July 2010 Archives

Summer at Powell Hall is a time for the rearranging of offices and the dispatching of accumulated stuff. This isn't the easiest thing to do when you're working for a symphony orchestra: one person's junk is another person's archive.

Many of you know the story of Nathaniel Ayers, the subject of the book and film The Soloist. And you know of his ongoing relationship with LA Times columnist Steve Lopez, who found Mr. Ayers playing a two-string violin on the mean streets of LA. It was Mr. Lopez who discovered that this homeless man suffering from schizophrenia was once a promising Juilliard student. Mr. Lopez and Mr. Ayers became friends, and Mr. Lopez went on to write the book The Soloist. 

I received a note from Saint Louis Symphony fan Kayla, a clarinet player who wants the musicians of the orchestra to know how wonderful they are. She sends a special shout out to fellow clarinetist Diana Haskell, who shared a stage-side photo moment with her.

So listen up SLSO musicians. You are wonderful, the best group of musicians in the whole world. Kayla says so.

In preparation for the 2010-11 season-long Russian Festival, I've been researching Russian composers--the first, it seems only natural, being Tchaikovsky. Two of his masterworks, the Violin Concerto and Symphony No. 5, are being performed on successive weekends to open the season.

I had a wonderful conversation with SLSO bassoonist Felicia Foland Thursday morning. Felicia will be the "Meet the Musician" subject for the September Playbill. She spoke to me from her country home, somewhere off a dirt road south of Hermann, MO, in a renovated log cabin that had been part of a German settlement in the 1860s. Felicia has been with the SLSO for 20 years--she really couldn't remember if she started in 1990 or '91. She grew up in Kirkwood and was a member of the Saint Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra. She's actually the first YO alum to have joined the SLSO, and was soon followed by Becky Boyer Hall, Kristin Ahlstrom, Mark Sparks, and more recently, Sarah Hogan and Erin Schreiber.

A walk through the Powell Hall foyer--which usually glistens like a room at Versailles, which makes sense since it was actually designed like a room at Versailles--these days has all the glamour of a construction site... because it is a construction site. Bathrooms--those most essential but too often neglected venue necessities--are being redone. All will be bright and shiny and palace-like again by fall.

I spent the weekend reading Renée Fleming's The Inner Voice: The Making of a Singer and, among other things, learned she wore out her LPs of Joni Mitchell's Hejira and The Hissing of Summer Lawns, and that she was invited to be the singer in Illinois Jacquet's jazz band when she was still a music school student in Potsdam, New York.

I was looking up information about Renée Fleming, the star of the SLSO's 2010 Gala, and discovered that she was invited by former president Vaclav Havel to perform at the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution in Prague in 2009. She sang Czech arias (she is of Czech ancestry) and she sang "Perfect Day" with Lou Reed. How cool is that?

After Wednesday's post I heard from a number of people who fondly remembered their days at summer music camp. Ah, youth. With the Youth Orchestra celebrating its 40th season during the 2010-11 season, YO manager Peggy Neilson and I looked at the roster for the 10th anniversary season. There were some familiar names: Becky Boyer, now Becky Boyer Hall, who plays in the SLSO second violin section; and Henry Claude and Ted Rubright, who frequently serve as extras in the SLSO percussion section.

I was in charge of locating just three Saint Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra musicians for a photo shoot with their conductor, Ward Stare, for an upcoming St. Louis magazine article. I figured, no problem. So I started making phone calls.

A while back I mentioned seeing a trailer for the Tilda Swinton film I Am Love (Io sono l'amore) and hearing the John Adams' score, particularly the finale to Harmonielehre, intensifying the visuals.

Thursday afternoon my capo dei capi, Adam Crane, and I took our show on the road to the Washington University Lifelong Learning Institute. The subject was the behind-the-scenes life of the SLSO, and since we're about as behind-the-scenes as it gets, we had plenty to talk about.

The recent failings of the St. Louis Cardinals have set me onto the edge of despair. I'll try and restore myself tomorrow and write a proper blog post.

As I'm sure most of you are well aware, KFUO ended 62 years of classical music programming on Tuesday night. And it was done most fittingly with Beethoven's "Ode to Joy." And music fans on the lawn with candles. And rain.

I'll share two observations from my sojourn to my own private Idaho.