February 2010 Archives

In this week's video blog, I want you to pay close attention to Nancy Allison's eyes when she talks about the previous evening's chorus-only rehearsal with Roberto Abbado. She says wonderful things about the rehearsal experience, but her eyes tell you just how wonderful it was.

The tail end of a conversation overheard between a stage hand and a musician prior to the first rehearsal of Haydn's "Drum Roll" Symphony, the musician speaking: "Hopefully, the notes come out."

With the Requiem to be performed this week, the death of Mozart hovers round. Is there any artist whose passing continues to be mourned as Mozart's is, more than 200 years after?

Friday night at the Black History Month concert Dr. Robert Ray was deservedly celebrated, with SLSO President Fred Bronstein and St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay starting the evening with an official city proclamation noting the contributions and general special-guy qualities of the sole director for the In Unison Chorus throughout its 15-year history.

There have been education concerts all week, two a day since Tuesday.

Kids get everything these days. They learn what a pentatonic scale is by way of Ravel, and they get to hear music from Pirates of the Caribbean, with Ward Stare conducting in a tri-cornered hat. When I was a kid, we got nothin'.

Here in Cardinal Nation we celebrate the arrival of pitchers and catchers to spring training. And perhaps no one celebrates this harbinger of spring--which is also the harbinger of many, many Cardinal victories--than Special Ops Forces Commando Maggie Bailey.

Dr. Robert Ray is conducting his final concert as Saint Louis Symphony In Unison Chorus director with the combined Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and In Unison Chorus on the Powell Hall stage Friday night for the Lift Every Voice: Black History Month Celebration. Robert has been the sole director of the In Unison Chorus for its full 15-year history--which is also being celebrated Friday night.

I've been revisiting The Catcher in the Rye since the death of J.D. Salinger, which for me, and probably for a lot of men for whom Holden Caulfield was an icon in their adolescence, is kind of like visiting a ghost of a former self. He was a character I took too much to heart when I was a teenager, and hearing his voice again makes me wince at times, remembering my past follies.

Pay attention. I'm trying to help you here. If you haven't managed a Valentine's Day gift by now, a swift trip to the grocery store for roses, a balloon and some cheap chocolate isn't going to save you. The concert at Powell starts at 3pm. Tickets are available. Make it look like it was all planned. You even planned the light dusting of snow. Two Romeo and Juliet pieces on the program. The prettiest violin concerto you ever want to hear. Sexy Ravel, which is what you'll both leave with playing in your ears. Think about it. No, don't even think. I'm serving up a hanging curveball here. Don't blow it.

Two more Valentine's Weekend concerts to go. You can still get tickets. You can still make this Valentine's Weekend work. There's even a concert on the day itself. Music guaranteed to make the object of your affection all swoony, because it's ROMANTIC. Get the picture. Go.

I'm always a little leery of the word "family" when it is used to describe any sort of organization or corporation or business. When I hear bosses say that "We're really a family," I wonder, "Why would we want to be that?" I know this may sound cynical, but given the dysfunctional nature of so many families, is that really an appropriate organizational model? Plus, if you stretch the metaphor a bit, who are the siblings, who is Mom or Dad? And, as we all know, you can't choose family, and in businesses people are hired, and fired. What's familial about that?

Sometimes the sequels are better than the originals (Godfather II, Aliens). In my rush to post, I left out a couple of couples: Tom Drake (trumpet) and Marian Drake (cello extra), and Susan Gordon (viola) and Marc Gordon (former SLSO English horn/oboe, retired).

Thanks to Facebook friends Sarah (violin, Indiana U., daughter of Tom and Marian) and Stephanie (SLSO staff/development) for keeping me correct.

For Valentine's Weekend, a list of the married couples of the SLSO: Erik Harris (double bass) and Heidi Harris (violin), Dana Edson Myers (violin) and Tim Myers (trombone), Deborah Bloom (violin) and Chris Carson (double bass), Catherine Lehr (cello) and Manuel Ramos (violin), Morris Jacob (viola) and Anne Fagerburg (cello).

Radu Lupu's Sunday afternoon encore was Brahms' Intermezzo in A major, op. 118, no. 2. And as much as the audience appreciated this, I've been told that the musicians were transported into a state of bliss.

I'm sorry I do not have a photo of cellist Danny Lee reclining in a seat in the auditorium reading a GQ with Johnny Depp on the cover during rehearsal break.

I had lunch with bass player Chris Carson today, who will be the March Playbill Meet the Musician subject. He and his wife, violinist Debbie Bloom, won't be playing the Beethoven Festival this weekend. Depending on what is being performed each week, the orchestra swells and shrinks. Sometimes the full orchestra, plus extras, is needed; sometimes, as with the Beethoven works this weekend, the orchestra thins down a little bit. In the rotation of players, Chris and Debbie got the week off.

Whenever I ask David Robertson, "How's it going?" as I did on an elevator ride from stage floor to sixth floor Wednesday afternoon, I already know he's not the sort of person to just say, "Fine," or "OK," or "Chillin'."  

Becky Boyer Hall told me as early as last summer about a special violin she would play for the Beethoven Festival. Then, a few days after the Sunday Beethoven Family Concert, she brought her instrument in for the video blog. We got together in the Met Bar in Powell Hall and Becky showed off her very cool Beethoven Fest violin. Watch.

During another Town Hall Meeting after-party conversation last week, an SLSO fan told me that the premiere of Beethoven's "Eroica" Symphony and the Lewis and Clark party's departure from the Mandan villages en route to the Pacific were on the same date. Depending on the hour of the concert and the time the Corps of Discovery's oars were in the Missouri, he surmised, these two expeditions into new territory began at about the same time.