparation philosophies.)

For repertoire I know well (and that I've performed fairly recently - say, in the couple of years,) I probably only need a couple of hours over a few days before the first rehearsal. For less familiar repertoire, I'll push up the preparation so I start looking at the piece a week to 10 days before, maybe spending 8-10 hours total on it. Pieces that I've studied but not conducted require a different kind of preparation, because I may understand them from an analytical and theoretical standpoint, but I may need technical preparation to get my ideas across clearly to the orchestra. Any piece that I don't know requires a LOT of work - I'd say 10-20 hours for every hour of music, at least, to really understand it. I try to start at least a month out.

Much of my work is at the keyboard, because I find it much easier to score read (i.e., look at a full orchestral score, reduce it in my head, and play it at the piano) than to simply visualize or try to hear things in my head. Of course, there are times when I'm on the road and don't have access to a keyboard, which makes things difficult. I have a very easy time hearing melodies and standard harmonic progressions, but I find complicated chords and extremely chromatic harmonies difficult, so I really prefer a keyboard if at all possible.

Memorizing a score is a whole other topic and requires it's own timeline!

I tend to start preparation very early, because I find it easier to digest information if I take in smaller pieces over a longer period of time. Osmo has told me he often will wait to really delve into a score because if he starts too early, he begins to second-guess decisions he has made. He goes through an enormous amount of repertoire a year, and with his schedule, there really is no time for second guessing!

Ask An Expert: Can you hear me now?

Time for another of our reader-submitted Ask an Expert questions. (Click the link in the menu above to submit one of your own!) This week's question comes from Daisuke Takeuchi, who is not, as far as I know, any relation to the star pitcher for the Boston Red Sox:

Q: I am a new fan of classical music thanks to Osmo Vanska and The Minnesota Orchestra experience. My question is about the sound range of classical music. When I listen to CDs, some parts are too quiet to hear. So, I turn the volume up, but then the loud parts get too loud. I feel like in order to listen to classical music you need a perfectly quiet environment, otherwise you cannot hear the quiet parts. I live in a neighborhood where cars go by, babies are crying, dogs are barking, and I get frustrated when I cannot hear the music. Of course, putting on a headphone would solve the problem, but this bothers me. So, please enlighten me as to why some parts are played so quietly that I cannot hear a thing.

For an answer, I went right to the top, to the master of extreme pianissimo himself, Minnesota Orchestra music director Osmo Vänskä. Osmo has a reputation for demanding extreme dynamics at both ends of the decibel spectrum from his orchestras, and our recent Beethoven recordings do have a startlingly wide dynamic range, due in part to the incredibly senstive digital equipment that the recording team at BIS uses. So Osmo, why so soft, and what's the best way to listen?

Osmo's Answer: First of all, don't try to listen [to classical music] in the car. There's just too much extra noise around. I would say that, even in the concert hall, during the softest passages, you still can hardly hear what we are playing, and you have to allow that that may be what we want you to hear. In [popular] music, everything is recorded so that the sound meter is always in more or less the same position. The sound level never goes too far into the red, and never goes very far the other way either. It is not that way in our music. So I would suggest to Daisuke that he set his volume as loud as his neighbors and his stereo will allow for the loud parts, and then keep it there - don't touch it when we go to the softest passages. It is meant to be so that it is very difficult to hear. That's the whole secret of the music we play - if you [turn up the softest parts,] you are missing the opportunity to go where the music wants to take you.

Ask An Expert: Composer Craziness

From time to time here on the ItC blog, we'll be posting questions that we receive from readers about some aspect of the orchestra world or other, along with answers from either the two of us or from whomever we can find who is best equipped to provide an answer. If you'd like to submit a question, just click the Ask An Expert button on the top menu. Here's our first installment:

Q: In your experience, whats the strangest thing a modern composer has ever asked the musicians or conductor to do in a score?

Sarah's Answer: I've done my share of new music readings for young composers, which can be both enlightening and entertaining, and I've seen some interesting stuff. The one that sticks out in my mind was a lengthy composition for soprano and orchestra by a doctoral student from 5-6 years ago. The music was pretty complicated, but what got me was the vocal line - the soprano was singing in pre-Coptic Egyptian (which was strange enough), but the kicker was that it was written out in hieroglyphs in the score. To the composer's defense, a hieroglyphic translation and pronunciation key was provided, but that wasn't really practical for rehearsing - it ended up being something like, "Could we go back to that raven/sun/eye/jackal-headed god line??"

Sam's Answer: Back in college, I once played a piece by the eminent Argentine composer Mauricio Kagel. It was called "Finale," even though it was a one-movement piece, and the reason it had that title was because, midway through the performance, the score instructed the conductor to have a heart attack and die. Our conductor, who was only 30 and in remarkably athletic shape, had to put on quite a show to sell his death to the audience - I believe he actually pulled the conductor's stand over on top of himself as he fell. Following the collapse, the entire chamber orchestra was instructed to leap from our chairs, surround the conductor, and try to help him. Eventually, it was determined, silently, that he was dead, and the first violinist led us back to our chairs, where we played the Dies Irae (a Latin death hymn), and then carried our still-deceased conductor from the stage. The hardest part, of course, was accomplishing all this without laughing...

I've actually got an even more interesting answer to this question, but sadly, it's not the kind of thing you want to be writing about on a general audience blog. (Let's just say that it would garner us an easy NC-17 rating.) I'd be happy to spill it to anyone who wants to buy me a beer after a concert sometime...