Kenneth Woods- a view from the podium

And so, the concert finished, we celebrated our accomplishments with a few rounds of drinks and called it a workshop. The only thing missing is a comment or two from the students- who I knew read this thing….

It’s probably a silly exercise to try and sum up such busy week with such a diverse and talented group in one or two words, but I’ve been trying to. After all, throughout the week, we tried in vane to complete the simple exercise “is it happy or sad? Round or point? One word!”

Perhaps I can suggest that it is a sign that we were  unusually lucky or successful in picking repertoire this year, that I can find a couple of themes that seemed to run through everyone’s work with the orchestra, and to come up prominently in the final discussion and concert- completeness and flexibility.

Of course, the two ideas are intimately intertwined, and both are central to the conductor’s art (it’s no accident that Gunther Schuller called his book the Compleat Conductor). The repertoire was chosen not only to provide a nice variety, but to expose our incompleteness and inflexibility as musicians. The kind of very clear, pattern oriented conducting in music of Stravinsky and Copland, where the phrasing and the bar lines are almost one, is exactly the last thing you need in the Dvorak Wind Serenade. The ability to generate explosive musical impulses and control sudden shifts of mood called for in the Beethoven op 95 is not much help in pacing the huge opening tutti of the Brahms D minor Piano Concerto. Again and again we saw that what you must do in one piece, you must never do in another (which simply highlights the silliness of so-called “conducting methods”!).

Again and again, we saw where our comfort zones were, what repertoire we’d lived in the most. An opera expert might suffer in Copland, while quartet-spieler who thrives on Beethoven might not be so comfortable breathing with winds in the Dvorak.

And of course, it is that repertoire we know least in which our lack of flexibility comes most rapidly into view. This is actually a bit counter-intuitive. Many young musicians think that the mark of knowing a piece really well is in developing rock hard convictions about it, but all too often those convictions are more justifications for our own wish to stay in a safe place on a piece we don’t know well enough. True mastery of a work means that we can effortlessly adapt our beating to the tempi of a soloist, or can switch from showing a phase idea to correcting a balance problem on the fly.

Every once in the while if I feel myself getting a bit rigid in my thinking, I try to re-target my study as if I were preparing for Beethoven or Haydn to come visit the rehearsal of their piece. I want to make absolutely sure that they’re not going to have to tell me anything that is in the score, but also that if they tell me “no, no, no- much, much faster,” I can do it. Each year and each traversal of a piece, I get a little closer to that goal, as will each of this year’s students.

But perhaps the reason this notion of completeness stands out so strongly this year is because it was such a strong class, and that there were so many students who had profoundly interesting and unique skill sets. One may breathe pretty well, but when you see someone who breathes amazingly well, you are reminded of your own incompleteness. You may know an opera work very well, but perhaps a colleague has not only a similar knowledge, but brings a fresher energy, or a more powerful performing presence. Simply knowing something backwards and forwards is not enough- we must bring that knowledge to life.

Throughout the week, we spoke of cultivating changeability and being omnivorous in the quest for changeability. Early in the week, I began spotting the “watchers” in the class- the conductors who managed to keep their eyes out of their own scores and on their colleagues and the musicians while watching the sessions. It seemed no coincidence at all that they were the most complete and changeable musicians. Happily, during the week, we could see that the watchers were themselves being watched- with the pattern so obvious to see, the whole class seemed to become more focused on trying to learn from each other, rather than sitting back contemplating how they might have done it differently.

Rest assured that the faculty were watching, too…..

The last day of the RCICW has a very different rhythm to the rest of the week. Gone are the regular conducting sessions with orchestra, and all the thrills and stress they bring. Instead, we spend the morning doing one-on-one coaching sessions with the students, followed by a brief discussion session to wrap up the week and a final concert.

The coaching sessions are something I always slightly dread as it’s hard to work without sound, but they do offer you the chance to work at a level of speed and intensity you can’t with an orchestra there. One-on-one, the teacher doesn’t have to worry that each time you stop the student they’re thinking that you are wasting their precious conducting time, so you can really put the laser on certain concepts. In my six sessions, I tried to balance preparing the concert excerpts with also using the time, within the context of preparing the concert, to point them in some good directions for the year to come. Some years, I’ve found these sessions to be either impossibly tough going, or, in the case of someone really advanced, a bit redundant. Not so this year- I felt like each session at least offered us chances to talk about and work on some interesting things.

The wrap-up session is exactly the sort of thing I used to dread as a student. This year’s exercise was for each student to given themselves one piece of specific feedback, but it ended up being more of a summary of each student’s experiences of the week (remember what I said about conductors in general not following instructions!). On one level, these kinds of things can feel contrived, but I’ve reluctantly come to realize how valuable they are in sort of codifying the ideas we’ve all been talking about, and they’re incredibly helpful for me in understanding some of what has stuck and what hasn’t throughout the week. Sometimes as a teacher you say something and get no response at all, so you’re tempted to just forget it the next time, but one such remark during the week, after which I could hear the pavement sinking outside the building and nothing else, seemed to get the most discussion in the wrap up…. Anyway, I thought everyone was refreshingly honest and often quite brave in what they said.

I began the final concert with a short chat to the audience, to explain to them what they were about to experience. The unrehearsed concert will always have moments of wide-eyed terror for performers and punters alike, but it also offers the possibility of moments of stunning magic and inspiration. There are bound to be train wrecks that will leave the responsible conductors rubbing their foreheads for months to come, but that’s how you learn. In the early years of the workshop, I used to really try to make the concert, you know, er, good. However, with no rehearsal, that doesn’t happen.  However, take heart, the audience understood the vibe and was passionately supportive throughout the evening.

I now feel that the point of the concert is not to be good, but to be truthful, Everyone has a chance do see what they can do when they conduct well- phrases happen, colors appear, but everyone also finds out what happens when you conduct poorly without the chance to train the orchestra when to ignore you- things fall apart, tempos turn glacial, intonation sours, and people panic. Put another way, the unrehearsed concert is a remarkably precise BS detection and elimination tool.

There were lessons both positive and negative in every piece, as we saw what each musician can do and what they need to learn to do. Every conductor at every level has our list of things we do well, things we do okay and things we haven’t figured out. Rehearsals are partly there to make up for the imperfection of our craft, so the dividing lines between strengths and weaknesses were particularly stark.

Certainly, some performers far exceed the best I had hoped of them, while others had a tough night. It’s always toughest for a teacher when you’ve warned a student “whatever you do, don’t slow down here,” or “you absolutely must look at the violins here” who then falls into the trap you tried to keep them out of. Such warnings are not a matter of aesthetics (although a musically satisfying performance is less likely to crash and burn than a dull one)- you “don’t slow down” because the next section doesn’t hold together at a slow tempo, and you look at the violins because they might not come in otherwise, not just as a social nicety. We know these things at a price- if we’re lucky we saw someone else slow down or not look at the violins, but all too often, we learned those mistakes at a terrible price. Ah well, there must be a reason we say “live and learn” and not “listen and learn.”

Still, there were thrills aplenty- Brennen and Esther were marvelous in Butterfly, in which the conductors all got a powerful (sometimes too powerful) sound out of the band. Each of the other pieces had lovely surprises, but in the end, it was the stunning artistry of Rick Rowley in the Brahms that I’ll remember. At the end of a week in which he gave a seminar on opera direction, filled in for an orchestra on Beethoven 2 and played in the orchestra for Appalachian Spring, Rick sat down at a very average piano and played a poetic, powerful, virtuosic and mature Brahms D minor from memory, while five different conductors marched across the stage. He set the bar high for all of us- to really think about what it means to be a complete musician and a selfless servant of the art, completely free of ego. Even as one is tempted to say its unfair to expect a conductor to get through Appalachian Spring or the Brahms without rehearsal, Rick showed us that a great musician can deliver the goods under the most unusual of circumstances….

Our final full day of teaching at the 2008 RCICW was a rather epic one. We began the day with the Beethoven F minor Quartet, op 95 (the “Serioso”), with which we had started the workshop on Monday. I was altogether happier with the second session, mostly for two related reasons. First, I think those who hadn’t known the piece before came away with a much better sense of what makes it special, which is something I felt we hadn’t quite expressed in our Haydn 86 sessions, for instance. Yes, one has to aim for better conducting, but that can only come when we understand the music we’re dealing with.

As we got more and more in touch with the genius of the work, we got closer to the second reason the session was a good one- discovering just why it is such a uniquely challenging piece for a conductor. On Monday, I had tried and failed to express just why the rhythm of the 3^rd mvt poses such interesting challenges- on Saturday we finally all experienced it and got a good sense of how one might go about meeting the challenge.

The afternoon session gave us a change to revisit the Stravinsky Octet with the Discovery Students, and there had been some notable improvements from earlier in the week. In the second hour, everyone had a chance to conduct a short excerpt from the 2^nd movement. David conducted through the excerpt once at the beginning of the break (he knows this piece better than anyone, I’m sure) just to give everyone some ideas about how to handle it. To my delight, everyone handled the exercise quite well, especially the transition, although nobody really controlled the rushing in the theme itself.

What was interesting was that nobody chose to try David’s exact version. Perhaps at a younger age, I would have also wanted to prove to myself and the faculty that I could do it my own way and make it work. On the other hand, had they succeeded in getting me to do it, I would have copied David’s version exactly, as I think even now that is a much more interesting exercise than simply conducting it like me. We all struggle to let go of our limitations (how many times did I hear “I really struggle with this”) and imitation can be a very effective way of forgetting ourselves in the best way.

Finally, we returned to Brahms for the evening. It was an inspiring session, with Rick playing beautifully. As with the Puccini the previous night, the lesson for me seemed to be that you have to dare to ask for things with your hands, no matter how scary that might be. I think we’ll all remember Edette’s pianissimo- something I had to push her towards and which she later said was “terrifying.”

It gets less terrifying in time, but only if you learn to dare to do it often (in her case, it was daring to give only the most microscopic of gestures. Not only did the band come in together, they did so with the most amazing sound). If you go to work thinking “I’ll conduct a little safe for now, then try to show more dynamics later,” you’re doomed.

Other than that, the other insight for me was David’s work in getting the students conducting the slow movement to really respond to Rick’s rubato. On paper, that looks like the easiest movement of the concerto, and one of the easiest of the week, but to really hold that luminous soft sound aloft takes tremendous skill.

Finally, let’s all remember- Brahms is a round composer, Stravinsky is a pointy composer, but Brahms is NOT a slow composer…. If you’ve got a 50 minute Brahms concerto (in D minor, no less), you needn’t worry that it won’t sound important and profound enough. I’d focus on making sure it sounds coherent enough

Day 5 done, the hour is late…..

Today was all conducting, no talking (no seminars, that is)- three sessions with the orchestra (four musicians played all three services!). I can’t remember any other day in the last four years here during which I thought I saw so many students conduct the best I’d seen them do. The Copland session was good, but I still feel like we’ve mostly only dealt with it as a technical exercise and barely scratched the surface of what it means and expresses. I’m still a bit baffled that a good musician, however busy, would only learn the first half of the piece. Especially a piece that is so organic and integrated. On the positive side, one student drew from David the single most impressive five minutes of conducting teaching I have ever seen- the student in question was, with David’s help, able to leap forward in a matter of minutes to solve, with one concept, a whole mountain of problems. Amazing.

The Dvorak session was more inspiring and satisfying, with some real major steps forward to be seen. We seemed to keep coming back to the ideas of centering, horizontal and circular motions and avoiding impulses that constrict the flow of the musical line.  Finally, we had our second Madame Butterfly session. Tonight’s students had the huge advantage of having seen the session on Wednesday, and forewarned is forearmed, but that is no reason to understate their accomplishements. It’s not a night I’ll soon forget. I even had chills a few times.

We’ve now gone through and organized the final concerts, so the students can begin to narrow their focus in preparation for Sunday. In past years, the process of organizing the final concert has been at best arduous. This year, it went fast, but I’m already sure we made a mistake or two, but that’s okay. If one luck’s into something one is not yet ready for, hopefully they have the self-awareness to know that is the case, and to put in that little bit of extra effort and commitment to earn now what hasn’t been earned in their preparation to date. On the whole, though, I’m looking forward to it.

More soon. Meanwhile, I go to bed hoping that the Beethoven is going to come to life tomorrow as it hasn’t so far….

I really like to blog about the conducting workshop, so the fact that I missed out yesterday is a good indication of this week’s feverish pace. Yesterday, Day 3, was all conducting- Stravinsky Octet in the morning with the Discover Program students, then the Dvorak Wind Serenade in the afternoon and finally Madame Butterfly in the evening.

All in all, that makes 27 different performances we saw yesterday, so it’s hard to generalize. However, I try to look for trends throughout the day- i.e., are people generally conducting the best I think they can or not. That tells me a lot about how successful we’re being as teachers. On that basis, I thought it was a really strong day- some really memorable moments, a lot of progress, a lot of people surpassing expectations on all three pieces. Brennen Guillory and Esther Mae Moses, our tenor and soprano for Butterfly, were both exceptional, inspiring and so completely professional. They sang like artists, but with a selfless devotion to craft that let the students find their sea legs in what for some of them was new territory. There were some really moments throughout the session.

It was also interesting doing the two wind pieces back to back, as they demand such different gestural language. Stravinsky seems to me to need angles, clean corners and geometry and the Dvorak is almost an etude in avoiding those- it needs circles. It’s just a little lesson I’ll remember next time I’m asked about the difference between conducting winds and strings- one should be focused on conducting the music first.

After such and exhilarating day, everyone was in high spirits and so the party was a lively if well-mannered one. After such a night, morning was destined to come all-too-soon, and it did. It was great to really talk to more of the class- lots of intelligent, curious, passionate and interested people.

In spite of the late night, we called everyone in to talk through Appalachian Spring before the session, as I think it has a set of very specific but solve-able problems. Interestingly, just about every conductor that conducted in the session that followed chose to divert from at least one of the technical suggestions we’d thrown out for them. I think on balance, in most instances the results bore out the usefulness of the original suggestion, but hopefully the work served to underline why I was suggesting what I was- I’d certainly tried (sometimes with rather deeply disappointing results) some of those same variant approaches myself.

The afternoon was another seminar class- a bit of an open forum grab bag. This one was mine to direct- something I enjoy but do find intimidating, especially the company of Chris and David. I tried this year to deal with questions and issues they wanted to talk about, as well as some specific things that had come up in the conducting sessions. First up, I wanted to talk about cultivating the skill of being changeable- the best conductors are usually the most versatile as well, and there are techniques for being able to change your conducting that can be learned. Intonation came up- something all of us on the faculty are interested in. Beyond that, we talked about the usual range of rehearsal technique, programming, context and so on. I hope it was useful, but I often worry that a session like this is least useful to the best students. Hopefully those who already know or even have strongly developed ideas about these topics were at least able to compare those with ours and see how we express things and whether it is effective. I think I played a honkin’ wrong chord while talking and demonstrating on the piano (it’s actually a pair of chords a third apart and I think I played the upper one a step higher)- David made a very polite noise, the meaning of which was instantly clear- Woods, wake up! Note to self- stay away from the piano after late nights, as you may fall asleep while playing.

Finally, tonight it was Haydn. David said earlier this week you should never teach the pieces you really love. It’s too hard to let go of what you love in them if a student can’t yet find those qualities (though many will, I think). Everyone did fine, especially considering what a foreign language Haydn was to some of them and how much harder it is than Stravinsky, but there were some rather nutty ideas about tempos. Back here at the Portland branch of Vftp International, I’m still kicking myself that neither David nor I demonstrated on the piece. I think we both felt like our versions would be so different from some of the student’s versions that it wouldn’t help them at that moment get better at what they were trying to do. On the other hand, to spend  2 ½ hours with Haydn Symphony without it ever really trying to show why were asking for things seemed, in retrospect, a mistake.

Just a couple of students wasted an opportunity too- a few EA students missed tonight’s session with the DP’s on the Haydn. I know everyone’s tired and needs to study, but to miss a chance to hear David talk about Haydn seems madness to me. It’s possibly the best piece of music we’re doing this week! You can study for the rest of your life, and you owe it to your colleagues to be there. A pity, I think. If they can watch the video of what they missed in 10 years, they’ll wish they’d been there.

So, Day 4- tough, tiring, long, grueling, occasionally frustrating, but somehow, maybe that means we’re getting somewhere. Tomorrow offers huge, huge opportunities- Copland, Dvorak and Puccini.  Rarrr!

UPDATE- David later assured me that I had not played the dreaded wrong note, but that he was confused by me stacking all of the notes of the melody as a chord…

Day two of the RCICW- there is still so much I want to say about my week at Round Top and last week in Pendleton, but the hour is late and so I must limit myself to thoughts about today.

We began today with the Discovery Program students conducting the 1^st mvt of the Stravinsky Wind Octet. In some ways it pointed to the fact that we don’t really get training in how to count. I’m not talking about counting rests so that we don’t come in wrong- I’m talking about counting the subdivision of the music in such a way that every musical event is digitized to a specific metric moment in time, and that ever digital moment is not merely an academic expression of linear time, but a vivid representation of the character of the music. It was a really fun session, and some really nice things happened, and I kept thinking that the DP students really have the best repertoire this year….

This afternoon we talked opera. Chris gave a vivid and inspiring chat about the craft of opera conducting and then Rick Rowley turned to his theatre training and gave us a director’s view of our scene from Madame Butterfly (we’re doing the final part of Act I). Rick is one of the best pianists I know, but he’s also a professional actor and director, so it is a tremendous luxury and privilege to look at a scene through the eyes of someone steeped in both music and drama. Finally, the incomparable Alex Hamilton, a wonderful mezzo who has sung for us in many past years, talked about the practicalities and intricacies of interacting with singers. I found, to my slight annoyance, that I kept jumping in more and more as the afternoon progressed because I get overexcited at these things. One day I will learn the verbal equivalent of sitting on my hands.

Finally, tonight we turned to the Brahms D minor Concerto with Rick. It was an interesting contrast to the Beethoven op 95 we started with yesterday. The Brahms is really more technically difficult and problematic for the conductor, but the overall level of confidence and command seemed higher for the Brahms and for the Beethoven. David spoke eloquently and rightly of the value of learning scores from scores and  not from recordings yesterday, but I felt like it was obvious today that the Brahms is more a part of most conductor’s body of listening knowledge than the Beethoven. Is there a way to metabolize and absorb a piece without a huge recording tradition so that it breathes as naturally as a standard repertoire piece you might have heard hundreds of times? Hmm…….

The end of the week is already looming. We’ve now seen each conductor once. The next sessions offer the richest opportunities for teaching because soon enough we have to start preparing for the final concert….

One final aside- David was stressing the value of watching the soloist tonight, but I must admit, I rarely, rarely look at soloists. I think the real question is where you are directing your energy and attention- if you look at the soloist, your attention is directed at the soloist and not the paper score or the orchestra. But can all that visual activity be counterproductive?  Sometimes when I’m soloing, I find being gazed at to be somewhat intrusive. On the other hand, I’m aware that my approach is at best unorthodox, so I should probably keep it to myself.

I feel at my most centered as an accompanist when I feel like my attention is all on the soloist, but on the aural level and, dare I say it, metaphysical level. I can hear and feel him or her breathe, I can feel the pianist’s finger descending through the key, or hear a singer transitioning from a consonant to a vowel. A great pianist like Rick can articulate a note or chord in such a way that you feel he is sinking into as a great string quartet would. That gives the conductor the chance to hear the key going down even before the note is released and ringing- at least I think it does.

Lots of excitement to look forward to tomorrow. Wish I had my cello here….  

I’ve literally not had a second to sit down and do even the shortest blog post in some time, and don’t have any time now either. However, the beginning of the Rose City International Conductor’s Workshop each summer has become such an important moment in my year that I couldn’t let the occasion pass without some comment.

So… as I’m giving up sleep I will badly need later in the week, this will be brief….

We seemed to have more than the usual pre-workshop scheduling/travel/facilities worries this year, but this may simply be that I block out the trauma of past years so as not to become too discouraged. Nonetheless, Kris, our sainted housing coordinator, was fielding calls at 3 AM the morning before the workshop to come and save a stranded conductor whose flight was cancelled, and there were other problems and challenges and issues being worked out throughout the first day so that everyone could get off their flights and into their rooms and be ready to conduct. Even my colleague Chris Zimmerman had to suffer through a cancelled flight, meaning he got in today at 1:30 instead of last night.

Still, by mid-afternoon, every single student and musician who was supposed to be there was there, and my blood pressure started to ease. Our first session was a score study class with David Hoose, as inspiring as always. I’ll never hear the final chord of the introduction to the Stravinsky Octet the same way again, and that’s a piece I’ve done quite a few times.

In that class we touched briefly on different general approaches to score study, and one student who had just come from another workshop spoke of the “why” approach, which is the best. Here is a link to an old post on the subject, complete with inspiring commentary from David. For general overview, do a search of the blog for “score questioning.”

Tonight we had our first conducting  session on the Beethoven op 95 quartet as orchestrated by Mahler. I picked it because I thought it would be telling to see how conductors coped  with a work of Beethoven that is more or less free of conducting traditions. Everyone did at least some marvelous things, but, somewhat as I feared, I didn’t feel like, in general, it was deep enough in everyone’s, or anyone’s, bones. There were huge problems with the publishers not sending out scores of the Mahler arrangement on time, but I was surprised that some people didn’t just sit down with the original quartet score, which is easy to get.

Tomorrow, we start with the Discovery Program students conducting the Stravinsky Octet, then an opera class where Chris Zimmerman will talk about opera technique and then Rick Rowley will talk about stage direction and scene building. Alexis Hamilton from Portland Opera will be on hand to provide the singer’s perspective. Finally, in the evening we hear Rick play the Brahms D minor concerto, which in many ways is the hardest piece for the students this week- all the technical challenges that make the first movement of the 3^rd Symphony so hard with the added challenge of having to accompany a complex and flexible solo part. Yikes! Still- we get to talk about conducting Brahms and listen to Rick, which is a great way to spend a summer evening.

I’m sorry for the lack of new content here this week- I’ve been in my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin for a few days, and there has been a lot of sentimental favorite beers and coffees that had to be consumed, as well old friends and family to visit.

Musically, Madison was once a hidden treasure. I had grown up listening to and learning from some of the best musicians I’d ever seen, and would go out into the world and mention their names and colleagues would look at me with blank incomprehension. No more- If Madison was once a buried treasure, it is now a magnet. I’ve seen old friends and colleagues here from festivals and conservatories all over the country who are now living and working here, and long-time Madison mainstays have been making the rounds of distinguished festivals everywhere. I’m glad to see it, but I slightly feel like my secret favorite movie has just become trendy.

It was sad to say goodbye to Round Top after such a short visit. There were a lot of new faces on the faculty, and I was just getting to know my colleagues by the time we had to go. Happily, I’ll be back next year and will hopefully have some more time to socialize. There was also not much time to get to know the students individually as much as I would have liked- Round Top has always been a place where the real social action happens after 10 PM, which is tough with a new born.

Musically, it was fun and an interesting week. All four pieces were of 20^th/21^st century origin, and spanned quite a range of styles, from the ferocity of Varese, to the Haydn-esque perfection of technique of the Copland, to the pastoral calm and oriental wit of the Higdon to the timeless sadness of the Barber. The Copland is a piece I never listen to anymore, so it had been a few years since I’d thought about it (I think I last conducted it in November of 05, which would have been about the last time I heard it). I came away from the concert more in awe of it than ever- it is so perfectly put together, so deeply moving and so ferociously challenging. America has produced a lot of great music (and Copland produced a lot of that), but Appalachian Spring may be the great work of American music.

Tim played wonderfully on the Higdon, which I really enjoyed working on. There is one really, really tough passage for the 1sts late in the piece. High, exposed, physically awkward and in terrible keys… To their credit, the players really threw themselves into it, and practiced it at every break. However, it did take some persuading to convince them of the efficacy of practicing a passage like that VERY slowly. Just for the record and for those of you taking auditions- practicing in whole notes wins jobs.

Tomorrow it’s back on another plane (our journey from Texas was a predictable litany of horrors) and on to Oregon for the OES camp and the Rose City International Conductor’s Workshop. I was reminded Wednesday when I tried to get 3 conductors in the same coffee house at the same time and totally failed that conductors, particularly young ones, do not seem to follow instructions very well. That’s good to remember before starting the workshop- I kind of have to deal with my younger colleagues as a group of young geniuses who follow instructions (particularly non-musical instructions) at more or less the first grade level. Sorry folks…… Just been my experience…. I’m guilty too…..

Well, my week at Round Top has been going by much too fast. This Texas Festival Orchestra is a marvelous group, one of the best they’ve ever had here, if not the best, and I’ve enjoyed rehearsals immensely.

I remember many years ago hearing Ivan Fischer, who I admire a lot, talking about the early years of the Budapest Festival Orchestra. As the orchestra was evolving into a full-time group, and one of the best orchestras in the world, people began to ask if they should chose a more permanent name. Ivan and his colleagues decided that the original name would serve as a reminder to avoid routine, and that all concerts are, in their own ways, festive.

With such a good group and such good working conditions we’ve been able to do a lot the kind of work the regular professional bands don’t have time for, and that conservatory orchestras often don’t have the patience for. I hope I haven’t tuned too many chords this week for everyone’s patience, but when you get out in the world and have to fight to make concerts happen amidst all kinds of budget restrictions, you learn to take advantage of opportunities to do the best work you can. Here we have time, talent, facilities and atmosphere- it’s not to be wasted.

It’s been lovely to revisit Appalachian Spring, which I first conducted here about 15 years ago. Over so many performances since then I’ve learned to predict with pretty high degrees of certainty where the problems will be- there’s the spot the violas might miscount or the place that rushes for everyone or the spot where the violins are way too loud.

However, if the problems become known, there are always undiscovered beauties and miracles in such a piece. I found something today- just a little color thing- in a swell in the coda that for all that it looks like nothing on the page really made a chill. It’ll be fun to teach the piece later this month with it so fresh in my mind.

One piece I don’t think we’ll be doing anytime soon at the workshop is the Barber Adagio for strings, which opens the concert. I can’t really think of a work that is more of a challenge to conduct, because in the end, conducting doesn’t serve the music very well, and yet, the piece doesn’t quite reach the same heights without a conductor as it can with. Next time I become MD of a new orchestra, it’ll be an important project to do together, alongside a lot of Haydn and Beethoven. In addition to being a wonderful piece, it is a great etude for the orchestra in playing like a chamber ensemble, breathing and listening to sound- when that happens, the most incredible things are possible.

Also on the program is Jennifer Higdon’s Soprano Saxophone Concerto, which has also been fun to put together. I have a feeling the audience will love it- there’s a lovely pastoral vibe going through the piece as well as some humor. Certainly not easy to play, though! There’s one first violin lick that would make a fiendish sight-reading excercise for a sadistic audition committee somewhere…..

I’m on the ground for an all-too-short to Festival Hill at Round Top, my first visit here in several years. The food is still great, and the grounds are as beautiful- an inimitable mixture of the immaculate and the rough-and ready, with stone monuments and incredible woodcarving next to old sheds and dirt roads.

The Concert Hall has come a long way since I was last here- it is for intents and purposes a finished product. My first summer as a young student, we had a stage with no apron, concrete floors, plywood walls and white plastic lawn chairs (which were still in use during my last visit, now replaced with permanent seats). The steel girders were still visible round the stage. Fortunately, the sound is still perfect or nearly so.

 I had a nice surprise on arrival- I’m conducting on another concert Saturday, where I’ll be doing the Varese Octandre with a mixture of faculty and students. I’ve been dying to do the Varese since last summer’s RCICW. Had I known, I would have brought my score. The only score on campus came from the publisher with the parts- at some point the middle 8 pages went missing, so the publishers saw fit to just stick single sided copies on white 8 ½ x 11 paper in the middle. Imagine if performers took this attitude to playing the piece?! Yes, we’ll do good professional work for 10 pages, then play completely half-assed and unprepared for 8 pages, the good again…

On Friday, we’re doing the 13 instrument version of Appalachian Spring. AppSpri was the second piece I ever conducted in a concert (here, as it happens), and I’ve done it many times since. Probably the first 6 times I did AppSpri, I did the 13 instrument version, then the last 4 times, I  did the full orchestra version. The orchestra version is wonderful, especially if you don’t let it turn into Billy the Kid- it’s still a chamber orchestra work. However, the original instrumentation is miraculous, and once I got used to it again, it’s many marvels come racing back. It is so deliciously difficult- we’re doing it at the workshop this summer (it is a complete coincidence that I’m doing it here- Alain only asked me a few weeks ago), and I’m curious to see how the students cope with musically. Suzanne and I were talking after the rehearsal today- it’s a surprisingly sad, or at least pensive, piece for being so popular. Anyway, it’s like coming home to rehearse on that stage again…

Speaking of Suzanne- last time I was here was when she and I met. How crazy to come back here for the first time since that fateful summer with our new traveling companion, Sam, who seems to be enjoying his first music festival a lot.