Boris Allakhverdyan (left) and Ilya Shterenberg

Once again, I do what I can to give you the latest and greatest news about the musicians of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.  Let’s begin:

Principal Flute

Denis Bouriakov officially began his tenure as Principal Flute today.  He makes his subscription concert debut this Friday in a concert conducted by Gustavo Dudamel; the program includes Britten’s Young Apollo, Stravinsky’s Apollo (featuring dancers performing George Balanchine’s choreography), and the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony.

Even though the former Principal of the Met Opera Orchestra has yet to appear on stage at Walt Disney Concert Hall, he already began to make his presence felt in Southern California. He appeared last night as soloist with the Chamber Orchestra of the South Bay in CPE Bach’s Flute Concerto in d minor and the Fantasie by Fauré (very bummed to have missed that).  In addition, he has already committed to being a guest artist for the 2016 “Beyond the Master Class” flute seminar run by Jim Walker, a former LA Phil Principal flute himself.

Principal Clarinet

Michele Zukovsky is still Principal Clarinet and sounding fantastic in the process, but her final appearance in that capacity on December 20th is fast approaching.  I sit down with her this Wednesday to chat about it and, well, whatever comes to mind, and will share the interview with everyone a few days before her last concert.

As for Ms. Zukovsky’s potential replacement:  nothing official from the orchestra, but multiple sources say that there are two finalists to fill the huge vacancy that will be created when she retires, and one of the sources mentioned these two names: 

• Boris Allakhverdyan, Principal Clarinet of the Met Opera Orchestra
• Ilya Shterenberg, Principal Clarinet of the San Antonio Symphony

Examples of both of their playing are below:

No word on when the gentlemen will play their trial weeks.  It would have to happen while Mr. Dudamel is in town, and I’d be shocked if they could schedule either of the musicians for the coming week since the auditions were only a few weeks ago.  A more likely scenario would be during The Dude’s Spring 2016 appearances.  His concerts Feb 25 – March 6 feature some interesting repertoire with meaty clarinet parts (including Copland’s Appalachian Spring and the Mahler 3rd Symphony); the programs from those two weeks will also be played on the LA Phil’s March 2016 tour to New York, Amsterdam, Paris, Luxembourg, and London, so if the trials occur in that time, it’ll be interesting to see if either of the candidates join the orchestra on that tour.  If the trials don’t occur then, the next opportunity would be during the last three weeks of the season, May 19 – June 4.

If Mr. Allakhverdyan ultimately gets the position (and I’m not saying he should or shouldn’t), he’d not only be the third principal woodwind player to join the LA Phil directly from the Met in the past few years (Mr. Bouriakov and Principal Bassoon Whitney Crockett being the other two), he’d be the latest player to depart/escape the Met.  The Met’s other Principal Clarinet, Anthony McGill, has already left to join the New York Philharmonic.

Many fans of the LA Phil might be shocked that Burt Hara isn’t among the finalists or perhaps that he wasn’t offered the job outright.  Certainly, the orchestra’s distinguished Associate Principal and former Principal with both the Minnesota Orchestras and Philadelphia Orchestra has the credentials and the chops to do the job, and during his time in LA, his playing has been consistently magnificent.  So what gives?

Apparently, Mr. Hara chose not to take the audition.  This may not be as surprising as it first seems for two reasons:

• When I spoke to him soon after he accepted tenure here and officially resigned from the Minnesota Orchestra, I asked him how he felt serving as Associate Principal instead of having the top job.  His calm response foreshadowed his more recent decision:  “If I were a younger musician, it might matter more.  But after having been Principal in Minnesota and Philadelphia for 25 years, I have nothing left to prove as a musician, to me or to anyone else.  Plus, I still get my share of opportunities to play first chair.”
• It’s also worth noting that by not taking the audition, he’d almost certainly be on the committee selecting the finalists; in other words, he’d have a huge say on who’d be leading the section going forward.  That has its own benefits.

Strings

I had previously reported that Ben Hong, the LA Phil’s Assistant Principal Cello, had won the audition to become Associate Principal, and that no date had been set for when he’d officially take the new position.  Observant fans will note that according to the LA Phil’s roster, he still hasn’t moved into his new job.  Final details are still being hammered out, and until that happens, Mr. Hong continues to be the “Acting Associate Principal.”

In the meantime, Dahae Kim, Assistant Principal of the Detroit Symphony, has taken over as “Acting Assistant Principal” as a substitute player.  Once Mr. Hong officially gets his promotion and if/when he obtains tenure, Ms. Kim will officially join the LA Phil and begin her own tenure process.

Over in the violins, Nathan Cole (the orchestra’s First Associate Concertmaster) recently won the audition to be the Seattle Symphony’s new Concertmaster and was offered the position.  No news yet on whether or not he will accept the position, and no announcement has been made from either orchestra.  A couple things to note:

• It’s a matter of opinion which position is “better” (a more prestigious job with a less prestigious orchestra or visa versa, living in LA vs. Seattle, etc.).  What is indisputable is that according to the latest IRS public filings, Mr. Cole already has a higher compensation than all but eight concertmasters of US orchestras, so odds are good that he’d have to take a pay cut to join the SSO, potentially a large pay cut.  According to the most recent applicable Form 990s, Mr. Cole has a total compensation over $300,000/year; Adaptistration.com shows the Seattle concertmaster’s total pay in the same year to be $205,000.
• Mr. Cole’s wife, Akiko Tarumoto, holds the 5th Chair in the LA Phil’s First Violin section.  I have no doubt that she could earn a job with the SSO if she wished; however, she’d have to wait for an actual audition to even attempt to join that orchestra, and even if/when she did take it, there’s no guarantee that she’d win the audition and stranger things have happened.  Furthermore, she would also have to take a pay cut to move to Seattle.

Brass

No major updates with either the Principal Trombone or Associate Principal Horn chairs.  What I can say is this:

• I’m expecting that at least one more candidate for Principal Trombone will play a trial during the next two weeks.  Jim Miller (LA Phil Associate Principal) continues to be Acting Principal.  When needed, Kim Ohlemeyer, former Principal Trombone with the Phoenix Symphony, sits in with the orchestra.
• With regards to the Associate Principal Horn position, my understanding is that there are no candidates officially under consideration currently, and an audition will occur this season or next.  Over the past few months, many horn players have played first chair with the orchestra when Andrew Bain needed a break:  Joseph Assi (Associate Principal, Dallas Symphony) has been the most frequent guest; others have included Karl Pituch (Principal, Detroit Symphony), Roger Kaza (Principal, St. Louis Symphony), and David Everson (Assistant Principal, Detroit Symphony).  Amy Jo Rhine, the LA Phil’s 3rd Horn, has played first chair as well on occasion.

RELATED POSTS:

• LA Phil’s Ben Hong promoted to Associate Principal Cello
• Update re: Michele Zukovsky, her last LA Phil concert date, and her retirement
• LA Phil comings and goings (Summer 2015 edition): big news in the flutes and clarinets, plus a little more (UPDATED on July 8)

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Photo credits:

• Denis Bouriakov:  courtesy of the artist’s website (www.bouriakov.com)
• Boris Allakhverdyan:  courtesy of the artist’s website (http://www.borisallakhverdyan.com)
• Ilya Shterenberg:  courtesy of  North Shore Chamber Music Festival
• Burt Hara:  courtesy of the Los Angeles Philharmonic
• Dahae Kim:  courtesy of National Repertory Orchestra

On first impression, Michele Zukovsky might not strike you as anyone particularly notable other than being a fairly energetic, witty, and self-deprecating 70-something.  That seems to suit her just fine.  Rather than talk about herself or her career, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Principal Clarinet is more eager to share photos of herself as a proud grand-aunt, crawling on all fours as two young children hang all over her.  “I’m really just an old hippy,” she confesses, just as Eric Clapton’s music begins playing in the background seemingly on cue.

Yet if anyone born in Los Angeles were pre-destined to be one of the world’s truly great clarinetists, Ms. Zukovsky would be it.   Her father, Kalman Bloch, was Principal Clarinet of the LA Phil for over 40 years, half of that time spent with her as the other Principal.  Her mother, Frances Bloch-Heifetz, was an artist and a relative of legendary violinist Jascha Heifetz.

This Sunday will mark the final concert Ms. Zukovsky will play with the LA Phil.  Her first performance with them was in 1961, and she has served as Principal for almost her entire tenure.  To put that 54-year time span in perspective, consider that when she joined the orchestra, Ronald Reagan was still a Democrat and hosting the General Electric Theater on TV, John Glenn was about a year away from being the first American to ever orbit the Earth, and a 25-year old Zubin Mehta had not yet become Music Director in LA.  There was no Internet, there were no cell phones or faxes, in fact, people would recognize “Pennsylvania 6-5000” as both a song AND a phone number.

She has seen, heard, and done a lot during those nearly five-and-one-half decades:  got her orchestra job as a teenager; served as a pioneer for women as principal players in professional orchestras; changed instruments ten years into her career; played for five Music Directors; performed numerous premieres including being the soloist in the world premiere of John Williams’ Clarinet Concerto; and much more.  She’s seen the LA Phil rise from a good provincial orchestra to a truly world-class ensemble, and has been a major contributor to that process.  As I’ve said before, I hope the LA Phil and its donors endow the Principal Clarinet chair in her honor because she deserves it.

Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with her over lunch.  We chatted about her career, dispelled some myths, and talked about her plans for the future.  She was candid with her opinion about many topics and people, while taking great pains not to offend even when there was seemingly nothing to be offended about.  It was as casual and easygoing a time as one could hope, with Ms. Zukovsky often making a point to ask about my background and being generous with her time in general.  In fact, if not for another appointment on my schedule and a planned lesson on hers, we probably could have continued our banter.

Here is much of that conversation . . .

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CK Dexter Haven:  You’re a local girl in the truest sense, aren’t you?

Michele Zukovsky:  I lived my whole life in the Echo Park / Silver Lake area.

I got offers to play in other orchestras, but my comfort zone would have been upset, so I just stayed here [laughs].   I’ve got called to play in Paris, New York, everywhere. I love the idea of traveling, but I like to go home afterwards.

I went to John Marshall High School, which is right around here.  Got to play at USC when I was 18, then joined the Philharmonic.  It’s amazing:  I’ve lived and worked within an eight-mile radius my whole life.  I just like a very simple life.

CKDH:  You grew up, of course, with your father playing in your house.

MZ: Yes, with my father playing and his students too.  I grew up with the sound of the clarinet in my ear, that’s for sure.

CKDH:  Did you ever grow up thinking you’d play anything besides the clarinet?

MZ:  Um, no.  I mean, really, no.  My life was so set.  My father had clarinets lying around and one day I said, ‘Oooh, let me try ‘em,’ and that was it.  I took to it like a duck to water, basically.

CKDH:  For a lot of people, having their parent teach them something doesn’t work.  I tried to be my son’s first piano teacher, and that went horribly.

MZ:  Yeah, but that’s because you were father and son.  Father and daughter, that’s okay.  We were very similar in many ways, and had the same sense of humor, so it worked out.

CKDH:  At what point did you decide you wanted to make a life playing clarinet just as he had?

MZ:  I didn’t choose it, it just happened.  I was one of these happy-go-lucky people who never thought ahead.  I just lived — and still live — in the moment, so I hadn’t ever planned on being first chair in the LA Philharmonic or that kind of person.  I just thought I’d be a teacher or whatever, you know?  Just hang out.

CKDH:  Was there any particular reason you chose to go to school at ‘SC, besides the fact that it was within an eight-mile radius?

MZ:  [laughing]  Because it was a name I knew, I just tried out and got a full scholarship, so I said, “Okay, I’ll just play there.”  I was just that kind of person.

I took steps that weren’t planned, but evidently it was destiny.  I was just following a path that was laid out before me.  So that’s what happened.  I didn’t have that hunger, I didn’t have that, “I’ve gotta make it” personality.  It just happened.

Zubin Mehta, Michele Zukovsky, and Kalman Bloch

CKDH:  How did your father feel about it?  Some parents are like, “You really should do this,” while others might say, “Well, I don’t know if you want to get into this.”

MZ:  No, my mother had to talk my father into letting me audition for the job [at the LA Phil].  I’m just one of these people who is sorta kinda on this meditational plane.  I don’t think ahead that much.  I just think, “Okay, I’ll just pick up the clarinet,” or “okay, I’ll just practice for a month then try out for the job” . . .

CKDH:  And it worked!

MZ:  Yeah [laughing], I can’t believe to this day that this is how it happened.  My whole life happened that way.

CKDH:  You were a sophomore at ‘SC?

MZ:  No — well, it was my first year there.  I went to LACC for a year when I was 17, then when I was 18 I went to USC.  Then 10 weeks after that, I got the job.

I tried to maintain the job at the Philharmonic and go to USC, but I got so sick with infectious mononucleosis.  I said, “Dad, I can’t go to college.”  I just learned everything on my own.  You know, I teach there now and I’m not sure they even know I that I don’t have a degree! [Laughs]  I just followed the path, I didn’t push.

CKDH:  And it worked for you.

MZ:  It worked, it really did.  I was just one of these lucky people.

CKDH:  So that was 1961 and Georg Solti had just announced that he wasn’t taking the Music Directorship.

MZ:  He wasn’t coming, which was really great for me because he might not have hired me!  A committee hired me.  I played the audition at the Hollywood Bowl behind closed doors, and they didn’t know who was playing, so it was a fair audition.

CKDH:  Was your father on the committee?

MZ:  I don’t know.  I think he was not.

CKDH:  But you hear stories from that era of other musicians not going through a committee.  I think Roger Bobo [tuba great and her former colleague at the LA Phil] mentioned that he got the job by basically just auditioning for Zubin Mehta, and Zubin gave him the job.

MZ:  That’s the way it was done.  Sometimes, I think it is better that way because a lot of people who audition nowadays have to fulfill all desires:  they have to play in tune, they have to play in time, they have to play within a certain box or else they aren’t going to move ahead.  And some of those wilder, more interesting individual players, like Roger Bobo or myself or whoever, would not have made the finals.

I call them “lopsided players.”  Those kind of guys are the ones that perk up your ears but may not do everything great, like my father.  He tried out for Otto Klemperer, and there were only two people, him against one other guy.  He just played while Klemperer was at the piano, and he just played some Wagner or some solo piece.  Klemperer heard him and just hired him.  He didn’t play one single excerpt from the orchestral repertoire.

Taking four lines of Tchaikovsky or, um [thinking] . . .

CKDH:  Kodaly or Gershwin

MZ:  Exactly!  Not always the best way to find the best musician.

CKDH:  So did you play excerpts when you auditioned?

MZ:  Yes, I did play excerpts.  Actually, during the audition, I made mistakes.  In Peter and the Wolf, I made a mistake.  Yet they heard something they liked, and I still ended up [getting the job].  Today, the person who made that mistake would not move up.

CKDH:  You’ve sat on audition committees, I’m assuming.

MZ:  Not for very long, actually.  I don’t like all that committee stuff.  But I did sit on a few.

CKDH:  So when you did, did you provide input on the excerpts at least?

MZ:  For the clarinet auditions?  Sure.  The audition system itself is flawed, but it’s the best we got.

CKDH:  Like democracy according to Winston Churchill?

MZ:  Right, exactly!

CKDH:  So you were in the orchestra for a few years as a section player before you got promoted.

MZ:  At some point, Zubin decided that he wanted to have co-principals in all the sections.  Mostly, he decided to do that because he thought some of the principals were not as strong as the section players, so he thought it’d bolster the sections.  I didn’t like the idea at first, but he did.  So my dad and I shared duties as co-principals.

CKDH:  So back when there were two principals, before Burt Hara joined as Associate Principal, you would often play 2nd chair instead of first because the official 2nd clarinet is also the official E-flat clarinet at the LA Phil.  How did you like doing that?

MZ:  That was fun.  Sometimes I’d just rather do that.  You can just go there and play and leave.  You don’t have to get a great reed.  Same with Burt, has told me that he likes getting to play 2nd sometimes.  He’s very casual.

CKDH:  I spoke to him over the phone soon after he got tenure here and officially resigned from the Minnesota Orchestra and asked him, “Many are wondering how can you take an Associate’s job after playing Principal for 25 years?” and he replied, “You know, if I were a younger musician it might matter more.  But I don’t have anything left to prove to myself or anyone else.”

MZ:  That’s true, very true.  This guarantees that he has some nice solo work and also can spend more time with his family, probably even prolong his career.

CKDH:  You’ve seemingly had a consistently excellent section over the years, including now.

MZ:  Yes, David Howard has been wonderful, and Andrew [Lowy] has been a fine addition.

CKDH:  And you’ve specifically played with some fantastic principal players:  your father, Lorin Levee, and now Burt.  Can you tell me a little about each of them?

Kalman Bloch, Lorin Levee, and Burt Hara

MZ:  My father was a naturally great musician with a gorgeous sound.  He also was a little bit of a lopsided player in that his intonation was sometimes a little touchy, but it was worth it for what you got out of it.  Gorgeous sound.  The way I play is very much an extension of how he played; I really don’t know where my father ends and I begin.

Lorin was an amazing technician.  Amazing.  He could play anything.  He wasn’t a savant, but he could just lay it out.  I would hear him play and just say, “Oh my God.  Genius.  Amazing.”

CKDH:  I’ve heard stories of people who said they heard about him when he was still just a teenager.

MZ:  Oh yeah, he was very famous, he soloed with the Chicago Symphony back then.  After a while [of playing together], I looked at a new piece of music and looked at him and say, “Lorin, I don’t want to bother learning this, it’ll take me a month but it’ll take you only a couple days.  Will you take it?”  And he’d say “Okay.”  He was just one of those kind of guys.  He was a great colleague.

CKDH:  Now Burt.

MZ:  He’s a prince, an absolutely incredible guy, and an incredible player.  I had really wanted him to try out for first chair [at the LA Phil’s recent audition for a new Principal Clarinet].  I’m still a little disappointed he didn’t.

CKDH:  Well, when the orchestra settles on someone to hire as the new Principal, they’ll have two outstanding players again.

MZ:  True.

CKDH:  I think many people were surprised he’d actually take an audition to come to LA as an Associate Principal in the first place.

MZ:  I think people know me to be casual. People know I don’t have to play everything, not like a first player who says, “I have to do this, and this, and this.”  Like Burt, I have nothing to prove. [Laughs]

[To be continued HERE . . . ]

RELATED POSTS:

• LA Phil comings and goings (Fall 2015 edition): Principal Clarinet update and much more

• Update re: Michele Zukovsky, her last LA Phil concert date, and her retirement

• LA Phil comings and goings (Summer 2015 edition): big news in the flutes and clarinets, plus a little more (UPDATED on July 8)

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Photo credits:

• Michele Zukovsky, November 2015:  photo by CK Dexter Haven
• Zubin Mehta, Michele Zukovsky, and Kalman Bloch:  courtesy of David Blumberg
• Kalman Bloch:  courtesy of ClarinetCentral Blog
• Lorin Levee:  courtesy of the Los Angeles Philharmonic
• Burt Hara:  courtesy of the Los Angeles Philharmonic

Kurt Masur, Music Director Emeritus of the New York Philharmonic and former Kappellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, has died at his home in Greenwich, CT.  The German native was 88-years old.

Notable obituaries:

• Margalit Fox for The New York Times
• Anastasia Tsioulcas for National Public Radio

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Photo courtesy of Radio France / Christophe Abramowitz

Michele Zukovsky, Principal Clarinet of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, wraps up her amazing 54-year tenure with the orchestra in an all-Rachmaninoff concert today at 2pm; Cristian Măcelaru conducts.

Below is the second part of my interview with her (Part 1 is HERE).  In it, we chat about her switch from a French clarinet to a German one, some observations about conductors good and bad, and her plans for the future . . . . 

—–

CK Dexter Haven:  How do you [and the other LA Phil Principal or Associate Principal] decide who plays what?

Michele Zukovsky:  How we decided between me and Lorin [Levee] originally was that we flipped a coin.  I started playing first [chair], then the next weekend he would play first.  Honestly, my career is as long as it has been because of that co-principal situation.  I don’t think I would’ve lasted as long as principal clarinet otherwise.  You know Burt [Hara, the LA Phil’s Associate Principal], asked me that same question.

It’s another bit of luck.  I’ve been lucky my whole life.  I didn’t like it at first, but it grew on me.

CKDH:  So going back to when you got hired, Zubin joined the next year or so.  It is pretty well known that he has always loved your playing.  That said, he also went public not long after becoming Music Director that he didn’t believe women should be in orchestras.

MZ:  [Laughs]  Yeah, but he changed his mind.  WE changed his mind.

CKDH:  You and Barbara Winters [the LA Phil’s former Principal Oboe].

MZ:  Right.  Yeah, he changed his mind.  Little by little.  When I first joined the orchestra, there were only five women.  Playing in an orchestra was considered “a man’s job.”  But at the same time, you had all these great women as solo pianists.  My mother-in-law was a great pianist, but she had to stay at home and raise the kids.  Now, it’s an even playing field and we can all work.

CKDH:  So I’ve heard a few different stories about how and why you switched from a French clarinet to a German clarinet, a Wurlitzer.  Some stories have said Zubin asked you to make the switch, some say it was your decision.  What’s the truth?

MZ:  The truth is that it was my decision.

They didn’t make mouthpieces so good back then to get the sound I liked.  I had to work too hard to get the sound I wanted out of a French clarinet.  So I tried a German mouthpiece back in 1970, and I said, “Wow, that’s incredible.  I don’t have to work so hard.”  So I put the German mouthpiece on a French clarinet, but that was too out of tune.

Eventually, my husband [the late clarinetist Charles Zukovsky] and I bought two Wurlitzers.  They’re very hard to play, but if you play correctly, like a teaching aide, you sounded really great and it made me play correctly my whole life.  If you didn’t play correctly, you’d sound terrible.

I like the French for Ravel and other similar repertoire.  But Zubin did a lot of Mahler, Bruckner, Strauss.  And he did everything else too.  To me, it all sounds better on the German.

CKDH:  No one else you’ve played with in the section has ever played a German clarinet, have they?

MZ:  No.  I don’t even let my students play it.  It’s too hard.  You lose 30% of your technique.

CKDH:  So how long did it take for you to make the transition from the French to the German?

MZ:  I did it in one day.

CKDH:  Oh my God!

MZ:  I put the French clarinet down, I picked up the German clarinet, and that was that.

CKDH:  You just walked on stage one day and . . .

MZ:  Yup, walked on stage and played it.  It was hard, I wasn’t sounding so good for a year. [chuckles]  In 1971, I changed and my father [Kalman Bloch] helped me cover the hard parts.  But by 1978, I did the Corigliano Clarinet Concerto and the German sounded great.  I think.  I don’t know.”

CKDH:  I’m sure it did.

MZ:  Anyways, that’s what happened.  I’m sure Zubin said, “I want you to go to Germany or Austria and . . .”  It’s not true.  I taught myself.  I never had a lesson on the German clarinet.

CKDH:  Have you ever had a student come to you wanting to learn to play German and then . . .

MZ:  And then I told them not to?  Yeah, I had one student.

There were other [principal] clarinetists that did it.  Larry Combs in Chicago played German when Barenboim ran the orchestra because he liked that sound.  And what was the name of the conductor from the Concertgebouw when my father was in the orchestra?

CKDH:  Eduard van Beinum?

MZ:  Yes, van Beinum.  He wanted my father to play a Wurlitzer, but he didn’t.

I think the Buffet is great.  It’s really about who’s playing, who’s behind the wheel. . . .

But I’m not a very good teacher though, I have to say.

CKDH:  How can you say that?

MZ:  Because I’m a natural.  It’s very hard for me to give specifics like, “You should do this or that.”  Instead, I’m like, “Pick up the clarinet and do it like I do it.“ [she chuckles].

CKDH:  Not exactly the way Yehuda Gilad [famed clarinet pedagogue who teaches at USC and Colburn] does it.

MZ:  Now Yehuda is incredible.  He’s got the gift, he’s got magic. When kids come to me, I say, “Look, all I can do is teach you the clarinet.  I don’t have anything going for me.  Study with Yehuda if you want to learn special things.”  He’s incredible.

CKDH:  It’s amazing how many of his students have ended up with major gigs in orchestras all over the world.

MZ:  I know!  Why?  How?!!  He’s just incredible.  I took a lesson with him to find out.

CKDH:  You took a lesson?

MZ:  Oh yeah, I wanted to see how he taught.  I think he had me ride a stationary bike before playing or something like that [laughing].  Whatever he does, it’s remarkable.

. . . .

CKDH:  Did you play at all in the studios too?

MZ:  I did.  A lot.

CKDH:  Did you enjoy that?

MZ:  No. Not particularly.

CKDH:  Why?

MZ:  I don’t know.  I just . . . I mean, a couple of studio calls with John Williams were nice.  There were a couple of tracks with some nice clarinet licks, but mostly, no.  I’d rather just watch grass grow or take a walk [laughing].  That’s just me. . . .

CKDH:  John Williams wrote his Clarinet Concerto for you, and you’re the only one who he’s ever let play it.

MZ:  I don’t think he likes it.  I mean, I like it, but . . .

CKDH:  Maybe you can come back and play it again.

MZ:  No, I’d rather do something different, like play early clarinet.  I need a new challenge.

. . . .

CKDH:  From your perspective, how was Zubin Mehta as a Music Director?

MZ:  Wonderful.  Very engaging, very caring.

CKDH:  He hasn’t guest conducted the LA Phil in the past few years, but before that, he visited fairly often.  How different is he now to when he was Music Director.

MZ:  Very different.  I heard him from the audience when he was 26.  He was a very physical conductor.  He relied on that, it was his energy.  And now he’s slowed down a lot, that’s what happens.  He was more of a showman back then, he wanted to put on a good show and feel the passion.

CKDH:  Then going from him to Carlo Maria Giulini was a big transition.

MZ:  Giulini was so refined and NOT a showman.  More spiritual, like Toscanini.  He was afraid of Beethoven, so of course, at some point we did it a lot.  He was a wonderful musician.  If I were to be a conductor I would’ve imitated the way he conducted.  Though he was sometimes too slow.  Too darn slow, man!  Don’t you think? [laughs]

CKDH:  I think of the Beethoven 3rd you and the orchestra did with him.

MZ:  I don’t listen to my recordings really.  How was it?

CKDH:  Really slow!  [laughing]  Let’s call it “spacious.”

MZ:  He was wonderful, but I don’t think he was [at his best] in symphonic repertoire.  I think he was best with opera, as are most Italian conductors, because that’s what Italian composers wrote.  I think German conductors tend to be best with symphonies because they were more often written by German composers, French conductors with Debussy and Ravel, English with English . . .

CKDH:  And American conductors with Gershwin, Copland, and Barber?

MZ:  Unfortunately, yes.  That’s true, unfortunately.  You got it. . . .

Though there was [one young German conductor] who made his debut with us many years ago and was just awful in rehearsal, full of himself, treated us poorly.  Finally, at one point during rehearsal, he said he was having trouble expressing himself in English because he didn’t speak it very well.  And I said out loud, “Don’t bother, you’re not coming back!”

[We both laugh]

I used to have a vast collection of Beethoven symphonies, and I put together my ideal Beethoven 9th, movement by movement.  It was like Mengelberg, Furtwängler, and two others that were perfect.

That tradition has been diluted through the years.  You’re not looking necessarily at the way Brahms did it when he was alive, we’re not going to hear or feel the way Brahms did it in the 1890’s.  It’s not being passed down very much longer.

Now, you’ve got these great young performers doing Vivaldi violin concertos where they’re making it a whole new thing.  It’s like alive and they’re improvising.  It doesn’t have to be the way Vivaldi did it, and they’re phenomenal and I can feel it.  That’s the way we’re going now.

Music can be very boring now when you’re just trying to repeat the same old thing over and over instead of making it your own.  Now, even with the period instrument orchestras, they’re starting to all sound the same.  I used to listen to 33s and could tell within the first three downbeats who the conductor was and where the orchestra was from.  Now, not so much.

CKDH:  Isn’t the overall quality of musicians better in orchestras?

MZ:  Yes, but it all is starting to sound too generic.

CKDH:  Is that because of the recordings?  Or the conductors traveling all over the world?

MZ:  Partly.  The conductors are tired.  They just want to make a nice, safe performance.

I think that’s one of the reasons I’m glad to be done.

CKDH:  I was gonna ask this later, but since you brought it up, I’ll ask it now:  why are you leaving?  People all over the place, including myself, other regular concertgoers, even people inside the orchestra, all think that you you still sound awesome.  Why did you pick now?

MZ:  I’d rather leave five years too soon than two years too late.

CKDH:  Had you pondered leaving earlier?

MZ:  I tried to retire a couple of times, but they just said, “No.” [She grins]  . . . But it’s time.  Now I have a new life partner and a whole new life awaiting me.

CKDH:  Good for you.  What does that life look like — away from music?

MZ:  I don’t know, honestly.  We’ll see where life takes us.  He’s brilliant.  He’s someone to be with and have a good time with.

I’ll teach, I’ll play chamber music concerts.  It’s just time to leave.  I’m going to be 73.

It has nothing to do with the clarinet playing.  I haven’t really practiced for years.  I haven’t.

CKDH:  People will love to know that!!  When was the last time you “woodshedded” a piece?

MZ:  I’m too senile to remember!  Usually, if I just practice a piece for an hour, I get it.  It’s terrible, but it’s true.  Maybe I just don’t have high standards.

CKDH:  I find that interesting and hard to believe.

MZ:  Maybe I’ll learn Spanish, then learn the piano or something.  I’ll teach lots of kids.

CKDH: You’ve played so many different things:  orchestral works, chamber music, concertos, solos.  Is there anything that you’re going to particularly miss playing?

MZ:  I’m going to miss it all.  Don’t think I’m not going to miss a single bit of it, that wonderful sound that washes around me, playing great music.  I love it.

I just didn’t want to deal anymore. . . .  I’m always having to look for a reed and having it wear out.  I think I got a little lazy.

I watched my father go through retirement, and I swore I’d never do it that way.  He was 67.  It’s very hard [retiring].  Don’t get me wrong, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. . . .

It’s going to be very difficult.  I’m probably not going to come around and won’t hang out. . . . I just don’t want to be around the orchestra for a while.  I want to make a clean break, close this chapter and move onto another chapter.

There’s another world out there.  [In this job], you get very focused in on one thing because you have to sound good.  You have to let a lot of things go, you have to let the world go by you, and I don’t want to do that anymore.

CKDH:  Well 73 or not, you’re still in good shape, both musically and physically.

MZ:  That’s the time to leave!

CKDH:  While you can still enjoy everything else.

MZ:  Mmm-hmm.  I think I want to cook.  Learn to cook.

CKDH:  Do you cook now?

MZ:  I don’t cook at all!

CKDH:  There’s a new adventure for you.  Maybe the next time we have lunch, you can cook for us.

MZ:  Oh, I don’t think I’d put you through that.

. . . .

CKDH:  Any final thoughts for everyone?

MZ:  Yes, something I’d really like you to share:  orchestra musicians need you, the audience.  We can play very well without an audience, but we feed off your energy.  It’s synergistic and it makes the concert experience special.  Thank you and please keep coming.

—–

Michele Zukovsky’s final concert as Principal Clarinet of the Los Angeles Philharmonic will be 2pm, Sunday, December 20, 2015:

Cristian Măcelaru, conductor
Kirill Gerstein, piano

Rachmaninoff: Vocalise, Op. 34, No. 14
Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18
Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances, Op. 45

RELATED POSTS:

• A chat with Michele Zukovsky (part 1 of 2): the LA Phil’s outgoing Principal Clarinet reflects on how her 54-year tenure began, the audition process, and more

• LA Phil comings and goings (Fall 2015 edition): Principal Clarinet update and much more

• Update re: Michele Zukovsky, her last LA Phil concert date, and her retirement

• LA Phil comings and goings (Summer 2015 edition): big news in the flutes and clarinets, plus a little more (UPDATED on July 8)

—————

Photo credits:

• Michele Zukovsky, November 2015:  photo by CK Dexter Haven
• Zubin Mehta in 1961 at the Hollywood Bowl:  photo by Otto Rothschild from the Los Angeles Philharmonic archives
• Michele Zukovsky (black & white):  courtesy of the Chamber Orchestra of the South Bay
• album cover:  courtesy of Deutsche Grammophon
• Michele Zukovsky at Walt Disney Concert Hall:  courtesy of the Los Angeles Philharmonic

The good folks at Los Angeles Opera just announced their 2016/17 season (at the slightly curious time of 9pm-ish Pacific Time, midnight-ish Eastern, but no matter).  There are six mainstage productions, one semi-staged musical, three “Off Grand” productions, plus the regular community performances of Britten’s Noah’s Flood.  First, the details, with my general observations on the season below that:

Mainstage Productions

1. Verdi — Macbeth (seven performances, Sep 17–Oct 16, 2016):  Plácido Domingo and Ekaterina Semenchuk star as the titular King and Lady from Verdi’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Scottish Play.”  James Conlon, LA Opera’s Music Director, conducts and Darko Tresnjak, last seen by the company leading the excellent production of The Ghosts of Versailles, directs this new production.
2. Glass — Akhnaten (six performances, Nov 5–27, 2016; company premiere):  Countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, mezzo-soprano J’nai Bridges, and soprano Stacey Tappan appear in a new production directed by Phelim McDermott.  The company’s freshly minted Artist-in-Residence, Matthew Aucoin, conducts.
3. Mozart — The Abduction from the Seraglio (six performances, Jan 28–Feb 19, 2017):  Aleksandra Kurzak plays Constanze and James Conlon conducts this rendition co-produced with six other opera companies — including the long-lost Opera Pacific
4. R. Strauss — Salome (six performances, Feb 18–March 19, 2017):  Soprano Patricia Racette is back and so is Sir Peter Hall’s production from LA Opera’s first season.
5. Offenbach — The Tales of Hoffman (six performances, March 25–April 15, 2017):  Soprano Diana Damrau makes her LA Opera debut and tenor Vittorio Grigolo returns in this redo of Marta Domingo’s production.  She directs and her husband, Plácido, conducts.
6. Puccini — Tosca (seven performances, April 22–May 13, 2017):  Soprano Sondra Radvanovsky returns in the title role.  ‘Nuff said.

Other Productions

• Hearne — The Source (five performances, Oct 19–23, 2016, REDCAT; West Coast premiere)
• Aucoin — Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (two performances, Oct 29 and 31, 2016, The Theater at Ace Hotel; world premiere)
• Bernstein — Wonderful Town (three semi-staged performances, Dec 2-4, 2016, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion)
• Britten — Noah’s Flood (two performances, May 6, 2016, The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels)
• Sankaram — Thumbprint (four performances, June 15–18, 2017, REDCAT; west coast premiere)

My $0.02 on the season

• The 2016/17 season is an improvement over the rather dull 2015/16 season.  Granted, that’s a rather low hurdle to overcome, and but any improvement is a step in the right direction.
• The big emphasis by LA Opera for the coming season is to present operas that haven’t been seen at the Dorothy Chandler in a while.  That’s something that should be applauded; even a warhorse like Hoffman hasn’t been performed by the company since 2002.  However, when shows by Verdi, Mozart, Strauss, and Offenbach are being offered up as rarities, the company still has a long way to go before it gets back to the artistic level seen before the great recession; the 2014/2015 season with its Dido/Bluebeard double bill and Ghosts of Versailles seems avant-garde by comparison.  We haven’t seen Wozzeck, The Fiery Angel, or Queen of Spades in a long time also, why not bring one of them back? The Rake’s Progress by Stravinsky is still nowhere to be seen.  Ditto Janácek’s From the House of the Dead.  If those are too edgy, there are Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera, or Donizetti’s La fille du régiment, both of which have been absent from the LA Opera stage.  There are at least two dozen more options, but alas, we’ll have to wait until the 2017/18 season or longer.  Almost makes one long for the days when the company had the cojones to stage a production of Strauss’s Elektra that featured, among other things, huge broken phallus on stage . . . on second thought, maybe it’s better if that one is left locked up somewhere.
• Plácido Domingo, tenor-cum-conductor-cum-impressario-cum-baritone,  takes a stab at Macbeth (snicker snicker).  Good for him.  He may not be the perfect baritone, but may I never become so jaded that I don’t take look forward to hearing him sing.
• Major kudos to LA Opera for stepping up to present Akhnaten.  I’m saying that despite not being a huge fan of Glass’s music;  however, I really liked Einstein on the Beach, so I’m looking forward to what Aucoin and McDermott do with this one.
•  No Wagner opera.  Just sayin’.  I’m not a Wagner fan per se, but a major company like this one should be doing more of his works, shouldn’t they?  Even if they’re not yet ready to bring back the Ring cycle, how about some Parsifal or Tannhäuser?  Or a little Lohengrin?  Or to be really crazy, perhaps some Rienzi?  No??!!  Fine, be that way.
• Tosca again.  Tosca. AGAIN.  Ugh.  For heaven’s sake, they just presented the same production with the same soprano in 2013.  Yeah, sure, I liked it the last time around, and it’s very nice to have the bad-ass Ms. Radvanovsky back in town.  Still, couldn’t they have found something else for her to sing, like Donizetti’s Anna Bolena with which she’s been blow doors off the Met?  Or maybe even bring in a different bad-ass soprano, just to change things up a bit? Or at least find a new production?  No??!!!!  Fine, be that way.  To paraphrase Scarpia in the First Act finale: “Meh, Tosca”.
• I can’t remember the last time that Italian wasn’t the language of the majority — or even a plurality — of operas being performed at the Dorothy Chandler.  Just to be precise, there are two productions each in German and Italian, one in French, and one in a combination “English, Ancient Egyptian, Biblical Hebrew, and Akkadian.”
• More statistics:  38 total main stage performances, 13 off site, and 3 semi-staged performances of Wonderful Town at the Dorothy Chandler.
• One more number:  zero — as in the number of recitals this season, as well as the number of mainstage productions being conducted by Grant Gershon, LA Opera’s Resident Conductor; however, he is on the podium for Wonderful Town.
• I remember a time not that long ago when there were seven to nine mainstage productions, with seven performances of a given production being a low number.  Perhaps we’re better off having the company’s resources devoted to their “Off Grand” performances since they have tended to be reliably interesting; I’m still giddy about their ¡FIGARO! (90210) from a couple of years ago.  Still, Los Angeles shouldn’t have to choose between a reasonably robust, varied, and compelling main stage season and more adventurous off-site fare.

Bottomline:  Not a bad season, but it could/should be so much better.  Here’s hoping that by June 2017, the individual productions make me feel differently about it all.

The official Los Angeles Opera preview trailer and press release:

LA Opera Announces
2016/17 Season

Highlights include a major company premiere, a superstar debut
and four foundational works not presented in more than a decade

(Los Angeles) January 25, 2016 – General Director Plácido Domingo has announced the repertory and artist roster for the company’s 2016/17 season. Created by Mr. Domingo in collaboration with Music Director James Conlon and President and CEO Christopher Koelsch, the season will include six mainstage productions and a classic musical presented at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. A total of 40 performances will take place in that venue, while an additional 13 performances will be presented elsewhere through the company’s Off Grand initiative.

The season will open on September 17, 2016, and will run through June 18, 2017.

“LA Opera’s 31st season emphasizes operas that have long been absent from our stage,” said Plácido Domingo, who will open the season in the title role of Macbeth and later conduct a revival of The Tales of Hoffmann, starring soprano Diana Damrau in her company debut. “It includes four foundational works that haven’t been presented here in 13 years or longer, as well as the company premiere of Akhnaten, a major 20th-century work by Philip Glass. The season also features several multi-season programmatic initiatives. Macbeth will mark my fourth collaboration with James Conlon since 2012 in a Verdi masterwork. Akhnaten will be our third Philip Glass project since 2013, with more works by this hugely important composer planned for the future. In addition to our mainstage programming, Wonderful Town will inaugurate a three-season celebration of Leonard Bernstein, perhaps the most influential American composer of his generation. We expect our tribute to encompass four different Bernstein works by the time we reach his centenary in 2018.”

“The coming season affords me the opportunity to conduct four important operas that I haven’t yet conducted in Los Angeles,” said James Conlon. “The German operatic repertoire is an artistic legacy that is very important for the company and to me personally. After emphasizing Wagner in the seasons surrounding the Ring cycle, it is logical for us now to turn our focus to the operas of Richard Strauss, which haven’t been performed here in more than a decade. I’m especially looking forward to Salome, the first Strauss opera I will conduct at LA Opera, as well as The Abduction from the Seraglio, last performed here in 1995. Above all, I am thrilled to continue my ongoing collaboration with Plácido in our season-opening Macbeth, our offering to the international recognition of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. The diversity of the season’s repertoire affords ample opportunity for the LA Opera Orchestra and Chorus to display their extraordinary talents.”

Complete casting and additional information can be found at LAOpera.org or by clicking on the titles below for more details.

MAINSTAGE PRODUCTIONS
(performed at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion)

Macbeth (Sep 17–Oct 16, 2016) — Giuseppe Verdi
Plácido Domingo stars as Macbeth with Ekaterina Semenchuk as Lady Macbeth in a new production conducted by James Conlon. LA Opera’s first staging of Macbeth since 1987 will be directed by Darko Tresnjak (The Ghost of Versailles, 2015). Costume designer Suttirat Anne Larlarb, known for her work in such films as Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours, will make her operatic debut.

Akhnaten (Nov 5–27, 2016; company premiere) — Philip Glass
Matthew Aucoin, LA Opera’s incoming Artist in Residence, conducts a new co-production with English National Opera, directed by Phelim McDermott and starring countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo in the title role.

The Abduction from the Seraglio (Jan 28–Feb 19, 2017) — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
James Conlon conducts LA Opera’s first performances in 21 years of Mozart’s comic gem. Set aboard the “Orient Express” in the Roaring Twenties, the production is directed by James Robinson, featuring soprano Aleksandra Kurzak in the leading role of Konstanze.

Salome (Feb 18–March 19, 2017) — Richard Strauss
Soprano Patricia Racette returns to perform the title role in Peter Hall’s iconic production, first presented in LA Opera’s 1986 inaugural season. James Conlon conducts a cast that also includes baritone Tómas Tómasson as John the Baptist and renowned Wagnerian soprano Gabriele Schnaut in her company debut as Herodias.

The Tales of Hoffmann (March 25–April 15, 2017) — Jacques Offenbach
Superstar soprano Diana Damrau makes her LA Opera debut as all four heroines opposite tenor Vittorio Grigolo as Hoffmann. Plácido Domingo conducts Marta Domingo’s production, last presented in 2002.

Tosca (April 22–May 13, 2017) — Giacomo Puccini
Soprano Sondra Radvanovsky returns as Tosca with tenor Russell Thomas as Cavaradossi and baritone Egils Silins as Scarpia. James Conlon conducts John Caird’s thrilling 2013 production.

SEMI-STAGED CONCERT MUSICAL
(at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion)

Wonderful Town (Dec 2–4, 2016; company premiere) — Leonard Bernstein
Kicking off a three-season celebration leading up to the 100th anniversary of Leonard Bernstein’s birth, LA Opera’s Resident Conductor Grant Gershon conducts three special performances of one of the greatest treasures of Broadway’s Golden Age. (All-star cast to be announced this spring.)

30th BIRTHDAY OPEN HOUSE
(at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion)

On October 8, 2016, LA Opera will celebrate its 30th birthday by opening its doors and inviting everyone to enjoy the magic of opera. All events will be free to the public. Highlights will include appearances by Plácido Domingo and James Conlon, performances featuring members of the Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program, several additional performances for families, art workshops for children, costume and scenery demonstrations, backstage tours and much more. (Additional details will be announced later in the year.)

OFF GRAND PRESENTATIONS

The Source (Oct 19–23, 2016; west coast premiere) — Ted Hearne
The Source dives into the media hysteria surrounding Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning, the Army private at the center of the WikiLeaks scandal. The west coast premiere of The Source launches a third season of collaborations with Beth Morrison Projects.

Presented at REDCAT (631 W. Second Street, Los Angeles, 90012)

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (Oct 29 and 31, 2016; premiere)
Matthew Aucoin will create and conduct a new score for director F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent screen classic. The film will be screened as Mr. Aucoin leads a chamber orchestra in live performances of the score—incorporating music by composers of Murnau’s time and new music composed by Mr. Aucoin himself.

Presented at the Theatre at Ace Hotel (929 S. Broadway, Los Angeles, 90015)

Thumbprint (June 15–18, 2017; west coast premiere) — Kamala Sankaram
A true story told through Hindustani and European musical influences, Thumbprint explores the deep family ties and tribal traditions that empowered Mukhtar Mai to become the first female victim of gang rape to bring her attackers to justice in Pakistan.

Presented at REDCAT (631 W. Second Street, Los Angeles, 90012)

Noah’s Flood (May 6, 2017) — Benjamin Britten
James Conlon will conduct two free community performances on May 6, featuring hundreds of students and amateur performers collaborating with LA Opera’s professional artists and musicians.

Presented at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels (555 W. Temple Street, Los Angeles, 90012)

For more information about LA Opera’s Off Grand initiative, visit LAOpera.org/OffGrand.

Additional Comments

“This announcement comes at the midpoint of LA Opera’s 30th Anniversary Season and I can’t wait to see what the next 30 years have in store for us,” said Marc Stern, Chairman of LA Opera’s Board of Directors. “The incredible team of Plácido Domingo, James Conlon and Christopher Koelsch are dedicated to fulfilling the bold vision of our founders. Their accomplishments would not have been possible without the extraordinary generosity and leadership of our board members, and I am also grateful to our audiences for their devoted support. I couldn’t be more optimistic about the future of the company.”

“With three mainstage productions that are new to our stage, as well as a variety of contemporary works of every scale, the 2016/17 season reflects our ambition to be known as one of the most forward-thinking companies in America,” noted President and CEO Christopher Koelsch. “Two of our presentations, Akhnaten and Nosferatu, will be especially notable for the participation of Matthew Aucoin, the brilliant composer-conductor who will begin his residency as our first ever Artist in Residence. Our ongoing series of contemporary chamber works, in collaboration with Beth Morrison Projects, continues to expand the boundaries of the art form, with powerful performances in the intimate environment of REDCAT. The important new works to be presented there in the 2016/17 season—The Source and Thumbprint—address raw contemporary subjects, WikiLeaks and the role of women in contemporary Pakistan, issues that are in the news today. Our Off Grand initiative continues to be a major draw for new audiences, as half of those in attendance at those performances are completely new to our company.”

Subscription Ticket Information

Season subscription tickets for the 2016/17 season are now available, starting at $99 for all six mainstage operas. Tickets for The Source, Nosferatu, Wonderful Town and Thumbprint are currently for sale only with subscription packages. For further information, please visit LA Opera’s website at LAOpera.org or call LA Opera’s box office at 213.972.8001.

Unless otherwise specified, performances take place at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion (135 North Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, 90012).

Please visit LAOpera.org for updated casting information and performance dates.

Artist headshots and production photographs are available on the LA Opera Press Gallery: LAOpera.org/press/Press-Photos

All programs, artists and dates are subject to change.

LA Opera is a non-profit organization
dedicated to serving the greater Los Angeles community.

Yamaha is the Official Piano of LA Opera.

LAOpera.org

LA Opera Media Contact
Fran Rizzi, Director of Public Relations
frizzi@laopera.org / 213.972.7554

Jean Davidson is six months into her job as President & CEO of the Los Angeles Master Chorale, and in some ways, she’s still settling in.

She’s lived much of the past two decades in New York.  Her most recent ten years were spent as the administrative yin to the artistic yang of acclaimed choreographer Bill T. Jones.  Before that, she was at the helm of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project.  And because of that, she’s definitely out of practice when it comes to driving a car, especially in the tangle of streets and freeways in LA.

So not surprisingly, she lives in Downtown Los Angeles within a reasonable stroll of Walt Disney Concert Hall.  “I love it here in the Arts District.  It kind of reminds me of Brooklyn in many ways, and it’s only a $3 Uber to the Music Center.  I even like walking there and back when the days are longer.”

She hasn’t quite sorted out the difference between “Highway 110 and Highway 101” – neither calling them “freeways” nor referring to them as “The 110” or “The 101” as locals are famous for doing – mainly because she hasn’t driven them with any frequency yet.

“My husband, Kojiro Umezaki, drives them more since he is on the music faculty at UC Irvine. Sometimes he takes the train to Orange County, but he drives regularly.  So usually when we’re together and we need to go somewhere, he drives.  The one time I drove, apparently it didn’t go very well because he said something like, ‘Okay, maybe we shouldn’t do that too often.’ [laughing]”

—–

Ms. Davidson is cheerful and friendly.  She has a casual confidence that is absent the swagger or stiffness displayed by many Chief Executives of either gender in any industry.  But make no mistake, the confidence is there in spades, combined with a probing mind and an intense love for The Arts in all its machinations.

As we’re enjoying an easygoing chat in a café within her adopted DTLA neighborhood, I ask Ms. Davidson:  how familiar was she with the Master Chorale before she tossed her hat in the ring for the top job?

“Not at all,” she freely admits.  “That’s the great thing, right?!  Not at all.  A friend of mine knew I was looking to relocate to Los Angeles and sent me a note with the position posting.  I had heard about the Music Center, the LA Phil, LA Opera, and Center Theatre Group, but I’d never heard of the Master Chorale.”

“So the first thing I did was go to iTunes to look for recordings, and the first thing I found was their Nico Muhly recording.  We had worked with him on a project for New York Live Arts, and I thought, ‘Oh, that’s cool.’  And then I listened and said, ‘Wow, that’s really beautiful.  I need to hear more!”  So I found the Gorecki recording, which is really amazing too.”

“Then about a year ago, I was in Los Angeles with Bill T. Jones for A Rite, a piece he created with Anne Bogart for the 100^th Anniversary of The Rite of Spring, and we were doing it at UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance.  I had applied [for the job] but hadn’t yet been called for an interview, so I sent an email to Terry Knowles [who was the LAMC President at the time] saying, ‘Hello, I’m applying to the position and I’m in town.  I’ve never seen you perform, can I come?’ ”

“So she invited me to a rehearsal at Walt Disney Concert Hall for the ‘Songs of Ascent’ program [featuring music by Whitacre, Brahms, Paik, and Kirchner].  I was blown away and it was only a rehearsal,” she says without a hint of irony or sarcasm.  “It was one of those moments – and it was just a rehearsal! – you know, those times when the world closes in around you and you’re centered and focused in on this artistic moment?  That happened.  It was amazing.”

Later she adds:  “I’m still learning about the choral world.   When I first started working with Yo-Yo Ma, I knew very little about classical music.  But I’m a hard worker and I’d like to think I’m a fast learner.”

Given all of that, she might seem like a curious choice to lead any choral organization, especially one so deeply rooted into Los Angeles as this one is.  After all, from its inception to the present, the LAMC’s executive leaders, conductors, and composers-in-residence have almost all tended to be Angelenos.  Many were – and in the case of current Composer-in-Residence Shawn Kirchner, still are – singers in the Master Chorale.

So why did the LAMC decide that this self-admitted choral newbie, an Oberlin College theater major and former lighting designer turned arts administrator, is the right person to lead the nation’s largest independent choral organization to the next level?

“It wasn’t like we said to ourselves ‘Hey everybody, let’s find someone for this position with virtually no choral experience whatsoever!’, ” says the Master Chorale’s Artistic Director, Grant Gershon, in an email response.  “What we knew going into the search process was that we wanted an arts leader with a very broad knowledge of what’s going on in the world of culture at large, and ideally one with a proven track record of success in steering a vibrant arts organization in a major urban center.”

Ms. Davidson postulates at least a couple more reasons why the LAMC Board chose her for this critical position:  “It’s one of the things that’s interesting is that I’m NOT an expert in choral music.  In fact, that’s one of the benefits I bring is that I can see things with an outsider’s point of view, and that can help us build the brand of the organization.”

“I’m not from New York but I’d been living there for 15 years and I’m pretty frank and blunt with my approach to business,” she reveals.  “During the interview process, I was very honest and open with them.  There are moments when I wondered how it would resonate with them when I said things like, “No one knows who you are outside the choral world.”  I said that because I believe that, and that’s a problem.”

She has similar opinions regarding Mr. Gershon’s relative anonymity outside the choral community.  “He’s a great artist.  More people need to know about Grant because he’s incredibly thoughtful, very knowledgeable, and yet extremely humble.  He’s not a huge ego, but he’s absolutely brilliant.  He reminds me a lot of Yo-Yo in that respect, and I’ve known him for 25 years.  It’s not like Yo-Yo or Grant are going to tell you exactly how to do something, but instead they’ll guide you there.  And every time I talk to Grant, I learn something new about choral music and classical music.”

“I mean this with respect [to everyone who has preceded me], it really is the best kept secret in arts in this country,” she emphasizes later.  “Why more people don’t know about the LA Master Chorale is perplexing because their artistic quality is so incredibly high.  So one of my goals is to increase the visibility of Grant and the Master Chorale nationally and internationally.”

When I ask if she has specific plans for how to make that happen, she gets a gleam in her eye and gives me a smile and an emphatic, “Yeah!”

Bill T. Jones

I press for details, but she politely demurs, not wanting to give away her strategy at this time and pointing out that it would be a conflict of interest for her to directly manage Mr. Gershon’s engagements away from the Master Chorale.

She is, however, willing to offer this potential precedent:  “After working with Yo-Yo for so many years, I went to work with Bill T. Jones, who is one of these absolute geniuses that nobody knew about.  And I always said that if I could figure out a way to get ‘Joe Sixpack’ in West Virginia, which is where I’m from, to know Bill T. Jones’s name, then I’ve succeeded.  So we worked on it for 10 years, and I’m certainly not taking all the credit and don’t want to sound egotistical . . . but after he earned a couple of Tony Awards [for Spring Awakening and Fela!], a National Medal of the Arts, and Kennedy Center Honors, I feel like we were able to say that we accomplished it.”

(Of course, there’s another precedent:  one only has to look to the Master Chorale’s roommate at Walt Disney Concert Hall, the LA Phil, and how their President, Deborah Borda, has influenced and perhaps even helped to steer Gustavo Dudamel’s career.  But I digress . . . )

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We talk in generalities about a few topics related to reaching new audiences, like the challenges and opportunities of attracting younger concertgoers, the optimum uses of video or other technology as part of both traditional and non-traditional choral performances, and the importance of taking smart, calculated risks and trying new things.

I mention that I heard about the LAMC’s recent recording session of works by David Lang:  the national anthems, which the Master Chorale co-commissioned and of which they gave the world premiere, and the Pulitzer Prize winning the little match girl passion.  I confess that I’m more excited that the Master Chorale made the point recording it in Hi-Res Audio than I am music about itself, and she laughs but also expresses satisfaction that somebody cares about the extra effort and expense.

(L to R) John Adams, David Lang, Steve Reich, Grant Gershon, Peter Sellars, Nico Muhly

When we get to the topic of building new partnerships and enhancing the ones they already have with people like Morten Lauridsen, John Adams, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Peter Sellars, and others,  she gets a little extra animated.  After all, much of her career success as an arts executive has been establishing and nurturing innovative collaborations across organizations and even genres.  Ms. Davidson mentions all the composers she has met since coming to the Master Chorale, and beams with pride when mentioning the “Made in L.A.” concert from earlier in the season which featured music by Messrs. Lauridsen, Whitacre, and Kirchner, as well as others like Dale Trumbore, Moira Smiley, Jeff Beal, Matthew Brown, Paul Chihara, and Nilo Alcala.  She’s willing and eager to leverage the contacts she has with artists outside the Master Chorale’s existing circle of relationships and introduce them to each other, but only when those contacts serve Mr. Gershon’s artistic vision.

“I’m always cautious not to confuse my role with the Artistic Director’s role,” she emphasizes.  “But I also feel like Grant and I already have the kind of relationship where I can say, ‘Here’s someone I’ve worked with in the past, let’s consider them,’ and he’s been open to it.  I bring my former relationships as an offering, I guess, and if something sticks, great, but in the end it’s Grant’s decision.”

Later she says:  “Grant’s on contract until 2020, and I want to achieve what he wants to do artistically with the hope that he’ll stay.”

We’ll all have to wait to see if he does stay, but right now, the admiration and openness to work with artistic partners old and new seems genuinely mutual.  “Jean has collaborated closely with artists whom I revere and who speak of their work with her in the most glowing terms,” Mr. Gershon says. “I knew already by the end of my first meeting with Jean that she could help us to reach new audiences and deepen the impact of our music making.”

Over the course of the next season or two, Los Angeles will have the chance to see and hear how the relationship between the two leaders of the Master Chorale begins to manifest itself.  And if those still-to-be revealed plans of Ms. Davidson pan out, the rest of the USA – and maybe even the world – will have a chance to see and hear these outstanding singers too.

As both Ms. Davidson and Mr. Gershon told me separately, “This is a very exciting time for this organization!”

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The Los Angeles Master Chorale performs the Verdi Requiem at Walt Disney Concert Hall at 2pm today (Saturday, January 30) and 7pm tomorrow evening (Sunday January 31).

Grant Gershon conducts.  Soloists include Amber Wagner (soprano), Michelle DeYoung (mezzo-soprano), Issachah Savage (tenor), and Morris Robinson (bass).

Tickets are available HERE.

Click HERE to view streaming video of their complete performance of the Verdi Requiem at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel (and featuring soloists Julianna Di Giacomo, Michelle DeYoung, Vittorio Grigolo, and Ildebrando d’Arcangelo).

RELATED POST:

• Spending time with Grant Gershon (Part 1 of 2): how a pianist and conducting skeptic became a choral maestro

Photo credits:

• Jean Davidson: via Twitter (Finland), photo by Tilly Blair,Gruber Photographers
• Album Cover (LAMC/Gershon:  “A Good Understanding,” Nico Muhly):  courtesy of Decca
• Grant Gershon:  photo by CK Dexter Haven
• Bill T. Jones:  photo by Walter McBride / WM Photos
• John Adams, David Lang, Steve Reich, Grant Gershon, Peter Sellars, Nico Muhly:  photo by Patrick Brown

Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Philharmonic made public their plans for the upcoming 2016-17 season at Walt Disney Concert Hall (details available HERE).  This comes on the heels of last week’s announcement of the 2016 summer season at the Hollywood Bowl (HERE are details of that).

In summary:  it’s a damn good-looking season.  The WDCH season in particular is pretty freakin’ spectacular.  Definitely worth a solid “A,” maybe even an “A+” if one doesn’t get too picky about guest conductors or the concentration of world premieres on the Green Umbrella docket.  Dare I say that this is the best season Gustavo Dudamel has programmed since he’s taken over the orchestra.  Here’s the short version as to why:

• Interesting mix of repertoire, featuring the requisite balance of new works vs. warhorses.  You want world premieres?  The LA Phil is playing 14 of them between the regular subscription season and the Green Umbrella new music series.  You want old masters?  Lots of Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Mozart, and Haydn for you too.  The rest of the season is punctuated by some wonderful choices that haven’t been played by the LA Phil in a long time, if at all.  Two cases in point:
  • Stravinsky’s Requiem Canticles and Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass on the same program with Yuja Wang playing the Bartok Piano Concerto no. 1  to boot!!!  Mr. Dudamel conducts this very Salonen-style program.
  • The U.S. premiere of an awesome sounding LA Phil co-commission:  George Haas’s Concerto Grosso for Alphorn (or “Alpinehorn” if you prefer) and Orchestra featuring the Hornroh Modern Alphorn Quartet.  Seriously:  Alphorn.  Four of them.  In Disney Hall.  It doesn’t get much cooler than that.
• The return of guest conductors who’ve been missing for a few seasons, most notably former Music Director Zubin Mehta.
• A solid roster of guest artists appearing with the orchestra (e.g. Yuja Wang doing all three Bartok Piano Concerti) and/or in recital (e.g. Martha Argerich and Stephen Kovacevich appearing together)
• Interesting programming initiatives aplenty.  None of the ho-hum Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, or Brahms festivals this year.

Let’s be honest, if this were any other orchestra, I’d give it an A+++, but we’re kinda spoiled here in LA.

After perusing the details of both seasons, here are  the things I thought were worth highlighting and/or commenting upon:

Conductors

• Music & Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel leads 13 weeks of subscription concerts at Walt Disney Concert Hall, plus the season opening gala.  He also takes the orchestra on a rare late-October/early-November tour to Costa Mesa, San Francisco, Davis, and Seattle, with Mahler 9 being performed in all cities and a second concert in San Francisco featuring Andrew Norman’s complete Play and the Tchaikovsky 4th Symphony.  He also leads three weeks at the Hollywood Bowl, with this summer’s opera being Tosca (yes, another Tosca . . . scoff scoff) featuring Juliana Di Giacomo in the title role, Fabio Sartori as  Cavaradossi, and Falk Struckmann playing the evil Scarpia.
• Conductor Laureate Esa-Pekka Salonen appears at WDCH for only two weeks (as opposed to the three-week stints with which he’s been gracing us lately), both in April 2017.  The first week is all Sibelius (Symphonies 6 & 7, Six Humoresques, and Finlandia).   The second week involves three non-subscription concerts offered as part of the broader “Reykjavík Festival” being presented by the LA Phil.
• Zubin Mehta makes his long-awaited return to the LA Phil podium January 13-15 conducting Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben and the West Coast premiere of Ravi Shankar’s Sitar Concerto No. 2, Raga mala, with Anoushka Shankar as the featured soloist.  (If you want a preview, you can get a used copy of the CD of the Shankar concerto featuring the same principals for only $1.12 on Amazon).
• Current and former LA Phil Assistant/Associate Conductors making appearances:
  • Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, current Assistant Conductor, soon-to-be promoted to Associate Conductor in June, and more notably, soon-to-be Principal Conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in September:   a Beethoven & Ravel night at the Bowl, plus three concerts at WDCH featuring the aforementioned Haas Alphorn Concerto Grosso squeezed between Mozart and Haydn.
  • Grant Gershon, Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale and Resident Conductor of Los Angeles Opera:   two performances El Niño, John Adams’ Messiah-inspired oratorio on the Nativity.
  • Lionel Bringuier, Chief Conductor and Music Director of the Tonhalle Orchestra in Zurich:   three concerts at WDCH doing the Mussorgsky/Ravel Night on Bald Mountain, Prokofiev 2nd Violin Concerto with Gil Shaham, and Stravinsky’s Petrushka.
  • Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Music Director of the Fort Worth Symphony:   one September evening at the Hollywood Bowl of R. Strauss, J. Strauss, Jr., and selections of pieces by Kreisler for violin and orchestra with Martin Chalifour, the LA Phil’s Principal Concertmaster.
  • Joana Carneiro, Music Director of the Berkeley Symphony and Principal Conductor of the Orquesta Sinfonica Portuguesa:  one night at the Bowl to conduct Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and the Korngold Violin Concerto with Mr. Shaham as soloist.
• Other notable returning guest conductors whom I’m looking forward to seeing with the LA Phil at Disney Hall (roughly in declining order of interest):  David Robertson, Stéphane Denève, Jaap van Zweden (recently announced as the next Music Director of the New York Philharmonic), James Gaffigan, Krzysztof Urbański, Bernard Labadie, and  Christoph Eschenbach.
• Notable returning guest conductors about whose return I am completely indifferent but whose concert I will attend with an open mind anyway:  Pablo Heras-Casado.
• Simon Rattle makes a very welcome Walt Disney Concert Hall appearance (yea!!).  Unfortunately, it is with the Berlin Philharmonic instead of the LA Phil (grumble grumble).  Still, when they show up to play Éclat by Boulez and the Mahler 7th Symphony, you can’t be too disappointed, right?   I’ll take it and say, “Thank you very much.”
• In what has unfortunately become the norm, no other conductors besides Messrs. Dudamel & Salonen conduct two or more subscription concert weeks.  Coming closest:
  • David Newman conducts two weekends at the Bowl, the first in July featuring music from Star Trek, and the second in September where he shares the podium with John Williams.  He also makes two subscription concert appearances at WDCH, conducting the LA Phil in Bernstein’s score for On the Waterfront on November 18 and Steiner’s score for Casablanca on November 20th, both of which will be performed while their respective films are shown.
  • John Adams, the orchestra’s Creative Chair, and Thomas Adès each conduct one week of subscription concerts plus one Green Umbrella concert.
  • Bramwell Tovey, the LA Phil’s former Principal Guest Conductor at the Hollywood Bowl, conducts five concerts at the Bowl between Thursday, August 26, and Thursday, September 1, then gets a week in WDCH leading a program of Walton, Sibelius, and Tchaikovsky.
• The season is awash in conductor/composers.  Besides Messrs. Salonen, Adams, and Adès, Daniel Bjarnason and Matthias Pintscher pick up the baton.
• Philippe Jordan (Music Director of the Opéra national de Paris) and Santtu-Matias Rouvali (Chief Conductor of the Tampere Philharmonic and former Dudamel Conducting Fellow) make their subscription concert debuts with the LA Phil during the WDCH season.
• Ludovic Morlot, Andrew Manze, Nicholas McGegan, and a few others appear during the summer at the Bowl, but won’t be at Disney Hall.
• Other frequent/occasional guest conductors notably absent from this year (roughly in declining order of disappointment):  Charles Dutoit, Susanna Mälkki, Michael Tilson Thomas, James Conlon, Emmanuelle Haïm, Leonard Slatkin, Daniel Harding, Semyon Bychkov.
• Guest conductors who haven’t been in LA in a long time that I’d love to see, but whose continued absence does not shock me:  Bernard Haitink, Riccardo Muti, Vladimir Jurowski, André Previn, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Kent Nagano.

Soloists

• Instrumentalists appearing with the orchestra:
  • The usual suspects:  pianists Yefim Bronfman, Emanuel Ax, Yuja Wang, Jean-Yves Thibaudet,  Hélène Grimaud; violinists Lisa Batiashvilli, Joshua Bell, Gil Shaham, Christian Tetzlff; cellists Johannes Moser.
  • Nice to have them back: pianists Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Daniil Trifonov, Stephen Kovacevich; violinists Ray Chen, Augustin Hadelich; cellist Steven Isserlis.
  • Some notable names make recital appearances but do not perform with the orchestra:  pianists Martha Argerich, Lang Lang, Garrick Ohlsson; violinists Hillary Hahn, Itzhak Perlman; Yo-Yo Ma (cello); Edgar Meyer (string bass); Renee Fleming (soprano); Ian Bostridge (tenor).
• Unlike previous seasons where multiple members of the LA Phil have been given solo turns, no one besides Mr. Chalifour gets to be at the front of the stage in either WDCH or Hollywood Bowl seasons.
• There are some excellent vocal soloists appearing with the orchestra, including:  mezzo-sopranos Michelle DeYoung, Elīna Garanča, Christianna Stotijn; baritones Matthias Goerne, Simon Keenlyside, and more.

Elīna Garanča

Programs and programming initiatives

• Overall, it’s the longest season I can remember, beginning with the season opening gala in late September and ending with a mid-June Green Umbrella concert.
• The upcoming WDCH season currently features fourteen world premieres, five U.S. premieres, and five West Coast premieres.  Almost all of them appear as part of the Green Umbrella series and not as part of the regular subscription.  In fact:
  • Only one of the world premieres (a new work by James Matheson conducted by James Gaffigan), one US premiere (the aforementioned Alphorn concerto grosso), and four West Coast premieres appear on the regular subscription season.  That’s somewhat disappointing.
  • Gustavo Dudamel conducts exactly zero world or US premieres.  None.  Nada.  Zip.  Goose egg. . . .That’s even more disappointing.  The only West Coast premiere he conducts is towards Osiris, a relatively small Pintscher work.
  • Mitigating this disappointment are the fairly numerous novel and/or rarely performed works on Mr. Dudamel’s concerts, including works by Stravinsky (Requiem Canticles, Symphonies of Wind Instruments), Janáček (Glagolitic Mass, Sinfonietta), Schoenberg (Accompaniment to a Film Scene, Piano Concerto featuring Emanuel Ax), Adams (Absolute Jest), Norman (Play), Prokofiev (Scythian Suite), Schnittke ((K)ein Sommernachtstraum).
• Composers shockingly and disappointingly missing from LA Phil programs in the 2016-17 season: um, well, nobody jumps out, I’m happy to say.  Like I said, it’s a pretty spectacular season . . . perhaps Gershwin, Copland, Barber, Bruckner, Elgar, Grieg, Salonen, Verdi, any number of women . . . someone help me out.
• Yuval Sharon begins his three-year partnership with the LA Phil with three projects:  Nights and Dreams: A Schubert & Beckett Recital with Mr. Bostridge; two Green Umbrella presentations and the unveiling of a new installation by Rand Steiger during a day of new music across the campus, and a staging of Lou Harrison’s opera Young Caesar.
• If you’re a fan of vocal/choral music like me, it’s a good year:
  • In addition to the previously mentioned El Niño, Stravinsky’s Requiem Canticles, Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass, and Young Caesar, the orchestra offers complete performances of Nixon in China by Adams (conducted by the composer), The Creation by Haydn (conducted by Mr. Dudamel), and Handel’s Messiah (conducted by Mr. Labadie and featuring his singers of La Chapelle de Quebec)
  • Mr. Adès’s concerts feature his  Totentanz during his subscription week and the world premiere of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground by Gerald Barry as part of the Green Umbrella series.
  • Mr. Dudamel leads a sequence of concerts pairing Schubert symphonies with Mahler song cycles:  Ms. DeYoung sings Songs of a Wayfarer for two nights, Mr. Goerne sings Kindertotenlieder for three nights, and Ms. Garanča sings Rückert–Lieder for two performances and songs from Das Knaben Wunderhorn for two other performances.
  • Mr. Jordan leads an evening of Wagner excerpts featuring Swedish soprano Iréne Theorin.  This is exactly how I prefer my Wagner — in short snippets instead of 5 hour chunks.

If you want a more quantitative analysis of the WDCH season, Brian Lauritzen crunches the numbers HERE.

It’ll be a good ride.  I’m looking forward to it.

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Photo credits:

• Gustavo Dudamel:  courtesy of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association
• Hornroh Modern Alphorn Quartet and Elīna Garanča:  photos courtesy of the respective artist’s website

As I mentioned last November, Boris Allakhverdyan was one of two finalists in the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s open auditions to find a new Principal Clarinet to take over for the retiring Michele Zukovsky.  Multiple sources have now indicated that Mr. Allakverdyan, current Principal Clarinet of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, won the last phase of the audition and was offered the job earlier this weekend.

Assuming he officially accepts the position, he will become the third LA Phil woodwind principal to have come directly from the MET orchestra: Whitney Crockett joined the LA Phil as Principal Bassoon in 2010, while Denis Bouriakov started as Principal Flute at the end of 2015.

So to recap for those of you trying to keep score of MET orchestra departures, here’s what I’ve got as far as principal players:

• LA Phil:  Messrs. Crockett (2010), Bouriakov (2015), and now Allakhverdyan (2016?)
• NY Phil:  Anthony McGill, Principal Clarinet (2014); Timothy Cobb, Principal Bass (2014)
• Chicago Symphony:  Steven Williamson, Principal Clarinet (2011); Stefán Ragnar Höskuldsson, flute (2015 but not starting officially until 2016)

Back in LA, a few additional titled chairs are still up for grabs.  Auditions for Associate Principal Horn are supposed to wrap up today, another guest Principal Trombone plays with the orchestra this week, and the orchestra recently announced May auditions for Principal Percussion.  I’ll continue to post updates as I get them.

RELATED POSTS

• LA Phil comings and goings (Fall 2015 edition): Principal Clarinet update and much more
• LA Phil comings and goings (Summer 2015 edition): big news in the flutes and clarinets, plus a little more (UPDATED on July 8)
• News about the LA Phil brass and a former principal flute, plus two guys named McGill and more

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Photo credit:  courtesy of  www.borisallakhverdyan.com

“Mommy would explain to us:  ‘Quiet, Daddy’s composing.  Quiet, Daddy has Stravinsky coming to the house tonight.’ ” — Lena Ballinger (Rachel Weisz), Youth

“Molto triste.” — Sumi Jo, the Oscar’s red carpet

If you watched the 88th Academy Awards last night, you may have noticed that only three of the five songs nominated in the “Best Original Song” category were performed during the ceremony.  While this isn’t the first time this has happened, it certainly goes against tradition.

More notably for classical music fans, one of the songs not performed was “Simple Song #3” (from the movie Youth), composed by David Lang and sung by coloratura soprano Sumi Jo.

The official reason for the omission as Variety reported last week: “time constraints.”

In my humble opinion, that’s — [cough] —  bullsh!t — [cough cough].  I’m guessing it had more to do with the genre of the song and the lack of popularity of the principals.  If the two songs left out of the show were instead performed by Rihanna and One Direction, you could bet your golden statuette that time would have magically been found.

Here are comments from the red carpet by Mr. Lang and Ms. Jo: 

Youth follows Fred Ballinger, a retired orchestra conductor played by Michael Caine, who is on holiday in the Alps with his daughter (Rachel Weisz) and his film director best friend Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel) when he receives an invitation from Queen Elizabeth II to perform for Prince Philip’s birthday. Paolo Sorrentino, the film’s director, chose the Pulitzer prize-winning composer because “he is a contemporary musician, able to compose both sublime and accessible music.  I thought he would be the best composer for this type of film and for the character of Fred.”

Below are three more videos:  a featurette on the music for Youth, the film’s red band trailer, and “Simple Song #3” itself sung by Ms. Jo and featuring violinist Viktoria Mullova and the BBC Concert Orchestra.

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Photo credit:  courtesy of Askonas Holt

The Los Angeles Philharmonic announced this morning that Susanna Mälkki has been appointed as Principal Guest Conductor of the orchestra.  The Finnish maestra’s tenure will officially begin with the 2017-18 season, with an initial contract to last three years.  She  will conduct three subscription weeks, Green Umbrella concerts, as well as other projects with the orchestra to be announced.

I was bummed out that she wasn’t appearing here in the coming season, but this totally makes up for it in its awesomeness.  Why?

First and most importantly:  

• She’s definitely one of the best conductors of this generation.  Many, including me, thought she should have been tapped as the New York Philharmonic’s Music Director instead of Jaap van Zweden.  Their loss is our gain.  Ms. Mälkki is a perfect fit for the LA Phil. She combines a stellar reputation in contemporary music with a proven ability to breathe new life into tired warhorses; her 2013 take of the Brahms 4th Symphony at Walt Disney Concert Hall is still the only rendition I’ve ever unequivocally enjoyed.
• No matter the repertoire, the orchestra has always sounded in peak form when she’s been on the podium.  I can’t say that of all the guest conductors waving his/her arms in front of them.

Secondly, her conducting style and repertoire nicely complements that of Gustavo Dudamel:

• They both bring  energy to the stage but in different ways.  Saying that his interpretations are more spicy, heart-on-the-sleeve affairs whereas hers are more subtle and analytical would be over-simplifying things, but not by much.
• More importantly, they have different centers of gravity when it comes to the composers they tend to perform.  Do you automatically picture Mr. Dudamel conducting the premiere of Unsuk Chin opera or Ms. Mälkki helming a Tchaikovsky cycle?  Um, probably the other way around.
• Now, there are those among you that were hoping for hoping for more of an eminence grise in the role (e.g. Charles Dutoit, to toss out one popular name) and will point out that Ms. Mälkki musical point of view overlaps considerably with Esa-Pekka Salonen, the orchestra’s Conductor Laureate and extant baton wielding “FinnAngeleno.”  I’d reply that this is beneficial, especially given that Mr. Salonen seems increasingly drawn to “projects” — next season’s Reykjavik Festival at WDCH and the recently announced Ring Cycle at Finnish Opera are just the latest example — than to subscription projects.  Moreover, overlap is not the same thing as identical.  While Mr. Salonen’s European base has been in London, Ms. Mälkki bring a more Continental perspective with past posts in Paris (Music Director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain) and Lisbon (Principal Guest Conductor of the Gulbenkian Orchestra), so their relationships and influences are going to be different.  There are also the obvious differences in gender and generation which are bound to manifest themselves.

Third, this appointment enables the LA Phil — and us as the audience — to build a deeper relationship with her specifically because she’ll be spending at least three weeks per year in Southern California.  That level of commitment between any orchestra and a guest conductor is noteworthy, and it is particularly rare with this orchestra.

• In recent years, few guest conductors without any kind of official Los Angeles Philharmonic position conducted as many as two weeks, let alone three, in any given season.  Since Walt Disney Concert Hall opened, you’ve had the occasional fortnight of Christoph von Dohnanyi, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, and Mr. Dutoit, but those were rare exceptions.
• The orchestra hasn’t had anyone as Principal Guest Conductor since 1981 when Carlo Maria Giulini was Music Director (!!!)  Of course, the two he picked were pretty good — you’ve heard of Simon Rattle and Michael Tilson Thomas perhaps?
• The last person to be offered the Principal Guest Conductor title was Mr. Salonen himself back in the late 1980’s while Andre Previn was Music Director.  Of course, that offer was made by former LA Phil impresario Ernest Fleischmann without Mr. Previn’s knowledge and the offer was withdrawn.  The tussle that followed eventually led Mr. Previn stepping down as Music Director, with Mr. Salonen soon being named to take his place
• The orchestra hasn’t had an official Principal Guest of any sort since Bramwell Tovey was “Principal Guest Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl” from 2008 to 2010, with Leonard Slatkin holding the awkwardly-titled job for the two years before that.

Finally, it’s worth noting that Ms. Mälkki three-year tenure at the LA Phil ends one year before Mr. Dudamel’s own contract as Artistic & Music Director.  That could end up being a completely meaningless coincidence — or it could make her the leading candidate to replace Mr. Dudamel in the top job once 2022 rolls around.  There are neither guarantees nor precedents, but should the Phil and The Dude decide to part ways at that time, she’d probably be among the names floated even if she didn’t already have official ties to the orchestra.  File that thought under, “Things that make you say, ‘Hmmmm . . . ‘ ”

In the end, this is terrific news for the orchestra and for Southern California classical music fans.  To them and us, I offer an enthusiastic, “Huzzah!”

The full press release from the Los Angeles Philharmonic is HERE.

RELATED POSTS:

• My $0.02 on the LA Phil’s 2016-17 Walt Disney Concert Hall season and 2016 Hollywood Bowl season

• Down a different sort of rabbit hole: the LA Phil finally brings Chin’sAlice in Wonderland to SoCal

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Photo credit:  Mathew Imaging

Nineteen years down, one more to go. With tonight’s concert at UCLA’s Royce Hall, Jeffrey Kahane will complete his penultimate season at Music Director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.

It’s a tenure that is remarkable not only for its length (which is considerable) or even the quality of the music that has resulted from it (which is consistently top-notch), but rather by the evolution and transformation that has occurred within LACO during this time.

I sat down Mr. Kahane earlier this week to reflect on his relationship with the orchestra over the years and to look forward to his plans for the near future.

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In June 1996, when LACO announced that then-39-year-old Jeffrey Kahane would be the orchestra’s Music Director beginning with the 1997-98 season, it would have been optimistic to think his time with the orchestra would yield such noteworthy results.

Los Angeles in the early 1990’s was, by all accounts, not the greatest time or place for many Angelenos, not least of those were folks involved with classical music. Fires, floods, riots, and earthquakes increased the general pessimism about the future of the city, leading to, among other things, a fiscal tightening. Investors of any kind were hard to come by for SoCal businesses wishing to survive, let alone grow. Finding well-heeled donors for high art was even harder.

The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra was already experiencing some challenges at the beginning of that period. When they announced in 1991 that Christof Perick would replace Iona Brown as Music Director the following year, it came as a surprise, most notably to Ms. Brown who called news of her departure “a great shock.” (Cariaga, Daniel: “Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra to Replace Music Director,” Los Angeles Times; 10 Jan 1991).

By 1994, the orchestra had flirted with bankruptcy and financial woes forced the orchestra to trim the size of its season, leading Mr. Perick to downsize his title as well to “Artistic Advisor.” Further cuts in programming for the 1995-96 season were followed by Mr. Perick abandoning the post entirely.

Into the breach stepped Mr. Kahane, still known primarily as a  popular piano soloist. “I had an incredible challenge because the orchestra was, as any of the musicians who were around at the time will tell you, quite demoralized,” he observes. “It was out of the woods in one sense [because bankruptcy was avoided] but there was a long way to go to build it up to the level of financial security and presence in the city that it has today.”

He credits the orchestra’s musicians, Board of Directors, and especially Ruth Eliel, LACO’s Executive Director at the time, for enabling his success.

“I was early on in my conducting career, maybe half a dozen years or so, but people on the board and the musicians had faith in me. They took a leap and offered me the position. Looking back on it now, I really think it was really a leap of faith on their part because I wasn’t someone who came to the position with a decade or so of experience as a conductor, and certainly not as a music director. Being offered the job was one of the greatest moments of my life.”

Of course, his relationship with the orchestra began long before when he was growing up in LA and going to the Mark Taper Forum when Sir Neville Marriner was conducting this orchestra there.  “He was not yet ‘Sir’,” Mr. Kahane says, chuckling.  “I probably attended a concert in the orchestra’s first season, and I heard them over the years,” he recalls fondly. “When my career as a pianist started to take off in the 1980’s, one of my first important engagements I had as a soloist was with the chamber orchestra. I had known many of the players well for several years before that, and I developed a special relationship with the orchestra as a soloist.”

By the late 1980’s, he was doing some conducting on a limited basis, mainly from the piano. His first-ever professional experience as a conductor was at the Oregon Bach Festival in the summer of 1988. “The Oregon Bach Festival was fondly referred to for decades as ‘LACO North’ because so many of the chamber orchestra’s musicians would go to Eugene for the summer to play for Helmuth Rilling,” he explains.

They had the tradition of playing at least one concert without a conductor on the podium, and at the time the concertmaster was Kathleen Lenski, who was also LACO’s concertmaster. She suggested that Mr. Kahane lead from the keyboard since he knew the concerto better than she did. That led to further conducting at the festival, which then led to an invitation to guest conduct LACO a few years later.

In that context, the notion that a struggling chamber orchestra should hire a relatively untested conductor to lead them out of its doldrums and improve its fortunes, both artistic and financial, makes more sense. In fact, it seems less like the “leap of faith” Mr. Kahane describes and more like a shrewd gamble by both him and LACO.

—————

Looking back, that gamble couldn’t have paid off much better. Twenty years after his appointment, the orchestra has re-established itself as an important part of the Southern California classical music community. They perform concerts throughout LA County, with subscription concerts in Glendale and the Westside, a Baroque series at the Colburn School in Downtown, an annual concert in Pasadena at the Ambassador Auditorium, and an acclaimed “Westside Connections” series curated by Concertmaster Margaret Batjer that examines links between music and other artistic, scientific, and societal influences.

“I inherited an orchestra that played wonderfully and a loyal and dedicated audience, but it was in some ways, it was a conservative institution. There wasn’t a lot of risk taking going on. I love how we’ve taken risks since then, and almost everything has paid off.”

How did this happen?

“I was able to win the trust of the musicians, the audience, and the Board,” states Mr. Kahane. “It didn’t happen overnight, but I believed it was possible for the orchestra to regain the stature that it had and to do things new and different. The amazing thing looking back was that almost everything that I had wanted to happen actually happened: we did recordings, we took the orchestra to Carnegie Hall, we took the orchestra to Europe.”

“Most importantly, the orchestra is in a very healthy and stable position,” he asserts. “You can take an orchestra to Europe and end up a million dollars in debt. We were able to do all those things and with careful management from the board and leadership from Ruth Eliel, we did in a fiscally responsible way.”

At the core of the success are the musicians themselves, and according to Mr. Kahane, the have the ability to develop, change, and be flexible in ways few orchestras in the country can match. “Of the many things that are remarkable about LACO, one of the most remarkable things — maybe the single most remarkable – is how much it does well. To do the Baroque series, Westside Connections, and a regular subscription series with a track record of commissioning and playing new works is, if I dare say, pretty stellar,” he beams. “I asked the office to compile a list of all the premieres and commissions we’ve done, and I think it’s something like 50 for the last two decades. For an orchestra that only plays seven subscription concerts per year, that’s really quite wonderful.

It was not always an easy path, and from the beginning, there was resistance. He recalls one concert during his first season when he decided to replace a more familiar work programmed by one of his predecessors with the Copland Clarinet Concerto. “I got angry letters, one particular one that was outraged that I would put a “contemporary” work on that program,” he says as he chuckles. “If somebody would have told our audiences that 15 years later we would have been doint truly contemporary works on almost every program, I think people wouldn’t have believed it.”

And while doing more contemporary music was a goal, he clarifies that it wasn’t the biggest priority: “I didn’t want to be dogmatic in saying, ‘We have to have a contemporary work on every program.’ What I definitely didn’t want, though, was to do an overture, then a concerto, then a symphony.” Instead, he hoped people would come to a concert knowing that most likely they would walk away having felt really glad they had attended, and not necessarily because they loved everything on the program, but, as he says, “that at least one thing on the concert would be incredibly exciting.”

Frequent visitors to LACO concerts these days would probably agree with that. The audiences in Glendale or UCLA’s Royce Hall can sometimes be heard to grumble and be judgmental about a new work, but they come back to hear more. Part of that is because there isn’t one flavor of new composition style Mr. Kahane prefers over another. To paraphrase former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart: he knows a good new composition when he sees it.

“I get piles and piles and PILES of scores every year,” he stresses. “I can usually tell immediately by looking at the first page of the score whether this is a composer I’m interested in. It’s impossible to explain how and why that is, but you can usually tell from the quality of a musical gesture, the energy in the gesture, and the craft with which that gesture is presented. It might not be literally one page, but certainly within the first two or three pages, you can tell whether this is written by a composer of substance.”

These composers can range from the relatively audience-friendly concerto written for him by Pulitzer Prize winner Kevin Puts, to fellow pianist Timo Andres, to the harder-edged work of Ted Hearne. But he gives special recognition to LACO’s current Composer-in-Residence, Andrew Norman.

“I’m so glad that we were able to sign him on when we did. If it had been a year later, it wouldn’t have happened. He’s such an inspiration to me and the musicians. His career was already exploding when I engaged him, but since then, it’s gone up by a power of ten.” The two recently collaborated with the New York Philharmonic for the world premiere of Split, a work the composer wrote specifically for Mr. Kahane. The work and its performance received glowing reviews from The New York Times, and Mr. Kahane posits that “it almost certainly wouldn’t have happened without our connection at LACO.”

—————

I asked him about the funniest story or stories he recalls from his time with LACO, and he offered two.

The first occurred before he was Music Director, when he was performing as soloist in Beethoven’s 4^th Piano Concerto during the Iona Brown era as part of a children’s concert at the Wiltern Theatre. Halfway through the piece, everyone started laughing. He tried hard to play through the distraction, but had no idea what was causing it.

“We’re playing a very serious piece of music. I was perfectly well dressed, so it wasn’t my appearance,” he remembers worrying. “I’m wondering: ‘Why are they laughing?’ I look at the audience, they’re cracking up, the orchestra is trying not to lose it.” It turns out that a big German shepherd was on stage. The stage manager’s dog got loose and was wandering in the violin section. “I had no idea, I couldn’t see it because it was happening behind me.   Very funny.”

As to an amusing memory that occurred during his music directorship, the recalls the first time Yo-Yo Ma joined hm and LACO for the Beethoven Triple Concerto (a piece they will reprise in the upcoming 2016-17 season). “I wanted to be sure we had the finest piano possible. I wasn’t satisfied with any of the Steinways that we had available at the time, so we brought out a special Hamburg Steinway, and a key on the piano broke during the first movement. A piano technician had to come out on stage between the first and second movement to pull the action out and fix the key. He did this amazingly in five minutes, the audience cheered and he got a huge ovation. Wasn’t really funny at the time, but sorta funny now. Sorta,” he says with a grin.

—————

With one year left, how is he feeling?

“It’s all very gratifying for me. Obviously, there’s going to be great sorrow leaving,” he confesses.

“I never thought I’d stay for twenty years. . . . I felt that even though I’d be perfectly happy staying here for the rest of my life, I knew it wouldn’t be right for me or the orchestra. There has to be significant and meaningful change. I don’t know what that’s going to look like which is also kind of thrilling. I really look forward to seeing who the next lucky person is that’ll be inheriting it.

When asked what he’ll miss most, it’s definitely the musicians with whom he’s partnered for these two decades. I toss out some names, and he shares thoughts:

• Margaret Batjer, whom he hired as concertmaster soon after taking over the orchestra: “The great thing about Margaret is that she has not only been an amazing colleague and friend, she’s been an incredibly creative force in a way that very few other concertmasters I know have been. Her idea of creating the Westside Connections series is the best example. The Strad Fest from a few seasons ago is another one. She extends herself way beyond her job description. And she’s a beautiful player and a very generous spirit. I’m endlessly grateful for Margaret.”
• Allan Vogel, LACO’s legendary Principal Oboe who retires at the end of this season: “He’s one of a kind. Everywhere I go, absolutely everywhere in this country and sometimes beyond, whenever people realize I’m part of LACO, they ask, ‘How is Allan Vogel?’ or ‘I’ve studied with Allan Vogel!’ or ‘Do you know how lucky are you to have Alan Vogel?!!’ He’s often called ‘the soul of the orchestra,’ and it’s going to be impossible to replace him. He’s not just a great musician, he’s an amazing human being with a tremendously radiant spirit , and he’s beloved by the audience.
• David Shostac, LACO’s longtime Principal Flute who’ll also retire at the end of this season: “He’s an incredibly loving human being, and so talented in multi-faceted ways. He’s had such a great career, not only with us, but as a jazz musician.

He interrupts me to emphasize how big a loss it is that Messrs. Vogel and Shostac are retiring at the same time. “Allan and Dave or so fond of one another, and their playing together goes back for so long. It’s not just that we’re losing one or the other of them, we’re losing the relationship between them as well.”

Does he worry about having to replace both of them at the same time and the synergies they brought?

“It’s a challenge,” he acknowledges. “One of the things about woodwind sections is that sometimes it takes a while for a woodwind section to cohere. As you’ve seen, sometimes orchestras will go a long time without finding a principal that’ll stick; they’ll find someone and it doesn’t quite work. Both of those positions — and Principal Horn as well — those three positions are among the most critical position in an orchestra. It’s not enough to hire a great player, you have to find someone who’s able to work well with others.”

While it will be difficult to identify musicians to succeed LACO players of that stature and history, finding new players for the orchestra is one of the parts of being a Music Director that he enjoys most. “It’s one of the great things about the job. As people have left over time for one reason or another, I’ve been able to hire some absolutely phenomenal musicians like Andrew Shulman (Principal Cello). One of the exciting things is hearing the high level of playing in some of the newer, younger players – Sandy Hughes, our 2^nd flute, and Claire Brazeau, 2^nd oboe, to name a couple – they’re amazing. “

There are other administrative parts about his role Music Director he won’t miss as much, but he’s philosophical about them. “You have to be the public face of the orchestra. I’ve made my peace with that. I can’t say it’s the easiest thing in the world for me; it’s not,” he reveals. “There have been times over the past 20 years that I’ve grumbled about it or felt frustrated that I had to spend so much time dealing with non-musical issues. But the way I’ve framed it in my mind is that everything I do that isn’t directly about music makes it possible for us to do all the types of things that we do.”

—————-

What does the future hold for him? More piano concerts and guest conducting engagements, perhaps even an uptick in the chamber music collaborations. In addition, “There are other things that I can’t talk about that may or may not pan out,” so stay tuned.

His studio as part of the piano faculty of USC’s Thornton School of Music will continue to grow. “This year I only had one student of my own, but I taught classes on an ad hoc basis. Next year, I’ll have a class of 4 or 5, and maybe 8 the year after that.” He also taught a class for graduate students surveying the Mozart Piano Concertos, and he may even teach conducting in the future.

And he’s confident LACO will be fine without him.

“Well, in a year, two years, the orchestra will be very different. I do believe that the ethos, the generosity of spirit is going to stay no matter who comes into the orchestra and no matter who takes over as Music Director. I’m certain that that person will be extremely different from me, but I’m fairly certain that they’ll have the same sense of partnership with the orchestra musicians.”

“The challenge for LACO over the next two decades is that the visibility of the orchestra continues to increase, that the range of the orchestra doesn’t diminish, that it stays strong and that we continue to do the things we do well.”

The “we” in his statement is not a slip up. He has always felt collegial with this orchestra and its musicians, and it’s clear that partnership will continue after his tenure as Music Director ends. Some of that will continue in an official capacity since he’ll assume the title of Music Director Laureate, and he looks forward to it.

“I can’t tell you exactly what that means as far as when I’ll be back or how much, but I’ll definitely be back. Definitely.”

RELATED POSTS:

• Jeffrey Kahane leaving LA Chamber Orchestra after 2016-17 season

Photo credits:

• Jeffrey Kahane:  CK Dexter Haven
• Jeffrey Kahane with piano:  courtesy of CM Artists
• Margaret Batjer:   photo by Michael Burke
• Allan Vogel:   photo by Michael Burke
• David Shostac:  Jamie Pham

There are few places that celebrate living composers and their works more than the Ojai Festival.  And among those favored by this haven for contemporary classical music is Kaija Saariaho.

She first gained notice in the early 1980’s as part of the “Ears Open Society,” the Finnish collective of Sibelius Academy alumni which included Esa-Pekka Salonen and Magnus Lindberg.  She’s since become one of the world’s most sought-after composers, though her ties to Salonen and her repeated collaborations with eclectic theatre director Peter Sellars, both of whom have adopted Los Angeles as their home, have given her music extra doses of exposure in Southern California.  Timothy Mangan once said that she “writes music that elevates tone color and instrumental timbre to the top of the heap – above melody, rhythm and harmony – and she is a master at it.”  Mark Swed echoes that assessment:  “Her harmonies are not, these days, especially complex, but when combined with her ear for exquisite instrumental color, they create a world to which a listener is magnetically drawn. ”

So with Mr. Sellars serving as the Music Director of this year’s Ojai Festival, it comes as no surprise that Ms. Saariaho’s music will feature prominently throughout the weekend, most notably with tonight’s US premiere of the chamber orchestra version of her opera, La Passion de Simone.

What is a bit of shock, however, is that despite so much of her music being performed at past festivals, this year will mark the first time she will actually be at Ojai in person.

I had the good fortune to speak with Ms. Saariaho via Skype from her studio in Paris, her home since graduating from the Sibelius Academy.  She was gracious and thoughtful, sometimes pausing before answering questions but never seeming measured or reluctant to say exactly what she thought.  Here’s how it went: 

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CK Dexter Haven: Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today.

Kaija Saariaho: It’s a cold and wet evening, and so I’m very happy to speak with you.

CKDH: Your music has been played at Ojai for a long time, but this year is the first time you’ll actually attend the festival in person. Why now, and why did you choose not to visit sooner?

KS: Well, this time of the year there are usually many things going on. Often this is also part of my composition period, so I try not travel, especially not so far as California. Of course, Ojai is a place with many beautiful artists, so I would have liked to.

This time [I was able to] because my friend Peter is the Music Director and is playing a lot of my music, including a new staging of my opera, La Passion de Simone, which I haven’t seen in person, and I just recently had an opera premiere so I haven’t yet begun composing big new work.

So there are lots of good reasons and this is a good moment.

CKDH: We’re very lucky it worked out! What have you heard about Ojai from Peter or Esa-Pekka or others with whom you’ve collaborated? And do you remember when you first heard about it?

KS: I’ve heard about Ojai for a really long time, and I know it has some great traditions. They tell me it’s a special place with a special atmosphere. So I’m very curious and I’m very happy to finally be able to be there this summer.

CKDH: How and when did Peter approach you to join him at the festival – not just to have your music performed but to actually come to Southern California?

KS: Oh, it’s been planned for a long time. It seems kind of evident this time. [She smiles]. I’m not sure he even really invited me because it seemed like it was clear for both of us that I should be there this summer.

CKDH: Of course, it took a while for the original version of La Passion de Simone to make its way to Southern California. [Its November 2006 world premiere was in Vienna. Its US premiere was intended for the opening of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s 2007-08 season at Walt Disney Concert Hall, but was postponed for various reasons until August 2008 at Lincoln Center. The LA Phil was finally able to offer the work’s West Coast premiere in January 2009 at WDCH.]

We will, however, have the privilege of seeing and hearing the US Premiere of the new chamber orchestra version on the opening night at this year’s Ojai Festival.  [the world premiere was performed in 2013 by “La Chambre aux échos,” a French music theatre company.] Can you please share your approach for this new version? Is it a straight re-orchestration or more of a re-imagining?

KS: This was something really special. I’ve done reductions of my works before; I’ve had ideas and just followed them. This time, this young group had come to the piece; they were at the world premiere in Vienna, saw Peter’s production, and ever since have loved it. They wanted to perform it, but they didn’t have the possibility of performing it.

Their conductor studied the score and made a proposition for me: the big choir, how it could be written for four voices; how we could take away the electronics and have a live actor there. They had really studied the work. They said, “Look, we have this project. We would love to do it, but nobody else could do the orchestration than you.”

So I went to it, and I said, “Yes, maybe. Maybe.” I went back to the piece and it became very clear to me how I could reduce it. Then I became really interested in the project because I realized how intimate and deep the piece is for me personally, and I told myself, “Maybe it works even better with more intimate, direct forces rather than a massive choir and a massive orchestra.”

And I think it does. I think it does.

CKDH: In addition to La Passion de Simone, there was also originally supposed to be a performance of Only the Sound Remains, one of your newer works. Unfortunately, there was a difficult decision made by Tom Morris [the festival’s Artistic Director] to change that plan and it’s no longer on the program, primarily because of technical difficulties in adapting it to the outdoor environment of Libby Bowl.

KS: The decision had to be made when Tom came to the premiere. I had seen the plans, but since I’d never been to Ojai, I was very worried about it. Peter didn’t really know the piece until the rehearsals in Amsterdam. He didn’t realize how fragile it is. We talked about how it’s only seven musicians, so it’s not like it an enormous sized force. But he didn’t know the kantele, a fragile instrument that needs to be tuned all the time.

So when we started to imagine the situation in Ojai – early in the morning to late in the evening where the temperature and the humidity outdoors would change dramatically – we didn’t know how it would be possible. Everybody was so sad, but really, Tom said it finally: “How could we possibly do it?”

I saw pictures and it would have been absolutely lovely, but I don’t know how we could’ve done it in that venue.

CKDH: Are there any plans or even preliminary discussions to perform it in Southern California at some point in the future.

KS: I hope there are, but often I’m not part of those discussions. I know Peter himself was very upset, so certainly he’s very, very motivated to find a place. It’s very difficult.

CKDH: You’ve mentioned Peter a lot, and you’ve collaborated with him for many years. How did that collaboration begin, how has it changed, and why has it lasted so long?

KS: Peter has been a really big operatic inspiration for me. I’m not completely sure I would have written any of them if I hadn’t seen any of his productions because even if I’d been interested in opera for a long time, I thought there was no space for me in it. Then the first production of his that I saw was Don Giovanni in 1989, then I saw Saint François d’Assise by Messiaen and The Rake’s Progress. He really made me think about opera again. I felt that it really opened my mind and it made me think that it can be thought of differently and there is space also for me.

So that’s how it started. Our first collaboration was L’Amour du loin, my first opera. Of course, in the beginning, we didn’t know each other so well. Peter wanted to protect his vision always. He was afraid that I wanted to interfere, but in the beginning I didn’t much dare to interfere. Now, I don’t mind interfering so much now that we know each other very well [smiles].

He is an interesting man. He always has strong visions which are based not only on a lot of knowledge which he says but also from a feeling of empathy and concern for today’s world.

It’s always interesting. It’s not always easy, but it’s interesting and good because my work is very private work. Most of the time I’m sitting in my studio and writing my music, so it’s very contrasting. It wakes me up and gives me ideas.

CKDH: Has there ever been any friction or head-butting between the two of you?

KS: Sure, of course. That’s normal.

CKDH: And who usually wins?

KS: I think we have found ways for both of us to give in a little bit, but I think usually Peter wins. He speaks until no one has the force to resist him [smiles].

Of course, there are things that are very important to me. If there are things happening on stage, that is completely his decision, but if I feel something is going against the music, I try to discuss it with him.

CKDH: As with any composer, your music has evolved over time. The music speaks for itself, but how has your approach to composition evolved?

KS: Well, over the years I have developed my routines concerning my work which function best and most easily prevent the blocks that everybody gets every now and then. For me, the questions are rather practical. In a way, my feeling about my music is rather similar. It starts from a kind-of subconscious state, and it gets born from material that comes from the surface of my mind even if I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.

And then, what happens after that has not enormously changed as a matter of fact. I have my way to get the music onto paper or into the computer, and have found ways to protect the music, protect the mind. This simply means that when I compose: I must not meet a lot of people; I must not go out in the daytime when my work is in process; I need to have enough time; I’m not able to travel as much as I should for my career.

It’s really practical stuff. I don’t feel that my relationship to my music has changed.

CKDH: Talking about practical stuff, when you were at Sibelius Academy, the emphasis was, I’m guessing, still on writing out music on paper. These days, many composers won’t – or can’t – compose on paper and go straight to computers, on “Sibelius” [the composing software] in fact. How do you feel about that and how different is it for you to work with paper vs. computers in how to approach your writing?

KS:   Yes, of course, I was working only with pencil and paper before. I’m left handed, so I could never use ink because I’d make a mess. So I’d use pencil, and in the old days you’d have to make photocopies so you’d have to press very hard when writing to get readable photocopies. I got a problem with my arm after I’d written my piece Du cristal which I finished in 1989, so I couldn’t put it in a good shape, so I rather early started working using the “Finale” program. Little by little, I tried to do both because it was very difficult for me to use computers; I liked writing so much. I started using computers more and more, and Finale is very intuitive for me now.

But I still print out pages after writing them and then I complete it with pencil so I can still have the pleasure of drawing on paper. It’s my publisher that will finalize it. There are practical aspects, of course. If you create a file and the parts are created from that file, there is a lot less proof reading; that’s one practical detail. But I think the most important thing is how you deal with your music and how you come to whatever is set for you.

CKDH: When you were first starting out, you were grouped with these other Finnish conductors like Esa-Pekka Salonen and Magnus Lindberg. You were these young, rebellious musicians.

Now, of course, many people know your work around the world. Looking at the program at Ojai, you have many younger up-and-coming composers. You have someone like Caroline Shaw who is barely in her 30’s and has already won the Pulitzer Prize.

What are your thoughts of the younger generation of composers? Is there anyone that you listen to a lot or whom you particularly admire?

KS: I’m in contact with a lot of young composers. I tried to help them a lot. I feel that they have a really hard time, even harder than we had because the world has become so ruthless. I have admiration for many young composers. I can’t mention names because I can’t mention all of them. There are fantastic young composers, though.

I’m happy to help them always whenever I can. I believe in young people very strongly.

CKDH: One of the thing that Ms. Shaw has become famous for is collaborating with Kanye West. Have you ever given consideration to collaborating with popular musicians in some way? Is that something that you’re interested in doing?

KS: I never met somebody who wanted to collaborate with me or with whom I’d want to collaborate. I have nothing against it, but it hasn’t happened.

CKDH: How much of other people’s music do you listen to, and is it always classical music or do you listen to popular music too?

KS: Knowing that I am always composing, I don’t really listen to much music unless it’s work. I get so much music sent to me, but that’s part of the work. I go to concerts a lot when I have the possibility. It’s mostly classical music, but it could also be traditional Indian music or traditional Japanese music, something like that.

Rock music? It’s been a long time since I’ve got really sensitive ears. I like a lot of different music, but the problem for me is the volume. In every genre, there are lots of interesting works. I’m always interested in anything that is well done.

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The 2016 Ojai Festival runs from Thursday, June 9 through Sunday, June 12.  The entire festival’s program, as well as tickets, are available at ojaifestival.org

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Photo credits:

• Kaija Saariaho:  photos by Priska Ketterer via saariaho.org
• Peter Sellars:  photo by Ruth Walz, courtesy of the Ojai Festival

Attend the Ojai Music Festival, Southern California’s loveable cabal of contemporary classical music, and you expect works by living composers, particularly brand new pieces that get their debut at the festival.  This year, the first world premiere shows up on Saturday afternoon:  This might also be a form of dreaming by Caroline Shaw (with text by Claudia Rankine).

That the festival tapped Ms. Shaw for the commission seems like a no-brainer:  in 2013, she became the youngest-ever winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music.

Then you learn that she’ll also appear at the festival singing alto as a member of Roomful of Teeth, the a capella ensemble with a Grammy to their credit, and you’re more impressed.  Oh, she’s a talented violinist too, with degrees from Rice and Yale.  And BTW, when she’s not writing, singing, or playing classical music, she manages to squeeze in time to collaborate with the iconoclastic Kanye West.

Sounds like a musical equivalent to Schrödinger’s Cat, having multiple simultaneous realities unless/until someone forces you into a single defined existence.  Could someone really have that kind of resume at that young an age, spanning musical genres from high art to gritty pop?  Sure —  composers like, you know, Gershwin or Mozart fit that bill.

Okay, that may not be an entirely fair comparison, but really, who is this woman?!!

—–

“I call myself a ‘musician,’ and I still think that’s the best word because it’s what I do,” the multi-tasking Ms. Shaw explains.  “But I don’t really consider myself primarily one thing over another except maybe a violinist because I feel like I did that before I did anything — which is probably not true because you sing before you learn how, but violin was my entry into music from a young age.”

“When I feel like one thing is taking over and maybe cutting off something else, I try with the best of my ability to adjust my time and step away from certain things to allow time for another.”

Yeah, okay.   In contrast, though, this is how she introduces herself on her own webpage:

Hi. I’m Caroline. Thanks for stopping by. Do you like music? Oh good. Do you like avocados? Even better. Oh, and janky mandolin is your jam? Super. This will be just fine then. Welcome to my little corner of the internet.

Take the resume — Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, Grammy-winning ensemble singer, professional violinist, hip-hop remixer — and make sure you read it through the filter of that introduction, with its polyglot influences and casual yet energetic implications.  When you then listen to her music, eclectic and complex in construction but pure and direct in its ability to communicate, it all makes perfect sense.

—–

Judging by the inquiry about avocados and analogies she made in a prior interview, food seems to be a common thread that pops up with her.  I point it out and ask about her relationship with food.

“It’s a loving relationship with food,” Ms. Shaw says with a laugh.  She doesn’t have the chance to cook much given her travel schedule, but she confesses to an obsession with soft-boiled eggs, and can describe her own recipe for achieving soft-boiled egg bliss with equal parts affection and precision.  She has a fire-escape garden that she describes as “my two square feet of illegal space in New York where I put plants out, I grow my herbs, and I try to grow things that I can’t.”  Chief among that last category was a pumpkin.  Seriously.  A pumpkin in a fire-escape garden in the middle of Manhattan.

“I tried to grow that last year,” she explains. “The vines grew great, but there was a fungus so it didn’t happen, but it was a joy to watch.”

So does food influence her music-making?  Yes, though not in the way you might expect.

“It would definitely be subconsciously. I could also probably articulate some murky relationships based on analogies, but . . . I honestly think about Traci Des Jardins (the Bay Area chef).”

“I was so profoundly affected by this one segment of the TV show “Top Chef Masters” when she was a contestant. The challenge was to cook a meal for a returning veteran based on his favorite food. All the other chefs would hear their veteran say, ‘Oh, I like fried chicken,’ and then they’d create this deconstructed or extra-fancy version of the idea. Her veteran said he liked meatloaf, and she created the perfect idea of what meatloaf should be:  just a simple thing, not trying to make it a five-star restaurant creative meatloaf, but what is the essence of that food and the meal and that familiarity and the relationships of that family to that meal and the history they have with it, and how to recreate that in a way that’s respectful of their experience. I think about it quite a lot.”

That mimics her own approach to creating music, or as she puts it, “The idea of presenting a chord or an idea that is presented on its own, unadulterated, simply but truly elegantly and beautifully without trying to doctor it up with other effects.”  She emphasizes that there was no cause and effect, that the TV show didn’t lead to her compositional style, but that meatloaf definitely resonated with her.

In a similar yet more concrete way, she finds inspiration from early music and she likes to revisit and study the essential elements that make the music of Bach, Handel, Purcell, or Monteverdi so great.

“A lot of it is a certain sense of harmony or harmonic progression, of voicing or resonance in the chord, and I try to distill what is it about that that we love so much. Like what is it about the flavor of that kind of pie that you love so much and how do you bring that out? It’s not recreating something over and over again, but is still fresh and new and you taste the essence of rosemary or some other ingredient the way you never have before. That’s all I really need.”

—–

Conscious or subconscious thoughts of food aren’t her only source of inspiration.  Unlike others for whom inspiration is turned into composition as part of a structured and regular routine (see my recent interview with Kaija Saariaho for a perfect example), Ms. Shaw gets inspired in fits and spurts, often at times and places unexpected.  She compensates by using that essential tool of the 21st century, the mobile phone.

“For me, I think about a piece for a really long time,” she says.  “I have a folder in my computer and on my phone full of notes or links of things I’ve been thinking about. I’ll just take a picture of something or take notes and put it in the folder, and then the actual birth of the piece often is pretty quick. I don’t think I have any patterns for how I write.”

That may have to change now that her notoriety and life as a musical multi-tasker has made her schedule more chaotic.  “I don’t have a rhythm or set working time.  I’m thinking that I might need to strive for that and sequester off. I’m not able to do that at this point, I’m doing too many performing things. . . . A few years ago, no one knew who I was and I only wrote for fun.”

Yeah, that’s not happening again anytime soon. She says she has nearly 20 commissions outstanding.  And that doesn’t count the times that Kim Kardashian’s husband wants to work with her.

“It’s funny you mention Kanye.  In that world, I think they thought of me originally as an, um, singer?  I didn’t really do exactly what they wanted me to do, which is why I think we get along now. I said ‘That’s stupid if you just want me to sing this line.  That’s not how it works — I write music, and I can do a lot more than just that.’ They didn’t quite understand that I really fit in more in a producer role, as a creator and manipulator of sounds.”

Fortunately for both of them, he listened and as she promised, she did a lot more.  Ms. Shaw’s re-working of his song, “Say You Will” was a revelation, with new electronic sounds combined with her vocals and violin layered over and woven into his minimalist original version.  She manages to create something that, just like Traci Des Jardins’ meatloaf, respects the original while simultaneously augmenting it.

Since then, they’ve appeared at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser together and she’s appeared on two tracks of his latest album, The Life of Pablo.  More from CarYe (or is it KanOline?) is undoubtedly on the way.

—–

The more I speak with Ms. Shaw, the more surprising it is to me that she and Mr. West have formed an ongoing partnership, though not because they originate from different musical realms; other well-known composers of her generation (Andrew Norman, Gabriel Kahane, and Mason Bates to name just a few) easily traverse genres and/or mix Gen Y pop culture elements into their concert hall works.

It’s just that their personalities are so very different:  Kanye is pomposity personified, with genuine talent usually being overshadowed by a level of self-aggrandizement rivaling a Presidential candidate; in contrast, Ms. Shaw is unpretentious and self-deprecating, deeply insightful and analytical, fiercely intelligent without over-intellectualizing anything.  Kanye can’t help telling you how great he and his music are;  Ms. Shaw never brought up any of her awards, and is adamant about letting her music speak on its own terms, never wanting to be proscriptive with either her musicians or her audience.

“I try to create a piece that is healthy to play for the person who’s doing it, and also is meaningful, honest, and sincere and is trying to achieve what I’m setting out to achieve while still giving them their own space.”  She adds later:  “I don’t use long, sweeping, soaring melodies.  It’s not really the way I write.  I’ve heard too many American operas sound like . . . ”

Like Puccini?

“Yeah, like Puccini.  It’s forcing an emotion upon you, and that’s not what I want to do.”

—–

Don’t misunderstand.  It’s not like she has anything against the classical music canon.  On the contrary, her initial aspirations for a musical career were rather mainstream, particularly when she was still a teenage violinist.  She had no delusions about being the next wunderkind soloist like Midori or Hillary Hahn.  “I actually think Hillary Hahn is one of the reasons why I said, ‘It’s okay, I never have to be like that.’  She’s an insanely good violinist and I could never approach her quality of playing.”

Instead, she had aspirations of maybe being in an orchestra, or if things went really well, she’d be in a string quartet.

“Those guys were my idols,” she reveals.  “People that traveled around, had residencies, talked to kids, and played the best possible late Beethoven that one can.  That was my goal. That was what I envisioned with my life, and then I went to Yale and realized that I was running out of time to meet those people.  It’s sort of like a marriage, finding someone to build a relationship with.  It’s hard to find three other people with whom to have a quartet marriage.”

So to pay the bills, she started singing at Yale where they had a budget to pay singers.  Later, she also got paid for accompanying dance classes.  “I loved that, but there was no stable future in it and I didn’t want to do that forever.  But here I was, splitting time between singing, playing violin with hopes of being in a quartet, and playing for dance classes.  I still play in quartets, but I never get paid to play late Beethoven in a quartet.”

And what about composing?

“The idea that I could get paid to write music was so bizarre to me. ”

Fast forward a few years, with a Pulitzer for her Partita for 8 voices, a que full of commissions, and a world premiere this Saturday at the Ojai Festival, and that idea is not as far-fetched as it had been.

—–

This might also be a form of dreaming, Ms. Shaw’s composition debuting at Ojai’s Libby Bowl at 3pm tomorrow afternoon, is a festival commission that had its nascency before she got any calls from Tom Morris or Peter Sellars (the festival’s  Artistic Director and 2016 Music Director, respectively).

“I certainly knew of Claudia Rankine’s work, especially because her book Citizen has taken over conversations,” says Ms. Shaw.  “Peter was talking about people who were going to be involved at Ojai, and her name came up.  He pointed me towards her book Don’t Let Me Be Lonely, from which the text for my piece originates.  It wasn’t any kind of assignment on the festival’s part, it just spoke to me and it seemed like the right thing to do.”

“I really don’t work with text a lot.  There’s text in Partita, but it’s spoken and used as a texture  It’s only sung for about twenty seconds throughout the whole piece, which really more about color and vowels, writing instrumentally.  I’ve had a couple other things that use text, a set of songs that specifically use lyrics from old songs; so these words already have been used in a song, they came into existence as musical words, and they already have a musical sensibility about them.”

The seven movement work mostly uses the last few pages of the book, with each movement setting text a little differently.  As Ms. Shaw explains, “She plays with poetic literary form in a way that I want to do with the music if I can.  A lot of the inspiration of the piece is listening to her speak in any interview I can get my ears on; the way she delivers her own text is kind of perfect, so I’ve been working on what I can do musically after that.”

“In this case, I’m using text that’s NOT intended for music.  It’s mostly prose poetry, without the typical verse forms that usually lend themselves to music.  I like that, I was attracted to it more than other things because it has a tight forwardness about it that I could find really interesting.  It’s sort of impossible to put it into music.  I’m finding that even thinking about it — how do I approach this text? What can I do musically, against it, inside of it, around it, or with it — brings up questions I hadn’t really asked myself before.”

“I knew it was going to be hard, and it was hard.  In fact, I knew going into it that it’d be the hardest thing I’ve tried to do, but I really wanted to do it.”

—————

Photo credits:

• Caroline Shaw:  photo by Dashon Burton
• Traci Des Jardins:  photo by Frankie Frankeny

Hello, everyone.  If you’re shocked that I’ve actually published something three days in a row, join the club.

I realize that I’ve not been publishing at the rate I have in the past.  I’m working on changing that.  It’s not that I haven’t been writing; I have.  It’s just hasn’t made it here to All is Yar.  You should be seeing things with more regularity again.  I won’t/can’t promise any particular level of frequency, but I will say that I’m shooting for at least once a week, if not more often.

In any case, that’s not what I’m here to talk about today.

I’ll quickly start by saying that I’ve seen three concerts so far at this year’s Ojai Festival (one Thursday night and two earlier today), and they have all been very much worth it.  I’ll be attending one more late tonight and then head back down to LA tomorrow.  Detailed reviews for all of it will come in a few days.

More importantly, please join me in offering thoughts and prayers to Timothy Mangan: the kick-ass music critic, erstwhile trombonist, and all-around gentleman was laid off by the Orange County Register yesterday after being in their employ for nearly two decades.

This sucks on sooooo many fronts.  I have much to say in response, some of which would require more profanities than the All is Yar style guide would allow, while the rest will require more time to cogently share than is adequate this evening.  It may take me a few days, but it needs to be said so stay tuned.

One might argue that it’s blogs like this and people like me that have led to expert professionals like Tim to lose his job.  If you’re among them, allow me to politely yet vehemently disagree and say that the opposite is true: because traditional media outlets, particularly newspapers, no longer have full-time music critics, classical music fans rely on knowledgeable alternative sources like this for information and arts organizations turn to writers like me for coverage.  There can be and there should be place for all of us.  Alas, that is increasingly not the case.

The sad irony is that in addition to being the day Timothy Mangan was given his pink slip, yesterday also happened to mark the 5 year anniversary of the birth of All is Yar.  Frankly, neither “CK Dexter Haven” nor this little corner of the internet would exist if it weren’t for Tim.  If you haven’t already figured it out, my parents put a different name on my birth certificate. My nom de plume originated as my chosen identity when commenting on Tim’s columns on a long-gone version of the OC Register’s webpage.  No Tim, no CKDH.

Then, when I started up this particular enterprise, Tim’s early support helped solidify and legitimize All is Yar‘s existence.  He’s been a mentor and dare I say a friend, and I owe him a great debt.

Again, I could and should say more, but for now, let me just say, “Thank you, Tim. The next few rounds of whisky are on me.”

Happy Independence Day, everyone!  In my continuing effort to expand beyond the ubiquitous marches of John Philip Sousa, I present “Bravura” by C.E. Duble.  It will likely sound familiar to many of you, so much so that you might have thought that it actually was written by Sousa.  It also happened to be one of my favorite marches to actually, um, march to during my military days.

Below is a rendition of “Bravura” by the U.S. Air Force Heritage of America Band (fka the USAF Tactical Air Command Band).  These are the same folks that still have lots of free patriotic and ceremonial military music available for download at their website HERE and HERE.  Enjoy.

I trust everyone enjoyed their 4th of July weekend with tummies still full after all that BBQ and fingers still intact after all those fireworks.  Now that those festivities are behind us, let’s look ahead to what I think are the most noteworthy concerts that the month of July has in store for classical music fans in Southern California:

Music Academy of the West

The annual summer assembly of renowned artists and budding professionals is already in full swing in Santa Barbara, but their July schedule includes four particularly interesting offerings:

• Saturday, July 9 (Granada Theatre):  Young conductor Case Scaglioni leads the Academy Festival Orchestra in Stravinsky’s 1919 suite from The Firebird, Wagner’s overture to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and concertos by Bowen and Jolivet featuring winners of the Academy’s concerto competition.  SoCal fans my remember Mr. Scaglioni from his  three-year stint as Music Director of the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra.  Since then, he’s become the New York Philharmonic’s Associate Conductor and has had many auspicious appearances with other orchestras.
• Saturday, July 16 (Granada Theatre):  Alan Gilbert, the NY Phil’s outgoing Music Director, conducts the Academy Orchestra in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 (“Eroica”), Berg’s Three Pieces for Orchestra, and “The Representation of Chaos” from Haydn’s The Creation.
• Wednesday, July 20 (Hahn Hall, UCSB):  Emmanuel Pahud, Principal Flute of the Berlin Philharmonic,  is easily one of the best in the world at his instrument — many would consider him to be THE best.  It’s not often he does a solo recital in Southern California, particularly at a venue so intimate, so don’t miss this chance.  He and accompanist Jonathan Feldman (piano) perform works by Reineke, J. S. Bach, Poulenc, C. P. E. Bach, and Martinů.
• Friday, July 29, and Sunday, July 31 (Granada Theatre):   Smetena’s The Bartered Bride is this year’s opera being proffered by the Academy’s much-lauded vocal program, led by legendary mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne.  Matthew Aucoin conducts and David Paul directs.

unSUNg:  Songs Uncommon and New

This unique three-concert series of new and/or neglected vocal works brought to you by Lauri D. Goldenhersh (publisher of the online singer’s collective, Lauri’s List) and Ariel Pisturino, Co-founding Curator, is back again.  Their fourth season kicks off this Sunday, July 10, with a program of pieces by Darius Milhaud, Peter Yates, David Avshalomov, and Pàl Hermann.  Featured soloists include David Wilson (tenor), Alexandra Grabarchuk (mezzo-soprano), Patrick McKellan (baritone), and Katherine Giaquinto (soprano).

The other two concerts in the series will be on July 31 and August 21.  All performances are at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Glendale, CA.  Tickets are $15 in advance and $18 at the door.

The Hollywood Bowl

The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s summer home has been open for business for a couple of weeks already, but the orchestra itself doesn’t actually take up residence until this weekend when David Newman conducts them in Michael Giacchino’s score to J. J. Abram’s Star Trek, all while the movie itself is shown on the Bowl’s high-def big screens.

After that, classical music concerts start in earnest, and there is plenty of megawatt-level star power to behold if one were inclined:

• Tuesday, July 12:  Lang Lang, pianist in excelsis, brings his highly personal take on Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 to bear on the curtain raiser to this summer’s classical season.  Music & Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel doubles down on the Russian warhorses for the night with Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade.
• Thursday, July 14, and Tuesday, July 19:  Mr. Dudamel conducts the orchestra, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, and vocal soloists in a concert version of West Side Story with music by Bernstein and lyrics by Sondheim.
• Thursday, July 21:  Yuja Wang’s appearances at the Bowl have become legendary — usually for musical excellence, occasionally for extra-curricular things as well.  This year, she joins the LA Phil and Mr. Dudamel for two jazz-inspired classics:  the Ravel Piano Concerto in G and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (FWIW:  let’s hope she’s loosened up a bit since her most recent local foray into Gershwin).  A concert suite from Porgy and Bess opens the program and Ravel’s ubiquitous Bolero closes it.
• Sunday, July 24:  Puccini’s Tosca is the one-off opera for this year’s Bowl Season.  Local girl Juliana Di Giacomo sings the title role, tenor Russell Thomas is Cavaradossi, her ill-fated beau, and Falk Struckmann is the sinister Scarpia.
• Tuesday, July 26:  Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla‘s star keeps rising since being appointed Music Director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra — the hype is real, she’s truly that good — which means the chances to see her conduct at the Hollywood Bowl or anywhere else locally are diminishing in equal proportion. Catch her while you still can, like at this concert featuring crowd-pleasers by Beethoven and Ravel.  Pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Frenchman turned Angeleno, and many others join in the fun.
• Thursday, July 28:  Americana old and new . . . guest conductor Cristian Măcelaru conducts two works by Aaron Copland (Symphony No. 3 and An Outdoor Overture), and violinist Nicola Benedetti performs the West Coast premiere of Wynton Marsalis’s Violin Concerto.

Pacific Symphony 

Saturday, July 23:  Carl St.Clair leads  a tuneful, if somewhat disjointed, concert headlined by Beethoven’s 9th Symphony and also featuring Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, Barber’s Adagio for Strings, and two works from John Williams.  This summer is the orchestra’s last at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre before its landlord, The Irvine Company, finally develops the land into housing, so if you have an affection for the place, this is the last July you’ll have to enjoy concerts here.

—————

Photo credits

• Emmanuel Pahud:  Josef Fischnaller EMI Classics
• unSUNg logo:  courtesy of unSUNg
• Gustavo Dudamel and Hollywood Bowl:  courtesy of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association

It’s time once again to talk about one of our favorite topics:  musical chairs in major orchestras, particularly the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

There has been a lot happening since last we broached the topic, and by the end of the beginning of the 2016/17 season, one current principal will have retired and there’ll be three new principal players with the LA Phil that weren’t in their jobs at the end of this past Fall/Winter season.  There’s more besides that in San Francisco, Portland, New York, and Chicago as well.  Here are the specifics:

Principal Percussion

When the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Carlo Maria Giulini held auditions in 1983 to find a new percussionist, they chose a local.  Raynor Carroll was in his last year of undergraduate studies at Cal State LA when Mitchell Peters, his teacher and the LA Phil’s Principal Timpanist at the time, encouraged him to try out for the job.  Not only did he win the position, three years later he was promoted to Principal Percussionist.  For a kid who had lived in Pasadena since he was four-years old, it was quite the coup.

More than thirty years have passed, and Mr. Carroll is retiring this Summer.  His final concert with the orchestra will be on Sunday, September 4th, the last of the annual concerts John Williams spends at the Hollywood Bowl.

The musician filling his spot has already been chosen, and once again, the LA Phil selected a 20-something from the area who went to a local university and studied with orchestra members:  Matthew Howard.

The Los Angeles native got his Bachelor of Music in 2012 from the USC Thornton School of Music, studying with Joseph Pereira (Principal Timpanist) and James Babor (Percussionist).  He followed that up with a Master’s degree from the New England Conservatory and a year as a Fellow at the New World Symphony (NWS), Michael Tilson Thomas’s prestigious post-graduate training orchestra in Florida.

Despite the parallels between his journey to the LA Phil’s Principal Percussion chair vis-a-vis that of his predecessor, actually having it happen was not something he dared imagine. “It’s pretty ridiculous. I was not expecting getting my dream job off the bat,” he said in an interview with Tamika Bickham of the NWS about his new gig.

Yes, it’s hard for anyone to get any job in a professional orchestra.  Make it a principal’s chair in one of the top orchestras in the world that happens to be in your hometown, and it’s that much harder.  But that’s not all he was talking about.

Earlier this year, the LA Phil announced auditions to find a new Principal Percussionist.  Mr. Howard applied for the opportunity — and was denied.

He was put on the standby list instead, and as luck would have it, the orchestra reached out to him two months later:  a number of people offered an audition spot could not or chose not to take it, so Mr. Howard would have his shot after all.  Unfortunately, by then the audition was merely a month away, giving him only one-third of the usual time to prepare.

“In order to get to that level you have to have months of intricate and stressful training on a two second blurb of music,” he said in same interview.  “I was prepared enough and experienced enough in audition taking to know how to prepare for this most efficiently.”

Obviously, one month was enough.  No word yet on when he’ll officially begin his new job, but don’t be surprised to see him at Walt Disney Concert Hall in late September when the new 2016/17 season begins.

Principal Trombone

Trying to replace Nitzan Haroz as Principal Trombone hasn’t been the fastest process, but this shouldn’t come as a surprise.  As Tom Hooten, Principal Trumpet, told me in a 2014  interview, “We want to take the time to find the right player, and Nitzan set a very high bar.”

After open auditions held two years ago failed to yield a job offer, several musicians were invited for trial weeks and private auditions with the orchestra.  The most recent of these candidates, Jörgen van Rijen (Principal Trombone of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam), played the iconic first trombone part in the Mahler 3rd Symphony with the orchestra at Walt Disney Concert Hall this past March and knocked it out of the park.  He then joined them on their tour of Europe and New York, and appeared with the rest of the brass and percussion sections on The Tonight Show with Stephen Colbert to play Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man (BTW:  videos of that performance were all over the internet when it was first broadcast; they’ve since been pulled, likely because of copyright issues).  Mr. Rijen was offered the job, but after some consideration, decided to stay in Amsterdam.

Fortunately, he was not the only stellar trombonist under consideration.  In May of 2015, David Rejano Cantero, Principal Trombone of the Munich Philharmonic, played as guest first chair for a program of works by Falla and Rodrigo.  The concert wasn’t quite the showpiece for trombone that Mahler 3 is, but I thought that Mr. Rejano’s performance was superb nonetheless.  In fact, more than one noteworthy listener was surprised when he wasn’t given the position outright.

Regardless of the delay in the decision making, he was eventually offered the job and subsequently accepted.  His tenure as Principal Trombone of the Los Angeles Philharmonic officially begins on August 15.  In the meantime, enjoy this video of him as soloist in the third movement of the Trombone Concerto by Launy Grøndahl:

Principal Clarinet, First Violins, Cellos, and Associate Principal Horn

There are a few other bits to mention

• Boris Allakhverdyan officially took over as Principal Clarinet on July 4.
• Nathan Cole is still First Associate Concertmaster.  He had previously been offered the position as Concertmaster of the Seattle Symphony, but ultimately turned them down.  Mr. Cole is an excellent violinist, and Seattle’s loss is Southern California’s continued good fortune.
• After playing almost the entire 2015/16 WDCH season as Acting Assistant Principal Cello as a guest player, Dahae Kim officially joined the orchestra in that role in May.  One source stated that she has already been given tenure.
• Other relatively recent additions to the orchestra who’ve reportedly been given tenure:  Denis Bouriakov (Principal Flute), Stéphane Beaulac (Third/Utility Trumpet), and Andrew Lowy (Second/E-flat Clarinet).  They’ve all been fabulous additions to the orchestra, and I would’ve been surprised had any of them NOT been given tenure.
• One titled chair still vacant:  Associate Principal Horn.  Open auditions held this past February yielded no offers or even trial weeks.  The parade of guest hornists occupying the first chair has continued since then, many/most are likely passing through without actually vying for the job.  One of them stood out:  Robert Johnson, Associate Principal Horn of the Houston Symphony, who led the section in late April while LA Phil Principal Andrew Bain was doing a guest stint of his own with the Berlin Philharmonic.  I saw one of the concerts in which Mr. Johnson performed works by Mussorgsky, Grieg, and Janacek, and he was excellent.  His playing was full of nuance, bold without ever being bombastic.  Rick Schultz also praised him in a concert review for the Los Angeles Times, saying that Mr. Johnson’s “horn playing in a warm duet with [pianist Jean-Yves] Thibaudet was especially impressive.”  His appearance was not an official trial week, but let’s hope that Mr. Bain and the powers that be decide to give him one.  IMHO, he’d be a great addition to the orchestra.

News from orchestras in San Francisco, Portland, New York, and Chicago

The Los Angeles Philharmonic isn’t the only orchestra with personnel news of note.  Here are some quick updates from farther afield:

• The San Francisco Symphony has been without a Principal Timpanist since David Herbert decamped the Bay Area in 2013 in the midst of that orchestra’s labor troubles for the Chicago Symphony, leaving a rather pointed indictment of SFS management in his wake.  After three years and multiple auditions, they appear to be close to filling the void:  an offer has been given to Edward Stephan, currently Principal Timpani of the Pittsburgh Symphony.  No word yet on if he’s accepted.  If he doesn’t, expect Michael Israelievitch to continue as Acting Principal.
• News from the Pacific Northwest:  the Oregon Symphony announced that the contract of Music Director Carlos Kalmar has been extended to the end of the 2020/21 season, after which he will step down.  He will have held the position for 18 years, second only to James DePriest’s 23 years.  (A tip of the hat to Charles Noble for mentioning it in light of the classical music vacuum that The Oregonian has sadly become.)
• This happened in May, but for completeness sake, I’ll mention it anyways:  Chris Martin, Principal Trumpet of the Chicago Symphony, is leaving the Midwest to take the same position with the New York Philharmonic.   He fills the chair most recently held by the legendary Phil Smith, himself a former Chicago Symphony player.  That a trumpeter would willingly vacate the CSO chair once held by the equally legendary (if not more so) Adolph “Bud” Herseth is a shock to begin with.  That the NY Phil reportedly offered Mr. Martin the position WITH tenure is almost unheard of.  Draw your own conclusions about the mad trumpet skillz [sic] he possesses. . . . As you might expect, there is much hand wringing and gnashing of teeth by classical music fans in the Windy City, to which Riccardo Muti, the CSO’s Music Director, replied to the Chicago Tribune:  “I spoke with Chris Martin today. He is very close to the Chicago Symphony but he wants another experience (away from the orchestra). So we shall see. Change is natural in symphony orchestras. The important thing is to find replacements who are very good. Everybody wants to play in the CSO, so I’m not worried.”  Everybody except Chris Martin.  And Eugene Izotov.  And Mathieu Dufour.  And David McGill.  And others. . . . There is no doubt that the CSO is still one of the premiere orchestras in the world and will have it’s share of top-notch musicians from whom to choose replacements.  But with yet another principal player in his prime deciding to leave the orchestra, you can’t help but say, “Hmmmmm.”
• Speaking of the Chicago Symphony, they did fill one of their empty principal chairs, reaching into their past to do it:  Alex Klein is Principal Oboe once again.  He had previously held the position from 1995 until 2004 when complications of focal hand dystonia forced him to step down.  Thankfully for him and classical music fans in Chicago, he has recovered.  He played as guest principal with the CSO in April and won an audition with the orchestra in late June.

RELATED POSTS:

• Boris Allakhverdyan will be the next Principal Clarinet of the Los Angeles Philharmonic

• LA Phil comings and goings (Fall 2015 edition): Principal Clarinet update and much more

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Photo credits:

• Raynor Carroll holding cymbals:  courtesy of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association
• Matthew Howard playing:  courtesy of the New World Symphony
• David Rejano Cantero without glasses:  courtesy of Antoine Curtois — Paris
• Raynor Carroll in suit:  courtesy of California State University, Los Angeles
• Matthew Howard portrait:   courtesy of the New World Symphony
• David Rejano Cantero with glasses:  courtesy of International Summer Brass Festival Alicante
• Robert Johnson:  courtesy of the Houston Symphony

“Someone will usually ask me:  ‘How did you pick percussion or drums?’  I didn’t, it picked me.  It was always been the sound of a drum that caught my ear,” explains Raynor Carroll, Principal Percussionist for the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

“I like to say I have the ideal job – and soon I’ll say I had the ideal job [laughs].”

A 33-year veteran with the orchestra, Mr. Carroll recently announced that’d he’ll be retiring.  His final concert will be tomorrow night, going out with a bang (if you’ll forgive the obvious pun) in a special Sunday edition of the LA Phil’s annual visit from composer John Williams.

I had the pleasure of meeting him recently after a rehearsal at the Hollywood Bowl.  For about an hour, we sat backstage and talked about his memories of more than three decades with the orchestra, the unique challenges and fun of being the Principal Percussionist, his newly appointed successor, Matthew Howard, and much more.

He was friendly and gracious, yet candid, clearly loving the opportunity to make music as a profession but ready to start the next chapter of his relatively young life, still shy of his 60th birthday.

The first half of the interview is below, and part two will be published tomorrow.

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CK Dexter Haven:  When did you know that you were going to be a musician as a career?

Raynor Carroll:  Probably elementary school at some point.  I was raised in a house that had music in it.  My dad sang in the church choir in and my mom played piano.

There was always music in the house.  Dad played anything from Count Basie to Ravel’s Bolero, so I got a good mixture. I had 4 other siblings and I’m the only professional musician, but we always had an appreciation for music.

I started playing in the Boys Club band and throughout junior high school and high school.

CKDH:  So you were obviously exposed to classical music from a very young age.  When did you become aware of this thing called “the Los Angeles Philharmonic?”

RC:  Probably late 60’s or early 70’s.  I don’t remember specifically, but they definitely played at my high school.  I remember that very clearly.

CKDH:  What high school did you go to?

RC:  Pasadena High.  Zubin Mehta conducted and that left a definite impression on me:  “You know, I could that.  I wanna do that.”

I can’t remember exactly which came first, either that concert at the high school or I came to a concert here at the Bowl around that time.  I remember the pieces that grabbed me:  Holst’s Planets and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.  Such vital percussion parts and so rhythmic.  It made a mark on me.

CKDH:  When you went to Cal State LA to study, you went specifically with the notion of becoming a classical percussionist and studying with Mitchell Peters, the LA Phil’s Principal Timpanist at the time?

RC:  Yes.

CKDH:  So story has it that you were still in college when the audition for the LA Phil came up?

RC:  I had finished at Cal State LA , actually.  The numbers are not right in some of the bios, but 1975-79 I was at Cal State LA, then I pretty much freelanced and was doing a little bit of teaching when the audition came up.

Mitch had said, “You should really do this.”  I was like, “I don’t think I’m ready for this,” and he said, “Yeah, you should.  It’s right here in town.  I think you’re ready.”

And I did it.  I surprised myself.

CKDH:  How similar or different was the audition you took compared to the auditions today?

RC:  I think it’s similar to what we do now.   You’d send in your resume and maybe they’d ask for a tape.  Then they’d invite you.  Now everything is so electronic.  Back in those days, I believe I sent in a reel-to-reel [tape], because after that it was cassettes, then CDs and DVDs.  Some of the places now want video to make sure you aren’t doctoring up your recording.

Other than that, I don’t think it’s too much different.

CKDH:  So you win the audition, and now you’re in the orchestra playing next to your teacher, the principal timpanist.  How different was it being there, playing with him in that setting?

RC:  What can I say?  It was phenomenal, a dream come true.  Especially when I became co-principal with him.  He couldn’t have been a better person, and he was very relaxed and laid back.

He very much guided me through things, recommending, “you should do this and do that.”  There is so much involved in my job other than what you see on stage, and it was very helpful to have him there.  And the guys in the section then, Walt Goodwin and Charles Delancey, were both easygoing and easy to get along with, so they made the transition for me from training orchestras like the AYS (American Youth Symphony) to the Philharmonic very easy.

CKDH:  Eventually, both Walt Goodwin and Charles Delancey retired and Perry Dreiman and Jim Babor took over for them in the late 80’s and early 90’s.  That’s been quite a run of the three of you being the section.  What was it about their playing that led you to choose them at the time, and what has it been like working with them all these years?

RC:  Trying to find the right pieces to put together to make a section is the goal.  First Walt Goodwin retiring in 1985 or so and Perry replacing him, it was an easy fit.  Same thing when Jim Babor took over when Chuck retired in 1992 or ’93.

That’s why you have a probation period.  You hear how they play when they do their audition, and that’s one thing. It’s actually different when you’re on stage playing with the whole orchestra.

But the probation period is also to see how you get along with each other.  Because you can have a great player, but if you’ve got personal issues, it can be a problem.  Part of the process is working with them, touring with them.  I think for a lot of people, you see your colleagues at work more than you do your family at home.  We spend so much time together.  That’s a very important part, and it’s been easy.  I’ve been very blessed.

CKDH:  You allude to the fact that most people only know what they see on stage and that there’s much more going on in the background.  Let’s talk more about that.  There are the basics of being Principal and the leadership role that you have.  How different is it being in that leadership capacity, and what are the parts of the job you like vs. the parts that are a challenge or that didn’t come naturally to you?  Is the on-stage or off-stage part of the job more stressful?

RC:  I like the off-stage work.  It’s a challenge.  If you know me, you know I’m very organized, and for me, a Principal Percussionist has to be organized because you’ve got so much going on.

Just to give you a breakdown of what happens:

• A month ahead of time, I get music from the library.  For example, with the John Williams concert – my last concert – it’s a stack of music, something like 18 pieces.
• I have to go through each of those and make a list of all the instruments we’ll need for each piece, I have to rent or acquire instruments we don’t normally have
• I have to make a chart for the crew so that they can place the instruments on stage
• Then I have to mark and assign each part of each piece and assign them to every player.  I have to decide if we need extra players or if the guy who’s playing bass drum run can over and play tam tam.  So I mark up all that, put them in the folders, and give them to the guys.

That’s a very time-consuming thing, but I love doing it because it’s like having this big puzzle and having to put all the pieces together.  And when you’re done, it’s a very nice feeling, it’s like, “Ahhhhh.”  It’s a challenge but I’ve always enjoyed that.

CKDH:  So if the flutes get doubling pay for playing piccolo or the trumpets for playing cornet in the same concert, is there any chance percussionists get paid quadrupling or quintupling pay given the variety of instruments you have to play?  I’m guessing probably not . . .

RC:  Actually, we do get doubling on certain things.  Like if we cross over and play timpani, we get a double.  Or in West Side Story where I have to fire a starter’s pistol, I get a double for that [chuckles].  Certain things like that.  But for all the usual percussion stuff, you’re right, we don’t get doubles for those.

CKDH:  Given that all of those instruments are part and parcel to the role of being a percussionist, switching between tuned mallet instruments to drums and cymbals, and that a big part of your role as Principal is assigning parts, how do you decide who plays what?  It’s seems like there are trends.  For example, when Ravel’s Bolero is on the program, I usually see Perry playing snare drum.

RC:  I play most of the prominent parts, and I know each player’s strengths and weaknesses, so to speak.  And I try to balance the workload so that there’s not too much going on for anyone, including me.

This summer has been the most intense for me in my 33 years.  Start with the two movies we did, complete soundtracks to Harry Potter and Star Trek:  both of those movies were written in two-minute segments, then you stop and reset and play the next segment; we played it continuously with the intermission, and it’s a challenge to have all those instruments on stage and to be able to go from one cue to the next in one or two minutes.

It was a big challenge and again, I like that.  I like trying to figure it out and make it work so that it’s the least obstructed on stage.  We’re supposed to appear very calm and  we’ve got it down.  Hopefully [laughing].  Hopefully no mallets fall or no one’s tripping on a cord or anything like that.

CKDH:  Any horror stories or amusing anecdotes to that effect?

RC:  Oh, things have happened, though nothing directly to us.  My favorite story here [at the Bowl] is coming out at intermission to set for the second half and there’s this dribble coming down from the top.  I look up and there’s a raccoon peeing  [we laugh].

There’s another one where we’re playing  a quiet passage and there’s a rumbling in the audience, and it’s almost like a wave that’s moving through it.  Turns out there was a skunk running through the boxes.

CKDH:  [Laughs] You talk about the organization that’s required of you.  Once, a musician took me backstage at Walt Disney Concert Hall and showed me the percussion room, saying, “This is the most organized room you’ll find backstage here.”  That’s probably true of any orchestra with its usual instruments, but especially with this orchestra and its repertoire, there’s a lot more.  Between all the exotic Asian, African, and South American instruments that you wouldn’t typically find in Strauss or Beethoven, to the coffee cups and wine bottles called for in contemporary music.  I assume you’re the one that has to figure out which coffee cup is “the right” coffee cup for a particular piece.

RC: Right!  [Laughing]  Or I ask someone in administration if they’ll bring me a selection of coffee cups and sometimes they just bring a few and you can’t quite find the right sound, so I always ask them please to bring a bunch.

Djembe

You know, the job has changed so much from when I joined the orchestra.  In the 80’s, you saw very few ethnic instruments.  Basically you just had congas and bongos – think West Side Story.  Now you get that all the time:  taiko, the African djembe, for example.  I recorded two or three pieces with the orchestra that called for djembe, like I said, years ago was not the norm but now it is.  We have three octaves of gongs now, which again, 20 years ago, you didn’t need gongs.  To me, it’s a reflection of the world today and what’s going on: more of a melting pot, a mixture of different sounds.  Composers are forced to come up with different sounds because they want to be inventive.

I remember this one composer had me stretch some masking tape across a drum and the performance was ripping the tape off.  Now who would have thought of that?  I wouldn’t have.

CKDH:  Maybe a Foley artist in a movie studio somewhere?

RC:  Yeah, exactly.  I enjoy that part, it’s part of the challenge of getting the part done.

CKDH:  I remember seeing behind the scenes footage from one of the orchestra’s tours, and it showed you guys in some foreign country getting the chance to go shopping – or maybe you made a point of going shopping – for new instruments.

RC:  Well you have to!  [laughs]  When you’re in Asia, you go look for gongs and tam tams and things like that which are harder to find here.  We were in Spain, and I remember getting some castanets.  For a percussionist, this is obvious, you just do this.

CKDH:  Among the more conventional instruments, you seem to be a Sabian house when it comes to cymbals.  Has that evolved over time or is it just something you decided?

RC:  It’s been a long time since we made the connection.  I believe they came to us and said, “We’d like to endorse you and be your sponsor.”  We tried some of their cymbals and we liked them, so we stayed with them all of these years.

CKDH:  You talk about the composer giving you directions on the sound they want to hear, which makes sense.  How often do you find conductors giving you specific direction with regards to actual equipment to use instead of just telling you to play softer or louder, and how do you react?

RC:  Not often.  It’s usually, “Can you use a softer stick,” or like you said, louder or softer.  The instances would obviously be more so contemporary pieces we play, and most particularly in the New Music Group.  But they pretty much go with what we’ve got.  It’s definitely more prevalent when the composer is there.  They’ll often make comments and say, “That’s not exactly what I head in mind.”  I’ll try to jump that by asking ahead of time.

We did the Andriessen opera at the end this past Walt Disney Concert Hall season, and the part said, “African marimba,” which is kind of vague, so I sent him an email about a bunch of things and that was one of them.  He replied something like, “Oh, you’re being so specific.  You can just lay a woman’s necklace across the marimba and that will be fine.”  He wanted that buzz sound from a marimba, and I would never have thought of that.  I was actually looking to see if I can find an African marimba that could play the specific notes he called for.

CKDH:  Are there favorite instruments you like to play?  Or are there particular parts in specific pieces that are favorites where you say, “Well, I get to choose who plays and I’m picking me.”

RC:  Oh yeah.  I love playing the bass drum part on The Rite of Spring.  As I said, that’s one of the pieces that got my attention at a very young age.  But also, that’s the joy and fun of playing percussion, having this wide variety of instruments compared to a trumpet player or a violin player.  We have a variety and move around.  That’s a lot of fun.

CKDH: In the LA Phil, Joe Pereira is the only official timpanist.  In some orchestras, one of the section percussionists also is also officially Assistant Principal Timpani, which isn’t the case here, so there seems to be more of a distinction between the roles.  I know that before Joe was hired, you were timpanist for a year or so.  Did you ever consider specializing in timpani instead of being in the percussion section?

RC:  To me, ideally, it’s both timpani and percussion because I love both.  That’s why I feel like I’ve been so fortunate here to be able to do both.  It’s great.

Even if you’re in the percussion section, there’ll be times when you have to play timpani, maybe in Berlioz and there’s four of us.  So it’s both.

CKDH:  While we’re talking about instruments, I want to bring up some specific ones because you have some great ones in the Los Angeles Philharmonic.  First of all, you can’t talk about orchestral percussion without talking about Mahler 6.  Tell me about the big box and big mallet.  I’ve heard different stories, but I’d love to hear yours.

RC:  Well, that’s one that we would go through with the conductors.  I remember when I first did it in the orchestra in the early 80’s – I believe with Simon Rattle, who is, of course, a percussionist.  I forget what we first used, but he said, “Eh, it’s not loud enough.”  So we ended up with what kind of looks like a jackhammer:  a 4×4 with a pole through it so you could grab it.  We slammed it on a podium or something.  Not the [conductor’s] podium itself, mind you, but something on the floor.  And he loved it.  If you go to the percussion room, we still have it and he signed it, something like, “Best hammer ever, Simon Rattle.”  This was before he was Sir Simon Rattle.

What do we use now?  When we moved to Disney Hall, it just wasn’t enough sound.  Now we have a hammer – you know the kind that you use when you’re at the circus and you slam to ring a bell – that type of hammer that we made.  We hit it with a box that we call “The Dog House” because it’s about the size of a dog house, and there’s a hole we cut out of it for the sound to go out.  Your dog could fit in there.

And because it’s so big – and Perry usually plays this – you have to have stairs to go up.  So it’s a big moment.  Every time we play it when that moment comes, I look up in the audience and see that there are people [whispering and pointing], “Oh, watch this.”  You can hear them say, “What’s he gonna do?!”  It’s great.

CKDH:  You designed The Dog House?

RC:  Eh, I don’t know [laughing].  You go to the crew and say, “Can you build us a 4’x4’ box?”  They say, “Yeah, sure.  What color do you want it?”

When we did the 6^th in Venezuela, it was too big, so the crew took it apart for the trip, then nailed it or screwed it back together when we got there.  Things you wouldn’t normally worry about.

CKDH:  Next instrument I want to ask about:  the big cast bells you use for Symphonie fantastique.  I love those.  I remember the first time you guys used them in Disney Hall, and you could literally feel the sound in your chest when you hit them.

RC:  We’d been wanting to get those forever, certainly before I was in the orchestra, but they’re expensive.  In their place we’ve used many different things, from chimes to bell plates.  They never were the right sound, though.

Finally, soon after we moved to Disney Hall, a donor donated the money to purchase the bells and we finally had the right instrument.  It makes a big difference.  I would go to administration prior to that and say [grinning], “Chicago has the real bells.  New York has them.  How come we don’t have them?”  So that’s how we got them.

CKDH:  I heard that originally they didn’t leave Disney Hall because of the weight?

RC:  They still don’t.  Yeah.

CKDH:  Is that something that you guys expected when you got them?

RC:  Well, I would say it’s an administrative decision.  I’ve you ask me, the bells got here, so they could move to the Bowl or other places.

A few years ago, we did a short West Coast tour with Gustavo [Dudamel] and we did Symphonie fantastique.  Knowing that we wouldn’t be moving the bells, he asked us to do it on synthesizer.  In other words, we sampled our bells and we played it electronically on a keyboard.  It’s not the same sound exactly, but that’s what he wanted.

CKDH:  This isn’t so much a question about an instrument but rather a piece and a collection of instruments:  I remember sitting in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion when Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted the Revueltas piece, La Noche de los Mayas.

RC:  Oh yeah!

CKDH:  Before you played it, people were sitting around asking each other, “Do you know this piece?”  “No, I’ve never heard of it at all.”  And then after it ended, the room erupting with cheers and loud applause.  There are a lot of pieces with iconic percussion parts, but that one struck me more than any other.  There were like six or so percussionists on stage that night?

RC:  Six?  You want to double that?  More like twelve! In fact, thirteen if you count the conch shell.

CKDH:  Yikes!  I didn’t realize it was that many.  Had you played it before that performance?

RC:  Nope.  I had heard of it, but never actually played it.  It was cool.  Still one of my favorites.  A fun piece to play and a great piece of music, fun for the audience too.

That’s one of the fun things at Disney Hall vs. the Dorothy Chandler:  having the audience right behind you.  It’s great.  They’ll often ask me, “Excuse me, what is that?”  Or “What kind of sound does that make.”  They ask questions of this, that, or the other, and having them right there is quite cool.

CKDH:  Tell me more about the transition from the Dorothy Chandler to Walt Disney Concert Hall.  I’ve heard stories from retired brass players with only short parts to play in a big piece about having magazines on their stands or other silly stuff like that.  In those days, you were literally as far away from the audience as any orchestral player could be.  Now, not so much.

RC:  It was huge.  Prior, we used to say the orchestra sounds best on tour.  The Dorothy Chandler is a multi-purpose hall and it just wasn’t a great sound for an orchestra.  When we moved, it was like, “Wow, the orchestra sounds better because we have a good space to play in.”

It’s a lot of fun to have a nice work environment and to actually have a dedicated percussion room.  Before that we had nothing.  All of our instruments were stored in trunks, and backstage at Dorothy Chandler, you had all these trunks laid out and we had to put our instruments in there after every service and performance.  It was kind of a drag.

If we wanted to practice, we’d try to reserve a room way up on the 4^th floor.  More often than not, it wouldn’t be available.  Now, it’s so much more professional and convenient to have a percussion room to keep all our things and be able to practice.

[To be continued . . . click HERE]

RELATED POSTS:

• Comings and goings at the LA Phil and beyond (Summer 2016 edition): Lots of updates with principal chairs and more

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Photo credits:

• Raynor Carroll:  photo by CK Dexter Haven
• Mahler 6 hammer and dog house:  courtesy of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association

Here’s Part Two of my interview with Raynor Carroll, the Principal Percussionist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic who’ll retire after tonight’s concert at the Hollywood Bowl.  (Part One can be found HERE).

In this part, he talks about:

• Matthew Howard, the musician taking over his orchestra chair once he steps down
• The challenges of attracting young African-Americans to orchestral music
• His post-retirement plans
• Memories of conductors with whom he’s worked while at the LA Phil
• and more

CKDH: This orchestra plays more music by written by living composers and music of the last half-century than just about any other.  And not everyone has to participate in the Green Umbrella new music series, but you do.  I’d love to hear about the role contemporary music plays in your life.

RC:  It’s been said that the featured instrument in the 18^th Century was the violin, in the 19^th Century the piano, and in the 20^th Century it’s percussion.  There’s so many possibilities for us.  I think it’s vital to include composers of the time into your programming.  That means a lot more work for us, but it’s the essence of the times we live in.

It’s, again, another challenge.  The parts are usually/often very difficult.  They can be difficult in just the set-up even when the parts themselves aren’t hard to play.  You might have to figure out how to play a bongo, then hit a marimba, then have to hit the glockenspiel.  There’s not one mallet you can use for everything, so you have to figure out all these logistical things out.  It’s a challenge, but again, I’d rather do this than any other thing.

It’s great and I think it’s such a vital part of what we do, 20^th and 21^st Century music.  It’s a necessity.

Now, there are good pieces, and there are bad pieces.  That is to say, there are works where you’ll spend hours and hours practicing, then at performance, you’re like “Oh my gosh.” [Scrunching his face in seeming anguish]  But then there are the others which are really worthwhile.

CKDH:  There are a lot of cool works featuring solo percussion with orchestra, and there have been some great musicians that have come through to play those solos:  Steven Schick, Evelyn Glennie, Martin Grubinger, to name just a few.  A lot of the other principals or section players in the LA Phil play concertos, but I don’t really see you or the other guys from the section up there in front of the orchestra.  What’s up with that?

RC:  It’s never been my passion to be a soloist.  I just love sitting in the back and playing, doing my part.  Other principals and section players might enjoy, from time to time, being a soloist.  I don’t get a particular thrill out of that.  I don’t go to administration suggesting a solo I want to do.

I had my one chance this year.  We did the Messiaen, From the Canyons to the Stars [Des canyons aux étoiles].  We did that in London, and I’m in front.  That’s fine.  Once every five years or so is fine. [Laughs] I don’t really need to do that.

CKDH:  Please tell me about your composing and your publishing company, Batterie Music.

RC:  It’s mainly pedagogic.  I’ve got a series of books, a timpani method book and some repertoire books.  When I was growing up, when you were preparing for an audition or working on a piece for school, there was no material and it was hard to get the music back then.  Whereas for all the other music, we didn’t.

So back in the 90’s, I just started publishing for each percussion instrument, and they’ve thankfully been very successful.  The impetus was because there was this need in the percussion world, and that’s one of things I want to continue to do more of [once I’m retired]. For the past few years, I’ve wanted to do that but just haven’t been able to do because of the time.  I enjoy doing it and I get a lot of feedback from other percussionists, some of whom say, “We use your book onstage instead of the actual music.”  [Laughing]

CKDH:  So is that why you’re retiring now?  You’re not really old and at what most people would consider “retirement age.”

RC:  Well, it’s all relative.  To me, that’s my point.  I’m not that old, so I can do some other things before I am too old to do them.  I love traveling, and it just gets a little more difficult when you’re older to do a 21-hour trip to Bali, for example.  It’ll be easier now than when I’m, say, 70.

You know, I’ve been in the orchestra for 33 years.  That’s a long time to be in one job.  Now, our job is unique, it’s different, and I love it.  I feel like we’re the luckiest people on the planet.  But I’ve been preparing for this for a long time, thinking about what I’m going to do and what the next phase of my life is going to be.

CKDH:  And what is the next phase of your life going to be?  It sounds like some Batterie Music, some travel . . .

RC:  Right, but part of it is that I don’t know yet.  We recently redid our yard with drought tolerant plants, and I enjoy working in the yard.  I actually made my wife a  garden bench and garden table.  I never really worked with wood before and it was a lot of fun.  So I don’t know, and that’s the exciting part.  Another part is researching family ancestry.  There’s a lot of things, in addition to a “honey do” list that my wife wants me to do [laughs].  There’s a lot of good stuff.

CKDH:  And after you leave, Matthew Howard will take your chair.  Can we talk a little bit about your successor?

RC:  Sure!

CKDH:  You can obviously relate to him in some ways:  being a local boy, growing up with this orchestra,  and all of a sudden becoming principal in your 20s.

RC:  Oh yeah.  You cannot believe how excited myself and my wife were when we heard that he got the gig.  She remembers one of the first times he came to our house for a lesson.  I think he had just finished college and I think he was at a junior college at the time, before going to USC.  And he came for lessons for a summer.

He had his backpack on, full of mallets and music.  She remembers that he was so into it and organized, she says like a mini me, but I didn’t say that [laughing].  When we’d spend time together, whatever I’d give him, he’d come the next time totally prepared and eager, like, “What’s next?  What have you got for me?!”

Do you remember the movie Up, the animated movie that came out a few years ago?  Do you remember Russell, the young “happa” kid in it who had a cap and a backpack?  Well, Matthew’s happa, and he’d have a backpack on and a cap on, and he’d came to the door and my wife would say, “Russell’s here!” [laughing].

The years would pass, he was at USC and then he went back east, he would still come and have a lesson here and there when he was in town.  He was focused.  I don’t always see that in my students and I’ve had many over the years.  He was always very focused and knew what he wanted to do.  It reminded me of how I was like many years ago.

When I told my wife, she said, “Wow, but I’m not surprised.”

CKDH:  Is there any advice you’ve given him?

RC:  We had lunch a month or so ago, and there was some advice I gave him about this, that, and the other.  He’s just ready to go, but I told him he could call or email if things come up and you’re not sure.

One of his big questions was, “Do you have an inventory of the instruments?  I don’t know the name of every single instrument.”  He’s worried about what I alluded to earlier, that he’s gotta make a list of every instrument that has to be on stage.  I sent him a list, but I also said don’t worry about it: the guys will help you, the crew will help you, and you’ll learn.

He’s great.  I think the section will be in good hands.

CKDH: Shifting gears a bit. There aren’t a lot of African-Americans in the orchestra. With you leaving, that’s one fewer. What impact do you think race plays in the classical music world in general and for you in particular as someone who’s been a role model just by your presence in the orchestra?

RC: Yeah, it’s a difficult thing. I said earlier, I think I’m here in part because my dad would play all types of music. So I think exposure is the important thing. I was fortunate to have that, to be in a home where music was so important, and I just latched onto the classical side.

I think that’s what’s missing from society in general [in the US]. You know, we go on tour in Europe and I come back to my room after the concert and there are actually orchestra concerts on TV. It’s just a regular part of their programming, and we don’t really have that. When there’s an orchestra on TV here, it’s a special performance, you know like Great Performances [on PBS], which is good but . . . Also I remember when I was growing up, Boston Pops would be on TV almost every Sunday, so that was an influence on me.

Where do you see it now? It’s not the same. What I was saying about Europe, [classical music] is part of their culture because that’s where it came from. We don’t have the same thing here, so that’s part of the problem. [Pauses to think]

There will be a Raynor pop up here or there because it’s their passion, but to get that exposure at a young age is critical. I don’t know what the answer is to improve the awareness that you can do this job, that it’s not limited to race or whatever, it’s a job that you can do also. You have to make it your drive and your focus, but you can do it. It’s a difficult thing.

CKDH: Given that lack of exposure of classical music to society in general, do you think young African-Americans – or young people of any ethnicity are better accessed via some kind of cross-over or collaboration between classical artists and musicians they have more exposure to? For example, there’s Caroline Shaw and her work with Kanye West. . . .

RC: I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s a better way. It’s one of the options.

We have done school concerts where we’d go to schools, and more recently since Disney Hall was built, students would come to Disney . . . [pauses to think] . . . Yeah, it’s a tough nut to crack.

I enjoy my teaching in that I feel like I can reach some of those players that possibly might pursue [classical music], but it’s tough. I don’t know what the answer is.

I wish there were more of a pool of players, but there isn’t.

CKDH: Getting back to the orchestra and you retiring. What are you going to miss the most?

RC: The music – being in the music. Obviously, I can still hear The Rite of Spring and [other works], but I won’t be in the middle of the orchestra playing that, which you can’t replace. That I’m definitely going to miss.

I’m not going to miss driving. I’m not going to miss parking at the Bowl [laughs]

CKDH: Are there particular conductors that stick in your mind?

RC: For good or for bad? [Laughing]

CKDH: Well, whatever you want to say . . .

RC: No, I’m just teasing. [Laughing]

Yeah, Esa-Pekka, having worked with him for all those years, he’d probably be at the top of my list. Fine musician, excellent ear and excellent conductor, and great knowledge of percussion, and/or if he didn’t, he’d come to me and ask in his particular way [changes his voice to mimic Salonen], “Do you have a different cymbal? It clashes with this chord,” or whatever else he’d have. I have the utmost respect for him.

Being hired by Carlo Maria Giulini, what can I say. [Smiles and looks off in another direction remembering]. My first season was his last season with the orchestra, unfortunately, so I only got limited concerts with him, but yes, definitely him.

CKDH: Everyone I’ve talked to about him has the same reaction when they mention him. They get the same aura in their face . . .

RC: Yeah, special and unique. Old-school, you’re never going to find anything like him anymore. He didn’t have great baton technique, but the essence of the music was just there. It was just amazing.

CKDH: So when someone doesn’t have great baton technique, it’s harder for everyone in the orchestra, but it seems that it would suck even more for you guys in percussion.

RC: Well, Leonard Bernstein didn’t have great baton technique. But again, the essence of the music . . . He was drenched in sweat, he’d be dancing and jumping on the podium, he was totally into it.

You don’t have to have great baton technique. You could have the other, someone has excellent technique and very clear, absolute metronomic beats, but where’s the music? [shakes his head]

CKDH: Let me throw some names out. Simon Rattle . . .

RC: I wish we’d see him more [smiling]. He’s fantastic. Really enjoyed working with him. Again, he’s a former percussionist, so we’ve related very well. I remember he was conducting Daphnis with us years ago at the Dorothy Chandler. I was playing the snare part. He stops and says, “That’s the perfect drum for this.” He had a keen ear because he was a player too.

CKDH: You sometimes hear of conductors who are violinists micromanaging the bowing or other such things getting into the minutiae. Since he was a percussionist, did he ever get into your business?

RC: Oh no.

CKDH: You mentioned Zubin Mehta having an impact on you.

RC: When I was a kid and you used to come watch the orchestra, he was Music Director so there’s always a special place for Zubin, for those days and those times. I respect what he does and I admire him. We don’t see him enough either.

CKDH: Since we’re on the Music Director carousel, how about Andre Previn?

RC: [Nods] Great musician, didn’t last long here unfortunately. There were a lot of possibilities, but he wasn’t here long enough.

CKDH: And now Gustavo. What’s it been like working with him since he’s become Music Director, going from Esa-Pekka and his Finnish ways to Gustavo and his Venezuelan ways?

RC: I think different repertoire for each. Esa-Pekka was more into the Modern works whereas with Gustavo, it seems that the Romantic works are more his specialty.

Thinking of Leonard Bernstein having passion on the podium: that’s Gustavo.

CKDH: Now thinking about other guest conductors who came through a lot. How about Kurt Sanderling?

RC: Really respected him. He would often tell stories about Shostakovich or different things that happened or things he experienced with composers he interacted with, things that were very enlightening and helpful to us in the orchestra. Again, old school, gone.

CKDH: Of the notable conductors you’re familiar with who didn’t visit L.A., any names stick out that you really wished would have come?

RC: Yeah, I don’t think I ever saw Claudio Abbado. I never saw Sir Georg Solti. There are the two for me. Those are the big names I think of.

CKDH:   How about working with Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, who passed away recently?

RC: He was fun, very fun. He’d always wear that very colorful shirt. [smiling]

I remember the last time I did Bolero was at Disney with Frühbeck. We started rehearsal, and he stopped and he told me to play louder. We did it again, he stopped again and told me to play louder still. Usually, it’s the oppose, they want it really really soft, but he said, “I want the person in the last row to hear.”

And then he told my colleagues, and I wish they’d say this more often: “Listen to the snare drum, play with the snare drum.” You know, I set the rhythm and they all have solos. So the problem for me is when the solos get really flexible with the time. But he said, “No, no, no.” I’ll always remember that from him. I thought, “Yes, finally!”

CKDH: I’m always in awe of you or Perry or whoever is playing the snare on that piece. I can’t imagine how hard it is.

RC: It’s really the first five minutes. The rest of it is fine, getting through the first five minutes with all those very quiet solos is the hard part. After that, it’s fine.

CKDH: Do you plan on coming back to sit in the audience at Disney Hall after you retire?

RC: Well, I won’t the first season, definitely not. After that, it’s a possibility. We’ll see.

RELATED POSTS:

• A chat with Raynor Carroll (part 1 of 2): the outgoing Principal Percussionist of the LA Phil talks about the joys and craziness of his job and the instruments he plays

• Comings and goings at the LA Phil and beyond (Summer 2016 edition): Lots of updates with principal chairs and more

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Photo credits:

• Raynor Carroll portrait in suit with blue tie:  courtesy of California State University, Los Angeles
• Exercises, Etudes, and Solos for the Timpani:  courtesy of Batterie Music
• Matthew Howard:  courtesy of New World Symphony
• Raynor Carroll with cymbals:  courtesy of Sabian
• Raynor Carroll sitting with timpani:  courtesy of Remo