First day with the new boss

We had our first rehearsal today for our first concert with our Music
Director designate, Edo de Waart. That by itself was a little unusual;
most orchestras have worked for their new Music Directors before they
were named Music Directors in the first place (our concertmaster Frank
Almond has written a comprehensive explanation of this state of affairs
for Drew McManus’ website). We had two rehearsals before he was named
just to make sure that we weren’t making a Michael Gielen/Cincinnati
kind of mistake. But that was it.

An odd week

My orchestra is under the Curse of the Renter, which is to say that we
don’t own our own hall. I would say that’s good news and bad news,
except that there’s very little good about the situation. We pay the
county a fortune in rent and a long list of add-on charges and we have
little control over dates. To add insult to injury, it’s a lousy hall.
When I was out for two months due to a broken finger in 2006, I went to
a few concerts and was really horrified to hear just how bad the sound
was in parts of the hall.

As a consequence of the Curse, we spend about 1/3 of our season as a
homeless orchestra; a figure that would be closer to 1/2 if we weren’t
the pit orchestra for the Florentine Opera, which is also a tenant of
the hall. What to do with us during that 1/3 of our season is a problem
that no management has really figured out during my tenure (not that I
have an answer either; I don’t). We are relieved of the rental expenses
when we’re out of our hall. Unfortunately we’re also relieved of our
core audience.

The Myth of the Music Police

That got your attention, didn’t it? Drew McManus has a very interesting post about what’s known colloquially as “the music police” and how managements should deal with them:

The Music Police are orchestra musicians who, for a whole host of diverse reasons, believe they have an innate authority to determine what qualifies as acceptable musical standards within their respective ensemble. These musicians act alone or sometimes form one of the numerous cliques found in the vast majority of professional orchestras. It is important to point out that there’s nothing inherently wrong with one musician having an opinion about a colleague’s musical abilities (you’re more likely to find Waldo than a musician who doesn’t); however, when one or more musician decide to impose their musical standards on fellow musicians in a way that involves a manager is when the silent alarms should start going off through the office.

As an orchestra musician for most of my adult life, and a union officer for some part of that time, I’ve had to deal with this phenomenon. I don’t enjoy it. I also don’t enjoy being lectured by people in the union business on the subject (and I don’t mean Drew). The self-righteousness of those who want to impose their standards on their colleagues is just one more thing that can making going to work seem like a chore. It makes little difference whether those standards are musical or behavioral.

Those who preach that the Music Police are charter members of the Axis of Evil show very little interest in examining why musicians sometimes take it on themselves to engage in such conduct. I find it uninteresting to condemn conduct that is an inevitable consequence of a dysfunctional or poorly designed workplace. And I have little patience for people who reduce complexities to witch hunts.

There’s not an orchestra musician alive who hadn’t been driven to distraction by their own inadequacies. That’s how we get better. There’s not an orchestra musician alive who hasn’t been driven to distraction by the musical failings of some of their colleagues. And there’s not an orchestra musician alive who hasn’t been driven into a blind rage by the failure of conductors to hear those failings and not to at least try to fix them, if only by rehearsing properly.

But of course, as orchestra musicians, we are barred by taboo from trying to address problems in rehearsal; that’s the conductor’s job. Yet it’s our orchestra that suffers when the conductor doesn’t do it. We are the ones who end up sounding ragged, or out of tune, or just plain bad. And, being musicians, it’s very hard to detach ourselves, and our self-images, from a bad performance. It might well not have been our fault. But it’s still us that sound bad.

In the absence of any apparent effort by the conductor or management to address such issues, it is inevitable that many members of the orchestra will feel the temptation to try to do so themselves, and that some will actually act on that impulse. For my part, I’d hate to play in an orchestra where no one cared about how things sounded or were incapable of figuring out where problems might be. For the most part, that temptation comes from very honorable motives; professional pride and a desire for excellence.

Should musicians run to management, or the conductor, with their lists of who should be fired? Of course not. Over the long term, such behavior is very harmful to the orchestra – almost as harmful as the institutional failings that lead musicians to believe that no one else is going to address problems of poor playing. But let’s not pretend that we all don’t have a pretty good idea of where the musical issues are in our orchestras, or that we don’t want to see them addressed.

The music police are not the problem, and beating on them is not the
solution. In virtually every instance, the real problem is either that
the wrong person was hired for a position or that musicians are not
adequately supervised and their long-term performance monitored. Hire
the right people, let them know how they’re doing on a regular ongoing
basis – and the music police will vanish as a substantive problem for
managers, unions, and orchestra musicians.

Yes, that does sound a little like “buy low, sell high, and you’ll
make money in the markets.” I didn’t say it was easy. But it is simple.

No rules for management at least

Daniel Wakin posted an article on the Budapest Festival Orchestra on his New York Times blog:

Mr. Fischer’s orchestra, he said, has three cardinal virtues, established at its creation: an emphasis on the players’ individual creativity; few rules, for maximum flexibility; and unusual programming.
… The no-rules rule means no long-term contracts, no overtime and auditions that end up with five or six finalists who play with the orchestra.

Oddly enough, my orchestra, which has plenty of rules, also has
auditions that produce finalists who play with the orchestra before
being hired (which I assume is what was meant). But it was the “no
overtime” and “no long-term contracts” that caught my attention.

Salome wrap-up

There seem to be a lot of Salome performances happening. The Met Opera
Orchestra just did the last scene in concert with Deborah Voight at Carnegie Hall, while
the Royal Opera House in London is about to start a very
well-publicized run, leading the Guardian to run a good article about
the opera.

Our final performance was on Sunday afternoon in the face of a
threatened blizzard (which turned out to be about an inch of snow).
Evidently I hadn’t had enough, because I found myself listening to a
recording on Monday.

After 1, Jochanaan’s a head

OK, it’s a bad joke. But he’ll be a head after performances 2 and 3 also.

We did our first of three performances of Salome last night. It took a little while to get organized; to spare the singers, the opera company generally schedules the dress rehearsal on Wednesday and the opening on Friday. So we hadn’t seen the piece (or each other) for a couple of days. With a warhorse, that wouldn’t be a problem. With something as unfamiliar and difficult as Salome, it can be. But things seemed to right themselves pretty quickly. Our local critic was very enamoured of the soprano, but thought we "played with a glorious combination of precision and excitement" too. It sure didn’t feel precise, but Strauss is oddly forgiving of imprecision.

We had a little excitement in the viola "A" section (there are two viola parts, A and B, each one divided in multiple ways), as my standpartner came down with what sounds like flu. Jamie Hofman, who’s playing the outside part on 2nd desk, took over the uncovered inside first desk lines when possible, and Sara Harmelink, who’s playing inside 2nd desk, played the uncovered notes in the many chords that have solo notes in them. I counted very carefully, not having Erin to tell me when to come in, and we all survived. Her absence did give us a little more room (and allowed me to get out of the principal flute’s line of sight to the conductor, for which she was grateful), and it was easier to see the part, not having to share it. Hardly adequate compensation for her absence, though. Most times it’s not a big deal when someone in the section is absent (including the principal, by the way). Strauss provides many of the exceptions to that rule.

The local critic loved the dance as well. I think we’re going to have to get video monitors in the pit  into our next contract. Isn’t there a musical case to be made for seeing what’s happening on stage? We could all accompany the dance much better if we could see what’s going on. No, of course we wouldn’t be distracted. We’re professionals.

Dance of the Seven Violas

Yes, we’re doing Salome this week. What a bitch. And Salome’s not a very nice person either. In fact there’s not a character in the whole opera I’d want to have a beer with.

We did the opera about eight years ago in concert. I don’t remember it being this hard. Of course being in the pit doesn’t help. It’s a huge orchestra, so the pit is jammed (the percussion is actually in the trap room) and I’m right in front of the oboes and flutes. As a result there are large chunks of the opera during which I can barely hear what I’m doing. I certainly can’t hear the fiddles at all, which is a definite handicap in this piece. I tried plugs, but there are lots of solos, which I find unbearable to play with plugs. But playing without plugs is pretty unbearable at times.

It’s a wonderful work. I think it suffers from early-Strauss compositional overkill, though – lots of extremely hard and counter-intuitive passagework that can’t be heard at all (just as well, perhaps). And it goes by fast, and there are lots of meter changes and tempi changes and key signature changes. That wouldn’t matter so much if the parts were less challenging. As it is, I feel that I’m running out of brain. No doubt it’s a piece that’s much more manageable after it’s been internalized the way that orchestra musicians internalize the warhorses of our repertoire.

The big question for any production of Salome is, of course, does she or doesn’t she at the end of the dance. I’m told that this production features full backal nudity. Fortunately we have a wonderful soprano who is not a blob. Unfortunately the violas are quite busy at the critical moment.

I guess I’ll have to settle for Catherine Malfitano on YouTube.

One of those weeks

We’ve had a few interesting weeks at the MSO. And then there was this week…

Playing in a foreign language

We did a program of mostly French music last week. We even had a French
conductor (Ludovic Morlot, who’s been on the guest conductor circuit
this year and who did a very nice job). It was just like Bastille Day as celebrated at the French
research station at the South Pole. Fortunately such weather does not
deter us Milwaukeeans, and the concerts were surprisingly
well-attended. (Unfortunately such weather doesn’t deter the New York
Giants either, but that’s another story.)

Some transitions

Steven Monder announced that he will retire as CEO of the Cincinnati Symphony after 31 years – which has got to be some kind of record. He received a standing ovation from the orchestra at the announcement – which I doubt means they were glad about it. They shouldn’t be – it’s as much of a seller’s market in orchestra managers these day as it is in music directors. And most of them aren’t union members – as Monder is (of both the AFM and IATSE).

Stanley Drucker will retire as principal clarinet of the New York Philharmonic after 60 years. That too has to be some kind of a record.

And Carrie Dennis, one of the principal violists of the Berlin Philharmonic, is leaving to become principal violist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. This is the first time I can recall someone leaving Berlin for an American orchestra. Berlin outranks LA in terms of prestige. But the weather – and likely the money – is better in LA.