April 2010 Archives

Thursday afternoon I had the opportunity to escort an HEC-TV cameraman and production team that were visiting the hall to record some footage of Christine Brewer for a planned TV profile of our homegrown soprano. As part of the occasion, students from her own personal adopt-a-school, Marissa Elementary, were treated to a lunch in the foyer with Christine, a bass-baritone welcome from Alan Held, and greetings from David Robertson just before Wagner rehearsal began with the singers and orchestra.

It may seem counterintuitive to talk to the piccolo player before a Ride of the Valkyries rehearsal, but the slso blog is nothing if not counterintuitive. And, the SLSO recently welcomed its new piccolo player, Rachel Braude, to its ranks (pronounced Brodie, as in The Prime of Miss Jean). As you'll learn from Rachel, since she has moved here from Boston she's discovering the old-school culinary character of St. Louis, and she'll explain the significant role the piccolo plays in Die Walküre, or dual roles, as played by Rachel and Andrea Kaplan.

An SLSO fan responded angrily to yesterday's post, upset that the judge seemingly dismissed the art form so many of us are so passionate about. She said he should have encouraged the jury pool to listen to the music, rather than to apologize for it.

During my day of fulfilling a civic duty, the judge asked the members of the jury pool to wait while he and the attorneys decided on the jurors to hear the case.

I begin jury duty on Monday. As soon as I have fulfilled my civic duty, I'll be back to blogging from Powell Hall.

As my Coffee Concert friend and I shared our list of books we'd been reading and movies we'd seen recently, we got to talking about Duke Ellington. Ellington came to mind because Bach was on the program, and I remembered a scene in Alex Ross' The Rest Is Noise in which Ellington, during a New Yorker interview in the 1940s, compared himself to Bach. "Bach and myself," he said, "both write with individual performers in mind." Ellington said these words while eating a pork chop.

Chris Maue has been keeping up his comic-strip report of Bloggers' Night. He gets into the whiskey in the current edition. Click to read, and Chris provides his own clicker to go back to the previous strips. 

Julia Erdmann takes some time during the rehearsal break to talk about moving from tour-mind back to Powell-mind, and praises the hometown hall. She also praises guest conductor Pinchas Zukerman and tries to pick her favorite, Brahms' Serenade No. 2 or Stravinsky's Pulcinella Suite. And you get a little of the rehearsal sound of the Brahms in this week's video blog.

I was waiting for the elevator on the seventh floor so I could go down to the stage to shoot the next video blog (coming soon: horn player Julia Erdmann and Brahms' Serenade No. 2) when I heard some beautiful violin playing from the floor below.

"These are days you'll remember," Natalie Merchant sang in the 10,000 Maniacs era, and that's something of the feeling around the SLSO in the afterglow of the California tour. Many glowing reviews, and many words of joy and pride from the musicians.

While I'm waiting for an appropriate time to call California and assess the tour finale buzz, The Basement Entrepreneur sends in his reflections of the April 10 Bloggers' Night, and comes up with an intriguing idea for the iPad. Click.

A break in the action while I was away from electronic devices, but now the tour finale is imminent and we'll again go back in time and move up to the present.

Let's go back in the time machine to Bloggers' Night, with the first of a planned series of comic strips from Chris Maue. The Powell concert of April 10 began with third graders playing violins as the warm-up band. Read Chris' strip: click.

Oboist Barbara Orland was not at LA/Ontario airport waiting during the flight delay--next stop, UC-Davis, Mondavi Center. Barbara was in Oakland meeting with friends from her Oberlin days. Before we got to talking about the Palm Desert/McCallum Theatre concert, she had to add to the praise for Disney Hall: "...unbelievable first notes from the Mozart concerto--warm and luscious and yummy."

I caught up with cellist Bjorn Ranheim as the bus carrying the SLSO was rising up out of the Los Angeles basin, "The snow-capped Sierra Madre to my left, beautiful rolling hills around me."

The posts from Bloggers' Night continue to come in. Jordan Oakes of St. Louis magazine describes the the violent violin carvings of Gil Shaham (Click)  and A Well Respected Tumblr gives us a "Well Respected Night at the Symphony." I will add, beer is always a welcome beverage in St. Louis, whether at Powell Hall or anywhere else. Click.

SLSO violist Chris Woehr is keeping a journal of his California Tour exploits and will be sharing his observations for the slso blog. As you can read, a violist comes prepared.

My colleague Adam Crane, Communications Department Director and il capo dei capi in my book, went to LA ahead of the band to take care of business and to visit with friends (his last gig was with the LA Phil). He will provide substantive reports as the tour winds along.

When we host Bloggers' Night, our guests are generally very eclectic in their musical tastes, but also are generally less knowledgeable about classical (or whatever we want to call the music the SLSO plays most of the time) than the many other music varieties. It is that fresh sensibility that often makes these blog posts so interesting.

I know I wasn't the only one in the hall Sunday afternoon wondering why the Mozart Second Violin Concerto doesn't get performed more often.

The first post in was actually from Dear Dominik, the lost blogger, which you will read about, but for some sort of technical difficulties I was unable to post in its proper order. Try again. Click. 

Somewhere late in the night, after the Doctor Atomic Symphony implosion had diminished in our blogger heads, there was talk of a show with live tweets, and some sort of promotion from PBR and bacon. Don't ask. I could never explain.

We're hosting our fourth Bloggers' Night Saturday. We're into double-digits in terms of bloggers who are scheduled to attend, which means much of next week you'll get to read numerous perspectives of the Rouse/Prokofiev/Sibelius/Adams concert.

As I mentioned previously, I sat down in an unWerner Herzog-like manner with David Robertson the other day to record some of his thoughts about the California-bound program this weekend. I did this as a special invite to the SLSO's Facebook community, which I know overlaps somewhat with the slso blog community, but to make sure you get it, here it is.

Before the first rehearsal of the Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 2, with Gil Shaham, Wednesday afternoon, David Robertson told the musicians of the SLSO about the first time he and Shaham were to play the work together.

I shot a video of David Robertson talking about this weekend's concerts for the SLSO's Facebook. I promised David ahead of time that I wouldn't get all Werner Herzog on him. I didn't hypnotize or pull a gun on him, or send him down the Mississippi on a ship with no steering mechanism.

Hopefully we'll have the video up tomorrow. Just David talking about music, with no volcano on the verge of eruption nearby.

The blog will be taking a break during this break in the action. A lovely Easter/Passover to all. The next post will be Tuesday, April 6.