Musical Chairs

This week, we're playing a richly varied program of music by Sibelius, Grieg, and Mozart - meat and potatoes repertoire - and I'm sitting at the back of the section with Sifei Cheng, who was my very first stand partner when I joined the Minnesota Orchestra. And for some reason, that's got me thinking about the benefits and drawbacks of the way we section string players drift around the stage from week to week.

Back when I first arrived in Minneapolis, in February 2000 (yup, my 10th anniversary with the orchestra comes up next Monday!), every member of the string section had a designated chair where we sat every day, every rehearsal, every concert, unless someone ahead of us was absent for some reason. Technically, all "non-titled" section players were equals, but there was no chance to move closer to the front of the section until someone ahead of you left the orchestra. In some sections, a vacancy would be filled by moving all the existing players up to fill in the gap, then placing the newest member at the back, but in other sections, any existing player wishing to move up would have to actually re-audition. Some members of our violin section actually auditioned 5 or more times over the course of their careers, just to get a better, but still non-titled, chair!

My chair was on the inside of the fourth desk of violas, with Sifei just to my left. It's not a bad chair, actually, despite being nearer the back of the stage than the front. You can usually see both the conductor and the principal viola pretty clearly; you're surrounded by other violists; and on a good day, you can even see the concertmaster, which is a bonus for any string player.

Also, as stand partners go, it probably doesn't get any better than Sifei. (His name is pronounced SEE-fee, by the way - I've heard some amazing butchery of that name over the years.) He's one of the calmest and friendliest people I've ever met, he plays absolutely effortlessly, and almost nothing fazes him. When you're a 23-year-old kid less than two years removed from college and jumping into the first really big job of your professional life, that's exactly the kind of player you want next to you. (It also didn't hurt that we're both obsessive sports fans. You've gotta have something to talk about when the guest conductor's horrible and the music is easy.)

I'd been in the orchestra for a little over three years when everything changed, and we voted to scrap our fixed-chair tradition for a mildly complicated system of revolving seating for section players. It was strictly voluntary for existing members of the orchestra (so as to protect those players who really had spent years painstakingly working their way up through the ranks,) but mandatory for anyone joining up after the system was enacted. The rationale for revolving is simple: sitting up front is better in almost every way. You can hear more accurately, see more clearly, and generally feel far more important to the ensemble blend than you do sitting thirty feet back on last desk.

Then, there's the undeniable fact that not everyone in a fixed seating system gets along as well as Sifei and I did. In my first professional orchestra, the old-timers loved to tell the story of the two bass players who sat together for decades without speaking, each with a single earplug stuffed into the ear that was turned towards the other. So the chance to switch seats every couple of weeks can be a lifesaver.

On the other hand, weeks like this one remind me of just how comfortable I used to feel with Sifei always on my left. It wasn't just that he was (and is) a monster player; it's that the permanence of a single stand partner allows you to build chemistry over time, the same way that members of a string quartet do. When you know instinctively how the person you're sitting with reacts to any musical situation, there's a comfort level, or at least a heightened awareness, that comes over your playing. Basically, it feels more like a partnership, at least when things are going well.

So while I don't quite miss the days when my career as a violist began and ended at "fourth stand inside," I feel lucky that I got a chance to try out both systems. It's still better at the front, but it's nice having a slightly deeper musical partnership that you get to revisit every now and then. Best of both worlds, if you ask me...

Double Standard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sick Daze

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

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

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

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

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

Not too cool to care

One of the few pleasures of travel these days is that the endless flight delays at least afford me the luxury of catching up on my reading. At the top of the stack this afternoon is the most current edition of Harvard Magazine (insert Ivy League joke here), which includes an article on John Adams' recent autobiography, Hallelujah Junction (which will soon be at the top of my reading stack!).

Although certainly one of the most respected and recognized composers of his generation, Adams has often taken a critical bashing. A minimalist aesthetic isn’t for everyone, I know (though it would be unfair to say that Adams is simply a minimalist - it’s merely a jumping-off point for him); but it’s hard to deny that, beneath the surface gloss, there is a distinct and direct musical voice at work.

Adams frequently cites his early musical influences - Rodgers and Hammerstein, Joni Mitchell, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Otis Redding, Janis Joplin – influences not just from a stylistic standpoint but from a pedagogic one as well: “I made more progress in my command of harmonic practice by reproducing these pop songs [by the Doors, the Beach Boys, and others] from memory at the piano than I ever did by my forced marches through the figured bass treatises.”

But, as Adams himself says, “I am not a vernacular composer”; rather, he’s a classical composer with multiple points of reference. To him this is an important distinction, as he finds that much contemporary classical music is “complex and self-referential. For me, though, inspiration comes from trying to connect with an audience. Music is fundamentally the art of feeling.”

Which, for those espousing a more European/avante garde aesthetic, might be a radical statement. Emotion in music should be an obvious given, but it’s a complex premise for both composers and performers. From a composer’s perspective, the question might be, should one simply try to express a personal feeling? Or is the duty of a creative artist to tap into a more universal zeitgeist? How does the expression of a personal emotion translate when put into a performers hands? From the performers viewpoint, does one’s expression of the music need be tied to the (assumed) original emotional intent of the composer? Or does one inject one's own personal sentiment? And how does that all translate to the listener – the emotional intent of a composer filtered through the prism of meticulously organized (and notated) sound and interpreted by yet a separate entity?

In times of emotional crisis, the old adage has it that it’s not as important to know exactly what to do as it is to simply care, and that maxim holds up well in this exchange as well – or, as Harvard Magazine puts it:

One spring night in 1976, Adams was driving his Karmann Ghia convertible through the Sierra foothills and listening to “Dawn” and “Siegfried’s Rhine Journey” from Götterdämmerung. “I said out loud, almost without thinking, ‘He cares.’” It was a matter of the sensual and emotional power of harmonic movement; for Adams, it was also a matter of sincerity.

“Caring”, on the surface of it, seems so wide-ranging and ambiguous, particularly from a performer’s perspective. Music-making is certainly a visceral experience, and there are those who throw themselves into it with extreme physicality – a way of showing that one “cares”. Yet for some musicians, this very visible expression of caring smacks of insincere showmanship. Grandstanding is a disservice to the actual music; by the same token, many concertgoers find it engaging from a purely visual standpoint, which then perhaps makes them “care” more about the performance. But is this really the kind of “caring” we want to encourage?

Some artists, however, while equally physically demonstrative, are not so to the detriment of the music; it’s hard to qualify what makes the difference, but for me it goes back to that matter of sincerity. I’ve long admired Yo-Yo Ma for his utter involvement when he plays – there’s something both selfless and intensely personal at the same time. And for me, he’s one of those rare artists who is clearly engaged not just with the music but with everyone else on stage, and with the audience as well. It’s a kind of total immersion in the experience of music that results from sincerely caring.

A sense of caring applies not just to individual artists, but to ensembles as well. I had a recent guest conducting experience where an oboist was playing, during a concert, with legs crossed (a big no-no – it’s kind of an “I couldn’t care less” stance). Needless to say, the playing wasn’t so engaging.

The quality that I love most about my home band, the Minnesota Orchestra, is that it collectively throws itself into every performance, be it the first concert in a subscription run or the last concert in an 6-Young-Peoples-Concerts week. The level of commitment and engagement is always inspiring; it’s absolutely tangible to the listener, and it’s a constant reminder to me that when we care about what we do onstage, the audience mirrors the sentiment right back to us. And that wonderful, wordless communication is why we all chose a life in music.

The Uncertainty Principal

It goes without saying that times are hard in the orchestra business, although there are modest signs that we may have gotten through the worst of it in a larger sense. (Then again, I'm just an eternal optimist...).

What makes it more difficult is the built-in lag time for any large non-profit organizations; the current season is largely based on funding that was either pledged or collected last season, before the bottom dropped out of the markets last fall. The market collapse, which has a detrimental affect both on corporate and individual donations (as well as endowments), will be felt much more acutely next season ('09-'10), when, perhaps (again, eternal optimist speaking), the economy might be staggering back onto its feet.

It all creates a tremendous amount of uncertainty - which then got me thinking about volatility and change versus normalcy and routine on a more personal level in the orchestral field.

An orchestral musician's life is predicated on a high amount of certainty; rehearsal and concert schedules are largely set by the beginning of the season (and if there are additions or alterations, there are rigid requirements about lead-time before the proposed changes), most repertoire for an upcoming season is set by spring of the previous season, musicians work with the same colleagues every day with little variation, and, except for a guest conductor the ensemble has never engaged before, one has a pretty good idea what to expect on the podium all year. The tenure process assures musicians lifetime employment barring extraordinary circumstances (career-ending injury, bankruptcy of the orchestra or diminishment of playing ability that is severe enough to necessitate a review process - an infrequent and often controversial occurrence). In an era of rampant job insecurity, orchestral musicians in a well-run organization have a enviable level of professional certainty.

I'm pretty well acquainted with this perspective on musical life, as a vast number of my friends (as well as my husband) are full-time orchestral musicians. I'm also acutely aware of how a conductor's life is on the opposite end of the certainty spectrum.

First and foremost, conductor don't have any sort of tenure system (unless you're working in academia, which is a world unto itself). This means there's a built-in endpoint for every conductor/orchestra relationship. From an artistic standpoint, this makes a good amount of sense; most conductors have a preferred repertoire (or at least certain composers they are most comfortable with), favorite guest artists, a particular approach to music-making, etc. Which can all provide new perspectives, deepen understanding of certain repertoire, encourage artistic growth in particular areas, etc. There is a perceived point, however, at which music directors no longer stimulate this sort of growth and discovery, because they have imparted all of their individual expertise to their orchestra (or so goes the belief).

The average tenure of music directors these days seems to hover in the 8-12 years slot - in stark contrast to, say, Ormandy, who after a brief stint with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra (now the Minnesota Orchestra) went on to helm the Philadelphia Orchestra for 44 years. As Sam has discussed, selecting and hiring a music director is a complicated, multi-year process. What this means, practically, for conductors is that once you've landed yourself a music directorship and settled in after the first couple of years, you have to start thinking about what your next gig is going to be. For staff conducting positions, where the average tenure is more frequently in the 3-5 year range, this means that the minute you're named to a position, you're already job-hunting again.

It's a strange position to be in, and the built-in job insecurity can be really wearing on the psyche. A conductor's life tends to be a complicated matrix of current positions, future positions, potential positions and guest conducting that could be a potential position (and then perhaps a future position!). The jet-setting maestro who spends little time with their home band has been much bemoaned, but in a way, how can they be blamed, if they need to secure future employment, which is what it all basically boils down to? Because, in the end, we're just free agents. (Osmo, to his defense, spends a lot more time at home with the Minnesota Orchestra that do music directors of similar stature).

No grand point to make here, save the personal reflection that built-in uncertainty in one's work becomes exacerbated by global uncertainty. My question to you; what do you think of "term-limits" for conductors?

Strangely the same

Pictured is the Orchestra during a touch-up rehearsal onstage at the Philharmonie in Cologne.

The stage is clearly a departure from what we know back in Minneapolis - for the last two concerts, we've been in venues that are "in the round", with the audience essentially surrounding the stage. Acoustics are divergent as well, and it makes the orchestra sound very different than when back in Orchestra Hall; both Philharmonies (in Berlin and Cologne) lent a clarity to what was coming off the stage that is in stark contrast to the wash of sound I'm used to hearing back home.

So, everything is different...but strangely the same. The pre-concert activity is identical, wherever you are in the world:


The unpacking of bass cases, which is where our bassists store their instruments whether back home or on tour (bassist Bob Anderson).


Warming up (Doug Wright, our principal trombone).


More warming up (yep, that's Sam!).

There's something comforting about the consistencies of those rituals, even as we traverse the miles (sorry, kilometers - we're in Europe!) - the sameness amidst the differentness.

One distinct difference:


Many European halls have an "artist's bar/cafe" backstage (something we miss back in Orchestra Hall), very convenient for either a quick bite pre-concert or a post-concert quaff (violinist Julie Ayer and cellist Mina Fisher find time for hydration and a quick chat at the backstage cafe in the Berlin Philharmonie).

"Online" Orchestra

I've often bemoaned the slow pace of change in large arts organizations, particularly in relation to 21st century media. Which was why I was both delighted and fascinated by a recent article in the New York Times about a new "online" ensemble, the YouTube Symphony Orchestra.

In short, musicians from around the world are invited to apply by downloading sheet music provided on the site (from Tan Dun's "Internet Symphony No. 1") and submitting a video of themselves playing the selection. There's even a video of Tan conducting, to keep you in absolute tempo, because the winners of this audition will then be part of a mash-up to create an online "performance" of the entire piece.

The other component is the video submission of a standard repertory piece - that puts you in the running for a chance to play the live version of the "Internet Symphony" at Carnegie Hall, if you are selected by YouTube viewers in an American Idol-style selection process, of course.

A great use of modern media and technology, in my book, and I'll be curious to see the final product(s). Part of the purpose, ostensibly, is to create a more organized dialogue about classical music on YouTube, which is a fine idea. I cringe a little, however, when thinking about comments that may be left on audition videos; I've seen enough snide (if not downright cruel) comments attached to individual performance videos to know that the anonymity of the internet allows for a degree of mean-spiritedness usually not seen in face-to-face interactions. The eternal optimist, I hope to be pleasantly surprised!

Of course, the project has its celebrity promoters - Tan Dun and Michael Tilson Thomas, or course, and the inimitable Lang Lang lends his own peculiar flourish. My burning question, though, is this; isn't the "Internet Symphony" simply a glorified expansion of the Olympic Medal Cermony Theme from the 2008 Beijing Olympics (with a bit of Eroica added in for good measure)? Which seems such a terribly unoriginal musical idea for such an innovative project. Take a listen and judge for yourself (the Olympic Theme becomes recognizable at about 1:06').




And here's the Olympic music (with Tan conducting, too!) for comparison.

Behavior Modification

Chicago-area violinist Holly Mulcahy has an article up over at The Partial Observer that has been making me cringe all week. The title is "How to Alienate Your Audience In 10 Easy Steps," and it's a full frontal assault on the subculture of professional orchestral musicians. Among the sins Mulcahy outlines: glaring at audience members rude enough to cough or shuffle during concerts, rolling eyes when a colleague on stage makes a mistake, refusing to smile (ever), deflecting compliments from the audience, and noticably sneering at anyone who enjoys "light" classics or pops.

It's a difficult article for me to read, because I've seen everything on Mulcahy's list go on in orchestras I've played in (the Minnesota Orchestra included) on a regular basis, and for most of my career, I've wondered how exactly we as an industry get away with it. More than that, I've wondered why I often feel like the only one who thinks it's a problem. (I'm sure I'm not the only one, but you'd be amazed how many musicians become hugely offended when told, even politely, that their onstage comportment could stand to be improved.)

So why is it that members of symphony orchestras seem to think that it's perfectly all right to look sour, glare at the audience, or hold involved conversations while standing to acknowledge the audience's applause? (That last one's a personal pet peeve of mine.) I've been thinking about it for a while, and I've come up with two theories.

The first is that we do it because we literally don't know any better. Musicians, alone among performing arts professionals, are never, at any point in their training, taught to be performers. We're taught how to play music, and how to take direction. No one ever teaches us the tricks that actors, dancers, and singers learn, such as how to make the whole auditorium feel like you're looking at them, how to walk across a stage without ever putting your back to the audience, or how to take a curtain call. The full extent of our exposure to the choreography of the stage is that, at some point, we'll probably be told of the tradition that, if you are a man, and you are performing with one or more women, you should allow them to leave the stage ahead of you. (I don't know why we still do this, actually, but pretty much all of us do in solo and chamber music situations.) But we've simply never learned about how one goes about looking engaged while on stage. (Important note: looking engaged is very different than actually being engaged. Either one is possible without the other.)

But many of the same musicians I've seen sporting wrinkled, stained tuxedo shirts and looking like they just ate a lemon during the bows wouldn't think of dressing or acting this way for a string quartet performance, and that goes to my second theory, which is that there's actually something about playing in an orchestra that leads to a lack of awareness of how one's behavior might be perceived.

Bear with me, here. While most of us who play in orchestras for a living love our jobs, it is a very different profession than many people imagine it to be. While musicians now have much greater control over workplace conditions than we used to (thanks to collective bargaining,) we still have essentially zero control over moment-to-moment artistic decisionmaking. The conductor, regardless of whether s/he is a genius or a moron, has absolute power over how we shape every phrase, whether we follow the directions in the score to the letter, what speed we play each piece, and countless other minutiae that, in any other musical situation, would be the province of the people holding the instruments.

Now, of course, there's a very good reason for this, and it's that you can't reasonably give 98 people an equal voice in these things without chaos erupting, so someone's got to be in charge. But the lack of artistic control does lead some musicians to feel like little more than cogs in a huge machine. (This is exactly why some musicians wouldn't join an orchestra for anything.) The sheer size of the ensemble also makes you feel pretty small and insignificant at times, especially if you're a string player surrounded by 10-15 other people playing exactly the same notes that you are. You can grow to feel downright invisible, in fact, and that, I think, is what leads some musicians to believe that they can do whatever they want to do on stage, because no one's really looking at them, specifically.

This is an industry-wide issue, and I've never seen a professional orchestra that really seemed to have the problem licked. In fact, orchestra managers and staffers frequently throw up their hands when asked about it, believing that musicians will be so resistant to any attempt to change our comportment that it's not even worth wading into the muck. And while I'm not going to deny that there are a few musicians out there so disconnected from reality that they don't think the audience has the right to expect anything but pretty notes from them, the vast majority of us are horrified when we hear that we've offended the people who paid good money to come see us.

Here's the bottom line: if there's one thing that orchestra musicians are good at, it's following directions. We may be a bunch of prima donnas at heart, but when we're given an order from someone in authority, we grumble and snarl... and then we do as we're told. If an orchestra, any orchestra, wanted to change the way we look and act during bows, all it would take is for someone in authority to make it a new rule - no different from the rules that control what we wear for our concerts and what time the rehearsals start. And someone ought to.

Language Barrier

In yesterday's post, I talked a bit about conductors and arrangers who "speak the language" of orchestra musicians, and how important that can be to the success of a non-classical orchestra performance. And that got me thinking back to an uncomfortable experience I had several years ago, during one of the early years of our Composers' Institute.

The folks who run the Institute make a point of trying to select as widely varied a group of young composers as they can to participate in the week of seminars, rehearsals, and performances, which means that we in the orchestra get the chance to engage with a lot of different schools of musical thought in a single concert. Some of the composers we see are ultra-serious types, whose music reflects a deep commitment to academic rigor and complex multi-layered composition. Others are more outward looking, if no less serious about their craft, and it's not at all unusual to dive into a piece that looks technically daunting, only to find that you're playing a deconstructed riff from a '70s funk band, or some such. And a select few of our visiting composers come at the work using an entirely different musical vocabulary than the one we're used to.

It was one of this last group that I encountered several years ago, when I'd been asked, along with violinist Stephanie Arado, to lead a seminar for the institute composers on upper string writing. The idea was for us to go through each participant's composition line by line, ask them questions about why they chose to write certain passages in a certain way, and help (if we could) in making their music clearer and more idiomatic for the musicians who would be playing it.

The seminar was going fine - I'm always amazed by how open most composers are to constructive criticism, and how eager they are to engage with musicians, qualities which are not always reciprocated by performers - until we turned to a work that had baffled me when I first looked at it. This was a jazz composition, scored for orchestra, but written almost entirely in the musical language of jazz.

This was a problem. Classical musicians, string players in particular, are almost never conversant in jazz, partly because we usually don't need to be, but mostly because, unlike rock music or country or showtunes, all of which are fairly simple for an experienced musician of any kind to grasp and play, jazz is hugely complicated and difficult to play, just like classical music. Unless you've spent a serious amount of time studying it, you're just not going to be very good at playing it. (I studied jazz on the side for a couple of years in college, and I'd still be considered below beginner level in my understanding and ability.)

There are, of course, ways to work around this gulf if you really want to hear an orchestra play jazz. Duke Ellington did it very successfully, by writing out jazz scores in purely classical-style notation, and all but removing improvisation from the mix. And countless composers use elements of jazz in their orchestral music. But what never changes is that, in order for the orchestra to play it the way you want it, you pretty much have to write it out exactly as you want the sounds to come out of the instruments. When you have a combo of 3-5 jazz musicians playing a tune, improvisation and spontaneous creativity are a natural thing. When you have 16 first violins who all have to play in unison to avoid complete aural chaos, you just can't have folks wandering off on their own.

The composer in our seminar wasn't having any of this, though. When Stephanie and I queried him as to what he was actually after in writing his score in a manner that classical musicians would have great difficulty reading (some chunks, in which he had simply written in chord changes, were completely outside our ability to interpret,) he began an extended rant on the narrowness of the classical music education system, and said that it was the responsibility of orchestra musicians to diversify their knowledge.

I quickly agreed with him, and I believe Stephanie did, as well. Conservatories don't offer nearly enough diversity of instruction, and I've always thought that orchestras in general would have a far stronger sense of rhythm and ensemble if every music student was required to study jazz. But this was neither here nor there, we said to our apoplectic composer, when you've written a piece of music that you want to be performed by an existing orchestra, today, under today's conditions. You know for a fact that they can't really execute what you're asking them to with the notation you've chosen to use, so why not look for a way to say what you want to say, using the orchestra's language?

He was furious, insisting that it wasn't his job to limit himself as a creator of music simply because musicians were too lazy to look beyond their comfort zone. I tried to calm the situation by asking whether he meant for the orchestra to fail, whether the meta-statement he wanted to make with the music was, "I have given you a piece that you can't play because you lack context, and this should make you curious about what else might exist in the world that you don't know about." No, he insisted, that wasn't it at all. He wanted the piece played as written, and he saw no reason other than stubborn disinterest that it couldn't be done.

I wish I could say that we resolved this - Aaron Kernis, our new music advisor who runs much of the Institute, made some valiant attempts to bridge the gap and achieve some small changes in the scoring that would at least give the orchestra a toehold to cling to. But in the end, we were in a stalemate. It was as if I had walked into one of the better taquerias down on Lake Street and complained loudly that few of the employees there seemed to speak English. In the larger scheme of things, immigrants to America will probably be better off learning English, yes, but that's irrelevant to my immediate quest to order lunch, which even my non-Spanish speaking self would be perfectly capable of doing under the circumstances.

In the end, the orchestra read the piece (this was thankfully before the era in which we began holding a public performance at the end of the Institute) as written. And we more or less failed utterly to play it correctly, sabotaged as we were by our own limited knowledge, and the immovable ideology of the composer. Pity.

Three minute egg

No, not some sort of esoteric reference, but a neew arts website. Ruminations from the Orchestra's first rehearsal of the season can be seen at the September 17 post, "the start of the season". I like the sports analogy, which seems an apt one, as musicians, like athletes, worry about maintaining conditioning in the off-season and about stamina in the long haul.

Damn The Tuxedos!

Composer/critic Greg Sandow had an interesting post over at his ArtsJournal blog this weekend, positing, with photographic evidence, that the formal dress sported by orchestras is an outdated remnant of a time when ordinary citizens of a certain class dressed much the same way on a daily basis, and orchestral music was largely the province of those certain classes. Greg's conclusion: "There isn't any [such] context now. Formal dress for classical performances just looks weird, and ancient. Time to put a stop to it."

Now, before I wade hip deep into this debate, let me state for the record that musicians are quite divided on the subject of concert dress, as are audiences. (The comments on Greg's post show that his readers are hardly of one mind.) In the last few years, I've begun to get the sense that a critical consensus is forming within the ranks of those who write about classical music for a living that it's time to think about ditching the white-tie-and-tails look, but even among those who agree with that statement, there's no widespread agreement about what should replace the tuxedos. Suits and ties, such as we wear for daytime concerts and pops? Simple black-on-black ensembles for everyone, which would have the men of the orchestra matching the women, who have never worn anything approaching the formality of a tux? T-shirts and jeans?

I'm not going to bother getting into what about the formal look turns some people off, and makes others happy, because I think both sides of that debate are fairly obvious, and have been hashed through ad nauseum elsewhere. Instead, I'd like to provide an argument in favor of ditching the tails that I haven't seen anywhere else. It's the major reason among many that I hate our dress code, and it has nothing to do with "looking professional" or making us more accessible to anyone who might find the formalwear intimidating and off-putting.

The argument is this: tuxedos are almost unimaginably uncomfortable to perform in, especially for string players, who must have pinpoint precision control of hundreds of small and large muscle groups at all times during a performance. The heavy tailcoats, needlessly bulky vests, ruffled shirts, and bow ties seemingly designed to get in the way of any shoulder-hoisted instrument quite simply make it harder to play well. I honestly believe that we become less elastic and adaptable as an ensemble the minute we put on these multi-layered monkey suits, and I can't believe there hasn't been a full-scale revolt before now.

Summer dress is even worse (again, if you're a man. Women's orchestral dress codes are almost always far looser, and never require topcoats under any circumstances.) Those white dinner jackets we wear with black bow ties and tux shirts are nearly always made of polyester, making them ridiculously hot for summer wear, and they're also nearly always badly tailored, which is an absolute killer when you're a violinist or bass player who needs a full range of arm motion. (Why don't we get non-polyester, you ask? Well, you know how there are always a few musicians wandering the stage in what look like unacceptably dirty white coats? Those are the cotton ones - they simply don't come in real, true white, so either you go poly or you look filthy.)

If you ask me, switching to a suit-and-tie dress code, as some high-profile European orchestras have done, doesn't really address the larger problem that topcoats make playing string instruments needlessly more difficult than playing without a coat. The women don't wear coats, and most of them look perfectly fine in their concert black. Why couldn't those of us with y chromosomes simply start wearing something more in line with what our female colleagues wear? A simple black button-down shirt with black dress pants and dress shoes is visually smooth, comfortable to play in, and in no way makes the orchestra look unprofessional or sloppy. (This, of course, is the dress code the Minnesota Orchestra employs for our Inside the Classics concerts.) For summer, we could switch from black shirts to white, as, again, the women already do.

Now, I know all the arguments for keeping things as they are, and I realize that many of you reading this probably aren't buying my contention that tuxes are really all that awful to play in, since orchestras have been doing so for ages, and sound perfectly fine. And as I said, there is no shortage of orchestra musicians who believe strongly that the formal look is an integral part of our presentation, and would hate to see a change.

But if you ask me, the truth is in actions, not words, so I tend to keep a close eye on what my colleagues choose to wear at our periodic chamber music concerts throughout the year, when no strict dress code is in place. Over the past years, I've seen colorful vests, well-tailored suits (mainly on wind players,) simple black ensembles, vibrant colored tops, and even a feather boa donned for effect during a classic film score.

What I have never, ever seen is a member of the Minnesota Orchestra choosing, of his own volition, to play a chamber music concert in white tie and tails. Why? Because they're awful to play in. Simple as that.

Being Prepared

I was recently reading a review of the Houston Symphony's season opening concert (a friend of mine was soloing with them,) and was struck by something essentially non-musical that bothered the critic enough to merit a mention:

After Houston Symphony Society president Jesse B. Tutor finished his remarks... he gestured to the empty stage and asked the audience to welcome the orchestra.

Nothing happened. The audience's applause almost died out before a musician came through a stage door.

Classical music organizations still don't get that such slip-ups are inexcusable in this day of ultra-produced entertainment.

Now, conventional wisdom among orchestra musicians says that we are there to play music, and the audience is there to listen to music, and we shouldn't be asked to act, or sing, or make fancy entrances, or do anything more than what we've been trained to do in music school. If a conductor or manager wants to make us try something different, we'll give it a shot, usually with maximal grumbling and minimal enthusiasm, and if it all goes wrong, fine with us. Proves our point.

This, of course, is exactly the kind of attitude Sarah and I have been trying to do away with in our Inside the Classics concerts, and we're lucky enough to be doing it with an orchestra that couldn't be more willing to dispense with the conventional wisdom, so long as it's done well. And by done well, I mean making sure that the musicians have the information they need to execute whatever we're asking them to do, while not burdening them with a lot of extra stuff they don't need to know.

I can actually picture what probably happened in Houston. The musicians were probably told only that they'd be entering after their president spoke to the crowd. They may or may not have been clearly told that his exit applause would also be their entrance applause. I'm guessing that they don't have a lot more room backstage than we do, so 95 or so musicians would have been crammed into the wings waiting, probably unable to hear more than a bit of what was being said onstage. In all likelihood, there was no one offstage assigned to actually cue the musicians to enter. In other words, everyone just sort of assumed that this simple bit of theater would work on its own.

The fact is, though, nothing that happens on a stage, no matter how simple the idea seems, just works on its own, and orchestras wanting to do things in a new way are usually caught flat-footed when it comes to executing things like this. Even the best-laid plans can easily go awry for the dumbest reasons.

For instance, last fall, the Minnesota Orchestra decided to open the first concert of our new season with John Corigliano's Promenade Overture, partly because it's a cool piece, but mostly because it begins with an empty stage, and calls for each section of the orchestra to enter separately. The last player to enter is the tuba, who comes out belching and honking just a few bars before the piece ends. It's gimmicky, yes, but it's awfully fun to watch, and seemed like a nifty way to reintroduce the orchestra to our audience.

But here's the problem: like most American orchestras, the concerts we play on opening week of a new season always, always begin with the national anthem. (I don't really know why, but I don't know why we sing it at baseball games, either.) Furthermore, the rules of playing the national anthem (yes, there are rules) state that if you're going to play it, you can't play anything else before it on the program. So our plan to have an empty stage at the beginning of the concert so as to give the Corigliano maximum effect would now be compromised. Astonishingly, no one had thought of this until two days before the concert.

The logical thing to do would, of course, have been to skip the Star-Spangled Banner. I know everyone's terrified of seeming unpatriotic these days, but honestly, I doubt that 95% of our audience even remembers that we do this every fall until they hear the snare drum kick in. Alternately, we could have disregarded the rule (who's going to arrest us, really?) and played the anthem after intermission or something. But we did neither. In typical symphony orchestra fashion, we played the anthem first, after which every single musician got up and left the stage, after which we played the Corigliano. It was still a cool piece, but the humor and drama the composer intended was out the window.

I think the problem orchestras run into when trying to do things in a more highly-produced way is that good ideas are rarely backed up with enough preparation and attention to detail. Something as simple as having four musicians leave their seats and come to the front of the stage at our Copland show last spring required me to prep additional parts for those players, tape those parts to extra music stands, place the stands where they would be out of the way for the bulk of the show, mark where each advancing player should stand at the front of the stage, mark the conductor's script to show where to cue the players to start moving, time my speech to end as they reached the front, and about six other things I've forgotten. Had I just said to the four players, "I need you to come to the front of the stage for the last excerpt of the first half, so start moving when I'm talking, and bring your music," the whole thing would likely have been a choreographic disaster.

Getting orchestras used to adding a subtle theatrical element to our performances is, I think, a good idea. But if we're going to do it, we need to do it right, and that means putting a lot more thought into the execution than most orchestras bother with.

All for one, Part II

So, less than twelve hours after the final cutoff of "Broadway Rocks", I was on my way to Philadelphia for a concert at the Mann Center. Outdoor venues present their own complications (iffy acoustics, weather, flying/biting insects), on top of the usual challenges of producing a pops show. And this one had it's own special features; fog machines, lasers and on-stage projections. Yes, friends, I conducted a show with a Pink Floyd cover band, The Machine.

The orchestra-du-jour was the Delaware Symphony, and it was a reunion of sorts; having spent 9 years in Philly during my Curtis years (and beyond), I know many of the musicians in the area, including nearly a dozen members of the DSO. The orchestra didn't exactly know what to expect, particularly as there were quite a few who had never heard a Pink Floyd tune, much less entertained the possibility of ever playing one. Fortunately for me, the personnel manager of the DSO, who must have a fantastic sense of humor, hired my husband to fill in a hole in the horn section ("I think you know the conductor", he emailed). Paul's a big Pink Floyd fan, and he had originally planned to make the trip up to Philly to catch the show from the mosh pit. His presence in the orchestra ended up being utterly invaluable; more on that in a bit.

This is the kind of cross-musical collaboration that makes a good deal of sense, particularly because many of those Pink Floyd tunes have an orchestral bent to them to begin with. What made this particular show easy and logical (and this is an issue addressed more fully in Sam's previous post) were the arrangements, by violinist/arranger/pop musician Maxim Moston. Max's were the type of arrangements that make a conductor and orchestra happy; nothing too fussy or complicated, a few nice licks for the orchestra, straightforward/idiomatic writing, clean parts and logical rehearsal letters ("V1" and "B2" - "verse one" and "bridge 2", easy for the orchestra to identify and written in language that the band would also understand - a very savvy cross-musical touch).

The band, The Machine, was fantastic to work with (and if you closed your eyes, you'd swear you were hearing Pink Floyd!). This was the second go-around with this particular with-orchestra show, so some of the kinks had already been worked out. Sound levels are always an issue, even with sound shields protecting most of the orchestra; when we play with bands, the loudest element is usually the trap set, and there's no way to shield that save creating an entire plexiglass sphere around it. Standing right behind the drummer on the podium, my ears got a bit blasted.

Showtime brought a few surprises; this was certainly the loudest audience I've ever encountered at an orchestra show (although the enthusiasm is always energizing), and the level of illicit substance use, as far as we could smell onstage, must have been pretty substantial. Then, of course, there were the fog machines (what toxic chemical spews from those things anyway?) and the incredibly trippy laser show (a bassist joked "This is the only concert I've done where I've worried about both cancer AND epilepsy"). The performance-practice difference came when, during the first half, The Machine deviated from the set list that the orchestra and I were looking at and embarked on a 3-song digression that had me sweating for a moment (a lot of the recorded/synth openings of those tunes sound similar!); fortunately, my husband, from the horn section, sent me a note saying "That's 'Sorrow', not on list. Will tell you when 'Comfortably numb' intro starts."

When I took the stage at the second half, an intrepid audience member shouted, "We love you, Sarah!!", which satisfied my rock star fantasy for the evening. But more than that, it reminded me of just how much fun this audience was having; they were having a fantastic communal experience of hearing what was probably some of their favorite music being played by a great band with an added lush layer of orchestration. It was a truly participatory event, with the audience singing along to nearly every tune. And whenever The Machine acknowledged the orchestra, the audience gave a roar of approval, which is, of course, wonderfully gratifying.

Because, as I keep saying, we're all in this together; we're all musicians, we're all trying to reach other people in some way. Too often, I feel that the classical approach becomes exclusively cerebral. It's not that there's anything wrong with complicated music that requires the analysis of not only the musicians onstage but the audience itself (and sometimes the brain loves the exercise). But there's nothing wrong in performing and enjoying music that's immediately graspable, with an instant emotional effect either; in fact the ideal output of a performing arts organization finds a judicious balance of both.

Orchestras don't need to dumb down what they do; there will always be those who enjoy a straight-up classical concert (although the overture-concerto-symphony model is a bit tired). But there is a larger world out there, ripe for collaboration. And done in the right way (with music and arrangements that incorporate the best of both worlds), they can be gratifying musical experiences for all parties involved. What thrills me is the possibility of that larger world, and the chance to reach even more individuals. Because that is why I'm a musician.

Putting Up With Pops

Reading Sarah's post on the importance of an orchestra presenting a variety of styles of music, and presenting them all well, I found myself reacting in two very different ways. On the one hand, I agree completely with Sarah that classical music's history of behaving as if it is the only kind of "serious" music in the world is counterproductive, wrongheaded, and outdated in a world where genres seem to have less importance every day. I also don't think that our commitment to the music of Beethoven, Stravinsky, and Golijov is threatened by spending one or two nights a month playing something else.

On the other hand, I confess to being a musician who frequently dreads playing pops shows. I'm not against the format as a concept by any stretch, and even when I'm playing a show that truly makes me want to put a bag over my head, I don't have a lot of trouble sucking it up and remembering that no one's job is fun all the time. But I'd be lying if I said that I thought the way we as an industry present and perform non-classical shows was working very well, on the whole.

Some of my best memories are from pops concerts I've played over the years. My very first pops show, with the Alabama Symphony (my first gig out of college,) featured the legendary Tony Bennett, and I was in awe of his stage presence and ability to make the oldest songs seem fresh. Later that same season in Birmingham, I sidled shyly up to country superstar Kathy Mattea at a break in rehearsal and asked if she would sign my copy of Love Travels. Here in Minneapolis, I count the pops shows we've played with stars like Doc Severinsen, Eartha Kitt, and Rajaton (channeling ABBA) as career highlights.

But I've always been someone who believes that music basically comes in two flavors - good and bad. I don't know of any musical genre that I consider either 100% good or 100% bad, and by "good" I don't necessarily mean that I enjoy listening to it, merely that there is some level of artistry and intellectual content there to be discerned. And the reality is that some orchestral pops shows - a lot, even - are just bad. Badly written, badly structured, badly organized, and badly performed as a direct result of the first three bads.

I know some musicians who think we have no business being a glorified backup band for some singer-songwriter who was famous in the 1970s and is trying to squeeze another few paychecks out of his old hits by adding a few crappy string arrangements to the guitar strumming. I'm not wholesale against that kind of show, if there's really a role for the orchestra, and I don't think we should have to be the star of every minute that we're on stage, but I've spent far too many nights trying desperately to make those crappy arrangements sound like something other than the filler dreck that they are, and I've come to the belief that orchestras do not pair well with certain types of aging pop stars. (Throw in the fact that some of them are creepy and drug-addled to the extent that discerning members of the audience can tell that there's something wrong up there, and you've got a recipe for an uncomfortable evening.)

Another way that a pops show can go bad is when a well-meaning guest artist who really wants to make the best possible use of the orchestra gets overly ambitious, and shows up with orchestra parts that are either unmanagably complex, or simply don't fit the way our instruments are played. (Frequently, such guest artists also bring along their own conductor, when most of them would really be better off using our people.) Earlier this season, we played a couple of shows with a legendary rocker who I've idolized since high school, and unfortunately, the show wound up being fairly disjointed as we struggled to understand our parts and how they fit in with the band. Both critics who reviewed the show seemed almost apologetic in pointing out that the collaboration didn't seem to have worked terribly well. They needn't have apologized.

The tragedy of bad pops shows is that a) there are so many people who still seem to buy tickets to and enjoy them, and b) there are so many better ideas out there! The bluegrass revival going on in Nashville and around the country music world is a natural fit for what we do - imagine what brilliant performers like Bela Fleck, Jerry Douglas, or Chris Thile could do with an orchestra backing them! Composers like Todd Levin have already proved that a big enough orchestra provides a dance/house music experience that no synthesizer could ever hope to replicate. And hip-hop, which is completely ignored by pops programmers, would be a fantastic genre to introduce into the concert hall - participatory, original, and embracing of all other genres of music in its production and backing tracks.

Now, would these ideas require some sort of investment on the part of a forward-thinking orchestra? Absolutely. The reason that so many of our pops guests show up with terrible orchestrations of their music is because they are not in the business of orchestrating. We'd need to somehow find a way to connect guest artists with good composers who will know how to properly weave our sound into theirs. But those composers are out there, and plenty of us in the classical world know where to find them. Even more important, there are plenty of non-classical performers out there crossing genres, breaking down walls, and waiting patiently for us to make contact. And if it would mean that we could finally remove the stigma of pops as silly, inconsequential music, the investment would be well worth it in the long run.

All for one, Part I

An interesting week, marred a bit by jet-lag (Honolulu - Minneapolis - Philadelphia in the span of 3 days, a bit rough, but scheduling a vacation in the middle of a busy summer season is my own choice!).

First up, on Wednesday, was "Broadway Rocks", with a quartet of Broadway singers and the Minnesota Chorale. It's always fun to work with people who know exactly what they're doing, and all four singers in this show certainly fit the bill. Truth be told, I love Broadway stuff, no matter how schlocky it can get, and although "Music of the Night" can get a little tiresome (this was the 20th time I've done it, in its many guises), it's still a hoot to perform it with a singer who has the timing down cold (in this case, Doug Labrecque). It's also fun for the members of the Orchestra who are called upon to play outside of their usual box, as bassist Dave Williamson, playing electric bass for the show, did.

Pops shows like this are, without doubt, much trickier to produce than a usual subscription week. When I've tried to explain this to non-industry people, I'm always met with surprise, because audiences consider it to be "lighter" fare - isn't it then easier to put together? But here's the lowdown; the music played in Pops shows is usually arranged, written in a manner different from the standard classical repertoire (I'm often reading off of a piano/vocal score with chord changes and basic instrumental cues written in), often involves adjusting to a different style of music and to soloists who, quite literally, use a different vocabulary to discuss what we're doing (it's "the bridge after verse two" for the singers, 17 bars after rehearsal letter "F" for the orchestra). We're usually on an incredibly tight rehearsal schedule (we had a 2 1/2 hour rehearsal - with 20-minute break, of course - to get through 90 minutes of music). And often, it's a one-shot deal as there's only one performance (the second performance of anything is so much more relaxed and enjoyable!!!).

All that being said, I thrive on the thrill of tight scheduling, barely-controlled chaos during the show and having the chance to think outside of the classical box. And as the packed Hall and screaming standing ovation evinced, there are a lot of people out there who enjoyed it as well.

The Orchestra generally is good-humored about their forays outside the realm of Beethoven and Brahms, although there are certainly those who grumble (sometimes a bit vociferously). Orchestra musicians on the whole have very mixed feelings about these kinds of performances, mostly because, when faced with a chart from, say, Andrew Lloyd Webber or Elvis Costello or Tiempo Libre, there is a certain discomfort in that it is not the type of music they were trained to play. Some look at pop or rock or Broadway or salsa as somehow below their training and talent, a sentiment I can appreciate, being a product of conservatory inculcation myself; for better or for worse, in school I was constantly reminded of how rarefied my chosen studies were. In fact, sometime this past season, as I was about to take the stage for yet another Pops show, an Orchestra player sidled up to me and asked, quite sardonically, "So, this is what you went to Curtis for, right?"

To which I would reply, yes, it is. Because my rigorous conservatory education gave me the solid foundation of theory and orchestration and analysis and technique to approach any kind of music without trepidation. And because that solid foundation gives me the ability to bring a great deal of skill to all types of music, whether it was specifically included in my training or not. I recently met with a prominent New York public relations specialist who confirmed for me what I have believed for years; non-classical concerts (whether we call them "Pops" or "collaborations" or "special events" or whatever) are a sovereign entity unto themselves, a category of orchestral music-making that should be well-produced and of high quality. They are most often the biggest draws (and thus money-makers) in an organization's season, and they are the productions which then have the capacity to balance out the less populist (and perhaps more artistically interesting for the orchestra - I'm thinking Mahler 9) concerts. And we should all approach these presentations as a legitimate and significant part of an orchestra's output.

Classical musicians tend to be elitist; it's a part of our training. But I think this attitude does not in any way stand us good stead, particularly as we see the symphonic world slowly trending away from the straight "classical" concert as the only model of performance. If I call myself a musician, I should have the ability to understand and appreciate music as a whole, not just my (very small) corner of it. We all have our preferences (I'm not a huge country fan, granted, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate the skillful way a song is put together or the ingenious tunefulness of a melody), but this cannot prevent us from acknowledging the legitimacy of other forms of music. Because, as musicians, we should all be in this together.

More than meets the eye

I hope you've had a chance to listen to the Mischke Broadcast on Sam's latest post; there are some really astute observations about the Orchestra and some great questions posed to the group of musicians who chatted with Mischke post-rehearsal.

I was waiting for the quintessential orchestra question/comment, and I wasn't disappointed: "I don't understand how you can [watch the conductor] and read the sheet music at the same time...". I've gotten the same sort of questions in the post-concert Q&A sessions at the "Inside the Classics" shows - "How do you know the orchestra is paying attention to what you do if they're looking at their music and not at you?". The answer, of course, is that peripheral vision plays a huge role in orchestral playing, as does a constantly shifting visual focus.

Players are obviously looking at music, but they have other things to visually attend to as well; string players, for instance, are not always looking at their fingers on their instruments, but if they have a huge leap up to a high note, they are certainly looking at the fingerboard to make the shift accurately. Section players keep a corner of their eye on their section leaders - it's crucial for ensemble playing for a section to be thinking and breathing together. And everyone keeps another eye-corner on the conductor; it's pretty amazing what you can pick up just by the velocity of movement without fully focusing on the actual gesture itself.

It's not to say that we on the podium are bereft of any direct eye contact whatsoever. When coming in for a big solo, most wind and brass players like a good second or so of visual confirmation - I've encountered instances where something went slightly awry before a big wind solo, and a clear cue with lots of eye contact is reassuring and usually very much appreciated. Usually, once the contact is made, it need not be continued - it's more of a "We're both just checking to make sure that everything's OK" moment. String section leaders, particularly the concert master, will make eye contact as well, especially when a conductor is indicating that something needs to change - the tempo is too fast/slow, the dynamic is not where it should be - and a quick look from both parties is all that's needed to confirm "I'm trying to get you to move the tempo/I get that you're trying to make us pick up the tempo".

Sometimes the visual contact is of a totally extra-musical nature. This past holiday season we played the "Evening Prayer" and "Pantomime" from Hansel and Gretel a half dozen times during Young People's Concerts, and a few weeks before the performances violist Matt Young had mentioned to me how much he loved a particular part of the "Pantomime". So of course during the first performance I glanced over to him at that moment and caught his eye - he smiled, I smiled, and from then on all week I always gave him a quick look, which was always returned. It's one of those "inside joke" moments that happens constantly onstage, which (as long as it doesn't distract from the performance!) I rather like - we might be creating extraordinary music, but we're just people, after all, and those wordless but deeply human exchanges that happen are part of what helps us feel connected to each other, which, in turn, makes the music even more extraordinary.

Radical Within Reason

Okay, Hicks, you caught me. In the course of trying to write an even-handed, reasonable post about the difficult choices orchestras and their supporters face, I did, as you suggest, offer up the somewhat radical notion that not every city needs a full-size symphony orchestra. (And before anyone gets the idea that I'm suggesting that Columbus is one of those cities, let me state unequivocally that I'm not. As of now, I'm officially taking this discussion entirely into the hypothetical realm, and leaving the Columbus debate behind.) This is an idea I've been toying around with for years now, and without going into a ridiculous level of detail, my thinking on the issue more or less breaks down this way:

Most large and medium-sized cities (let's draw an arbitrary line and say we're talking about metro areas of more than a million people, of which the US has roughly 50) have the population and resources available to sustain a professional symphony orchestra of some description, if one is desired. How large a musician complement and how sizable an annual budget that orchestra will operate with is determined by how much money the local board believes it can raise. Conflicts will, of course, arise over these funding levels, but it can be safely assumed that the resources to support a cultural organization of the size and scope of an orchestra are there to be mined.

Still, in many of these cities, an orchestra seems to exist for no other reason than that cities are expected to have orchestras, just as they are expected to have museums, theaters, and professional sports teams. And just as with museums, theaters, and sports teams, the value of an orchestra to its community is only as great as the creativity and commitment those in charge bring to the table.

(I'm including musicians as part of "those in charge," although in many orchestras, the rank-and-file musicians are effectively shut out of all decision-making processes, and in many others, a majority of musicians believe that their only job is to play their instruments, and that tasks like marketing the group, planning for the future, and creating a sustainable organization should be left to others. I find both of these kinds of situations to be exceedingly backward, so I'm just taking it as read that musicians should be given a voice in the leadership of an orchestra, and that they should accept that role. If you disagree, that's fine, but my larger argument is based on an assumption that musicians are not just drones with instruments and batons, and that managers and board members are not just bean counters who happen to like Mozart.)

So here's the problem: not every city is the same, yet we seem to think that orchestras can be one-size-fits-all organizations, shoehorned into any urban area and made to thrive. This is why symphony orchestra performances tend to look exactly the same in every American city. There's no effort to create an orchestra that fits the community, because the word "orchestra" is thought to be a static one, implying precisely that there will be musicians dressed in white tie and tails holding instruments, looking dour, and playing serious music for a serious audience of serious people, who will be expected to stay seriously quiet and react to the performance only at pre-approved times. So a city like Minneapolis, which wholeheartedly embraces indie rock music, avant garde visual art, and theater of all kinds from classic to downright subversive, has an orchestra that, on most nights, offers roughly the same concert experience you would get in a city with far more conservative artistic tastes, like Philadelphia.

I could speculate for hours about the reasons behind this bizarre addiction to sameness. Musicians tend to be averse to large-scale change and fearful of anything that might appear to dumb down the art we've dedicated our lives to. Wealthy concertgoers in many cities, especially smaller ones, value the stilted formality of the concert experience, because they believe that it makes them seem more cosmopolitan. And because orchestras are so expensive and so dependent on the financial support of the community, no one in charge is ever eager to rock the boat by asking fundamental questions about why we do things the way we do.

All of this brings me back to what Sarah called my "radical bit of thinking." Granting that orchestras are a commodity that many cities desire and support, why are we so determined to foist them on cities that clearly would like something else better? Why do we insist on calling a paltry group of 25-30 musicians a "symphony orchestra," as so many US cities now do, and hemming them in to everything that description implies when they could do far more interesting and relevant work as a chamber orchestra, a loose musical collective, or something else entirely?

The conundrum of the professional musician in our era is essentially this: if you want the security of a steady paycheck, health insurance, and the knowledge that your job will likely still exist next week, you need to find an orchestra to play in. But if you want the opportunity to have a real say in your musical life, to create new and interesting art and find an audience for it, you have to forgo that security and lead the life of a freelancer, supplementing your art with an endless succession of wedding gigs and teaching jobs.

What I'm proposing, basically, is an amalgam of those two extremes for cities where an orchestra has either failed to sustain itself or just never gotten off the ground. In larger cities, or places with a deep and abiding love of all kinds of music, there's no reason that such an organization can't exist alongside a larger orchestra, and many already do. New York's Orchestra of St. Luke's and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra are two of the more famous examples. You could make the argument that, in recent years, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra has been moving in exactly this direction, too, offering an ever-wider diversity of concerts, partnering with the University of Minnesota, involving its musicians with the community in new and interesting ways, and still maintaining their more traditional concert offerings at the Ordway.

Somehow, though, this kind of thing never seems to get tried in cities that don't already have a large and successful orchestra. Traditionally, smaller musical groups in small cities operate as cheaply as possible, paying their musicians as freelancers and just keeping their fiscal heads above water. But wouldn't it be great if the moneyed interests in a small or medium-sized city decided to throw themselves into creating and sustaining a really fantastic group of resident musicians who could create dozens of different performance experiences every year, yet be paid a reasonable wage, given benefits, and put down serious roots in the community? And wouldn't that be better than those same moneyed interests engaging in an endless battle over how big their symphony orchestra can be, and how much it should be paid?

Halfway to what?

Part of the fun of having a writing partnership on this blog is the built-in diversity of opinions. So, let me make sure to first direct you to Sam's most recent post before I proceed to play devil's advocate (or just raise some more interesting questions).

OK, read "No such thing as halfway"? Let me lay some observations on you (and in no particular order of chronology or significance - we are on orchestra vacation this week and I feel unencumbered by the need for hyper-efficiency, organization and protocol usually required of a conductor!).

First, the comments. The two reader comments concentrate on details that Sam had used just to clarify a point by making a comparison. While I'm all for journalistic accuracy (and Sam does clarify where he got the figures), I'm utterly fascinated by the fact that people have responded to these particular facts and figures (not the main thrust of Sam's argument) without commenting on the message as a whole. And unless I'm reading this whole post wrong, it's quite a message:

"Cities and their residents have to set priorities and make decisions, is what I'm trying to say in my typically long-winded, roundabout way. Not every city is going to be able to boast of having every conceivable entertainment and amenity. So there shouldn't have to be a lot of civic shame if a populace decides that it just doesn't want to spend millions every year to sustain a specific sports team or cultural group. But trying to keep such an organization floating on the cheap, as a shadow of what it ought to be, strikes me as taking your citizenry for a long walk off a short pier and asking them to pay for it."

In short, and, please, Sam, correct me if I'm wrong, my friend, the suggestions is that some cities will not be able to or simply not be interested in sustaining a full-time orchestra. Or, perhaps, any orchestra at all. And if they do, at present, sustain that larger orchestra, but with increasing difficulty and growing budget crises, it is doing a disservice to try to maintain only a portion of that orchestra, because it is not longer an "orchestra"; and, in fact, there should be no orchestra at all - because otherwise you're "taking your citizenry for a long walk off a short pier and asking them to pay for it."

Which I find to be a radical bit of thinking, and which is why I'm kind of surprised that the comments argue over the aforementioned minutiae (as important as those details may be).

Now, let's go back to that radical bit of thinking and revisit. City X is having a difficult time supporting its full-time orchestra. What do you do? (Full disclosure here for any readers who might not be privy to the inner workings of the classical music world; orchestra musicians and orchestra "management" (to which I would lump in orchestra boards as well) have an uneasy relationship, on the whole. And musicians tend to lump conductors into "management" (read: only interested in the bottom line, artistry be damned) as well. "Management" tends to think of conductors as "musicians" (read: only interested in artistry, the bottom line be damned). Which often puts conductors into an uncomfortable in-between netherworld of "damned if you do, damned if you don't".)

Sam is not the only person suggesting that it might be better to have no Orchestra X at all rather than have a vastly reduced ensemble playing for far fewer weeks. According to the Columbus Dispatch article link, discussing the Columbus Symphony situation which sparked Sam's thoughts about the matter:

"On Jan. 17, after walking out of the board's first attempt to explain the restructuring, union President Doug Fisher and other musicians said they'd rather see the symphony die than be downsized."

On one hand, I understand a union leader's stance on an organization of his constituents; the purpose of a union is power in numbers, the leverage of collective bargaining, etc. Makes sense, then, to have an all-or-nothing attitude. But at what cost?? We're talking permanent loss of all possible positions versus loss of 20 positions (not a majority). My own instinct (and again, like Sam, I would stress that I'm not responding directly to what's happening in Columbus, but to a hypothetical similar situation) would be to preserve what's possible to preserve; I would rather see a majority of musicians be able to keep doing what they're doing that see all of them out of work.

And here comes my second question, based on these assertions:

"But on the most general level, I've just never understood it when executives and board members of arts organizations propose to save their companies by slashing them beyond recognition. Orchestras are particularly inflexible in this regard, because they really only come in two sizes: symphonic, and chamber. Symphonic orchestras only work if they look and sound like orchestras, so proposing to serve your local public with a "symphonic orchestra" of 31 players is not only odd, it's making a fairly large assumption about what sort of hogwash your public is going to be willing to buy into."

Doesn't that depend on what we consider "symphonic"? Under the 21st century model, OK, yes, we could make these divisions of "symphonic" and "chamber" - but only because we consider the average Mozart-sized (or early Beethoven-sized) "symphonic" orchestra to be "chamber" sized by modern comparison.

But it also reminds me of organizations that consider themselves "symphony orchestras" that have a core ensemble of 30-some-odd players, such as the Richmond Symphony. (Full disclosure - I was associate conductor of the Richmond Symphony for a couple of years, and my husband is still acting principal horn there.) The structure of this ensemble allows then to perform as a smaller "chamber" sized ensemble, add on per-service musicians to perform (regularly) with a Strauss- or Mahler- or Bruckner- or Prokofiev-sized orchestra and present actual chamber groups (mostly in schools, occasionally for special functions). No-one considers this product to be diluted or "hogwash". In fact, this ensemble enriches the community immeasurably, particularly through its outreach efforts.

Now, given a large orchestra's financial woes, from a purely community perspective, my own feelings are that it's always better that some performing ensemble be maintained (it's the "something is better than nothing" viewpoint). Because there are artistic and social services that only an orchestra, as a prominent arts organization in any community, has the ability to provide. Because a sustainable smaller ensemble could maintain a musical presence and retain employment for a majority of the currently employed musicians. Yes, downsizing would require a tremendous and at times onerous paradigm shift, but why go for such an extreme all-or-nothing attitude?

This is what all of these conflicts, in my limited personal experience, always boils down to: musicians typically view management as never being able to fulfill their charge to secure the funding adequate to run orchestras as the musicians see fit ("Why can't they just raise some more money, isn't that their job?"); management typically view musicians as having no idea of the complexities of keeping an unwieldly non-profit organization financially afloat, particularly on the cusp of a recession ("Why can't they understand how long-term economic volatility is affecting our endowment, not to mention our donors?"). Deep differences in perspective, both of which touch on truth, from disparate points of view. But often I feel it's some sort of fundamental inability (unwillingness? I don't know) to bridge those gaps that leads to all-or-nothing statements, threats and deeper discord. Is it misunderstanding, mistrust? From my perspective, neither party is ever completely right (and, hey, neither are conductors, who, in an effort to appear diplomatic, attempt to stay out of any conflict whatsoever), and so it begs the question, what can we do to allay this general and ingrained antagonism?

No Such Thing As Halfway

In the five months since Sarah and I began writing this blog, I've refrained from commenting in any sort of specific way on the internal crises that all too frequently plague American orchestras these days. My reasons for remaining silent are twofold: first, I think that the issues and problems surrounding the proper care and feeding of major arts organizations are in general far too complicated to be unraveled in a blog setting.

Second, and more to the point, I'm a professional orchestral musician, which gives me a vested interest in any battle between musicians and orchestra managements, and yet I'm posting to a blog hosted by the official website of the Minnesota Orchestra. (See here for our official policy on what gets written in this space.) No one in our management has ever told me or Sarah what we can and cannot write, but it would obviously put everyone in a bad situation if we were to start tossing bombs around in our own house. (I'm also in no position to speak for my colleagues here in Minneapolis, so I try to be careful not to use this blog in a way that would give anyone the impression that I'm representing anything more than my own views.)

All that having been said, there are events currently unfolding at Ohio's Columbus Symphony that I think are worth getting into, in the most general possible way. Basically, the CSO, which has a long and venerable history among mid-tier American orchestras (for an Upper Midwest comparison, think of it as being somewhat comparable to the Milwaukee Symphony,) is facing a financial crunch which apparently has its management and board stymied.

Those in charge of the organization have become convinced that the orchestra simply isn't sustainable in its present form, and have announced a plan to "save" the ensemble by laying off 22 full-time musicians and slashing 12 weeks off the current 46-week season. If the plan is implemented, the orchestra would have 31 musicians remaining in its ranks. Presumably, it would continue to call itself the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, despite the fact that it would employ fewer musicians than the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. (For comparison, the Minnesota Orchestra's full complement is 98 musicians, including 3 librarians, and we are one of 18 American orchestras that pays its musicians year-round.)

Now, I'm not closely connected to the situation in Columbus, and I wouldn't presume to speculate on whether the city can afford to sustain its orchestra (although it's worth noting that the CSO musicians believe fervently that it can.) The state of Ohio is home to two major orchestras (Cleveland and Cincinnati) despite also being home to some seriously depressed economic circumstances. Columbus, despite being large, is basically a huge college town, which makes its economic calculus different from a city built on industry or finance. So I'm not going to stand here and declare that I know the truth about Columbus from 750 miles away.

But on the most general level, I've just never understood it when executives and board members of arts organizations propose to save their companies by slashing them beyond recognition. Orchestras are particularly inflexible in this regard, because they really only come in two sizes: symphonic, and chamber. Symphonic orchestras only work if they look and sound like orchestras, so proposing to serve your local public with a "symphonic orchestra" of 31 players is not only odd, it's making a fairly large assumption about what sort of hogwash your public is going to be willing to buy into.

Consider it from another angle: let's say that the Minnesota Timberwolves, plagued for years by slumping ticket sales, underperforming teams, and a deeply unpopular general manager, decided that they just could no longer compete in the hockey-mad winter sports marketplace of Minneapolis/St. Paul. But rather than move the team, or fold completely, or sell to a new local owner who could try to succeed where others had failed, let's say that the team announced that it would be laying off five of its twelve players, and playing only 65 games per season, rather than the customary 82. (They'll keep the unpopular GM on, of course, just like in real life.)

You know, of course, what would happen. This plan would be a non-starter, both with fans and with the NBA, because basketball teams have twelve players and play 82 games. That's just what they do. I suppose you could own a team with seven players and play 65 games, but the Boston Celtics are not going to show up to play you, and your local fan base is certainly not going to shell out $50-$200 a ticket to watch your little experiment.

Now, orchestras are a bit more flexible than that: there are successful symphony orchestras in this country with as few as fifty full-time musicians - they just have to bulk up with a lot of extra players if they want to do something like a Mahler symphony. But there really is a limit to how far you can pare down the ensemble and still call it an orchestra and expect people to pay for it.

The reality is that not all cities are equal, either in terms of their relative wealth, or in the needs and desires of the populace. The Seattle area is comparable in size to the Twin Cities, yet it lacks an NHL hockey team, and it doesn't have a theatre company with anything like the budget and national profile of the Guthrie. Minneapolis and St. Paul are renowned for our embrace of arts and culture, yet we don't have a single full-time large scale ballet company. Phoenix is the sixth-largest city in America (soon to be the fifth,) yet its symphony orchestra pays a base salary that's in the neighborhood of that earned by orchestra musicians in Birmingham and Kansas City.

Cities and their residents have to set priorities and make decisions, is what I'm trying to say in my typically long-winded, roundabout way. Not every city is going to be able to boast of having every conceivable entertainment and amenity. So there shouldn't have to be a lot of civic shame if a populace decides that it just doesn't want to spend millions every year to sustain a specific sports team or cultural group. But trying to keep such an organization floating on the cheap, as a shadow of what it ought to be, strikes me as taking your citizenry for a long walk off a short pier and asking them to pay for it.

Again, let me stress: this isn't really about the Columbus Symphony. I'm just using their situation as a catalyst for a larger discussion, because this is hardly the first time that an American orchestra has proposed a cost-saving scheme like this, and it surely won't be the last. Orchestras are big, expensive, unwieldy beasts, even by non-profit arts standards, and they're an absolute bear to manage, fund, and maintain. In tough economic times, some are bound to be unable to sustain themselves, and while that's sad, it is the way of things.

I just don't think we ought to be lowering expectations, either of what cultural institutions can be, or of just how much work it takes to create and sustain them. If you want an orchestra, by all means, have an orchestra. If you want a basketball team, have a basketball team. But don't organize a 5K race and then try to tell everyone you're hosting the Olympics. People aren't that stupid.