Kenneth Woods- a view from the podium

As we approach next week’s broadcast of the new Discovering Music show on the Nielsen Flute Concerto, we thought it would be nice to make available some older episodes as podcasts. The current episode is on the general topic of Impressionism. There’s a lovely performance of Debussy’s Prelude a l’apres midi d’un faun at the end, as well as excerpts from Images, Siegfried and Kovanschina. 

Discovering Music- “Impressionism” 

BBC National Orchestra of Wales 

Kenneth Woods, conductor 

Stephen Johnson, presenter 

Click here to listen 

Available for one week only. 

Here’s a good luck at the OES music library (note that the shelves and the wall are horizontal!)….

 Just think how long it took to mark all those bowings!

Please, please give what you can to the OES Fire Renewal Fund.

 (Flames break through the office roof)

Well, it’s been two weeks since the fire hit. I don’t think anyone in the organization can believe it, as none of us has been able to catch a breath during that whole time. We’ve raised a chunk of money, found a new office, started a lawsuit, sent out a lot of press releases and so on, but it frankly feels like we’ve barely put a dent in everything there is to do. I had a long chat with Michelle today, and it really hit me that my prediction that we’d now have twice as much work to do and that each task would take twice as long might have been optimistic.  There is an interesting look inside things in Pendleton here. I think Reid and Michelle have had nearly as difficult as few weeks on top of the fire as I have. It’s been really tough here- enough to prevent me going to Pendleton when I’m needed. I’ve written before about how gigs always fall at the same time- so do shitstorms.

We’ve had donations from via the PayPal account from Paris, New York, Chicago, Dayton, L.A., Vancouver and Boise, among other spots, as well as donors from Oregon. Still, that’s only about a third of what we need to cover the immediate extra costs we’re facing for the rest of the year (which in music business terms is not much). If just half of the thousand or so readers who come through here every day would take the five minutes to visit PayPal and give just $10 or $20 bucks, we would be there. Although the actual losses for the orchestra are in the hundreds of thousands, much of that can be replaced and rebuilt piecemeal over the next 20 years.

We’ve also had a piano donated, a laptop, a few desktops, parts to Mahler 1, phones and desks. In a couple of weeks, I’ll do a special post acknowledging all the materianl donations I can. 

The good news is that Michelle and I finished the season schedule for next year on the phone today, and it will be a great series of concerts if they happen. We’re nearly there- please help us weather the storm, and I can stop writing like one of those annoying NPR fund drive folks. 

We’d like to invite any regular readers to visit YouTube and search for Mahler. 

We found out today that for some bizarre reason, the number 1 search result on YouTube for Mahler is the first mvt. of Kindertotenlieder with me conducting baritone Jesus Suaste and the State of Mexico Symphony. Bernstein is number 2, Simon Rattle is 3-5 and Claudio Abbado is no. 6. 

I want to make completely clear that we did not engineer this in any way, but I’m happy to ask readers to click through to KTL so we keep the ranking. 

We have set up a channel of KW clips on YouTube, called Downbeat TV.

Check it out. 

Cheers 

Ken 

One of the recent news items on the OES fire said that “the orchestra takes pride in describing itself as “the most remotely situated full symphony orchestra on the planet.”"
Actually, that nickname is just the legacy of a long-forgotten newspaper writer.

The actual members of the orchestra and I refer to the orchestra, with pride, as the “best goddamn redneck orchestra in the world.”

No offense to other redneck orchestras.

KW

We’ve tried to gather all the blog posts we could find so far on the symphony fire. The list is sure to be incomplete, and we’ll edit and update as we learn of other postings. Getting the word out about the situation is job no. 1 right now- if we can make a good, quick push and raise some substantial funds, we’ll be on our way to survival. 

Click here to make a donation to the OES Fire Renewal Fund using PayPal.

Thanks to everyone who’s written about us.

NEW!- Classical Convert- A beginner’s guide to classical music

NEW!- The Fauxharmonic Orchestra

Planned Purlhood (a must read for her background on the owners of the building and their general approach to maintenance and safety)

Adventures of an Idaho violist

Rebecca’s Blog  (who wisely writes about the importance of supporting small arts organizations as well as the behemoths)

Violinist.com

aworks

more aworks

Soho the dog

David Stabler (music critic of the Oregonian)

Les Nouvelles

AMK’s Diary

nosnikreplliw (flickr photo blog)

Hiway 200

I Still Live in America

We’re making good progress raising funds, but it is a race against the clock. Small donations are just as appreciated as large ones- it _is_ worth taking the time to donate $10, just as it is with any number of digits in the number.

Lots of good news. More and more people have stepped up to the plate to help, and things are looking up. Thanks to everyone that has helped.

We have come up with a good and simple plan, which is basically to create an institutional framework that will make sure business as usual is getting taken care of while we deal with fallout from the fire. The biggest danger right now is not the fire, but being so fixated on that that we don’t take care of things like getting the brochure for next season in the mail in the next few weeks, getting the details for our Mahler 1 concert sorted, getting our everyday business sorted. Everyone is taking a moment to outline their own time management setup, and the staff and the board are just walking through everyone’s duties as now adjusted. In the short term, we only have about half of the man-hours to do our regular work as we normally would, so there will be a lot of overtime (unpaid!) and a lot of volunteer time from the board and community.

I’d had a draining and exhausting week all-round, not limitted to the fire, up to the moment when we started rehearsing Elgar 1 with the Wrexham Symphony on Wednesday night. Within seconds, I felt every bit my old self, and the rehearsal was a joy, for which I thank them. The OES is going to feel quite rushed to be ready for Mahler 1, with rehearsals starting in about 5 weeks, but I wish it was sooner for everyone in Pendleton’s sake. What that organization needs now is music.
KW

Click here to make a donation to the OES Fire Renewal Fund using PayPal.

It has been a very interesting study to see the range of reactions we’ve had from around the country to the recent fire at the OES offices.

It’s been depressing, but not surprising, to see how an event like this plays out in the regional news media. By the time the fire department had put out the last hot spots, the story was already old news, and for many residents of the Northwest, this event will go down in history as “Fire in Popcorn Popper Destroys Lodge,” which has been the headline for many of the wire stories that came out. Some of the earliest coverage didn’t even mention the symphony or any of the other businesses. Really, who writes these headlines? It’s no wonder there’s so much stupidity in the world when those who make the day-to-day decisions about what news reaches us have no sense of relevance or context. Who cares about the goddamn popcorn machine?!?!?!? If the American media can forget New Orleans, what hope does a tiny orchestra have?

By the time the fire was out and the enormity of the damage was known, the “news cycle” had moved on. We expect our local paper will cover the aftermath, but any broader coverage will only happen if we agitate for it.

In the early hours of this, we realized we needed to raise awareness of our plight within the classical field. I had hoped that this blog, which is pretty widely read and linked, would be a fairly powerful tool. It has been and it hasn’t. I’m delighted to thank a few other bloggers who have picked up the story and helped to raise awareness, like Robert Gable at Aworks and Mathew Guerrieri at Soho the Dog. Those links have helped, and have actually led to donations.

Email and email listserves have proved a very powerful tool, and many people contacted that way have helped or offered to help (THANK YOU!), but there have been just a few reactions that have raised my hackles. . One commetator said that orchestra only performs at full force 6 times a year, but that it is “fairly active” in education and outreach.

If by “fairly active” one means that the orchestra’s staff and board work year-round in collaboration with almost all of the music educators and private teachers in the area, then yes, we’re “fairly active.” The youth ensembles rehearse and perform 9 months of the year, and the summer music camp is a major organizational undertaking. I find the “fairly” rather distasteful because I see week-in and week-out how hard people in Pendleton work to keep those programs going. All of those programs have to not only be run, they have to be funded- we have grant writers and fundraisers working year round to do that. I have been lucky to work with and in some very large orchestras, and I can safely say that many of the Pendleton folks work as hard as anyone in the business.

Yes, the orchestra only does six concerts a year, but for non-“A” orchestras, that’s a pretty common number, and they are serious, thoughtful and challenging programs. Doing more many concerts would cost more than the community can afford, and would dilute audience interest; also, the orchestra does have a mission beyond concert presentation, which it takes very seriously.

All of our concerts since my arrival are listed in the Concert Archive page of my own website. Have a look. We’ve done all-20^th Century programs, we’ve done numerous premieres and hosted a composer-in-residence, we’ve had nationally known soloists, we’ve done Mahler, we’re completing a Beethoven cycle next year. Here is a typical OES program-

McKinnon- Three Songs of the Magic Strings for Violin and Orchestra (World Premiere)
Hindemith- Der Schwanendreher (Concerto on Old German Folk Songs for Viola and Small
Orchestra)
Hong-Mei Xiao, viola
Copland- Appalachian Spring (Version for Full Orchestra)

Here’s another-
Chris Thomas- Blue Northern (World Premiere Commission)
Barber- Cello Concerto
Kevin Hekmatpanah, cello
Borodin- Symphony No. 2
 

Some are more mainstream-
Wagner- Overture to Rienzi
Rachmaninoff- Piano Concerto No. 3
William Wolfram, piano
Dvorak- Symphony No. 6

But in Pendleton, every single one of those pieces was a FIRST PERFORMANCE!

I think the OES and other groups like it perform many vital services to the industry as a whole. It is musical missionary work, in the best sense of that phrase.

Music education in public schools used to be a major tool for spreading awareness of classical music in rural areas. All of the small towns along the I-84 corridor used to have string programs, now Pendleton is the ONLY TOWN in the Eastern 2/3rds of Oregon with a string program in the school district. Small-town orchestras are fighting a pitched battle to keep orchestral music a living part of the fabric of rural America.

Without powerful and effective advocacy in small communities and remote areas, the symphony orchestra could and would quickly become something that only exists in major blue-state cities. Soon, the industry would be dead, as classical music becomes such a tiny minority interest as to be totally irrelevant, or at least financially unsustainable.

We give young soloists an opportunity to build careers and gain experience, young conductors a chance to hone their craft (that’s why I went) and established soloists a chance to learn new repertoire. We offer composers opportunities to get their music heard and recorded. Young professional musicians who are busy taking auditions at major orchestras can gain invaluable onstage experience and do, and local student and part-time musicians can have the opportunity to play alongside talented and serious musicians. I’ll say right up front that the average technical standard of the OES is not as high as many other groups, but isn’t building orchestras and making them better supposed to be part of what this business is about? You can’t build what is already finished. This is a group that has made a commitment to get better, and I can enjoy working with them just as I do the BBC.

Smaller orchestras can still have a huge impact on their local economies- in Pendleton, symphony concert nights are the busiest of the year (other than during Round Up, the huge rodeo which annually swells Pendleton’s poulation to about 80,000) at all the area restaurants, and we’re always a part of civic drives to attract new businesses to the town. So, I guess it rubs me the wrong way when I read anything that comes across as “we normally wouldn’t talk about such a puny organization, but I guess they’ve had a fire so….”

There is an opportunity here, which is to use this crisis to expand awareness of what the orchestra does within the community. Even in a town as small as Pendleton, there are many who are only peripherally aware of the orchestra, and who don’t know understand all the ways in which the organization is a part of the fabric of the community. I hope that we’ll come out of this with a stronger sense of purpose and a broader community consensus on the value of the organization, not only to those who come to concerts.  Perhaps at the national level, we might have a more probing conversation about the role of regional and community orchestras within the field. Is there enough communication and collaboration between big and small orchestras? Do national service organizations offer smaller organizations enough guidance in sharing good operational practices? Do the efforts of small orchestras receive the recognition they deserve? We’re lucky to have executive and board leadership that, in my opinion, is of a quality that is unusual for such a small orchestra, but not all small orchestras are so lucky. The OES is an aspirational organization- just as much as any orchestra. We know all-too-well the limitations of the organization musically and institutionally, and were making a long-term, concerted effort to improve what we do. We don’t need to be reminded of our smallness.

I do want to say that many, many people and organizations have stepped up and offered to help, both locally and internationally. That is deeply, deeply, deeply appreciated. We were finally able to get into the building and assess our losses, and are now in the process of identifying immediate and long-term needs and developing our strategy. We’ve made it our primary goal to come out of this stronger than before- we’re not cancelling or cutting anything at this point, just working harder. If you’ve been in touch, we’ll be in touch, and thank you.

KW

We’ve set up a stopgap page where people can make donations to the Oregon East Symphony Fire Renewal Fund. The page is currently being hosted on my website’s server, as the OES is locked out of our site until at least Wednesday, but if you click the donation button, it takes you through to PayPal where the transaction takes place. OES is a 501c3 non-profit, all donations are tax deductable.

If everyone who reads this blog just today gave just $10, we’d be able to get our day-to-day business up and running again. You don’t need a PayPal account, just a credit card or debit card.

Thanks for helping

 KW

UPDATE- This is actually working! Thank you to those of you who have donated so far. We’ve got a long way to go, but we’re starting to move forward.

This is the main work area of the office and the meeting space for the board, as it appears without walls or a roof

 All that remains of my office. It has been doing double service as a nap room for Michelle’s 4-month-old daughter while I’m away- that is Miranda’s cradle swing in the foreground. On many days, she would have been asleep in there when the fire started. I think that’s all the perspective on this I need.

KW

When I read at Jessica Duchen’s blog that “Stephen King argues that poor old Edu should never have been on the £20 note at all and represents ‘a peculiar celebration of mediocrity,’” I thought “That’s it! I’m burning all my King novels.” 

Then I read on and realized that “this Stephen King is head of economics for HSBC.” 

Then I realized that all my Stephen King novels burned on Thursday anyway. 

Fuck it

Maybe I’ll just move our mortgage in protest, instead….  KW

The Arts and Community editor at the East Oregonian asked me if we could do a story on the recovery of my cello from the fire at the Oregon East Symphony offices. This is what I sent her. 

My first thought was that the situation was too serious for anything resembling a “feel-good” story, but actually, I now think that the specifics of the story point to some important truths about what the organization called the “Oregon East Symphony” really is, what it stands for and why we need to make sure we come out of this stronger than ever.    

The fact that my cello and one of my guitars were the only things that survived this fire intact has to be one of the best examples of karma, or reaping what you sow, that I’ve ever seen happen in real life.   My cello and guitar were the only things that made it out of the office to the best of my knowledge. I bought the cello nearly four years ago because it had become too expensive and risky to travel with my main instrument. I needed an instrument that could live in Oregon which I could play on during my frequent visits. It’s not a rare or unique instrument, but one that has served me well. I had a luthier in Wisconsin who I’ve known since I started playing customize it for me, and it’s the instrument I’ve played all my recent Oregon performances on, including the Elgar Cello Concerto I did at the last concert.    

Perhaps less expensive, but more valuable to me was the guitar, which I’ve had since I was 13. Many of your readers might know that I used to be a rock and jazz guitar player- it was a big part of my life for many years. When I moved to Cardiff to be with my wife a few years ago, I had to make tough choices about what to bring, and it all boiled down what was most urgently needed in building my life and career today. I couldn’t afford to be sentimental. Everything else has been stored in the OES office, and is now lost. Huge chunks of my life, things I’d written, things I’d composed, furniture that came down through the family, musical instruments, records, tons of books and virtually all the letters I’d gotten up the age of about 30, including things from friends and teachers and relatives who are no longer living, are now gone. Having the one guitar left will mean a lot- more, frankly, than the cello, as it is a link with that earlier epoch in my life.    

My cello and guitar were rescued by Aurora Torres, our principal violist, and Lisa Robertson, our concertmaster. They were the only ones in the office when the fire reached it.  Aurora studies violin and viola with Lisa and they were having a lesson in the OES teaching studio when the fire started.    

I first met Aurora when we started the A-Sharp Players preparatory orchestra about 5 years ago. This was back when Cheryl Marier was our executive director, and she had come to me asking if I would be interested in starting a youth orchestra and conducting it. It was something that had been discussed when I first came to the orchestra and at that point I had said that I didn’t have the time to take it on, but this time I said yes. Aurora was one of the founding members of the orchestra, and I knew her as the rather quiet young girl in the back of the first violins. She was pretty-much self-taught at that point, and I was concerned about whether she would be able to cope with some of the music we were playing.    

As that first year went on, she thrived where others faltered, and when I heard her second audition, I was blown away with the progress she had made without the help of a teacher. I did something I rarely do, which is that I went directly to Lisa and asked her to consider taking Aurora into her studio based on what I’d seen in her audition, and I went to Aurora’s parents and asked them to pursue lessons with Lisa. I also told them that the orchestra would pay for her lessons, as they don’t have a lot of money.    

It’s now several years later, and Aurora has matured from being the little kid in the back of the section of the youth orchestra to being a principal player in the OES itself. When Jason Thornton was in town to conduct our Elgar concert last month he was so impressed with her passion for music and her playing that he offered to arrange a scholarship for her to study in England this summer. Along the way, the orchestra has continued to provide lesson assistance, instruments, tuition waves, whatever it took. We’ve done that for a lot of kids, and it has always been worthwhile- she’s by no means the only talented and bright young person to come through our organization. She was just the one who was having a lesson when the building caught fire, and it was her and her teacher who grabbed my instruments.    

Just think- if Cheryl hadn’t asked me a second time to start a youth orchestra, if I’d said no (when the A-sharps were started, I was only being paid exactly ¼ what I got for youth orchestra rehearsals in my old job in Ohio), it the orchestra hadn’t had the grant funding to pay for it, if we hadn’t had the funds to waive tuition fees for students who need the help, if we hadn’t had the teaching space at the office, if Lisa hadn’t been able to teach her because the orchestra couldn’t subsidize lessons, if Aurora didn’t have a violin to play on…. if any one of these things, all of which are central, everyday parts of what the orchestra does and what it stands for, if any of them hadn’t happened, then nothing would have come out of that building. I’m glad to have my instruments, but I’m even happier to be able to point to everything that has happened over the last six years that led to their rescue.  

There are graduates of our youth programs who are playing in professional orchestras, there are graduates who are leading their university orchestras, there are graduates writing film scores in Hollywood. Pendleton is a place where a kid who is a first-generation American without family money to support her training can learn to play Mahler symphonies and go on to travel the world, to study abroad. When I left town, we were trying to arrange to support Aurora’s travel costs to study in England, which is something we would do if we could for any serious young musician who has put the work in, earned the opportunity and needs the help. Those kinds of opportunities have been there for anyone who had the heart to earn them. Not every community can say that. 

That has been what the OES stands for, and now every bit of that legacy is at risk. We need the community to step up to the plate, and we know that they will, but it’s important that people remember that the symphony isn’t just six Saturday nights a year. It’s a day-in-day-out, year-round effort by staffers, board members, volunteers and musicians to not just put on concerts but to transform lives. I think we were already about the hardest working orchestra in the world, and now we have to all work harder. If we’re so busy rebuilding our office that we can’t fulfil our mission, then we might as well not have an office. 

We had just announced the details of our summer camp when the fire hit. That camp is often the first chance that kids in our area get to participate in an intense immersion in music. Who knows where this year’s first-timers will end up, or where music might take them in life. How many lives might they touch? How many cellos will get pulled out of how many fires by the kids who are starting this year? That camp has to happen. The teaching space has to re-open. The scholarship programs have to stay strong. We need every concert we do to continue to be the best concert we’ve ever done. Our staff need to have time and energy to make sure that happens. We need help to do that. 

A very quick update from Pendleton… 

The implications for the orchestra are far worse than we initially feared, due to problems with the orchestra’s insurance and liability issues with the buildings owners. Our insurance company and that of the building’s owners may be sparring for some time over who is responsible for the costs. It may be many months, possibly over a year, before the orchestra sees any help from insurance.  Smith’s Boot and Shoe Repair and the Pendleton Coffee Bean were also both destroyed. I know both Claude, owner of the boot shop, and Paula, owner of the Coffee Bean, and they are among the kindest and hardest working business people you could ever meet. Both have poured their every energy into those businesses. I feel awful for them, and I don’t know how I will survive our next concert without Paula’s coffee.  Since the office opened in 1999, it has also often served as a popular show space for the work of local artists. There were, as always, a number of original works on display in the office on Thursday, and collectively the artists have seen tens of thousands of dollars worth of their work destroyed. The orchestra is going to set up a temporary office at the Art Center. Portland Internetworks have generously donated us a new computer to get started. In the short term, the orchestra will desperately need help to survive. Donations can still be sent to our old address, and will be forwarded on.

The OES is a 501c3 non-profit, and all donations are tax-deductable. 

Oregon East Symphony 

Fire Recovery Fund

424 S Main

Pendleton, Oregon 97801

It will take at least a year for the orchestra to recover its prospects, but first we must survive for the next few months.

More information will be posted as it becomes available.

KW

In one of the most shocking examples of a complete lack of respect for a nation’s cultural heritage I’ve come accross in some time, the British government has announced it is taking Elgar’s face off the 20 pound note in his 150th anniversary year.

Classy.

Story by Jessica Duchen here