October 2009 Archives

The SLSO's Will James and John Kasica play water percussion with Colin Currie on Tan Dun's Water Concerto. If you go to the concert Saturday night--and there are tickets, go!--you'll notice that Will and John are not dressed in formal tuxedo attire in the first half of the show. As Will explained to me the other day, they are soaked by intermission. No need to pay extra tuxedo dry-cleaning costs just before Carnegie. They change to formal wear for the second half.

The audience members near the stage were warned about possible showers during the performance, which of course meant that during the stage change for the Tan Dun a number of people moved up to be closer. A hearty bravo goes out to the couple who, seated nearest to John, dressed in full rain gear.

The invited bloggers had a great time. The general consensus: The SLSO rocked the Bartok! Actually, there's another modifier that goes in there, but this is a family-friendly blog.

The Henchmen were involved in a myriad of activities for the Water Concerto stage change during Friday morning's rehearsal. The musicians playing water percussion need to be surrounded by clear plastic shields so the string instruments, and the people playing them, don't get a dousing during performance. If you're sitting near the stage, bring a raincoat.

SLSO Principal Percussion Will James commenting on Colin Currie following the rehearsal of Bright Sheng's marimba concerto, Colors of Crimson: "His precision is scary."

Colin Currie graciously allowed me to shoot him rehearsing Tan Dun's Water Concerto in the Green Room. Last week I wrote about Yo-Yo Ma's sense of play during the Gala Concert. "Play" is in even greater evidence with Colin "working" on this piece. Tan Dun has taken the earliest human percussive act--playing in water--and made music out of it.

Early Wednesday morning percussion wizard Colin Currie was already in the Green Room hard at work preparing for Tan Dun's Water Concerto and Bright Sheng's Colors of Crimson. A whole lot of crazy percussion instruments for Water Concerto. Colors of Crimson is a marimba concerto, which sounds less complicated by comparison, but Currie was spending a lot of time on it. David Robertson told me that one of the reasons he programmed the marimba concerto was that the last time Currie was here--for his three-different-concertos-over-three-concerts marathon in 2008--David discovered how wonderful the marimba sounds in Powell Hall.

The parking lot was a little sparse Monday morning, with a number of my colleagues taking a much-deserved and well-earned recovery day from all the effort that went into making the Gala a big success.

 

But no rest for violists and horn players--at least those who were auditioning for extra positions today. They walked in holding their instrument cases, their hearts full of hope and anxiety, huddled against the rain.

I was moving from one side of the balcony to the other, outside of the auditorium, with photographer Mike DeFelippo, who was shooting Yo-Yo Ma in action for the Gala Saturday night. Two movements of the Dvorak Cello Concerto were done, so Ma had already given the rapt audience a lot to take home with them. From my separate perches in the balcony, I had been watching the audience a fair amount of the time, and it was heartening to see how totally involved nearly 3000 people were with the grace and power of an orchestra at play. And that word, "play," came to mind when Mike said, after watching and photographing Ma for two movements of Dvorak, "That guy is all about joy."

As the Pirates slugger Willie Stargell once said, "They don't say, 'Work ball.' They say, 'Play ball.'" Likewise, music is played, not worked--although a great deal of work goes into making it into play. Musicians are players, and to watch Yo-Yo Ma with the SLSO, you see a musician truly playing with his fellow musicians. All about joy.

And the whole evening was filled with that joyfulness. I'm just one of many staffers who are downright exhausted today (and I didn't do half of what many of my colleagues did) from the work and the worry of making the Gala Event a joyful enterprise. So much can go wrong. But the faces I saw in the audience, the faces I saw at the after-concert dinner and dance--I saw a lot of happy people.

It was quite a week for the SLSO, one that partly defined all that we are about. In a few days we went from a free concert to a top-dollar concert, and there was no diminishment of quality from one to the other. The high school and college students on Thursday night got a great concert for free, one I hope they may cherish and think about for a long time. The paying customers on Saturday night got a great concert too, with one of the world's greatest artists, the kind of artist of whom you can say, "I saw Yo-Yo Ma," and whoever you say it to may immediately understand that something special to came into your life.

All week, whatever the audience, whichever music the orchestra was preparing, the art came first, always. Because the quality of the art is from where all the joy is sprung.

Thursday night's SoundCheck Concert--high school and college students experienced the Child of Our Time program for free--was phenomenal in so many ways: the unique binding of Ives' Unanswered Question and Barber's Adagio for Strings; the raucous gospel of Rollo Dilworth's world premiere Freedom's Plow; the visual spectacle of the Symphony's two great choruses, the SLS Chorus and SLS In Unison Chorus, on stage together for the intensely moving main event, Tippett's Child, with the breathtaking vocal power and subtlety of the dual choruses and guest vocalists Measha Brueggergosman, Kate Lindsey, Paul Groves and Jubilant Sykes. The Wow factor was substantial.

Dr. Robert Ray, the director of the In Unison Chorus, stopped by my office on his way to a meeting on Thursday afternoon. He had not yet seen the video blog with Rollo Dilworth, who had studied with Ray while he was a student at UM-St. Louis.

Tuesday afternoon composer Rollo Dilworth was in Powell Hall for a photo session with a photographer from UM-St. Louis. It was indeed a homecoming for Dilworth. He grew up a few blocks from Powell Hall, on St. Louis Avenue. He was a member of the Saint Louis Symphony IN UNISON® Chorus, and at UMSL studied with Robert Ray, In Unison's director. Dilworth continued his studies at Northwestern, lived and taught in Chicago for 14 years, and recently moved to Philadelphia where he now teaches at Temple University.

Here is something David Robertson said about the Child of Our Time program last fall, which gives an idea of its reason for being on the Powell Hall stage this week:

On my way down from my office to the Friday morning Coffee Concert, I saw Susan Slaughter pausing on the stairs, rapping the metal handrails, and then trying to approximate the changes in pitch with her voice as she descended.

In our continual efforts to deliver more of the behind-the-scenes experience of the SLSO, I took the stage for Thursday's morning rehearsal with a cool little pocket Flip video camera and talked to some of the musicians and got an excerpt of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. Many thanks to the musicians for allowing me to do this.

With the release of Bob Dylan's Christmas CD and the SLSO rehearsing Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, Dylan legend and the 1812's cannon blasts must have converged in my mind. (Sorry, no cannons in Powell Hall.)

Our most obsessive Cardinals fan, Special Ops Force Commando Maggie Bailey (she works in Operations), has decided to box up her collection of bobble heads (Yadier Molina, Ozzie Smith ) and action figures (Chris Carpenter, Albert Pujols). They'll go away until the beginning of spring training. Winter will pass in her office with the Fredbird bobble head and bobble belly and the Adam Wainwright action figure (because he did no wrong) remaining in the baseball spirit of wait 'til next year.

Percussionist Tom Stubbs was backstage during the rehearsal of a medley of tunes called "Those Fabulous Fifties," a number guest conductor Victor Vanacore arranged that includes "Mack the Knife." A Tall Order dance company, Todd Marsden and Suzie Hardt, were rushing from the stage to the Green Room to make a rapid costume change. The strings were playing a melody that just oozed smoochy romance.

Roger Kaza is the new SLSO Principal Horn, getting off to an auspicious start playing the gorgeous horn solo in Mahler's Symphony No. 5 on Opening Weekend. This is his second time with the SLSO, having started at Third Horn in 1983, then moving on to the Houston Symphony, where he was Associate Principal from 1995 until this season. Current hornmates Larry Strieby and Jim Wehrman were members of the SLSO horn section with Roger back in the '80s and early '90s, when Leonard Slatkin was music director.

With the "Wedding March" from Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream being rehearsed downstairs--yes, that's the "Wedding March" you all know and may have played at your wedding--know that in a couple days on the same stage the orchestra will be playing the big band sounds of Duke Ellington and Glenn Miller and others, conducted by Victor Vanacore. Vanacore worked with the Jackson Five and Ray Charles, among others. And Bruce Springsteen is his cousin.

This reminds me of something that is often said by young players who have just joined the SLSO after working for a time with other ensembles. "This band can play anything!"

What does it mean when you miss your own anniversary?

October 4, 2005, the slso blog began. Thanks to everyone who has been reading along. Thanks to everyone who has participated in making this a very fun daily chore. Let's do it some more!

Just when I received two more notes of praise for the live, Saturday night broadcasts via KFUO, from New Hampshire and Kirkwood, Missouri, Tuesday morning the shoe dropped with the announcement of the sale of the station to the owners of JOY FM, a "Christian contemporary" station. Sarah Bryan Miller of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has been doggedly pursuing the story since it was just a rumor, and you can read her report here and add your own two cents in a poll here.

The sale requires approval from the FCC. So as native St. Louisan Yogi Berra supposedly once said...

It's something of a wonder to hear from people from all over the country who are ecstatic about hearing the SLSO live online via KFUO on Saturday nights.

An SLSO fan in Rhode Island writes: "We have just finished listening to tonight's concert live via our computer, since in Rhode Island, the computer is the only way. What a fabulous concert and how generous the sponsors are to share their access to the music with us. We are subscribers to the Rhode Island Philharmonic, but they perform only monthly.... So unless we are attending our own orchestra's concerts (also a fabulous ensemble), we will be faithful listeners to the SLSO Saturday night concerts LIVE."

When the orchestra and U.S. Army Herald Trumpets launched into Fanfare for the Common Man, more than a few of my colleagues commented on a momentary swelling of emotion. What is it about that piece? It gets you directly at the heart, every time. Jonathan Reycraft, one of the members of the trombone section, played the Fanfare on his first concert with the SLSO in 2006, a benefit concert for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. I remember him telling me it was almost overwhelming, even as he stood in the middle of it.

A colleague rushed down the stairs to get to the stage minutes before rehearsal. "I love the Prokofiev [Piano Concerto No. 2]. I'm so excited!"

As I've mentioned before, one of the first musicians to arrive at the hall each morning is bassist Warren Goldberg. He was just ahead of me this morning, making his way into the spruced up double bass room. Carolyn White did the sprucing this summer, with many yards of light-colored carpet stretched across the walls, decreasing the "dungeon" feel (as Warren once described it on another morning) of the double bass sanctuary.