Fire Eduard Hanslick*

OMG, you guys! It's finally happened: someone has invented a Fire Joe Morgan for classical music!!!

Okay, that was probably a very confusing opening paragraph for most of you. Let me explain. A few years back, some baseball fans who make their living as Hollywood screenwriters became so disgusted with the low intelligence level and writing skill of many so-called experts on the game that they launched a blog devoted to tearing down the suppositions of these experts, line by line. The blog's namesake was arguably the greatest second baseman of all time, and is inarguably one of the most consistently nonsensical and pigheaded baseball analysts working today.

Fire Joe Morgan should have been one of the bitterest, boring-est, most unreadable blogs in the universe. Instead, it was utterly hilarious, spawned countless imitators in the sports blogosphere, and turned its creators into the conquering folk heroes of the baseball stat-geek world. Were they mean? Yes. Unfairly nit-picky? Sometimes. But they were also right in almost everything they wrote, and their devoted readership included quite a few of baseball's more forward-thinking analysts.

Sadly, the authors shut the whole enterprise down some time ago, shortly after shedding their anonymity (no surprise that the hilariously cruel Ken Tremendous turned out to be one of the writers behind The Office,) but their fight against nonsense and bad writing stands as some of the most entertaining content on the web.

From the day I discovered FJM, I wished someone would start just such a blog for classical music. So much of what gets written about our industry in respectable publications falls somewhere between speculative and idiotic that it can be downright infuriating. When you read about musicians or actors who claim not to read reviews, it's usually not because they think they're above analysis. It's because a wrongheaded and badly written review makes you want to scream, and it's almost never worth actually screaming about, and there's nothing to be accomplished by the screaming.

There are, of course, plenty of blogs out there offering strong opinions on classical music, and many of them openly disagree with professional critics on a regular basis. But they're not funny. In fact, they're usually the opposite of funny, which is to say strident and preachy, and it was the funny that made FJM such an entertaining and readable site, rather than just another shrieking partisan voice in the online void.

As it turns out, though, not only is there a classical music version of FJM, it's apparently been around for more than two years now! (How it's taken me this long to notice it is beyond me, but I suppose I should be grateful that I didn't find it while Googling myself.) It's called The Detritus Review, it's written (if the FAQ is to be believed) by a couple of grad students majoring in music who've become disgusted with the quality of music writing in the mainstream press, and you guys, it. is. funny.

Please note that I didn't say that it's nice. Or respectful. It is neither of those, and I know some of you get upset when Sarah or I seem disrespectful of some corner of the music universe, so fair warning that The Detritus Review may not be your kind of site. (Also, those of you who object to profanity are going to want to stay far, far away.)

But if the piercing of pretentious balloons and wholesale teardown of conventional wisdom is your kind of thing, you'll love it. Personally, I'll be spending the next several weeks plowing through their considerable archive...

*Eduard Hanslick, as those of you who've been attending Inside the Classics concerts since the beginning will remember, was the German critic who declared Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto to be an unholy mess that "stank to the ear."

If you're having a bad day...

...watch this, and I challenge you not to smile. I particularly love the über-flat Db at the first key change. And the little walk. Trololololo!

"Bring a date"

A telephone conversation with Jascha Heifetz. No, really. "If you don't have a date, bring your boy, bring somebody, I don't care."

The (Meaningless) Sound Of English

Anyone who listens to a lot of opera is probably used to listening to words sung in a language you don't understand. It takes some getting used to, yeah, but after awhile, you just get accustomed to the distinctive flow of, say, Italian or German, and even though you don't comprehend the words, the audible sound of the language becomes familiar.

So have you ever wondered what English-speakers (Americans, in particular,) sound like to foreigners who are constantly bombarded with American pop music, but don't actually understand English? Well, wonder no more: an Italian singer put together this video to demonstrate. It's an original song sung with American English diction, but the lyrics are nonsense.

It sounds surprisingly familiar, doesn't it? You feel like you ought to understand it (especially when the occasional "Baby!" or "All right!" jumps out at you,) but you don't. This is actually more or less what I feel like whenever I'm in Amsterdam. Dutch sounds basically like a blend of American-accented English and German (which I'm conversational in,) so I'm constantly on the verge of understanding what I'm hearing without actually achieving any real comprehension.

Still, I admit I'm surprised that English doesn't sound coarser than that to non-English speakers. It's certainly unique-sounding - no wonder Europeans are so good at picking the Americans out of a crowd...

Want Ad Fail

This turned out to be one of those relatively rare years when the actual Super Bowl was better than the much-anticipated Super Bowl ads. (And Vikings fans - didn't it take away a little bit of the sting when you watched Peyton Manning throw essentially the exact same late-4th-quarter interception that Brett Favre threw in the NFC championship game?) But I couldn't help but notice one particular ad that resulted in a virtual blizzard of Facebook and Twitter updates from pretty much every musician I know...



Now, I'll be the first to admit: that's a cute ad. Who doesn't love a good fiddling beaver/rags to riches story? Just one problem, and this is what got everyone a-twittering the moment the ad aired last night: Monster.com doesn't actually have ads for violinists. Or for any other instrument. Seriously, they don't - go look. (You'd think they would have at least keyed that particular search term to redirect to a video of the beaver ad, wouldn't you?)

Of course, since the ad also winds up with the beaver relaxing with his fiddle and a bikini-clad babe in a hot tub in the bed of a pickup truck (if only the gig that results in that level of celebrity existed...) perhaps accuracy was not the #1 concern. Or maybe, just maybe, as my friend Jo suggested, Monster had a whole bunch of ads for violinists, but the beavers got to 'em all before the rest of us could jump online. Stupid beavers.

As If There's Any Such Thing As A "Common" Violist...

And speaking of viola jokes, here's a little something I've been meaning to get on tape for quite a while now. Our viola section is notorious for always being up to something, and we frequently reduce each other to hysterics (as Sarah can attest) at inappropriate moments mid-rehearsal. But rarely do we feel any need to let the rest of the band in on the joke. (Quite frankly, your average violinist or bassoonist just doesn't have as highly developed a sense of humor as we do.)

But every once in a while, we enjoy sharing our, um, eccentricities with the world, and earlier this afternoon, we got the chance, at a thank-you lunch the musicians of the orchestra put on for our tireless and hardworking staff...



Mm-hm. Tell me that doesn't make you forget completely about the original! I really don't know why all fanfares aren't written for viola choir...

In all seriousness, credit where it's due: this particular arrangement is mine, but the idea came way back in my college days from native Minnesotan Kate Holzemer, now a violist to the stars, occasional ItC commenter, and avid hockey blogger based in Buffalo. Kate's version of the fanfare (which, if memory serves, included full percussion and a conductor) was first performed at Oberlin Conservatory, at a much-loved annual gathering known as Mock Students, in 1997 1996. She also played in the first performance of my version at Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music a couple of summers back. Thanks, Kate!

Viola-Matic!

Things have been getting pretty heavy around here lately (it's the winter doldrums - I swear I'll stop going off on rants once the sun comes out,) so it's definitely time for a mental health break. This oughta be just the ticket - it's a crazy dweebish video that's been making the rounds of the music world this past week, and it stars, as all great dweebish music-related videos should, the viola...



Okay, quick explanation for those of you who haven't played a stringed instrument for a while, or ever. As you are no doubt aware, our instruments are traditionally made out of wood, and we make an absolutely absurd deal about what kind of wood it is, and how it was harvested, and whether it ever spent several decades floating in the Mediterranean Sea, and on and on. (Personally, my viola's made out of a Canadian barn that came crashing down a few decades back, and I've decided that this is way cool.)

But a while back, this fabulous light-weight-but-indestructible substance called carbon fiber was invented, and wouldn't you know, someone came up with the idea to start making stringed instruments out of it. It was a brilliant idea - not that carbon fiber violins sound anywhere near as good as a quality wood version, because they don't. But professional musicians frequently have to play a lot of gigs in what you might call less than ideal climatological conditions. Outdoor weddings, Fourth of July concerts - these are not necessarily the places you want to be toting your 1678 Amati. (Please don't write a snooty comment telling me that Amati wasn't making violins in 1678. I don't care and I couldn't be bothered to check. He's old and Italian, and old Italians were making great violins in 1678.)

So carbon fiber violins, violas, and cellos started to pop up in the hands of various gigging musicians, as a sort of backup to their main instruments. (Did I mention that carbon fiber is cheap?) I've never considered getting one myself, just because, well - did I mention that my viola is made out of a barn? I just assume it considers the outdoors to be its natural habitat. But they do seem to be a positive development in the lives of musicians whose primary instruments cost more than their homes. And if they can slice... er, dice... um, mash the living hell out of a tomato too, well then, bonus, right?

And I though "Engelbert Humperdinck" was funny...

...what about this fellow:



(Via pianist Stephen Hough's blog)

New Year's Weekend: A Retrospective

New Year's Eve at the Dakota with Irvin Mayfield, Artistic Director of Jazz at Orchestra Hall. Great tunes, great band (Vincent Gardner!) and some fantastically funny commentary from Irvin. The show was broadcast live on "Toast of the Nation" on NPR, and Irvin opens with, "Everybody who's out there listening on National Public Radio, we're all butt-nekkid right now at the Dakota, make some noise!!" (No-one was, I assure you - it was -5F outside!!).


New Year's Day at Sam's, a gathering to watch the Winter Classic (oh, Flyers, why do you disappoint me so?). Not pictured; the ridiculously delicious (and gut-stretching) poutine that Sam made. Pictured; Eagles Jenga (I'm not kidding. A shout out to the Philadelphia in-laws for a most creative stocking-stuffer).

And speaking of football...

January 3rd at the Metrodome, watching my first live Vikings game. Had a fantastic time, and particularly enjoyed singing the Vikings fight song half a dozen times. I'm thinking of reharmonizing and resetting the tune, maybe in the style of Schütz. Or perhaps Krenek. (I know, my inner music nerd emerges at the weirdest times...).

Also, check out my Twin Cities entertainment picks for 2010.

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...

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...

Fighting For The Right To Complain

This past week, an honest-to-God US Congressman introduced a measure on the floor of the House which would designate the day before Thanksgiving "Complaint Free Wednesday." His heart was probably in the right place, but honestly. The economy's in the tank, Wall Street seems to have gotten away scot free with most of its own wealth while making all of ours disappear, political civility is at an all-time low, the unemployment rate is through the roof and still climbing, and one of the guys tasked (in part) with preventing this kind of thing from happening wants us to stop complaining?

Besides, there are better ways to deal with the human propensity for constant griping. Consider the Helsinki Complaints Choir, the brainchild of Finnish artists Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen...



My personal favorite part of this is the complaint about cell phone ringtones, sung to the tune of that ubiquitous Nokia ringtone. See there, Congressman? There's good to be found everywhere - even in perpetual whining.

Monday time-waster

You've gotta try this out; it's a web widget that allows you to type in a sentence which is then played back using those same words culled from a library of popular songs. Perfect 2-minute break on a manic Monday.

Orchestra hero?

Yes, please! (and do take a listen to the soundclip towards the end of the article...)

Come towards the light

We've successfully navigated through our first Inside the Classics concerts, which is a huge relief. We had the added pressure of creating a show that was radio-friendly (which meant, among other things, no sight gags and minimizing dead air, which changes the tempo of what we do), so it was a stressful week.

I've been saying for a while now that one of the more unusual features of my new position as Principal Conductor, Pops and Presentations (did I officially mention that on the blog? Can't remember...) is that I conduct a huge spectrum of repertoire (much more than in your average pops conducting position) - "everything from Beethoven to Ben Folds" has been my line. Well, last week was where the idea of that sound bite came from, and it certainly was a dramatic switch between Friday night's ItC MPR live broadcast to Saturday's concert featuringBen Folds.

The fact that the show happened to land on Halloween added to what was already a huge event - the Hall was beyond sold out, and tickets for standing room disappeared in an instant. There was definitely a different feel in the house - I don't think I've ever heard an audience make so much noise as a guest artist walked onstage - and much of the crowd was in the Halloween spirit, decked out in elaborate costumes.

Orchestra concerts generally tend to be fairly serious affairs, so it was interesting to see how our players would react to a concert that was outside the norm - and I think it's a credit to our musicians that they decided to join in on the fun. We had a variety of bewigged and costumed players onstage; we also handed out Folds-esque glasses for a subtle costuming touch (we had about 20 players with them on, and I donned them for the first half). A video sampling of backstage shenanigans (including an explanation from Ben about how to figure out if pants will fit you):





I met Ben over a year ago at when we did a show at the Mann Center in Philadelphia, and we've been working together on and off ever since. I love collaborating with him; aside from being a great songwriter and performer, he's really a consummate musician (and his classical training background comes in handy when working with an orchestra!). I mean, who else discusses the Lydian mode as part of their mid-concert schtick?

For the second half of the show we did a hasty outfit change, pulled on wigs and re-emerged as Sonny and Cher (I was apparently so unrecognizable that several members of the Orchestra were wondering "Who's that woman?" when I walked onstage):



(We're singing "I got you babe". Good times.)

I'm all for formality and seriousness where it's warranted (and part of me really loves the sense of decorum and ritual that is a large part of the usual classical concert process). But I do love a regular foray into the lighter side of things. Because life (and music, for that matter) is that much better with a sense of humor.

Sad songs say so much...

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

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

Bottle Music

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

Conductor hero

A conducting game very much in the vein of "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band"...except the cues have even less to do with the music in the conducting version than they do for the other two, making it an oddly amusical experience. Interesting idea, although I'm not sure what it does except to equate conducting to pushing a bunch of buttons. Oh, if only it were so easy...

Let's See Sarah Do This

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying Sarah Hicks isn't a dynamite conductor. I'm just saying that I doubt she's ever wrangled an orchestra, a choir, Madonna, the Beatles, and a herd of sheep in a single rehearsal...



But I suppose I could be wrong about that.

Boredom & Rage In 9/32 Time

Humor and classical music just aren't found together nearly as often as they ought to be, and Philadelphia Orchestra trumpeter Jeff Curnow has been working on doing something about that. He's been producing downright hilarious YouTube videos on various aspects of the music business for some time now (under the guise of selling trumpet mouthpieces,) and now he's about to launch a new series of online videos for Drew McManus's Inside the Arts site under the header, "What's Bothering Jeff?"

Orchestras can be downright infested with gallows humor, both good-natured and not, so I'm always impressed to discover a musician who, while maybe a bit on the cynical side, has obviously found a way to channel the frustrations of the job into something productive and hilarious. Here's my favorite of Jeff's videos to date, detailing the frustrations of having to play certain, shall we say, overly academic (read: pompous & unplayable) works.



The title of the piece alone is enough to make me start giggling, but my favorite parts are the brief shots of the written score. I wish I could say that I've never actually played a piece that featured time signatures like 15/1 and 9/32, but of course, I have. The marking underneath the first part of Excerpt 1 ("slowly at first then with angst") actually reminded me of a very specific American composer who shall remain nameless. And while I can't say that a composer has ever asked me to play a high C while screaming with my mouth closed and hitting my instrument with a hammer, I did once play a piece during which I was supposed to sing in harmony with what I was playing, and another during which the composer wanted me to beat on the back of viola with the metal end of my bow.

At times like that, as the late lamented Molly Ivins once said, you've either gotta laugh or cry, and crying's bad for you.

Vesti la Kellogg's

It's going to be a busy couple of weeks for me, between starting a new job, selling a house and organizing a cross-country move, so please forgive the spotty posting. While I might not have too much time for deep thoughts (I'll leave that to Sam), I do have time for occasional amusements, such as this classic Rice Krispies commercial:

I'm seeing colors

Back after a much-needed summer hiatus! Now, to ease myself back into regular blogging...

An ex-musician friend happened upon this video of Beethoven's 5th Symphony - a "visual representation" of music:



For a "color code" of what each line represents, click here.

This makes me think a bit of (don't laugh, now...) the vocals "notation" used for "Rockband" (yes, the video game for XBox/Playstation/Wii), which I find genius in its simplicity and accessibility. It's a reminder that there are a myriad ways to notate pitch and time (we in the orchestra business tend to get stuck on the dots and dashes on five lines that we look at every day).

Other cultures have very different systems:



Japanese Shakuhachi music.



Russian Znamenny chant.

And finally, an interesting link outlining alternative notation within the Western classical notation.

(Non-opposable) thumbs up

I know I've been posting a lot of videos lately, but this one is too good to pass up (this via Minnesota Orchestra Vice President and GM Bob Neu):



It's really kind of a fantastic idea, and musically it holds together with thematic threads (the closing few shots are actually repeats of the opening ones, so it gives it a nice sense of coming full circle). I particularly like the sudden harmonic shifts (appropriately coordinated with the...uh...soloist). I wonder, was the solo part notated? Or was this done purely with visual cues? In any case, a charming piece (kudos to composer/conductor Mindaugas Piecaitis) and a wonderfully innovative idea. With video screens, no less...

Bless The Rains

It's been forever since we had any significant rain here in Minneapolis, which makes for a nice mosquito-free summer, but also for crispy brown lawns and impossible farming/gardening conditions. Nothing we can do about it, of course, but a little rain dance couldn't hurt, right?



That's an Eastern European choral group called Perpetuum Jazzile turning in a pretty stunning rendition of my very favorite one-hit-wonder song from my childhood in the '80s, Toto's "Africa." Gotta love the creative thunder and lightning effect at the beginning...

(Hat tip to former MN Orch personnel manager Brian Woods for bringing this clip to my attention.)

Couldn't resist

I've been avoiding commentary on Michael Jackson's death (because, given the coverage on all the major media outlets, what could there possibly be to add??), but I had to share this with you:







(Organist Robert Ridgell plays a Jacksonian postlude last Sunday at Trinity Wall Street)


The (modal!) fugal treatment of "ABC" is particularly stunning. And make sure to watch through the collegial Book of Common Prayer-thumping at the end!

Quarter for your thoughts

We've begun our epic Symphony for the Cities week that takes us from Hudson, WI to Plymouth, Winona and Excelsior, MN. They're all outdoor venues, which present their own very peculiar challenges (I don't usually have to fight gnat swarms on stage at Orchestra Hall), but also their very particular pleasures (including the throng of kids dancing on the grass right in front of the orchestra).

On Monday night in Hudson, I turned to the audience before starting "Radetzky March" to explain to them how I'd cue their "clapping entrance", how I would indicate a soft dynamic, a loud dynamic and, most importantly, how I'd cut them off. "Now, I want you all to stop clapping right on my cutoff. If I hear any clapping after the cutoff, you own me 25 cents." I've asked for dollars in the past (and something I've done with student orchestras playing, say, rhythmically complex pieces like "The Rite of Spring" - "don't fall in the hole!"), but I figured it's tough times for everyone, so a quarter would do. It garnered some chuckles from the audience.

The Orchestra and I then started "Radetzky"; I cued the audience to come in, they clapped as softly as I indicated, then went to forte on my cue. At my cutoff, a thousand people stopped clapping - well, OK, except a few stragglers, who I pointed out in the crowd, grinning. We went through the series of clap soft/clap loud/stop as we performed the piece, and at the last chords the rhythmic clapping quickly disintegrated into applause.

I thought nothing more of our little clapping exercise as we finished up the program (I have to confess I get tired of doing "1812"...). After our Sousa encore, as musicians began to pack up, I was chugging bottled water behind the bandshell when a woman approached me.

"I just wanted to give you this," she said, handing me a quarter.

"Actually, this is for my husband. He kept clapping after you stopped us, all three times. I guess he doesn't follow direction too well. Anyway, he was too embarrassed to give it to you himself, so I'm doing it for him!"

I had a good laugh. If this keeps up, maybe I can buy a soda at the end of the week...

Heaven 'n' Hell

A stunning video installation in the elevator of the Standard Hotel in NYC by artist/director Marco Brambilla, depicting an eye-popping journey from hell to heaven:



It's positively Boschian (with Brueghelic undertones!), and I love that Stravinsky was chosen as the soundtrack - it's looped and manipulated, of course, but very well done, seamless.

A more hi-def version can be found here for your viewing pleasure, and worth watching to catch the profusion of images - it's ridiculously replete with pop-culture references - see if you can spot Michael Jackson...

The Best Medicine

When you spend your professional life immersed in some of the most complex music ever written day in and day out, the way orchestra players do, it can sometimes be hard to remember the simple power that music has to make us smile, or laugh, or just feel good about the world.

And then, someone sends you a link to a video of a piano-playing couple, married 62 years, giving an impromptu recital in the atrium of the Mayo Clinic.

Go ahead. Try to watch it without smiling. I dare you.



Thanks, Fran and Marlo. I really needed that today...

Transylvanian fun

...in the form of a musical glass duo playing "Il vecchio castello" ("The Old Castle") in, well, an old castle, the Hunyad Castle (Castelul Corvinilor) in Hunedoara, Romania, site of the imprisonment of Vlad III of Wallachia (more commonly remembered as Dracula). The piece works well for both the instrument and setting - eerie, atmospheric. Fun stuff. Make sure to listen through to the end - they do the "Ballet of the Chicks in their Shells" too.

tlhIngan maH!

That's "We are Klingons!"...in Klingon, of course.

I caught the new "Star Trek" movie last night, and while I enjoyed it immensely (although it was actually Klingon-free), I found Michael Giacchino's soundtrack oddly hollow. The reorchestration of the original TV series theme which accompanied the end credits was particularly under-driven. Maybe it was a conscious effort to avoid the kitsch-factor of the original, but taking away some of the rhythmic impetus (as well as the signature vocal line) made it fall a bit flat. Call me old-school if you like; I'll take it as a compliment.

"Star Trek" in its many incarnation has inspired fervent fandom all over the world, which has occasionally spilled over into the musical realm. The most recent - workshopping a Klingon-language opera. Klingons, in the Star Trek universe, are a wrinkle-headed warrior race. What's fascinating is that an actual language has been created for this fictional race, and that people pursue serious linguistic study of said fictional race with its concocted language.

The proposed Klingon opera, "u", involves not just Klingon language but also enthomusicological research. I'll be interested to what kind of creative notation system, harmonic language and structural methodology will be "discovered", boldly going where no man has gone before.

Postscript - although not a superfan, I'm certainly a little bit of a nerd...

The Great Chin-Rest Incident of Aught-Nine

Well, as Sarah alluded to yesterday, we had some added excitement at our Carnegie Hall concert Monday night, when our distinguished soloist had his chin rest come loose midway through the Sibelius concerto, and had to pull a fast swap with concertmaster Jorja Fleezanis. This is a big deal for any soloist, but fortunately for Leonidas, Jorja doesn't play just any violin. Her instrument was made in 1700 by the Italian master Matteo Gofriller, and one friend of mine in the audience said that he actually liked the dark, penetrating sound of Jorja's instrument even more than Kavakos's Stradivarius.

The New York Times reviewer noted that Jorja "tried to fix the violin during the concerto but could not." What he didn't mention is that the way she tried to fix it was by removing an earring and going all MacGyver on the chin rest mechanism. (Chin rests are attached to the instrument via a simple padded clamp, which is usually adjusted with a tool that looks like a piece of stiff paperclip.) When she couldn't get the thing tightened properly with the earring, she removed it entirely instead, and proceeded to play the rest of the concerto, sans chinrest, on Kavakos's instrument.

This actually further complicated matters when the concerto was over, because it was more or less guaranteed that the audience would want an encore from Kavakos. But his signature encore - an arrangement of Tarrega's Recuerdos de la Alhambra - uses a ricochet bowstroke so insanely difficult that it had our entire string section baffled when we first heard it last week. Could he pull it off on an unfamiliar violin? Would he even try?



Well, of course he could. And did. And the place went nuts. All in all, little disasters like this tend to turn quickly into good stories to tell other musicians over a beer later on. In fact, an hour or so after the concert, I found myself swapping similar stories with a couple of friends in a bar across the street from Carnegie. One friend remembered a soloist breaking a string mid-concerto, and turning to the concertmaster, only to find that his string had also just broken. Another friend recalled a snotty young concertmaster at Juilliard who once refused to give up his instrument to a soloist in need, a breach of orchestral protocol if ever there was one.

And then, there's the swap story to end all swap stories - it involves violin superstar Midori, and the incident in question pretty much made her famous...

Slowly, with intense inner torment

Mahler scores are notorious detailed with nit-picky instruction to both player and conductor - woe betide the conductor who hasn't figured them out before the first rehearsal, when a suspicious wind player might test their preparedness by asking a pointed question about an obscure marking!

A list of translations can prove very helpful. Or, in this case (a "memo" to the New Philharmonia Orchestra of Newton, MA), very funny (via Alex Ross).

To whet your appetite:

GERMAN - ENGLISH

Langsam - Slowly

Schleppend - Slowly

Dampfer auf - Slowly

Mit Dampfer - Slowly

Allmahlich in das Hauptzeitmass ubergehen - Do not look at the conductor

Im Anfang sehr gemaechlich - In intense inner torment

Alle Betonungen sehr zart - With more intense inner torment

Getheilt (geth.) - Out of tune

Immer noch zurueckhaltend - With steadily decreasing competence


Sorry for the spotty posting - I've been on a busy guest-conducting week, and the Orchestra, of course, has been at Carnegie (read the glowing review here). I'm disappointed to have missed some excitement - namely, soloist Leonidas Kavakos and concertmaster Jorja Fleezanis in a violin switcheroo mid-Sibelius. Sam, I'm sure, will have some first-hand insights when the Orchestra returns!

Mashing Up Ludwig

One of the great things about living in the digital age is the easy availability of incredible pockets of creativity that simply wouldn't have found any distribution channel before the era of the internet and user-generated content. YouTube, in particular, has become a way for talented people to share the kind of wildly creative but commercially non-viable projects that would otherwise likely never have existed.

I suspect that no musical genre has benefited from this phenomenon more than hip-hop. (And no genre has benefited less than classical, for a number of frustrating reasons that I'll leave for another day.) As a style that has always specialized in piggybacking on other genres through sampling and other techniques, hip-hop is uniquely positioned to take advantage of technologies like "autotuning," which allows the user to manipulate the pitch of voices and sounds. In other words, what would seem gimmicky and trite in, say, jazz, just comes off as fun and creative in hip-hop.

But gimmickry can be fun, too, and I've spotted a number of truly impressive efforts lately that make silly but impressive use of autotuning. For instance, you know that awful infomercial that seems to be on every half-hour or so lately? Wouldn't it be a lot more tolerable if that smirky little Vince character had a beat you could dance to?



Even better, wouldn't hot-button issues like gay marriage and climate change be a whole lot easier for everyone to deal with if the talking heads on TV sounded like this...?



I bring all this up because we're playing Beethoven's 7th this week, and along with being one of my favorite pieces in the world to play, it's a symphony that a good friend of mine once did something similarly creative with. If you've ever watched South Park, you know that there's a wheelchair-bound character named Timmy who can only say his own name. He says it a lot, and with great enthusiasm every time. In fact, his energy level is so high that my friend thought it could just about match the energy he'd heard that week at Orchestra Hall, where we'd been playing Beethoven's 7th. And it wasn't long before I was handed a homemade CD featuring this brilliant mash-up. (Listener advisory: it starts off pretty subtly - definitely listen all the way through to get the full impact...)



The credit for that little bit of genius goes to Mr. Benjamin Johnson of St. Paul, Minnesota. Benjamin's a former dancer with James Sewell Ballet, and these days makes his living as a massage therapist in Northeast Minneapolis. He also went to a heck of a lot of trouble to dig up this file when it became clear that everyone else he or I had ever given it to had lost it. Somebody buy that boy an auto-tuner...

Opera plots 4 u

A fantastic use of technology over at The Omniscient Mussel; a contest to create the ultimate opera plot synopsis in 140 characters or less, submitted via Twitter (or blog comment, if you must). The celebrity judge? Superstar soprano Danielle de Niese. The prizes? You gotta see it to believe it. It's made the press everywhere. (Winners from the first contest here.)

Such buzz! I wonder if this is duplicable in the symphonic field?

Cirque du...?

Whatever happened to this contortionist version of the Andrews Sisters? And what does "Solid Potato Salad" mean? Questions aside, it's three minutes and fifty seconds well spent - I particularly like their big close. Hang in there until the one-minute mark, where the real magic starts...

Strangely Mesmerizing

If you've ever been sent into a trance by the music of minimalists like Philip Glass and Steve Reich, and wondered just how they create that mesmerizing effect with nothing looping snippets of music, this site is for you. Part video game, part geometry test, and part compositional aid, you create your own mathematically generated piece just by drawing lines in the way of bouncing balls. Even just drawing a single horizontal line directly under the ball's entry point results quickly in an ever-more-complex world of sound. Box in the whole screen, and see how long you can keep the result from becoming cacophonous.

I'm normally not terribly susceptible to supposedly addictive games. But I've already spent several hours playing with this one. And I'm not even that big a Glass fan...

Run, Ludwig, run!

Fun and frolics at the Fairbanks Symphony - their annual "Beat Beethoven" 5K run. Why not an upgrade for next year? If taken at a profoundly deliberate pace, perhaps Mahler's 3rd Symphony would be the perfect marathon benchmark.

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

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

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

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

a theremin in action...

Because one needs a pick-me-up sometimes

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

Viola Destruction!

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



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

I'm seeing stars

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


And here, the stage view.


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

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


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

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...

Showing Off

As we await the arrival of legendary violinist Joshua Bell, our soloist for this week's concerts as well as our upcoming European tour, I thought I'd share one of my favorite virtuoso violin videos from a master of a bygone era. Willie Hall is the gentleman's name, and as nearly as I can tell, he's actually playing everything you hear in this clip, some of which is pretty incredible despite the low fidelity of the recording.



Your move, Mr. Bell...

More Japanese madness

Ever since I posted my "Vegetabulous" videos I occasionally receive YouTube links to further musical silliness, most often of the Japanese variety (and, oh, my friends, there is no shortage of it...).

My latest submission:



The crux of the drama being what kind of rice to choose with the "breakfast set" (white or "mixed" - with meat/veggies/flavoring mixed in). The side dishes sound "gorgeous"! But wait, there's a third option, rice with mushroom ("mattake gohan"), which sounds delicious, but there are only two servings. No problem, Mom and Daughter will share, so they can have both white and mushroom rice. But this makes Dad a little envious, what shall we do? Fate seals the decision; breakfast time is over, declare the servers, lunch will begin soon!

Who comes up with this stuff??

Cutting Room Floor: Alternate Fingering

Posts tagged as Cutting Room Floor are where we put all the material relevant to our Inside the Classics concerts that we know we won't have time to get to in the actual shows. Some of it is serious, some of it is silly, and some of it is just extra information about the featured composer or piece of music that we didn't know what else to do with. Click the tag to see all this extra source material in one place...

On the heels of our Mendelssohn concerts this week, we've got one last bit of Octet-based fun for your enjoyment. As those of you who were at the show will remember, the finale of the Octet for Strings begins with a ridiculously fast growling melody line in the second cello part, played in our performances by MN Orch principal cello Tony Ross. (Why was Tony playing second cello, you ask? Because he wanted to, and we don't argue with Big Tony.)

Anyway, Tony has played this piece a lot, and one of the frustrations cellists have with it is that, no matter how accurate and nimble your fingers are with that opening lick, it winds up just sounding like a bunch of ultra-low rumbling until the violas come in with the same line an octave higher. So Tony, ever the enterprising soul, has come up with a unique way of playing that opening growl that saves a great deal of wear and tear on the fingers...

(Apologies for the poor video quality. I don't have a real video camera...)

He actually threatened to play it that way at the show this week. And if he had, I'm betting only a few people would have been able to hear the difference. Looks totally ridiculous, though...

Playing For The Microphones

The orchestra heads back to work Monday morning, after two weeks away from the hall, but those of you waiting for a concert will have a while to wait yet. We'll spend this week recording new CDs, which for the first time under Osmo will feature a composer other than Beethoven. Okay, actually, we are recording some Beethoven - his fourth piano concerto with the up-and-coming Russian pianist Yevgeny Sudbin, but the bulk of the week will be spent on Bruckner's massive 4th symphony.

(Someone asked me the other day why we would pair these two very different pieces on a single CD, and the answer is that I'm pretty sure we won't be. Taken together, the Bruckner and Beethoven represent around 90 minutes of music, so I'm pretty sure they wouldn't fit on a single release. Whether the concerto will be released as a stand-alone CD or will sit on BIS's shelf until we've recorded another of the Beethoven concertos with Sudbin next season, I don't know, but I'll try to find out for those of you who care about such things.)

This will also be the first time since November that we'll be playing what musicians consider standard concert hall repertoire. As a commenter recently pointed out, our Decembers are given over entirely to holiday programming, and while some of it is certainly quality music, none of it is actually challenging to play. Throw in the additional fact that the last concert we played under Osmo was way the hell back on November 15 (a runout performance in Watertown,) and jumping feet first into a recording session with no rehearsal starts to seem like the musical equivalent of joining the Polar Bear Club. (Which, I'm reliably informed, one of our horn players actually did this weekend.)

The good news is that Osmo doesn't tend to throw us a lot of curveballs that we aren't ready for (we know him pretty well by now,) and we've worked with BIS producer Rob Suff for more than five years now, so the pace of the recording sessions will be familiar, if exhausting. Because we have to stop frequently to listen back to various takes, recordings take much longer than our regular rehearsals and concerts - we'll be at the hall from 10am to 6:30pm Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, and from 10am-1pm on Friday. (The off day on Wednesday is by design, so we don't end up sounding lethargic on the later takes.)

I'll chime in with some posts about the recording process as we go through it, and I'll try to score some photos and audio from the control room as well, if I can do it without annoying anyone too much. And for those of you waiting for us to get back into the tuxes, and who may have worn out your Minnesota Orchestra recording of Beethoven's 5th, here's a slightly different interpretation that I've been enjoying recently...

Yes, that would be Mr. Bean...