Tag Archives: conductors

Pretty Thievery

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You’ve heard of petty thieves; this summer I saw a pretty thief. My husband and I were visiting in Washington (state), seeing family, attending a fundraising event and spending a couple of days at the end of the trip where my partner was doing some work conducting a choir (comprising as its singers a batch of veteran choral conductors and teachers, a handful of whom are longtime friends of ours) in a workshop. It was all quite delightful, with the exception of the horrid respiratory gunk that my guy received as a gift along the way and that cut short the workshop fun. [He has fully recovered by now, thankfully.]

But another unexpected happy thing about the trip was that the fundraiser was held very near a condominium we own that, while it’s normally rented out as a residence—so we’ve not been inside it since we viewed it for purchase—our property manager informed us that we were getting a new renter and our visit sat right in the between-renters gap. So there was this handy opportunity for us to go in and renew our familiarity with the place where we might conceivably someday live ourselves as retirees, not to mention a chance to measure rooms, note the condition of things now that the home was actually clean and unfurnished, and so forth. All useful, along with the visit to that town itself, in reminding ourselves what had attracted us to the locale and the home in the first place.

Another attraction we were reminded of appeared serendipitously on this visit. As we were wandering through the neighborhood and trying to remember exactly how to find our only-once-visited place, we passed a house with beautiful dwarf fruit trees planted along its street side, and there stood a deer, placidly unruffled by either our passing car or the midday sun, casually balancing on two legs to reach up and nab some marvelous, rosy ripe apples and munch them one after another. We stopped, rolled down our windows to enjoy the sight, and listened to birds chorusing in the trees, and vowed never to turn in such a charming miscreant even if it one day dined on our own deck plants.Photo: Pretty Thievery

Röda tråden (The Red Thread)

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Röda tråden is the Swedish phrase for connectivity. I learned it from my husband, who in turn learned it during his dissertation studies on modern Swedish choral history, and in a way it’s the perfect encapsulation of what his research revealed: that the astonishingly deep and broad influence of such a small country, in such a short time, on such a large field as Western choir singing and music came about primarily because of the remarkable and unique confluence and joining together of a huge number of events, people, ideas and resources in that little land at the end of the Second World War. As unimaginably terrible as war is on any scale, it’s all the more a testament to connectedness that at the end of one of the largest we’ve known, such good and meaningful and positive elements were all drawn into one significant, beautiful growth spurt in the art of singing together.digital illustrationAs a miniature of String Theory in the arts, this surge of the choral art in Sweden is notable (no musical pun intended) not only because it posits a reasonably substantial explanation for the larger choral sector’s modern expansive development amid the general devastation and struggle following the end of WWII, but also because in doing so it illustrates wonderfully how the intertwining of all sorts of seemingly disparate elements such as safe havens from political unrest and postwar reevaluation of norms, personal and professional relationships and experimentation with new media could come into contact and interact to create a new mode of thinking, acting, composing, teaching and singing. In turn, this is a striking model of how people from distinct cultures, educational backgrounds, economic resources and political systems and of widely varying personalities, unified by the one tiny thread of choral music, could be pulled together into a complicated system that, though still colorfully messy and imperfect, led to a potent common end that has had lasting and marvelous influence for long and fruitful decades since.

I am, of course, grateful on a personal level because this Swedish postwar influence on Western choral culture has not only enriched my husband’s professional and artistic endeavors–not to mention was the basis for his award-winning doctoral dissertation that in turn opened a lot of friendly doors to us both in Sweden–but because it produced so much spectacular music and inspiration for so much more.

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Röda Tråden is the Swedish version of the idea that–indeed literally–fascinates so many of us: the connecting thread–that which binds one thing to another. I can think of nothing greater than to spend life seeking the Red Thread that shows us our commonalities and binds all people together as well.

Further, though, I am grateful that such an otherwise inexplicable event as the ‘Swedish Choral Miracle‘ seems to me ample proof that all things and people really are connected. And that through recognizing and making good use of those connections, however, odd or tenuous they may appear, there is hope for new and better songs to be sung everywhere.

If I needed further proof of this, last night’s concert gave it amply. My spouse conducted the combined forces of the Chancel Choir of the church where he’s currently interim choirmaster plus their excellent hired pro orchestra in performing Haydn and Dvorak’s two settings of the Te Deum text as the concert opening and closing, respectively, bookending the extraordinarily lovely and moving Missa Brevis of Kodaly. I came in to sit for the concert among strangers and acquaintances from the church and discovered a friend from another parish sitting across the aisle from me, then learned from one of the choir administrators that a friend of hers in attendance turned out to be a long-ago colleague of my husband’s from another state, and finally went up to greet my guy after the concert and found him speaking with a group of ladies in the front row, one of whom was the wife of a former US president. What brought all of us divergent people together in this moment? Music. Beautiful singing and playing. Chance, kismet, divine intervention. Call it what you will, the slender but unbreakable thread that connects us all drew us into one place for a time of basking in the inscrutably beautiful harmony that is beyond craft, beyond art. That is a concert without peer.

It’s All Rehearsal, Really

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Blog.08-30-2013.all-rehearsalWe may look like we’re all geared up and doing important stuff, but mostly, we spend all of our lives practicing, learning and getting ready for one thing or another. Some of those things happen in due course and many more of them either never quite come to fruition, or far more often, change along the way and we end up following along and seeing where it all takes us. All of this is quite normal and perfectly valid.

As a privileged observer and listener in many musical rehearsals long after the years when I was an active amateur participant, I can tell you that I think these more explicit practice sessions can have much the same sorts of both trajectories and outcomes. What anyone not privy to the backstage view of any sort of practice may easily forget, even if they once knew it, is that whether the moment is strictly obligatory, is amateur in the finer sense, or is wholly professional, it can have the same range of characteristics, studious, soulful, playful, predictable, heartrending or hilarious–or some grand combination of them all.

The experience of listening in on the preparations for musical performances is distinct from the performances themselves in a multitude of ways, but perhaps the most striking to a non-participant is arriving at a high-level rehearsal and seeing all and sundry set up camp for it in their work clothes. The star soloist is wearing old jeans. The conductor, who no matter how rigorously the singers and players enact their parts will likely move around and sweat the most, is wearing shorts and a short-sleeved, thin shirt. The players have open cases near their chairs with spare instrument pieces and alternate score parts strewn across them, and the singers, no matter what the temperature, are wearing neck scarves and lugging big containers of fluids to protect their own precious instruments. The rehearsal accompanist at the beat-up old piano is wearing glasses both on the bridge of the nose and the crown of the head, one for the easier to read individual parts and one for the microscopically reduced full score. All of this in a sort of ordered chaos the shows they are all there to Do Things. It’s work. It’s fun. It’s messy, like life.

Our Big Summer Road Trip, a driving circuit of over 6000 miles this July and August, was a multipurpose travel package designed to accomplish a number of ends, not least of them to attend and study and enjoy music-related adventures with friends, colleagues and other musicians and music lovers in several disparate events. First, we went to the Oregon Bach Festival to see the newly anointed Artistic Director make his debut interview marking the occasion, and more importantly to see maestro Helmuth Rilling conduct his grand finale performance as AD in this season when he officially passed the baton to his successor after 44 outstanding years at the Festival’s helm. The Festival is a fine one, Rilling a justly revered conductor and teacher, and many of the singers and players who participate, along with many regular OBF attendees, are longtime friends and colleagues, so it’s always a joy and privilege to go to the Festival ourselves, but particularly meaningful to see Rilling lead the B Minor Mass on his way to Conductor Emeritus status, since my husband Richard had the good fortune to sing the same piece under Rilling during the maestro’s second year at OBF. A great deal of water has gone under the bridge, and though a lot has changed in that flow of time, many things remain the same. Rehearsals and performances, practice and action go on as ever.

I had been reminded of all of this, of course, by the opportunity to attend the Boston Early Music Festival and see my spouse conduct and his Collegium Singers and the university’s Baroque Orchestra in June, along with admiring all of the other marvelous artists and events at BEMF. So many wonderful concerts and recitals; so much hard and happy work to prepare them! And how quickly June disappears into the mists of memory as the summer rolls forward. Thus, a long road trip seemingly becomes an amazingly fresh outing to experience more variations on this theme.

The second of the trio of musical events we attended on the road trip was the regional gathering of choral conductors in our former home area, a great opportunity to renew ties with longtime fellow conductors, teachers and friends over grilled wild salmon and to revisit musical literature options, audition processes, mull over the usual academic topics, share hints about favorite new compositions and gossip about who is the up-and-coming hottest new choir or conductor in anyone’s neighborhood. Driving up to the chapel that serves as the main conference space, whom should we see sitting visiting on the porch but a man who was the excellent recording engineer serving in that artistic task for many of my husband’s choirs’ recordings over the years, and with him, the teacher-conductor-mentor who led Richard to music as a vocation and profession in the first place and so became not only his ‘choral father’ but a lifelong dear friend. To follow this greeting with collegial renewal among many other fellow musical artists, from colleagues and collaborators to singers and students, composers and coordinators of conferences and musical programs at all levels, and then to have dinner a week later with both of those two first friends we’d spotted, was rich beyond words.

Third on our list and rounding out the road trip with our stop in Vancouver, BC, was the Vancouver Early Music Festival. A perfect bookend to starting the trip with OBF in Eugene, VEMF attendance had much the same purpose for us as the Oregon visit: see and hear good friends and other artists at work, and attend the events honoring the longtime AD’s retirement. While Jose Verstappen has served a mere 34 years in Vancouver, he has had as much impact of his own on the Festival there as Rilling has in Oregon, just a very different sort. Jose is a modest and self-effacing man, but as warm and as hardworking and dedicated, and certainly as hard for donors and supporters to say No to, as Rilling, and so both have created environments of commitment and excellence that will thrive long after both have abdicated their thrones. Matthew Halls, Rilling’s successor, and Matthew White, Verstappen’s, are both bright, gifted and able men and I expect to enjoy attending both festivals with as much outstanding artistry on display as ever in years to come.

While in Vancouver, besides the great fun of attending Verstappen’s farewell party, seeing many dear friends, meeting Bruce Dickey–the leading light of cornettists nowadays, he will be playing in the production of the Monteverdi Vespers Richard’s conducting in October–and hearing some terrific music of various kinds in concert, the highlight was sitting in during rehearsals for Händel’s ‘Israel in Egypt’. It was there that I was most struck by this lovely interweaving of labor and lightness that can happen when the people at practice are fully engaged in their work and love what they do. The piece itself is a marvel, full of potent and piquant and even picaresque melodies and moments, and those singing and playing it made the most of these riches. When Tyler Duncan and Sumner Thompson started singing the bass duet ‘The Lord is a Man of War‘, not only was the music and text mesmerizing (never mind my personal feelings about the story’s theology) but their obvious pleasure in exploring the expressive potential in the piece together with the players and conductor (the impressively sensitive and dramatic Alexander Weimann) moved me to pay special attention to this juxtaposition of the remarkable and the workaday, the plain and the powerful. So to all of you out there who sing, play, work, rehearse, prepare and perform, and especially to the players, singers, composers, conductors, administrators and Artistic Directors encountered on this summer tour of ours, I dedicate this poem.digital illustrationNumber Thirty-Eight

Strike, then carry on, and so the sound

Belies in beauty such a martial start,

When ragtag troops in everyday are found

To sing and play at battle from the heart–

Who seemed so simply destined for the soil

As laborers in neither art nor war

But some plebeian, plodding sort of toil,

Then strike, and decimate what came before–

Show the illusion is not acted out

Through violence or merely artifice,

But rather, note by note dispelling doubt

That mystery’s all quite undone by this–

Where love and war are mingled in their way

By songs more eloquent than words can say.