A Grand Opening

This past weekend was the first true test for the Evansville Philharmonic this season and, by all accounts, I'd say we passed with flying colors.

Our soloist, the great Russian (now Southbend resident) pianist, Alexander Toradze, arrived to rehearse with us on Friday night. The rehearsal was open to guests who were attending the Gala, many of whom had never experienced an orchestra rehearsal. All of those I spoke to were amazed at the intensity and focus displayed by all performers on stage as we rehearsed all the intricacies of the Tchaikovsky 1st Piano Concerto with Lexo (as everyone calls Toradze). His interpretation is full of surprises, his playing always exploring the extremes of emotions in the music and the polar extremes of dynamics. He is one of the most interesting, exciting and thoughtful pianists I've ever heard or worked with -- a true inspiration to all of us on stage!

After a festive and elegant pre-concert Gala dinner, which honored Neil and Karen Ellerbrook, the Victory Theatre filled up (it was the best attended Opening night concert we've had in the past 3 or 4 years), and I was honored (and surprised) to be presented with some gifts from the EPO in celebration of this being my 20th season (they were a beautiful pair of silver cufflings engraved with 'EPO AS 20', and a bottle of Italian wine - a 1996 Brunello di Montalcino - which I refrained from consuming during intermission) by Board President, Brian McGuire and Executive Director, Glenn Roberts.

We then had the audience join us in the traditional season opening playing/singing of the National Anthem, always an exciting ritual. After the SSB, the Orchestra launched into Wagner's Prelude to Die Meistersinger -- what a fantastic piece (and our tuba player, Melissa Williams handled the famous playing of the principal theme with aplomb). Toradze thrilled the socks off the audience -- no surprise there as he always has listeners mesmerized. And the Orchestra launched our Beethoven Symphony cycle with true verve and poise. After all the preparation -- from my first re-studying of the 7th in Italy to the rehearsals (all described in my previous posts) -- having a performance gel so well, and connect so viscerally with our audience, was the true payoff. Here is a link to Bill Nesmith's review in the Evansville Courier: http://www.courierpress.com/news/2008/sep/14/soloist-helps-philharmonic-open-season-on-note/ .

In case any of you in Evansville were unable to attend opening night (and for those of you who live anywhere else in the world), we are able to let you hear (and have to keep) the entire performance of our Beethoven 7. After working out all the logistics of getting this from the hands of our recording engineer, Kim Fillingham to our EPO IT guru, Adam Covey, and onto our website, we have TODAY our first music download available to anyone who goes to our website. Go to http://www.evansvillephilharmonic.org/music-downloads.html and you can easily download the Beethoven 7th performed by the EPO at our opening night concert, movement by movement. I hope you enjoy it!

Final note: If you listen to our performance of the symphony and have a score (or individual part) and metronome in hand, check our tempos against the metronome markings that Beethoven had his publisher include (next to the Italian tempo indication) at the start of each movement. Beethoven was convinced that, with the invention of Maezel's metronome, it would give all performers (even 200 years after its composition) the ability to know precisely how fast (or slow) each movement of a composition should be played. There is no need to guess at what Beethoven's intention for tempo was -- IF one heeds his specified metronome markings!

We're off!

Last night was a very big night for the Philharmonic - the annual ritual of the first rehearsal of the season. It is an event that I anticipate with eagerness, some nervousness, and a lot of excitement. Because of the nature of the EPO, with a substantial number of our players still pursuing musical studies (most often graduate and post graduate instrumentalists at the IU School of Music), we have a larger than average turnover of personnel each season. As I explained in the previous post about our auditions, this season had even more open positions than most years. While I was confident that we had assembled a fine pool of new players from those auditions, one never really knows how it will all gel until the first rehearsal, with our returning and new players together for the first time.

Well, our first rehearsal more than confirmed that we have a terrific orchestra this season! Truly, from the downbeat of the Beethoven 7th Symphony, there was a cohesive sound, and an excitement to the playing that is at least what I (and I think my colleagues) recall from last season -- quite possibly, discernibly better. Time will answer that question for sure -- but if last night's initial rehearsal was any indication, I think all of you in our audience can expect some great things from the Evansville Philharmonic this season. We spent nearly the entire rehearsal on the Beethoven 7th Symphony -- hard work, but without doubt a labor of love. There's nothing like putting together the Classics, specifically the Beethoven symphonies, and I anticipate this will be an exciting and fulfilling journey for orchestra and audience alike!

Auditions (and a little musing on the US Open)

Tonight, after attending the Arts Council of Southwestern Indiana's Arts Awards dinner, honoring my friend Howard Abrams as this year's recipient of the Mayor's Arts Award, I returned home very quickly. Normally, I play tennis on Thursday nights (except on nights we have Philharmonic rehearsals), but tonight I wanted to get home to watch as much of the US Open Quarterfinals match between Andy Roddick and Nolan Djokovic as I could. Alas, even though he played great, Roddick lost in a tight 4th set tiebreaker to the very talented Serb. Even more sad that Djokovic made some pretty disparaging remarks about Roddick, who had apparently quipped earlier that Djokovic was "playing with 16 injuries". If there was poetic justice it was in the New York crowd's heartfelt reaction to Djokovic's remarks -- the resounding unanimity of 20,000 booing spectators!

I digress - back to getting our season, and the Beethoven cycle, launched. I've been wanting to write for the past few days, but was mired in marking Wind, Brass, timpani parts for the Beethoven 7th (see my previous post). This past weekend I, together with Tim Smith, the EPO personnel manager, and a handful of EPO musicians, embarked upon a crucially important task: auditioning new musicians for our 2008-09 season. Because we are not a full time orchestra, and because so many of our musicians are at the early professional part of their careers, we have a fairly large annual turnover of personnel, especially in our string sections. This season we also had a number of Woodwind openings -- 3rd Oboe/English Horn, 2nd Flute/Piccolo, and 3rd Clarinet/Bass Clarinet -- and a section percussion vacancy. Auditions for those openings occurred last Friday, and we had a strong turnout of candidates for each instrument. Players came not only from this region, but from as far away as Chicago (the winner of the percussion spot) and Rochester, NY (a finalist for the Flute position who is in her senior year at Eastman School of Music, but who would have flown into Evansville for every cycle because her father is an airline pilot!). My colleagues, principal clarinet Thomas Josenhans, principal oboe Elizabeth Robertson, and principal percussion Bill Shaltis joined me for the day, and we listened to these musicians audition from 9 AM to after 5 PM. All the first rounds of these auditions take place with the auditionees playing on stage and the audition committee seated in the balcony behind a screen. Each auditionee is identified only with a number -- it is the ultimate objective hiring process as we don't (until the final round) know who the person is, what they look like, nor do we see any physical idiosyncrasies in their playing. It's only been in the last few years that the Philharmonic has (like most orchestras) started to employ a screened audition process, and I will be the first to admit that it allows us to focus completely on what their playing sounds like, which is, after all, what we want -- to select the player that sounds best! [Picture shows this committee in one of our lighter moments of the day.]

The following day, Saturday, an audition committee of three string principals -- concertmaster Gared Crawford, Principal violist Craig Bate and Principal Cellist Kevin Bate -- joined me in Bloomington to hear another full day -- again 9 - 5 -- of Violins, Violas, Cellos and Basses. We hear those auditionees together with Nicholas Palmer, Music Director of the Owensboro Symphony and that Orchestra's audition committee. The EPO and OSO work carefully together to avoid conflicts during the season as we share a fair number of the same musicians. Doing joint auditions helps bring the greatest pool of auditionees together as they prepare the same audition list and only have to play one audition. Each orchestra's committee then conference separately and choose players for whatever vacancies they have in each string section. It's interesting that we often select the same musicians for the open spots, but sometimes a very different ranking order results -- an interesting phenomenon considering that the applicants just played the exact same audition! At the end of the day, I'm pleased to say we filled all but one of the vacancies, all with very fine musicians. And from the prior day, four excellent musicians for the woodwind and percussion vacancies, including a new member of Tales & Scales and a former EPO musician, Elizabeth Telling, returning to our oboe section.

The audition process is a nerve wracking ordeal for the musician, no matter where one is in his or her career. The competition is very stiff and the odds are against your getting the job -- in the case of the wind and percussion, at least eight players competed for each spot (do the math, you have a 1 in 8 chance of getting hired!). And, it is an exhausting couple of days for the adjudicators as well. Ultimately though, this process ensures that we assemble the best possible Orchestra each season -- our returning musicians are joined each year by a new crop of very talented and eager musicians. It is this infusion of new players combined with our longstanding musicians that produces the energetic dynamic the EPO has each season.

Time to mark the parts

In my last post I spoke about the joys of re-discovering the Beethoven 7th Symphony, and in the process, as a conductor, making decisions about all kinds of details that affect interpretation. These include, of course, Tempo (how fast or slow), and Dynamics (how loud or soft). But, also the more subtle and intricate details of performance must be thought out before the first rehearsal takes place. These include Articulation (how short or long each note in a phrase should be played), Phrasing (how many notes are included in one "thought" -- think of how many notes you would sing in one breath), and, very importantly, Bowings. Bowings are simply indications of whether each string player plays Up Bow (pushing the bow up from the tip of the bow towards the heel of the bow) or Down Bow (pulling the bow from the heel to the tip of the bow) -- as an audience member you literally see the violinists moving together with the bow either going up or going down. This is all coordinated by indicating over the notes on the string players' page, whether to bow up or down -- an up bow marking looks exactly like a v, and a down bow looks like a staple or a lower case n (sort of). And we don't coordinate these bowings just because it looks nice to the audience, but to achieve a uniformity of phrasing and articulation -- thus the first violinists all play the same number of notes on one stroke of the bow, while moving the bow in the same direction. Generally speaking, in homogeneous sections of music, all string players bow with the same number of notes in each bow and in the same bow direction.

Obviously, this is not all decided randomly during orchestra rehearsal -- if we did, we'd need ten times the rehearsals we have, at least! Rather, bowings are always marked in the music -- in the part that is on each stand (and each string stand is shared by two players) -- well in advance of the first rehearsal. As conductor, I make most of the decisions about bowings while I'm studying and preparing my score, and then, usually, I mark those bowings into one part of each string section -- a "master" Violin I, Violin II, Viola, Cello and Bass part. Often I consult with my concertmaster, Gared Crawford (who joined the EPO as concertmaster last season), on whether these bowings are really the best for the section. Gared will play through them to make sure they are indeed playable and gives his input to me to confirm whether they in fact achieve the musical effect that the composer intended, and that I am after. [Our PR director, Carrie Marrett shot this photo of Gared and I working through the Beethoven 7th part the other day in the basement of the EPO offices]

This, my friends, is what I consider the true nitty-gritty phase of concert preparation. Rehearsals are the very intense, highly focused periods of playing through the music as an ensemble and getting it polished for the concert night. But it is this pre-rehearsal period of marking the orchestra parts, getting as much information clearly marked as possible, that allows us to concentrate on really making music in rehearsal - playing together, achieving uniformity of phrasing, intonation, dynamics, etc. Getting to that level of readiness prior to the first rehearsal is a long, tedious process involving hours and hours of my score and part editing, the input of bowings from the concertmaster and other string principals, and countless hours of part marking by our librarians, Tim Smith and Karen Renner.

I look forward to writing about the more poetic aspects of making music, but the rather pedestrian process of getting these performance details into the parts (and yes, I mark some dynamic, phrasing, articulation details into every wind, brass and percussion part as well) is in reality the daily grind of a conductor. It's a little like the old Dunkin Donuts commercial -- "Time to make the donuts," only for me it is, "Time to mark the parts, Time to mark the parts." By doing this, the players have a sense of direction from the time they receive their parts and begin practicing at home. Ultimately, we then have more freedom to truly concentrate on making music in the rehearsals and concerts -- and hopefully, giving our audience the truest possible representation of what Beethoven intended.