Eddie Silva: August 2007 Archives

I am going to make the Labor Day weekend a little longer so I won’t be back to post until Tuesday, September 4, which, ohmygosh, will be my fourth anniversary with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra.

There were auditions for the grownup orchestra earlier this week, and today there are auditions for the not-yet-quite-grownup orchestra. Saint Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra auditions are in progress. All those returning to the nearly 100-member orchestra must re-audition each season along with all of those hopefuls wanting to make it for the first time. I met a couple members of the Symphony Volunteer Association at the signup table, with the sounds of a double bass riding up the scales coming from the Green Room. “You’re going to hear a lot of that today,” I said to the woman at the table. “And a lot of good stuff too,” she assured me.

This morning I met Tom Drake, assistant principal trumpet, at the refreshingly timeless Spencer’s Grill in Kirkwood. Although all that surrounds Spencer’s has been new-urbanized, the diner stubbornly maintains its old-town character. Tom and I talked orchestra over an excellent BLT and a turkey club.

For those of you who were wondering whatever happened to the vintage “Powell” sign going up on the hall, which I reported a while ago, the concerns of officialdom have held me back from delivering the news. Of course, if you’ve driven Grand Ave. over the last few weeks, or taken a peek from one of the cross streets -- Delmar or Lindell or Washington, for example – you’ve already gotten an eyeful of our great and graceful new landmark, designed to appear as the old St. Louis Theatre sign once did, back when this place was a movie palace 40 years ago.

The second week of the season features a unique program in which seven SLSO musicians will be given center stage for Martin’s Concerto for Seven Wind Instruments. The magnificent seven are: scuba-diving specialist Barbara Orland (who also happens to be assistant principal oboe), the new assistant principal flute Andrea Kaplan, assistant principal clarinet Diana Haskell, assistant principal bassoon Andy Gott, horn player Tod Bowermaster, assistant principal trumpet Tom Drake, and assistant principal trombone Stephen Lange (who got his one and only speeding ticket in Texas because he was so caught up listening to a recording of Prokofiev Symphony No. 5).

Here are a couple recent emails from SLSO fans.

As anyone who has traveled in the Midwest and the South in these United States knows, any food can be fried. And many people who live in these regions will tell you, any food is better fried.

I received my annual summer postcard from SLSO first violinist Amy Oshiro, this one from Sun Valley. She reports that she has played six music festivals this summer. She also ends every sentence with an exclamation point except one, in which she mentions she’s “a little exhausted,” but then shifts back to the overall exuberant tone that is Amy O: “I’ll be back for opening week in St. Louis!”

I will be going on vacation to find some nourishment in New York, where it is also cooler than St. Louis. My next post will be Monday, August 20.

The best part of my day has been coffee with Barbara Orland, the SLSO assistant principal oboe. Barbara’s 30th anniversary with the orchestra was last season. She was hired while she was in the midst of her master’s studies at Temple University. The Dean of the Music School wondered if she was really sure she wanted to go to St. Louis. She told me she “happily packed my bags and left Philly” in 1976.

A few of my colleagues recently returned from a convention in Tucson. When I first heard of this junket, earlier in the summer, I figured this was the cheap-rate convention: Arizona in August.

They have returned to report is was cooler in Tucson than it was in St. Louis last week. Much cooler.

Back when I was writing for a local newspaper, and back in the bad old days when it looked like the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra was going to become as extinct as the Yangtze river dolphin, I used to ponder who Randy Adams most looked like: James Brolin (as when he appeared against type in the great indie flick Gas, Food, Lodging) or James Garner (I was thinking of Garner in the Murphy’s Romance era).

From Don Banks' NFL blog, via Alex Ross’ music blog:

A pertinent quote from the painter Frank Stella, from his Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, "Working Space":

You have not heard “Over the Rainbow” until you have heard it performed by an ensemble made up of trumpet, cornet, guitar, accordion and tuba. Ein prosit!

The sign on Grand is going up, which means more men with blowtorches working from a crane in the near-100-degree heat.

If it’s the hottest weekend of the summer it must be time for Strassenfest!

This is the opening to the poem “Winter Stars” by Larry Levis:

I get a little uneasy when I arrive at the hall on the first day of August and see a man with a blowtorch outside the back door.