George

Just about one year ago, I wrote an entry to this blog in which I praised the continuing acuteness, love of life, intellectual curiosity, and wonderful humor of my friend George—aged 99. To me, he was a real-life hero. My wife and I had visited him at his home in Florida and enjoyed ourselves hugely. Sadly, I recently received word that he had died—not having reached his 100th birthday. You can read his obituary here to get some background on his genuinely swash-buckling life.  And, in appreciation for his example on how to live one’s life, I’m re-running the blog post.

George: A study in living in the moment

The other day my wife and I went to visit our friend George. George is the oldest person I have ever known. He is now 99 years old and is my role model for any age. No, I’ll correct that. “Hero,” conveys a much stronger image of courage and humanity. Nearly all my other heroes are fictional, Pierre and Prince André from War and Peace, Prince Hal from Henry IV, Jacques from As You Like It – you get the picture. But George is the real living embodiment of the heroic. He is an exemplar of being human and keeping a mind so alert and so acute that intellectually he can do the 100 meters every day. He amazed me yet again by remembering our previous conversations, referring to them, and not repeating himself. I can’t even do that at my age.

Anthony Hopkins as Pierre Bezhukov in War and Peace

George was a journalist and covered the European theatre in WWII, actually finding himself in Milan in 1944 when Benito Mussolini was shot and hung face down in the market place, next to his mistress. He tells how initially the mistress was left hanging with her dress around her face until an old Italian man took off his belt and tied her skirts around her feet for decency’s sake. This is the photo you always see of this harrowing scene.

Mussolini

He also covered China during the epochal struggle between Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong in the late 1940’s. George’s apartment has the most wonderful Chinese works of art. He speaks of reading the first issues of the New Yorker magazine, the Atlantic Monthly and Time magazine, and his daily reads still include these three publications plus the New York Times. National and international events and the dramatis personae are at his fingertips be they the new British government, cuts to the BBC’s World Service, Al Jazeera, or the tumult in Egypt. On his living room table is the just-released autobiography of Mark Twain (ed. Harriet Elinor Smith) in which he is deeply immersed. In fact, words, books, and literature are what I believe have made him, as his doctors describe it, a living phenomenon. He cuts his intellectual teeth on ideas and facts every day. His style of speaking is akin to Alistair Cooke in his precise, clear, articulate, colorful, and well-structured reportage. He is achingly vivid when describing his own situation—which I’ll get to shortly.
I have made it policy over the years to send George books that I have discovered. He consumes them avidly and then gives his opinion. Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown (he found this book hard to appreciate because he had known most of the historical persons described); Némirovsky’s Suite Française and Roberto Bolaño’s Monsieur Pain. He wrote to me about Bolaño, an author he didn’t know, and I’ll just quote a section of his observations: “What will always, and I mean always, remain in my mind, were those two and a half pages of an inserted vignette which is a total gem of writing. It is dropped in those pages with no connection to the plot. I’m sure Bolaño just had to include it. It’s magnificently tense, keenly aimed at the reader’s heart. You will find it starting at paragraph 2 between pages 54 and 56.” I had missed this section during my reading and had to go back and rediscover it – and yes, of course, he was right.

Opera has always been a big feature in George’s life (all music I think, too) and he attended his first Metropolitan Opera performance at age ten with his mother (at the old New York Met). That experience ignited his lifelong love affair. Today he has the greatest joy going to the Met – through the live telecasts broadcast at a theatre near his home. He praises these with all his strength.

Just a few years ago, George came to our home for dinner with two of his closest lady friends. The idea was to have a great dinner and then attend a concert. The average age of our guests was around 93. They all arrived on time and dressed to the nines. The conversation was about politics. The preferred beverage was gin martinis with olives. I half expected them to light cigarettes. They were all feisty. The ladies had the serene beauty and toughness of Katherine Hepburn in On Golden Pond. Afterwards, we reflected that this was the type of blazing American character who could win a World War and still quote Keats. (By comparison, contemporary generations seem far more marshmallow-like in character.)

Katherine Hepburn

Even before he speaks, George’s eyes tell you everything you need to know about his character. They radiate life and curiosity. When he speaks about his current situation, he is unflinchingly direct. “Everything above my neck is working fine,” he says. “Below the neck, all the telephone lines have been cut.” Still, he accepts physical diminution. “If you can’t do it anymore then cut it out. Get on with what remains.” And he says this with whoops of laughter. For him every day is unique. There are no yesterdays. Tomorrow is a distant island. Only today, only the moment exists. George says that his life is as exciting today as it’s always been.
When I grow up and reach 99, I intend to visit George and compare notes.

Callas as Medea

Maria Callas (whom Hitchcock always wanted to cast) is on stage singing one of those death scene arias which she is delivering with every ounce of her passionate being.  She looks out into the audience and for a brief moment spies, through the glare of the lights, a commotion in one of the VIP boxes. A hand is raised. It contains a dagger. It falls with awful speed and force towards its victim. Callas sees this just as she is approaching a high C and the high C becomes a scream of such dramatic force that the audience immediately gives her a standing ovation. She, of course, is left looking towards that box and the murder she thinks she witnessed. Great idea. And what a start to a movie. Hitchcock was probably joking in the interview but in a way he was also revealing how he might take a creative germ and develop it into movies such as Psycho, Notorious, Strangers on a Train, and Suspicion. He was letting the reader in on some of his creative process, but the flow and narrative detail of the drama were inexorably locked in his imagination, and only he would tell the tale.

In a way that helps to define one of the characteristics of the “film noir,” that astonishing genre that fascinated audiences from the 1940’s to the late 1960’s with its dark sets, darker stories, chiaroscuro lighting effects, nefarious crimes, femme fatales,  trenchcoats, rakishly tilted fedoras, and atmospheric haze of cigarette smoke.

Robert Mitchum

Never has a raincoat looked more elegant and chic than when worn by Jean Gabin, Humphrey Bogart or Robert Mitchum.  Never has a cigarette appeared more compelling and sexy than when Alain Delon would light up a Gitanes and blow blue smoke over some irresistible blonde. And I only imagine that the smoke was blue because “film noir” had to be in black and white, that greatest of cinematic media which allowed directors and actors to emphasize the corruption of their world and the evil in their hearts. Colour would have blown it completely.

The “noir” genre came into existence probably in the 16^th century with the prototypical plays of Shakespeare. Just think of Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Julius Caesar. They all have the quintessential qualities of classic “film noir” and have been filmed or staged as such.

Consider Orson Welles’s Julius Caesar Broadway production from 1937, or Laurence Olivier’s 1948 Hamlet with the “To be or not to be” soliloquy balanced between spoken dialogue and voiceover, just like a Philip Marlowe narrative.   That Hamlet has a film score by William Walton that is straight out of Laura from 1944.

Now try putting some classic “film noir” actors in Shakespearean roles. Who wouldn’t have paid top dollar to see Bette Davis as the First Witch in Macbeth, or Joan Crawford as Lady Macbeth, or  even better, Barbara Stanwyck with her ineffable quality of vulnerability (think Double Indemnity)? Or how about Edward G. Robinson as Lear (Orson Welles played the part on television in a scaled down production by Peter Brooks) or Robert Mitchum as Iago or even Edmund in Lear with Rita Hayworth as Cordelia? But I am getting carried away.

Les Diaboliques

Anyway . . . the genre has been around a long time and probably achieved its pinnacle of success in movies like Les Diaboliques, whose final bathroom scene I still find frightening; or The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, Five Fingers and Sunset Boulevard. And it still inspires. What are Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction or even Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape (surely the final piece of introspection from Philip Marlowe?) but later examples of the genre.

Of all the outstanding “noir” examples, the one I keep coming back to because of its sheer power and storytelling originality is Carol Reed’s The Third Man. Filmed on location in war-torn Vienna in 1948, the movie is based on a novella by Graham Greene that he wrote in contemplation of the film treatment. It is a rare example of a film or theatre adaptation being so much better than the book. (The other of course being My Fair Lady, which adapted Shaw’s boringly self-reverential play Pygmalion.)

The film for me is the “ugly twin” of another movie classic, Casablanca from 1942, which famously starred Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. Casablanca is a movie of heroes, of optimism in the face of tragedy, of the positive future that war could produce. It even has a happy ending. By contrast, The Third Manis a story about the dreadful after-effects of war.  It is about doubt, menace, gloom, conscience, fear, hatred, and evil. And most of all it is about a hunted soul, Harry Lime himself. His lover, Miss Schmidt, played by Alida Valli, is a Bergman lookalike. The hat, the coat, some of those intensely sad looks. But there is no redemption for her. The last scene of the movie is an invitation to a happy ending. A long shot in a Viennese cemetery. It is day, a rarity in this movie. The sky is clear. There is no rain. Miss Schmidt is in her Bergman hat and coat walking briskly between a colonnade of trees that are not just devoid of leaves, but resemble the skeletons of a First World War battle scene. She walks towards a man waiting for her, who is patiently smoking a cigarette. A man who has the power to change her life and who is in love with her. And she walks straight past him . . . it is so exactly brilliant and right in its courage.

Scene from The Third Man

Earlier, she has a scene with this man, Holly Martin, an American who makes a living writing Westerns, played with all the right naive credulity by Joseph Cotton. The scene exactly models the famous rendezvous of Bergman and Bogart in the Arab market place. In Casablanca, we understand perfectly that the lovers are soul mates, yet the scene ends with Bogart crushed by Bergman, his face averted from the camera, in the weakest shot any actor can be made to play. Cotton and Valli play out the analogous incident in a rail station waiting room but without any sign of closeness, and with the dissonance of her train leaving without her. It ends with that same weak shot of Cotton’s face turned from the camera, defeated. The same is true of humor. In Casablanca it’s the pickpocket and the fat blond waiter playing out a set piece comedy routine. In The Third Man the humor is embodied in a poor emaciated man with a fixated stare walking slowly and inexorably towards the British forces trying to sell a mass of balloons. What could be more incongruous?

The major protagonist of The Third Manis Vienna. It is ravaged by war. There are bomb sites, rationing, a pervasive gray ambiance, the black market, the look of hunger in people’s faces. The city is divided into four zones occupied and controlled by the Americans, the British, the Russians and the French, and you feel that political vise tightening around its people.  The streets are wet with some relentless seeping moisture, the damp cobblestones giving off a phosphorescent gleam under the street lights. Pavement and buildings are crumbling. The avenues and passageways appear as dark mazes or caves.

"Papa!"

The play of shadows turns a small three-year-old boy with an oversized newsboy’s cap, very short pants, skinny legs, and a long coat, into a giant of scary proportions. He runs, shouting “Papa, Papa,” his voice echoing down the streets. I can hear it now.

I have seldom come across such mastery of light as Reed demonstrates here. But then, having created magical effects above ground, he takes us into the depths of the city . . . its sewers which he illuminates as if they were a vast subterranean cathedral. This is the setting for the denouement which I will mention in a moment.

The film’s second major protagonist is Harry Lime, played by a young Orson Welles. You have to wait 67 minutes for him to make his appearance but when he does it is one of those unforgettable moments in cinema history. A slightly drunk Holly Martin (who has been trying, despite ominous warnings, to unravel the mystery of his friend Harry’s suspicious death) thinks he is being followed in the dark streets. At the same time, a cat has escaped from Miss Schmidt, to whom Holly has declared his love. Suddenly, the camera discovers the cat which is seen purring in obvious delight, wrapping itself around the feet of a man hidden in the shadows of a doorway. Holly shouts so loudly that he wakes a neighbor in a top floor who opens her window to complain. It is the shaft of light from the windows that plays on the face of Orson Welles, revealing him like the most brilliant spotlight in the theatre.

Orson Welles

The very much alive Harry Lime stands,  smiles, is unafraid. And at this moment we become aware of how important the music has been throughout the movie. Indeed it is like a third protagonist, for it is so characterful. Carol Reed, who initially didn’t know what to do with the music, went out to dinner one night in Vienna and heard for the first time a zither played by Anton Karas. He was so taken with this sound that he recorded Karas for hours and then inserted the music into the film, including the famous Harry Lime theme.

The music is essentially commercial, the sort of ersatz folk idiom you hear in cafes and street corners when on vacation in various European capitals. But when used in the context of this drama and story it paints the states of minds, of emotions, of tragedy. The use of music at the moment of Harry Lime’s lighted entrance is nothing short of genius.

I mentioned the denouement. This happens in the Viennese sewers. The police and British forces have discovered that this is how Harry travels the city without detection and they are giving chase. Suddenly all those closed entrances are clangorously opened. Men and dogs and shouting fill the space of the submerged cathedral.

Vienna Sewers

And Harry runs. His body, his soul, they’re both running to be free of the calamity he has set in motion with his life and crimes. There is one shot that touches me with its simplicity and profundity. Harry has found a set of spiral stairs leading finally to the opening of a Viennese street. Escape is literally close at hand, but he doesn’t have the strength to open the grate. Instead you are left with the image of just his fingers stretching through the grillwork in the night air, the sound of wind blowing, as though his quivering fingers are small flowers that will never bloom in the sun. The moment lasts maybe fifteen seconds but it was made by a master.

Ran Blake

All of this has come to mind recently because of Ran Blake, one of our great faculty members, musician extraordinaire, founder of “Third Stream” with Gunther Schuller, and one of the great lovers of “film noir.” His “film noir” nights at NEC, recently featuring the work of Chabrol and Hitchcock, have reminded me personally of the wealth of images and originality of this genre.  It sent me back to look at The Third Man and I was overcome by just how great this movie is. So . . . I am not just commending it to you. I think I am saying it is essential watching for anyone who is fascinated by the human mind and creativity, and compelling storytelling. (Incidentally, if you’d like to hear music from The Third Man, you might consider attending our Viennese-themed Feast of Music, Feb. 25. More information here.)

P.S. Oh yes . . . the title of this blog. It is taken from the conversation between Holly Martin and Harry Lime as they ride the Ferris wheel in the heart of Vienna (the huge amusement park ride at the Prater is still a Viennese icon).  The words come at the climactic moment of one of the most nihilistic and cynical observations on humanity ever uttered. The words are Harry Lime’s… pronounced in the most off-hand, almost humorous way as he crunches on pills for his indigestion. The speech, undoubtedly the best in the movie and one of the best in any movie, lasts about three minutes and was written not by Graham Greene but by Welles himself who felt that the drama needed such a lift. And if you compare this with the Greene original, he is totally right. Take a look . . .

Deep Song

Amy Winehouse’s death just a few months ago was a great tragedy and has deprived us of a unique voice and creative spirit. Her career was brief, meteoric, self-destructive and full of moments of amazing achievement.

Amy Winehouse

The response that she was able to command from her fans was at once affirming and provocative and in many ways enabled her worst excesses. Her followers seemed to will her down a path towards an inexorable conclusion. But in a way she was living out the covenant that any extraordinary artist has with their public. The public demands more and more of its heroes; it has expectations of performance that are excessive and rapturous, but with only one way for the artist to meet that need–with a self-sacrificial outpouring of gifts and soul.

We love the romantic notion of artists who have given everything, whose talent is extinguished too early, whose covenant with us is ruptured by an untimely ending. Just think of our relationships with Mozart, Schubert, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Jimi Hendrix, Jacqueline du Pré, Kurt Cobain, Maria Callas: we are suffused by an inner yearning still for more but with an acknowledgement of what was given and sacrificed. Some of the artists I have selected for this article certainly fall within this category, but others do not and are alive and well, playing wonderfully, and enjoying happy family lives. But they all share a characteristic for deep song, the ability to sing or play through the ground from the soles of their feet, and into their voices and fingers and, by doing so, to change the world.

My first is a young violinist whose career never really happened. Only glimpses of performance have been captured, and we are left with just a handful of recordings. These were made by the legendary impresario Walter Legge, who discovered in 1940 a boy of sixteen studying with the great teacher Carl Flesch and took him into the recording studio to perform a few salon pieces.

Josef Hassid (1923-1950)

His name was Josef Hassid (1923-1950), and there were many extravagant claims made about his playing and artistry. Fritz Kreisler heard him and was quoted as saying, “A Heifetz violinist comes around every 100 years, a Hassid every 1000.” When you listen to his rendition of Sarasate’s Playera, you can recognize what he means. It is as though he has stood on a New York bridge with Sonny Rollins [i]focusing upon producing just one note, and he allows its sound to transmute into every dark colour imaginable.

The work is not a virtuoso showpiece; instead, it is a song expressing profound emotions of pain and knowing.

Art Pepper

As a result of his very candid autobiography Straight Life, Art Pepper (1925-1982) provoked all sorts of “voyeurism” when he came to London to perform at Ronnie Scott’s Club in 1980 with Milcho Leviev. In his past life he had turned to drugs, to criminal behavior, had served time in St. Quentin, but had emerged from this cauldron of desperation and experience with so much to tell us. And in the album “Blues for the Fisherman,” written by him and Leviev , he lays out his soul. His Make a List, Make a Wish is for me the supreme example of his artistry as a performer and composer. Bassist Tony Dumas has a really strong riff that is repeated and repeated, and every repetition is different—subtly and transformationally. Above it there are two long solos, first from Pepper and then, after a climax that has burnt and smoldered, Leviev takes us structurally to almost the same place but in a different way.

Jacqueline du Pré (1945-1987)

Jacqueline du Pré (1945-1987) enjoyed a meteoric solo career of little more than ten years during which time she consumed music and communicated her love and passion. In 1973, I heard her play the Elgar Concerto in London, a work forever associated with her. This was during the period of her very brief return to the concert platform after a two year break before her illness overcame her. Sir Neville Cardus, who wrote with equal passion about cricket and music, and who was knighted by the Queen for his services to both, wrote this astonishing description of her Elgar, “She went to the heart of the matter with a devotion remarkable in so young an artist so that we did not appear so much to be hearing as overhearing music which has the sunset touch on it, telling the end of an epoch in our island story and also telling of the composer’s acceptance of the end. The bright day is done, and he is for the dark. And she got the wounding juice out of this self-revealing work.” The Saint-Saens First Concerto from 1971 which I have selected is not musically on the same page as the Elgar but in terms of performance and sound, Du Pré will stop you in your tracks.

Lionel Hampton

Now this one is a total must. Lionel Hampton (1908-2002) with his All Stars playing “Stardust” from the Civic Auditorium, Pasadena, in 1947. Something was happening that night. The band took the standard and never looked back. Each solo builds on the next and is in itself unique. Willie Smith on alto sax is downright dirty. Corky Corcoran’s tenor is floating, sensuous, seductive. Charlie Shavers’ trumpet is virtuosically humorous. Slam Stewart, bass, does that astonishing improvisational trick of playing and singing what he is playing at the same time, at the distance of an octave. I adore this sound. Every one of them is sensational. The best ever. Then . . . in comes Lionel Hampton on vibes with an extended break which leaves everyone else at home. This is music making shaking with energy and discovery. And Hampton knows it. He knows how good it is and that this is a new place. It becomes more and more fluent, finding inspiration in every phrase of the standard. I played this once to my good friend and colleague the conductor Andrew Litton in his car just before an important dinner. He couldn’t leave and just sat there, transfixed.

Sarah Vaughan (1924-1990)

Sarah Vaughan (1924-1990) recorded a live album in 1957 at Mister Kelly’s in New York City with her trio—Jimmy Jones, Richard Davis, and Roy Haynes. It contains a track called “Be anything but darling be mine,” in which she demonstrated not just her voice and total command but her ability to sing as though she was an instrument rather than a voice—particularly the saxophone. Her muted, covered voice in certain passages takes us to new colours and feelings.

Eddie South (1904-1962)

Eddie South (1904-1962) was an African-American jazz violinist, classically trained, who, because of the savage racism of the time, could not pursue a career in a symphony orchestra. Instead, he developed into perhaps the greatest jazz violinist of all time and, in the 1930’s, became the mentor of Stéphane Grappelli when he visited Paris. His sound and imagination are extraordinary. Listen to his “Eddie’s Blues” (with Django Reinhardt accompanying him with a variety of rhythms and harmonic punctuations) for a great example of his originality as a performer and composer. What he produces in this recording dating from 1937 (and just think of the great violinists dominating the string world at that time) is a new sound and method of playing the violin. It is fluently virtuosic but only to expressive purposes. The sound is overall very sweet, but he can turn a note as well as a slide with a variety of different vibratos and colours. And then there is the percussive use of the bow adding punctuation to his phrasing. The first time I heard this track I could not believe what he was achieving, and each time I listen to it, I find new points of originality which amaze.

South’s accompanist, Django Reinhardt (1910-1953), is most associated with the Quintet of the Hot Club of France and Stéphane Grappelli. Reinhardt, Grappelli, and South collaborated many times, including some experimental crossovers with a jazz version of the Bach Double and this was many years before Jacques Loussier or Ward Swingle. Reinhardt was a gypsy born in Belgium to the Manouche gypsy family. At the age of eighteen, he was severely burnt in a caravan fire and suffered major damage to the third and fourth fingers of his left hand. His doctors stated that he would never play again. They were wrong. How he plays with basically two operational fingers defies belief. This is acoustic guitar playing in a totally different world from anything before or after. Only Jimi Hendrix in the 1960s created something as original. Reinhardt makes a unique sound. It had unspeakable character and colour and a sensuous quality which strokes the air. His virtuosity is given sometimes to amaze, always within character, but held in reserve as something that he has facile dominance over. He recorded a few purely solo works of his own composition. “Parfum” is full of simplicity and gentle, exotic chord sequences. The melodic line is sung with an accompaniment as delicate and soft as though from another instrument.

Last summer my wife and I traveled to Lisbon, Portugal, for a first visit. One of the main attractions for us was to experience the musical form, Fado, a sort of mixture of the blues and Flamenco. We went to many Fado clubs and heard some amazing singers. The format was always the same. Four different singers, performing for not longer than fifteen to twenty minutes each. No amplification. A small instrumental group of two guitars and a mandolin playing melodic lines and melismas and the voice hauntingly telling its story in thunderous declamatory form.

Amalia Rodriques (1920-1999)

All the performances we saw were given in cellars using the natural excellent acoustic provided by arches, the sound filling a room usually seating 100-200 people. It is a sound of the greatest complexity speaking to our humanity. The Queen of Fado was Amalia Rodrigues (1920-1999), whose recorded legacy shows how it can be done.

I first came across British Baroque violinist Rachel Podger about eight years ago when someone played for me her recording of the Bach Solo Sonatas and Partitas. It was a revelation in terms of blowing new life, energy, and insight into these masterworks. Consider this excerpt, the Gavotte and Rondo from the E-Major Partita. Podger works as a soloist, but in reality she is a confirmed collaborator. Her Bach Violin Concerti, in particular the last movement of the A minor, is a case in point. Instead of the old-fashioned virtuoso playing with a large orchestra accompanying rather like a herd of wildebeest with the contrapuntal lines so lost and muddy, we hear everything with the solo line merely part of the musical counterpoint and argument rather than the only line. It is like a chilled glass of San Pellegrino with lime, full of familiar and unfamiliar tastes. It is Bach reinvented. If you can get hold of it, I highly recommend it. (We at NEC were delighted to host Podger in a public masterclass in September 2010 where she worked with several of our string players in works of Bach.)

Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987)

So I will end with the last public performance given by Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987), the doyen of violinists and one of the greatest virtuosos of the 20^th century. In his last recital at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in 1972, he amazed as always with his showpieces, but with his final works he toned the brilliance down and instead elected to play short melodic pieces, often with mute. The Manuel de Falla “Nana” is for me the best example of simple melodic playing coloured by the articulation and ornamentation of Flamenco. It is as though he had walked away from the power Ferrari of his virtuosity and sat quietly in the melting sun allowing his soul to sing.

[ii]

Joseph Swensen. Photo by: Ugo Ponte

“Violinist/conductor Joseph Swensen is the Founder and Artistic Director of U-HAC International; Principal Guest Conductor and Artistic Advisor of Ensemble Orchestral de Paris; and Conductor Emeritus, Scottish Chamber Orchestra. As a violinist he has recorded the Beethoven Violin Concerto with Andre Previn and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Bach Sonatas with NEC’s very own keyboardist John Gibbons, and the Sibelius Violin Concerto. As conductor and violinist, he has recorded concertos and orchestral works by Mendelssohn, Prokofiev and Brahms with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.  My first encounter with him was while I was running the Bournemouth Symphony and Joey came to play the Beethoven Concerto. His was a performance of great musical integrity and originality. After that occasion, I gave him some of his first conducting opportunities. I’m delighted to have him write a guest blog on a subject that I know is of passionate concern to him.” –Tony Woodcock

UNIFORMITY, ENTITLEMENT AND SOMETHING CALLED U-HAC

When I was a child, Stravinsky, Copland and Shostakovich were the living legends, the heroes, the artistic giants clearly at the top of the classical music hierarchy. The gradual “flattening out” of that hierarchy during the decades since, has had a profound effect on the world of classical music. Don’t get me wrong, I am no advocate of the return of the old hierarchy, but our community needs to become more idealistic from the bottom up. Specifically by way of the education of future generations of classical artists.

Pragmatic goals now dominate the minds of many an artist, and a valid and earnest concern for the survival of the massive artistic institutions our forefathers built is justifiable, if self-serving. These institutions span the globe and require thousands of professional musicians to fill the positions they have created. Competition for these positions is fierce and salaries are usually very good. This competition, although seemingly necessary and certainly practical, has lead inevitably to an unprecedented uniformity and orthodoxy, even among many composers. This orthodoxy has ironically and tragically resulted in what seems to me to be the near renunciation of a previously shared conviction: that the most important factor in all artistic creation is the expression of what could be called the unique, mystical center within every artist, namely the soul. Of the soul, Johannes Brahms in the year 1896 allegedly said: “the soul of man is not conscious of its powers…to evolve and grow, man must learn how to use and develop his own soul forces (sic).”(1)

Dorothy Delay

In classical music training, separating the art from the craft is widely considered an essential part of the education. My violin teacher, Dorothy DeLay, was a pioneer and a revolutionary in taking this idea to the extreme. She and others like her taught us to systematically separate all technical aspects of playing an instrument from the integrated organic whole for the sake of perfecting the craft of music making, assuming the art (and soul) would take care of itself. She explained to me when I was fourteen years old that the reason she never mentioned the intangible or mystical aspects of music in her teaching was that she simply didn’t know how to speak about things she could not quantify. I remember being relieved however when she admitted to me that she nevertheless accepted these aspects of art as essential. But I complained to her nevertheless that, by choosing not to speak of the mysterious and intangible, she was giving the world the mistaken impression that she herself didn’t believe that they were important or that they even existed at all!

Igor Stravinsky

The musical values of our time were also deeply influenced by Igor Stravinsky. Famous for his disrespect for and dislike of performing artists, (especially orchestral musicians whom he often referred to as “nitwits”), Stravinsky demanded an unprecedented level of objective literalism in the performance of his works. In 1947 he wrote: “Interpretation is at the root of all the errors, all the sins, all the misunderstandings that interpose themselves between the musical work and the listener and prevent a faithful transmission of its message”(2) Perhaps this and other similar outbursts on the subject by Mr. Stravinsky are understandable overreactions to the irresponsible and arbitrary freedoms some mediocre early 20th century players exerted over composers’ apparent intentions.

It is clear to me that it is the misunderstanding and misuse of DeLay’s and Stravinsky’s philosophies, which have become the conventional wisdom in classical music today. Consequently, a new ideal has emerged: the ideal of uniformity. For example, a good string quartet is considered to be one in which the members’ sound, phrasing and intonation is indistinguishable one from the other. Decisions concerning uniform bowings in string chamber groups are often the first and sometimes the only discussion in rehearsals. As long as we all uniformly follow Stravinsky’s admonitions, we needn’t do anything as musicians other than robotically reproduce literally what the composer wrote on the page. Almost all “good” symphony orchestras are on ”uniform and blended” mode, (and many of the most prestigious ones are by far the most uniform). Conductors have little long-term influence. Even the great Carlos Kleiber, who famously referred to the Berlin Philharmonic as “wall to wall carpeting” in the 1980′s was, in my opinion, no match at the end of the day for the power of that orchestra’s uniformity ideal.

Beethoven : Coriolan – op.62, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Carlos Kleiber
Live Recording from 28 June , 1994 ;

All this uniformity and conformity obviously leave little room for anything Brahms might have called “soul work”, or in other words, art.

I don’t know about you, but this reminds me more of a military paradigm than an artistic one. Could this mentality be the legacy of classical music’s most influential conductors? From well before Toscanini to Solti and von Karajan these conductors taught us to be exacting, uncompromising soldiers. Even now, years after the last of them has gone, we continue their work by tyrannizing each other and ourselves. Georg Solti once said, when predicting the bright future of a promising assistant: “good sergeants make good generals!” It is ironic that since the Second World War, the world has become more free and diverse, while classical music has become more regimented and uniform. This ideal of uniformity is being passed on by way of most of our educational institutions for a very good reason, the job market requires it, and we believe that we are powerless to change the values of that market. I protest. We must change those values and it is the educational institutions themselves that need to lead the way to a more inspiring and interesting future for classical music. We educators need to implore young artists to have the courage to be true to their unique souls and see themselves as part of a force for positive change, from the bottom, up. This is imperative, not only for the sake of our finding joy in music once again, but for our very survival.

I dream of a more colorful, creative and relevant classical music world and I am not alone in pursuing this dream. Great work on behalf of these ideals is being done by extraordinary people all over the world and along with my partner Victoria Eisen, I am pleased to join their ranks with the creation of a new kind of arts education and arts aid organization: Unity Hills Arts Centers International (otherwise known as U-HAC International).

U-HAC’s home-base, a historic, inspiring 15-room, circa 1776 farmhouse in Townshend, Vermont, USA, is a meeting, learning, working and living space for artists, both professional and amateur.

U-HAC home base. Townshend, VT

Here we will continue to bring together artists of all mediums and from all cultural traditions for workshops, regularly occurring seminars, and residencies. We at U-HAC want to teach, learn, work and live with the arts in a completely different way: where inspired improvisation is the absolute ideal, the starting and ending point of all great art and all real living, where the “beginners mind” of the amateur and young student is at least as highly valued as the convictions and sophistication of the professional (the term “beginners mind”, used by the Buddhists, describes the state of mind in which one feels that everything is possible), and where teaching and learning are two sides of the same process shared by all involved.

We in the classical music world need to start to think differently, we need to set out to break the mold of uniformity. (Uniformity being obviously the absolute antithesis of “beginners mind”). It is that mold of uniformity itself, which is preventing innovation, individualism, artistic freedom and for some, real joy from becoming once again a part of the professional classical musician’s daily life. Although we may be created equal, we are not meant to become uniform. This is symbolized at the U-HAC home base by the power and infinite variety of the natural surroundings.

Music making should be a personally, uniquely transformative experience for MUSICIANS, not just for the music-loving, paying public. I was therefore pleased when, after our recent August 2011 seminar, ”Total Immersion in Brahms and Bach”, which brought together instrumentalists, conductors, composers, scholars, writers, visual and culinary artists of all ages, levels and cultures, many participants called it ”a completely life-changing experience.” Our sincere hope is that everyone who spends time at U-HAC will, each in his own way, take what he experienced back into the world, sharing these fresh values with colleagues and demanding them from leaders.

Complementing our work at the home base are the U-HAC Satellites. These mobile buildings, which will be constructed from recycled materials, will be sent to underprivileged and underserved rural communities worldwide. Village life across the world is fast disappearing as more and more young people from villages seek a more prosperous life in the cities. The social, cultural, economic and ecological results of this are disastrous and U-HAC wants to play a positive role by helping to enhance the cultural life and therefore the quality of life in the world’s villages. Each of these U-HAC Satellites will offer a varied curriculum of workshops in the arts of all cultures and each will present its own world-class concert series. They will be staffed in part by a kind of ”peace corps” of dedicated artist volunteers who believe that the arts can be a powerful means for social and economic revitalization. Most importantly, all U-HAC endeavors will be carried out with the utmost care for the earth’s natural environment.

U-HAC musicians rehearse

Other projects in various stages of development are the U-HAC Mentor/Apprentice Orchestral Institute, a program where orchestras will be created with one half retired professional orchestral musicians and the other half young students, sitting alongside each other for intensive workshops in orchestral playing. These workshops will take place in rural villages worldwide providing orchestral concerts for those communities in addition to providing profound benefits for the participants. The U-HAC Chamber Players, the resident ensemble at the home base and at all the U-HAC Satellites, is an ever-evolving group of about a dozen musicians which provides an invaluable, educational stepping stone in the form of performance and touring opportunities for the most accomplished and promising young artists at the very beginning of their professional careers.

Combining the vertical climb towards the highest imaginable artistic ideals with the corresponding horizontal outreach to humanity at large is the greatest challenge of the artist of today. We classical musicians have been indoctrinated with the belief that, solely due to the high art we create, we are indispensable to humanity. Like the monks of old, many among us presume that other people should finance our quest. This culture of entitlement contributed to the disappearance of most of the world’s monasteries and we classical musicians must avoid the same fate. If UNICEF provides food, and Doctors Without Borders provides medicine, we artists must create more aid organizations that provide the arts to the needy. No man should live by bread (or meds) alone and the arts are an essential nutrient for the survival of the human race.

In the USA, where the vast majority of public schools no longer even offer music in their curriculum, U-HAC International is one small organization, still in its infancy, yet full of hope, enthusiasm and energy. We are attempting to fill a void, and eager to play a role in the coming rebirth of a new and rejuvenated arts world.

(1) Arthur M. Abell, “Talks with Great Composers” (New York, N.Y.: Citadel Press, 1994) 6-7

(2) Igor Stravinsky, “Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons” (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1947), 122-3

I am sure we’ve all had evenings when we arrive home from work exhausted and brain-dead, not having the energy or concentration to do anything more than switch on the TV and go semi-conscious.  And of course, sleep comes pretty quickly, and that then consumes the entire evening.  Well I was having that sort of evening some years ago and eventually awoke with a start and stared at the action on the TV.  And…I was completely disoriented. I felt like I was inside an episode from the Twilight Zone. There on the screen was a film that I knew really well and admired enormously. Same dialogue. Same scenes.  Same direction. Same camera shots. But it was not the same movie.  For one thing, the original was in black and white and this was in glorious colour. All the actors had changed. Janet Leigh had suddenly become Anne Heche for instance.  I had stumbled across Gus Van Sant’s frame-by-infinite-frame remake of the great Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. It was immensely unnerving.

Well I had pretty much the same experience last week when I sat in on rehearsals for the first modern performance of the original version (premiered in 1889 in Budapest’s Vigadó Theater) of Mahler’s First Symphony performed by our Philharmonia Orchestra and Hugh Wolff.

Vigado Theater, Budapest

There was the Symphony’s last movement developing in all the ways we know and love building to that incredible moment when the entire viola section plays as though the Himalayan mountain range is exploding with that fortissimo three-note run.  And there it wasn’t.  Instead here was Mahler in some impossibly distant key, a box he had gotten himself into and the only way out was to bring back the huge dissonant storm that had started the movement.  That was pretty unnerving too.  But the insight that this moment and many others in this original version gave about the compositional process was astounding.  Listening to the September 26performance, we were hearing a masterpiece in process played with the passion and commitment that only outstanding young musicians can bring to such a project.

NEC Philharmonia

We had been given the rights to recreate this version by Marina Mahler, the composer’s granddaughter. Kristo Kondacki, a third- year Composition student and Mahler devotee had spent his summer producing a performing edition.  The results were a revelation.

Stanford and Norma Jean Calderwood Director of Orchestras Hugh Wolff

The concert inaugurated a semester-long celebration at NEC on the Centennial of Mahler’s death which I believe I can confidently say, no other performing organization could even approximate. Mahler Unleashed brings together the vast diversity of all NEC’s programmes from Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation, to piano, song, chamber music, and, of course, our extraordinary orchestra programne.  We will present more than 20 events, including symposia and film, between September and December.  Concerts include our conductorless Chamber Orchestra performing some of Mahler’s arrangements of Schubert and Bach  (did you know he conducted Bach with the NY Philharmonic?!) and showcasing music of his contemporaries, Fuchs, Schreker, Suk and Webern.  Mahler’s reworking of Beethoven’s Fifthis included.

His Fourth Symphony will be juxtaposed with Messiaen’s l’Ascension on a program with the theme Different Paths to Heaven. We will hear the fragment of his early Piano Quartetwhich the composer Alfred Schinittke took as a germ for his own fascinating mashup of gestures and ideas.

Ken Schaphorst

We will hear songs by Mahler and  his contemporaries and… Alma.   There are two quite experimental concerts: Mahler Remixed, which is a student project.  The participants have been invited to program, perform, compose, arrange, and market their own tribute to Mahler as part of our Entrepreneurial Musicianship program. From what I have seen of their plans so far they have come up with something totally original.  And there is Mahler in Chinatown  a title inspired not just by the composer’s choice of Chinese texts for Das lied von der Erdebut also by the story (perhaps apocryphal except I like it too much ) of his conducting the NY

Sarah Jarosz

Philharmonic, an experience he did not relish, and then eating comfort food in Chinatown. Anyway… besides the Schönberg arrangement of Das lied there will be a performance by our Chamber Orchestra of the famous Adagietto from the Fifth Symphony. But this time the orchestra will be joined by Jason Moran, a distinguished faculty member and one of the most original jazz pianists in the world today, who will weave improvised tropes on the music .  Who knows what Mahler would have made of this but it will be a fascinating meeting of styles and creativity.

Jason Moran performs “Fire Waltz”

All of these ideas took wing just a few months ago when Katarina Markovic, Chair of our History Department, mentioned the idea of oneconcert to celebrate the centennial.  This one concert became the inspiration amongst faculty chairs for the massive celebration we are now enjoying, and which I hope you will experience as well.

Katarina Markovic

Katarina has been a star throughout our planning, but the planning has been very unusual.  Instead of appointing an Artistic Director who would have imposed some sort of “Vision” on us all, I opted instead to empower all faculty chairs to discuss their ideas and come up with their own programmes reflecting their individual passions.  A case study in removing leadership and allowing the collective creativity of amazing minds to do the work.  Maybe there is something there for Government to think about!!

Before our opening concert on September 26, I had invited Gilbert Kaplan, the very well known Maher authority, to set the scene for our celebrations with his presentation, Mahler’s legacy.  Before a packed audience he gave a deeply felt and passionate account of Mahler’s life, illustrated by more than 200 slides and various musical examples.  As he reached his conclusion and literally faded from our view with only music in our ears, I felt deeply grateful for the emotional place of this sound world in my life.  Mahler has reached us all.

For over 70 years, since a boy, I have been an engaged and passionate listener of classical music.  For over 40 years I have had an affiliation with a major symphony orchestra organization, and for the last half of that period, have been a student of the organizational behavior patterns and decision-making processes within orchestral institutions.  During 1995-2003, I published Harmony, the journal of the Symphony Orchestra Institute.  Harmony presented the thoughtful inquiry and critique of North American symphony orchestra organizations by over 60 authors closely familiar with the field.  Over 1,200 pages were published. During this period, the Institute also sponsored or reported on six concerted and facilitated organizational change efforts.

The content of Harmony and these various interventions had the goal of bringing about positive change in how symphony orchestra organizations functioned — toward greater effectiveness, greater constituency satisfaction, greater community value — to be achieved particularly through greater involvement, stake, and responsibility by musicians in the decision-making and longer term development of their organizations.

In 2003, the work of the Institute was brought to a close and the residual funds were contributed to the Eastman School of Music for the development of the Orchestra Musician Forum and the website www.polyphonic.org. Here the goal was to advance the personal and professional outlook of symphony orchestra musicians in North America.

As I look back, particularly over the past fifteen years, it is disappointing to see that despite these efforts, and those of others, like the Mellon and Knight Foundations, there has been little change or innovation in the way orchestra  organizations operate.  While the need for greater community engagement and social value has mounted, it is discouraging to see how little has changed. Orchestra organizations have done little to redefine the community services they should be providing and, thus, there has been little modification of the job descriptions of all employees, but especially those of musicians.  With a few exceptions, no significantly modified or truly innovative models of organizational structure and decision-making processes have emerged.  At the same time, there have been recurring examples of serious organizational dysfunction entailed by adhering to the “isomorphic institutional” [1] model employed in the orchestral world now for some 50 years.

As reiterated frequently in Harmony, the structure of the larger conventional symphony organization is implicitly unsound and ineffective, and leads to organizational dysfunction. Through natural bonding heightened by unionization, the ensemble of musicians— which is the very reason for the organization’s existence — is separated from and pitted economically and psychologically against governance — the management and board — and through them, against the organization’s audiences and contributors –and the local community at large. These fraught relationships, buttressed by traditional industrial management and board attitudes about governing and managing unionized enterprises, along with the intransigence of national and local union leadership, assures a fundamentally adversarial relationship and sows the seeds of permanent distrust. The “we and they” of the orchestral structure essentially undermines the development of a common vision and operations designed to achieve it. Collective bargaining agreements have become complex organizational straitjackets that preclude flexibility and responsiveness.

There are various stages in the lives of traditionally structured and operated symphony organizations.  For some, despite steady and relatively high cost inflation—even when coupled with a lower breadth of community service and value—managements and boards are able annually to coax higher ticket fees out of audiences and larger gifts from contributors.  Boosterism and generosity prevail, with perhaps subtle, growing concern and mounting resistance. This situation exists in the organizations in a number of major cities. These prestigious orchestras will likely move forward but with growing stress.  They already gobble up a major portion of the philanthropic dollars devoted to musical organizations in their communities, and thus have little chance for increasing “market share.”  Over time, audience and contributor fatigue will set in.  Poor general economic conditions and dips in or the lack of growth of endowment capital will accelerate this stress.  It is just a matter of time before this pattern of existence becomes broadly unsustainable.

In many smaller cities, these trends are accelerating, or are already at hand. The next season’s revenues are used to fund the last season’s deficit.  Reserves are drawn on and then exhausted. Angels may offer relief but only defer the inevitable.

In due course, there is or will be a relatively abrupt cessation of business, accompanied by conflict and accusations within the now defunct organization, and around the community.

Sometimes, a successor organization emerges. But deep scars exist all around.  Even so, in a triumph of hope over experience, the new entity will quite typically take on the same conventional organizational format as its predecessor, in part because there is no other model. These traditional structures are doomed to failure—the cycle will be repeated. Such a waste—such a terrible waste.

Certainly, there may be some organizations which, despite their traditional structure, have so far avoided serious conflict and dysfunction, and whose leaders are looking constructively forward.  These leaders may well wish authentically and fundamentally to change their institution’s dynamics, and have the will and courage to undertake the effort.  Unfortunately, these situations are rare and the odds of a successful intervention leading to a radically different organizational structure are poor.  For example, check out the favorable trends and positive outlook of the Philadelphia Orchestra as of early 2002, based on organizational development efforts in 2000-2001, as very accurately reported in Harmony #14. Compare this optimistic 2002 status with the organization’s more recent status.

Changing the culture within traditionally structured orchestral institutions on a sustainable basis is almost impossible. We need to devote our thinking and ingenuity to creating some larger scale musical organizations using fresh, new ideas and forms.

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So now, let’s step away from all this history and pathology, take a pencil and a clean sheet of paper, and sketch out a new organizational model for the field.

Firstly, the notion of a “symphony orchestra organization” needs to be tossed out and replaced by the concept of a “musical arts and services organization.”  Such an entity would have a larger musician membership than a symphony orchestra, and its musicians would perform a wide range of classical and high-standard popular music. Among the activities would be symphony concerts performed in a central venue or venues. But more broadly and extensively, the organization would present a wide range of music in many smaller venues and settings throughout the community.  It would serve broad and diverse audiences, and such performances would be coupled and integrated with music education.  The reader will recognize this as the “community of musicians” concept put forth in 1987 by Ernest Fleischmann[2]

Ernest Fleischmann

and more recently endorsed and expanded by Bruce Coppock.

Secondly, in another major departure from past practice, these new organizations must be musician-governed and musician-driven.  By this, I mean the legal beneficial control of the organization through its organizing documents needs to rest with the musician membership. What’s more, the central board/executive committee functions, and particularly the artistic decision making (personnel and programming), need particularly to be led by musicians. [3]

These organizational concepts should be the foundational principles for those filling the voids created by unsuccessful traditional symphony orchestras.  There are a number of cities today that are ripe for such a new approach, and there will be more in coming months and years. But these cities will need a core group of musicians, supported and advised by a cadre of non-musician civic leaders, who together possess the imagination, will and courage to build a new flexible “network” organization valued by the community, gratifying to all constituencies, and capable of fulfilling the economic needs of musicians and staff.

In many large metropolitan areas, there may even be room for such an organization to develop and prosper as an alternative and supplement to the dominant symphony orchestra association.  Here again, a core group of musicians supported and advised by a group of community leaders will need to take the lead in galvanizing free lance musicians to participate in such an organization.

Symbolically, and practically, these organizations should be “musical arts societies”, as

Conductor Robert Shaw

Robert Shaw suggested — collaboratives in which all musicians and non-musicians, performers and audiences, join together in a covenant to provide and sustain high standard classical and popular musical and music educational services throughout the community.

In terms of legal format, these new organizations, under state law, should be either not-for-profit corporations or limited liability corporations. In either case, the organizing documents would provide for more than one class of members, with the musician member class having voting control. And in either case, the entity would obtain a 501 (c) (3) exemption in order to receive contributions which are tax deductible to donors.

The management and staff of such a new organization would have a structure and duties generally similar to that of any not-for-profit musical arts organization. However, given the breadth of musical performance activity envisioned, and the greater dynamism, flexibility and creativity needed, managers of these musician-driven musical arts organizations will need to develop high level skills in planning, logistics, and communications.

Although many musician members of such organizations might well be members of the AFM, there would be no need for collective bargaining agreements because the musicians will control the governance of these new organizations.   The musician members will have agreed in writing in by-laws or an operating agreement, and supplemental documents, how the enterprise is to be governed, managed, and operated, including compensation and work policies and conditions for all employees.  Any changes in such agreements would be voted on by the musicians and/or their elected representatives.  It is of questionable applicability and legality to propose to have a collective bargaining agreement cover a group of employees who together legally control and are responsible for “governing and managing” a corporation.

Some musical arts communities might consider and adopt multiple tiers of musician membership, following the experience and success of the London Symphony Orchestra.  In this arrangement, the level and nature of participation by each musician member would vary based on individual preference. There would be the flexibility to alter preferences and choices through annual personal employment contracts. Along with flexibility in work participation, there would be flexibility in compensation, depending on the nature and value of the work and the talents and experience of different employees.  Also, in such new organizations, sensible patterns of incentive compensation could be established.  All compensation policies would be developed in ways that flexibly serve the organization’s needs, as determined principally by the musicians themselves.

These new organizations will need to invest in personal and professional development of their members. On the musical front, the quality of individual and group musical performance will be primarily in the hands of musician colleagues; training in fair and compassionate evaluation processes will be needed. Musicians being periodically elected by their colleagues to fill overall governance and artistic decision-making roles — and their successors — will benefit from regular professional training in team building and team decision-making processes.

It would not be surprising that some new organizations develop primarily under the leadership and through the active participation of “younger-to-middle age” vs. “older” musicians.  Indeed, music school/conservatory leaders have recognized that members of the younger generation are highly tuned-in to societal change and community diversity. Trained in entrepreneurial skills and prepared to make musical careers outside traditional orchestra organizations, the students of today will most likely favor less hierarchical governing structures, and will exploit the enormous potential in electronic media.  Their achievements in developing smaller scale musical arts societies could be carried forward into large scale musician collaboratives.

A Far Cry

Some emerging musician-governed organizations, such as The Knights in New York, and A Far Cry in Boston, exhibit these potentials.  The philanthropic community will hopefully support these enterprising groups, as we are likely to see more and more of them come into existence.

To support and accelerate the development of new models of musician-governed arts organizations, it would be valuable to have a central advisory association. Such an association—which might be called The Association of Musician-Governed Musical Arts Organizations—could provide an exchange of “early best practices,” “experience-based insights,”or “lessons learned.” It could pair new groups with some of the existing symphonic organizations that already operate with some degree of musician governance

Memphis Symphony

(New Orleans, Colorado, Toledo, Memphis, and St. Paul come to mind.[4]) It could facilitate collaboration between fledgling groups and professional entrepreneurs. It might also research the experience of the many small chamber groups and chamber orchestras that are “self-governed,” to understand how their business models might be adapted to larger scale organizations.

In summary, we need to develop a new model for larger scale, musician-governed, diverse, and flexible musical arts and services societies. These entities would galvanize and liberate the creative potential of musician members, management and staff, and community participants.  They would better serve audiences, donors, and the community at large. And they would provide economic sustenance for the musicians, who would have the primary and controlling stake in the success of the organization.

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Eventually, discussions at the Oregon Symphony started to crystallize around the contribution we might make to the community, which, even though 3000 miles away from NYC, was in deep shock and trauma. We conceived of doing a special free community concert, televised and broadcast live on the radio and played out on speakers in the park blocks behind the concert hall.  Such a project would normally have taken 18 months of planning and negotiation, but we were on a mission and pulled it all together in three days.  Everyone wanted to help, everyone wanted to provide something free.  Donors and corporations willingly gave to make everything possible.

However, what I had forgotten to do in the heat of the moment was enlist the orchestra musicians in the project. Not surprisingly, they were feeling confused, neglected, traumatized.  What was this concert?  Why was it important?  Very understandably, they wanted to be with their families, offering support to their children.  I took a call in my office, which was a few blocks from the concert hall requesting that I come over and talk to the whole orchestra. The players wanted some reassurance and answers.  I raced over, but on the way could not conceive of a single phrase that would explain how important I felt this event would be in healing our community.

So, there I stood on the podium, feeling intensely emotional with all 90 pairs of eyes expectant.  I have no idea where it came from but I found myself telling a story.  It was a story of my own country,

London in the Blitz

England, during the Second World War, when London and many other cities were relentlessly bombed by the Nazis.  London alone suffered over 70 massive raids, which destroyed huge chunks of the city, and killed civilians indiscriminately.  In this chaos and fear, people turned to the arts, and, in particular, music, for reassurance and an alleviation of the horror they were experiencing.

Sir Henry Wood

And musicians were there, playing, singing, providing the comfort to the soul that only great art and great music can supply. On many occasions, audiences sat through air raid warnings, heard and felt the sound of bombs exploding, yet continued listening to

National Gallery Concerts, London

the power of a symphony orchestra playing with emotion and total commitment, disregarding the mortal danger they faced.

That was my story. The story of the power of music in our lives. It filled me with pride and with tears.  No one said anything. The concert happened and it was truly magnificent.  The then Music Director James DePreist led a programme listened to in silence and appreciated in silence, with the slow movement of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony seemingly prefiguring all the grief of those few intense days.

Portland, OR September 2001

Thousands watched the concert live on TV, hundreds of people stood in silence in the park blocks, as the music emerged from giant speakers, holding hands or cradling children tired but not asleep in their arms.  It was in community terms, the best of times and the worst of times.

Ten years later, and we are commemorating those events, remembering the world at that time and how it was changed by the tragedy.  At NEC, we are giving a special concert on September 11 at 2 p.m. in Jordan Hall.  It will be broadcast simultaneously on Boston All Classical 99.5 and WGBH 89.7. With the exception of the conductor, all the performers will be young people—high school age—including our Youth Philharmonic Orchestra, three soloists, Youth Chorale, and singers from the Handel and Haydn Society’s Young Men’s and Young Women’s Choruses.  These huge forces will be conducted by Ben Zander.  At the centerpiece of the program will be the world premiere of Silvio Amato’s interfaith oratorio, Illuminessence: Prayers for Peace. Fittingly, the work sets prayers from the Christian, Jewish and Islamic faiths and it underscores the commonality of human aspiration and the universal spiritual impulse.

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Tragedy is so often in our lives. Just a few weeks ago, one of our alumnae, violinist Alicia Doudna, ’04 M.M. was involved with her fiancé in a horrific car accident.  They are both still in hospital and we send them our love and support. String chair Lucy Chapman has coordinated a special concert in Williams Hall on Sept. 13 at 8 p.m. Many musicians have rushed forward to donate their services wanting to help in the way that only music can help. I remember my music master at grammar school suddenly addressing the entire school with a quote: “Whither doth the uttered music go?” That question has always resonated with me, but today I know the answer.  It goes to the heart.

Photo: Shivam Patel

Roland Valliere

When Roland Valliere, NEC Class of 1978 percussion performance, took over the Columbus Symphony in August 2009, the orchestra was on the brink of collapse. There had been a bitter work stoppage the previous year. The budget was unsustainable even after shortening the season and reducing the administrative staff.  There was no capitalization. The endowment had been spent to cover operating deficits. There was no line of credit, no cash reserves, no unrestricted endowment. And both the Music Director and Executive Director had left. Roland, who is all about reinvention and had masterminded a promising new high tech device that he believed would revolutionize the concert experience, felt there was an opportunity to turn things around by creating a new business model.  I talked to him—he is now the President and Chief Creative Officer– about the solutions he has put in place and how the orchestra is faring almost two years later.

Tony: Just before you went to Columbus, you had switched gears, left your previous job as Executive Director of the Kansas City Symphony to become an entrepreneur. The project you were working on is a fascinating example of your creativity.  Tell me about that.

Roland: I had created a prototype of what I called the Concert Companion—CoCo for short.

It’s a handheld device that offers explanatory text, program notes and video images in real time with the music. It’s analogous to the audio guides you can rent in a museum. The audio guides offer an aural enhancement of a visual experience. CoCo offered a textual enhancement of an aural experience. With funding from the Mellon, Knight, and Hewlett and Packard Foundations, we were able to do three rounds of testing over about five years but the economics of the venture didn’t work out.  I subsequently got involved in a project with the Juilliard School and soon thereafter was contacted by the Columbus Symphony.  

Columbus Symphony

Tony: The situation there was pretty dire, wasn’t it?

Roland: Well, the orchestra had a checkered history financially but a stellar artistic reputation. In 2007-08, there had been a lot of public hand-to-hand combat with a messy work stoppage. Before the work stoppage, the orchestra had been on a trajectory of moving toward a 52-week contract and a budget of $12.5 million. But that budget couldn’t be funded.  When I came in, the budget had been reduced to $9 million, which was viewed as sustainable. To get to that figure, they had reduced the season from 46 weeks to 38 weeks and the staff from 28 fulltime and 10 part-time to 18 fulltime and 4 part-time. At that time, there were 53 fulltime contracted musicians.

Tony: But, in fact, even those austerity measures weren’t enough, were they?

Roland: No. But, as you know, the Chinese character for “crisis” is made up of two characters that mean danger and opportunity. I felt there was opportunity in the situation so long as the organization was not hemorrhaging so badly that it couldn’t be revived.  I felt it could be revived and saw a chance to do something new.

Tony: Before you committed, you did something that was essential to your strategy.

Roland: Yes, this was a critical thing. I met with the head of the union and the orchestra committee and talked about some of the ideas I had. I told them I would need to work with them in close collaboration as partners—even though that had not always been the case there. And I wanted some assurance from them that this was their goal as well. If the communications were transparent, open and honest—and I assured them they would be from my perspective, then we would have a chance to move in a new direction. They were very supportive of that. The position would not have been attractive to me otherwise.

Tony: So, even the $9 million budget couldn’t be balanced?

Roland: That’s correct. This was true for a variety of reasons. We needed time to ramp up, we had lost momentum with subscription renewals, we had lost credibility with the public, and this had impacted the Annual Fund. When I put together a budget and added up the annualized revenue from ticket sales, fees and contributions, I realized that the budget, really to be sustainable, was only $7.5 million—about $1.5 million from where we were. So I put together a White Paper, The 21st Century Columbus Symphony, with the view forward, a new vision, and a different future, plus the corresponding need to fund that vision to the tune of $1.5 million which we called a Transition Fund. We had success in raising that. But at the same time the Annual Fund, mainly due to the economy, was proving even more challenging then we thought. It went off the rails in January 2010.  We didn’t meet our December goals and since we didn’t have a safety net, we found ourselves in a potentially devastating situation. This was no surprise to the board and musicians because I had projected that we would run out of funds in March if we didn’t raise the funding in advance of that. When fundraising ran short in December, it became evident we would have a severe problem and not be able to make payroll in February.

Tony: At which point, you turned to the board and musicians with four options?

Roland: Yes. The options went from bad to worse, including reducing the number of full time players (from 53 to 21), moving to a freelance orchestra (with no benefits or guaranteed services) or folding the tent completely.  Ultimately we agreed to further reduce the season (from 36 to 25 weeks) and consolidate the administration with the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts (CAPA).  This was very difficult, especially for the musicians, and remarkably was achieved in a spirit of collaboration.

Tony:  So talk about the administrative reorganization.

Roland: By reducing the season, we were able to realize $1 million in savings but we needed to get to $1.5 million. So, the next step was to talk to the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts (CAPA)and its President and CEO William B. Conner Jr.

William B. Connor

We discussed an administrative consolidation or merger, a process that took a month to figure out.

Tony: Explain what CAPA is, would you?

Roland: CAPA began in 1969 by saving from the wrecking ball the historic Ohio Theatre in Columbus, renovating that venue, and then operating it along with several other theatres it acquired/or managed in Columbus, New Haven, CT and other places. It provides shared services to a number of arts organizations including ticketing, marketing, public relations, finance, human resources, IT, and development/fundraising. What it offers each group is custom tailored to the group’s individual needs.

Tony: Describe the Columbus Symphony’s organizational arrangement with CAPA.

Roland: It functions much like a holding company. The Columbus Symphony’s board continues as before, with its own committees, fundraising work, Executive Committee, but the CAPA board has ultimate fiduciary responsibility. There is a kind of cross-fertilization on the two boards, with two of our board members, including our chairman Martin Inglis, sitting on the CAPA board. Bill Conner wears two hats as President and CEO of CAPA and as Managing Director and CEO of the Columbus Symphony.  He has management responsibility on a daily basis for the symphony.

Tony: Your position evolved into something that’s probably unique in symphony management, isn’t it?

Roland: Yes. A ship can have only one captain and we agreed that that should be Bill.  The board and musician leadership asked me to stick around to see the transition through and help set a future course. The CAPA arrangement went into effect in April 2010 and at that point I acquired a new title, that of President and Chief Creative Officer. I don’t think there’s another position like it in the industry.

My portfolio originally consisted of four key areas:
1.    to abet the integration with CAPA
2.    to facilitate the conclusion of our search for a new music director—which we did and hired Jean-Marie Zeitouni, who is a terrific catch.

Jean-Marie Zeitouni

3.    to lead the collective bargaining talks with the musicians’ union and negotiate a new contract before the expiration of the current agreement in August 2011. We did this last March and produced a new four year agreement. I thought it would be a six month process, but we concluded it in a week—a reflection of our resolve to work together, even in tough times, for the greater good of the organization.
4.    to create the “21st Century Columbus Symphony,” that is, to figure out the business model for going forward and guide this with CAPA and the Board. This is what I’m most focused on today.

Tony: How does your position dovetail with Bill Conner’s?

Roland: We’re joined at the hip, with Bill focused largely on the day-to-day running of the organization and me focused on strategy and innovation.  Both Bill and I, along the our Music Director Jean-Marie Zeitouni, report directly to the board through the chairman of the board.

Tony: You are now about 1 1/2 years into the arrangement with CAPA. How is it working out?
Roland: In the first full year of implementation, operating on a $7 million budget, we were able to eke out a small surplus. I had expected we would realize a savings of about $500,000 from the integration with CAPA, but in fact we were able to do better than that.  There was an upside in revenue, which we hadn’t anticipated. Both the City and the County stepped up to a major degree in way they never had before, each making multi-year $250,000 commitments. A number of corporations stood up too.
We have a five-year agreement with CAPA and our goals are threefold:
1.    stabilize the finances by balancing the budget, which we did last year and are on track to do this year
2.    establish a cash reserve so we could have an operating fund. Part of deal with CAPA was that they provide us with a line of credit. That was a blood infusion that we desperately needed.
3.    build up the endowment to $20 million or more to generate revenue for the operating budget.
Tony: So, let’s talk about your vision for the 21st Century Columbus Symphony.

Roland:  Well, there are several themes. Education is key.  We’re coming to see that music and the arts can be windows for developing creative and innovative thinking, the ability to problem solve. How can the Columbus Symphony make a contribution to that? How can we make ourselves more accessible—perhaps in part by making our content available in a time- and space-shifted manner. We need to stop focusing on the traditional model and figure out how we can serve our community in our unique way. We need to find a way for the orchestra to do R&D, something that takes money and the freedom to fail.
Over the next one to three years, we’re looking at several things:
1.    Maintaining a budget that matches supply with demand
2.    Diversifying our concert locations so that next year instead of doing all 12 subscription concerts in the Ohio Theatre, which is too large, we will do eight there and four at the smaller Southern Theatre, fitting our repertoire to the theatre.
3.    Experimenting with new concert formats such as one-hour Rush Hour concerts and one-hour Noon Concerts.
4.    Utilizing the Internet and social media as marketing and education tools and offering more streaming or video opportunities.  We’ve discussed creating total access subscriptions, whereby premium subscribers would have access to the concerts both physically and virtually in a time- and space-shifted fashion.

At the end of the day, the Columbus Symphony exists to serve our community through the wonder of great music.  It’s about connecting the music to people.
In a world of lightning fast change, we need to embrace the opportunity that such change provides and muster the courage and resources required to take smart and calculated risks.

Inside the Armory

Then there is the Drill Hall which is enormous.  You could easily fit a regiment in there and still have room for an audience.

It was the Drill Hall that was the unlikely home for the six weeks residency by the Royal Shakespeare Company, England’s premier theatrical troop which arrived at the height of the NY summer. Part of the Lincoln Center Festival, the company brought along five of the Bard’s greatest works: King Lear, As You  Like It, Romeo and Juliet, The Winter’s Tale, and Julius Caesar.  And the way the RSC used the Drill Hall was amazing.  The company brought in its own pre-fab theatre, designed to resemble the home theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, and seating around 1000.  The space felt intimate, boasted all the technological wizardry in the world including video, trap doors, astonishing lighting, and entrances and exits for the actors throughout the audience which gave the viewer the sensation of actually being in the play. It was the perfect setting for great theatre.

These were real ensemble performances as the members of the company appeared in literally every play, sometimes playing more than one part.  So Lear became Caesar, Brutus became Romeo, Touchstone became a servant. Rosalind was transformed into    Goneril, and on and on.  It gave the Company an energy, a bounce, a confidence that reached the audience and drew us into the action.  But what was most extraordinary— and I have this experience every time—was how Shakespeare still commands our attention with drama, poetry and philosophy that can only be described as contemporary.  We are still the same creatures that he spied in Elizabethan times, 4 centuries ago.

I “discovered” Shakespeare in my early 30’s after the usual immersion at school.  How can a 14-year old make sense of Othello or Hamlet?  The plays were frankly lost on me. My discovery came in the form of a birthday present of tickets for Henry IV, Part I & II, and Henry V… all on the same day, starting at 10:00 a.m. and ending after 11:00 pm.  Wow… I really had to be persuaded to take this gift seriously and arrived at the theatre with the greatest reluctance.  What happened when the curtain finally rose and there was Prince Hal and Falstaff, changed my life and has made the Bard a regular source of study and theatre going, with the occasional movie… (I love the Olivier “Richard III” and “Hamlet,” and “Much Ado about Nothing” with Kenneth Branagh.) The Henrys were such a visceral experience, the performances so powerful, that all these years later I can still visualize the scenes, still hear the audience shouting at some of the actors because they too had become part of the drama.

In New York, the RSC tapped into the profound heart of the dramas.

RSC Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar was a revelation.  Consider this intriguing fact: Caesar’s part is tiny; he has only 5% of the lines, yet… he is the eponymous hero. It is said that Shakespeare deliberately structured and titled the play this way to avoid competition among the other leading characters who actually dominate the action; Cassius, Marc Antony, and Brutus (the largest role with 28% of the play devoted to him).  But he couldn’t very well call the play “Brutus” without detracting from Marc Antony, Cassius, and Caesar!

Although not the title character, Brutus is one of the great theatrical creations who irresistibly becomes the focus of our attention. Virtuous and idealistic, he faces his demons, loves his wife, applies music and poetry as a balm for his soul.  And he philosophizes memorably:
 There is a tide in the affairs of men
    Which taken at the flood, leads to fortune:    
    Is bound in shallows and in miseries.  
    On such a full sea are we now afloat,
    And we must take the current when it serves,
    Or lose our ventures.

He is also an honorable man—which attribute, of course, becomes fodder for Marc Antony’s great oratorical moment.  That speech, “Friends, Romans, Countrymen,” screamed at the crowd to quieten them after Caesar’s assassination, is one of the most powerful political orations of all time.  Contemporary sessions of the English Parliament and the famous Prime Minister’s Question Time, which find the English at their most rhetorically aggressive, have nothing on the skill and manipulative device of Antony’s speech.  His use of repetition, with “honorable man” twisted ironically each time into something despicable, mesmerizes and finally sways the crowd.  His false modesty—“I am no orator, as Brutus is “—and his coup de theatre—
displaying the still bleeding body of Caesar—succeed in finally winning over the crowd which then turns against the conspirators.  We all know it’s brilliant, but hearing it again in the theatre comes as a vivid and welcome reminder.

RSC King Lear

The RSC’s King Lear took us to a different world—the spiritual journey of an old man, from king with all the brute force and privilege of that position, to dotage with a childlike wonder at nature and acceptance of death.  The play is dissonant, it doesn’t attempt a resolution.  Unlike As You Like It where all the plot strands are finally tied in a happy bow, you are left at the end of Lear with questions.  Why didn’t Edgar (Poor Tom) reveal himself to Gloucester as his son with a big reconciliation? What on earth happens to Gloucester at the end? Does Kent leave to kill himself?  Who is left as Lear’s heir, Edgar or Albany?  And the final cadence is so inconclusive.  Spoken by Edgar:
The weight of this sad time we must obey
    Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.  
    The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
    Shall never see so much nor live so long

My wife Virginia and I managed to see three out of the five plays on offer and our last was As You Like It.

RSC As You LIke It

We were not so familiar with this one so I bought a copy of the play and we did a bit of prior study. My word, that was worth it!  Curiously, the tragedies are much easier to understand than the comedies. With the latter you have a myriad of characters and plot lines tripping over themselves, like the Marriage of Figaro on steroids.

The strangest character, for me at least, is Touchstone, who is one of Shakespeare’s fools. I read and reread his lines and I just could not make sense of them. Where’s the humour? What on earth does it mean? Sort of like watching the Marx Brothers with the sound off. Then I read an article about a well-known British comedian who was engaged to do the part and had exactly the same response. He decided that the only way to do it was with a great deal of physical humor and that’s pretty much how the RSC did it too. When all the characters decamp to the forest of Arden, Touchstone appears covered in brambles, sticks, and leaves. His famous “how you construct an argument” set piece was done with huge amounts of mime. And ………….it was really funny.

Katherine Hepburn as Rosalind

The play’s dominant lead is Rosalind—the largest part that Shakespeare ever wrote for a woman, and yes……….you have to qualify that because women were not allowed to act on stage. So in his time, the audience would have seen a boy actor playing a woman who is then disguised as a boy called Ganymede for the scenes in the forest………all very complicated (on a par with the gender-switching character Octavian in the opera Der Rosenkavalier).  I read about Katherine Hepburn playing the role in NYC in the 30s—which must have been something! She would certainly have been very determined and I can just hear that voice. In the early 1960s, Vanessa Redgrave, another strong woman, just took off in the role—particularly when she experiences nature and the attraction of the forest for the first time. The RSC’s Rosalind was all passion and strength with lots of ambiguous sexuality. Polymorphously perverse I suppose!

The character who really captivated the audience (for me at least) was Jaques (pronounced for some reason as Jake-Qees) who is described in the cast list as a “Melancholy Philosophy.” His part is mordantly humorous but he does not play the fool. Instead, he offers quiet insights into our lives. At the end of the play, he decides against a return to court and remains in nature instead. He has one of the most famous speeches in Shakespeare, one that speaks to all our lives.
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the canon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

The Borromeo String Quartet

In addition to receiving the Artist Diploma from NEC, the quartet has gone on to win the 2007 Avery Fisher Career Grant, Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal Award (2001), and the Cleveland Quartet Award (1998), and to serve as Ensemble-in-Residence for National Public Radio’s Performance Today (1998-99). Besides being a wonderful performer and teacher, Nick is also a formidable early adopter of technology and an indefatigable entrepreneur. Under his leadership, the Borromeos have become probably the first (and only?) string quartet to perform using laptops, from which they can read the full score—not just their individual parts—and advance the “pages” with foot pedals. The quartet also records all its concerts—both video and audio—and has offered for sale these Living Archive recordings through its website. Because he is such a well-spring of creative ideas, I asked Nick to write a guest blog entry talking about entrepreneurship for the musician. You will find it inspiring! –Tony Woodcock ]

What is the simplest kit for transcendental artistic fulfillment?
Well, there’s looking into the glowing green of a stream in Yosemite National Park,
or…
the String Quartet.

Anyone who has experienced playing in a quartet notices very soon that as long as you have, one Cello, one Viola, two Violins, four bows, at least one chair and some means of four people seeing the score, you have a complete vehicle for exploring and recreating a vast and startlingly inspiring musical literature..  With a little clef-transposition, you can even venture into the contrapuntal vocal music that built the compositional dynamo that became Western Art Music. And you can do all that with the outrageously spare resources mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph.  In today’s world the obstacles of procuring printed scores have even mostly disappeared.  At a site like www.imslp.org, with a computer and a printer or a monitor and page-turning foot pedal, you can be playing almost anything you wish within a few minutes.  If you are performing from a computer, I might add, you will need some power for the computer, but you won’t need to turn on the light.

Well, I would say the satisfactions of playing in a string quartet have been noticed.  Today, there may be  more virtuoso-level string quartets than ever in history.  And anyone who has listened to quartets over several decades has probably had the pleasurable realization  that there is a tidal rise in the standards of string quartet playing.  It is inspiring.

So, a forest of artistic richness is growing around us in the form of string quartets.  Wonderful, right?

Yes, but in the forest each tree has its place, and that tree supports many life forms from huge vines to tiny insects to entities we can’t even see.   Although trees may grow where the seed falls, we as teachers and artists of all ages have a lot of choices regarding where to plant our tree and where we will encourage our students to plant theirs.  And I often wonder if we unwittingly tend to plant all of our trees in the same spot.  Instead, I would love to look at how we can expand  the forest, make our goals more local, and in so doing have more impact on more people.  Maybe doing this we can both effectively sustain ourselves and significantly alter the cultural drought we all feel we are fighting.

A uniquely powerful vehicle for doing this could be the string quartet.  With its self-sufficiency, overwhelmingly rich repertory,  and modest economic footprint, it is, I think, the ideal tool for reaching more people with great music, and having a great time doing so.  With a string quartet you can give as many concerts as the community shows interest in, with virtually no setup cost or administrative burden.

It is one thing for individual students to make their way into a community, look for performing opportunities and students, and hope that their careers come together.  This sometimes turns out fine. But sustaining a regular schedule of concerts performed at a consistently high artistic standard may prove difficult.  This model can work, but is probably less reliable than the concerted, ongoing practice and progress of a string quartet.

Myself, I have witnessed a lot of local music making.  Both of my parents are hosts of local music establishments.  My father has been organist and choir-master at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Durham, NC since before I was born, and my mother founded a music program called the Duke University String School about the year I was born, way back in 1966!

Duke University String School Orchestra, Dorothy Kitchen, Conductor, Alexander Scurtu, soloist in Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 2.

At first the string school was just an independent entity that grew out of my mother’s teaching at the YMCA, but soon there was the opportunity to join with Duke University and conduct lessons and rehearsals in the Duke Music Department facilities on Saturdays.  My mother’s school has had a steady enrollment of about 300 students for as long as I can remember and boasts one advanced orchestra, several intermediate ensembles, and a fairly extensive chamber music program.  Most parents are able to pay the modest tuition, but there are quite a few students who are given scholarships because the fees are beyond their means.  Out at St. Stephen’s, my father played for years on a mediocre electronic organ, but in 1977, funded by an inspired patron, the church was able to build a Flentrop three-manual tracker organ.  Since then the music program has expanded to include an orchestra, which, in turn, spun off to become the Orchestra of the Triangle. The church also offers an annual series of five or six concerts.  This is all icing on a cake of rich service music.  Currently, my father, in addition to playing, writes notes about the music each Sunday for the bulletin (a nice segue, I suppose, from teaching math at Duke University, a position from which he retired a short while ago).

Both of my parents’ music institutions enlist groups of people in performing live music every week.   In the school, the performances are viewed as a means of enhancing individual artistic development.  In the church, they offer the opportunity to enhance an individual’s inner wish to worship.

So, let’s think about local music-making.  Say a violinist and violist meet at NEC and are both from Missouri.  They know someone who could arrange concerts in a church near their hometowns.  They ask that person to let them present concerts in the church for $10 a ticket ($2 for the church, $2 for each player).  They invite another violinist they know to travel and join them and they know a recent conservatory graduate in Missouri who is a good cellist.  They all agree to play a series of six quartet concerts in two years at this church.  They start to communicate to local students and their teachers about their availability to coach chamber music and they invite as many people as they can to the concerts. They may be able to add a chamber music offering to already existing music education in the area.  They can invite local professionals and students to collaborate in a sextet or quintet or octet.

The resulting new friendships that are set in motion can result in good outcomes,  mixed with some failures.  But think what happens when these really first rate players tear into Beethoven Op. 95. 
Is there any limit to the artistic quality that can be achieved? None at all.  Will the audience be enthusiastic and want to come back?  I think so.  Will it be possible to suggest to young people that they should try playing Op. 95?  Probably at least one movement.  If the audience is really enthusiastic and they invite the ensemble to play another concert next week or give a presentation at someone’s company offices, can it happen?  Yes.  If a different church expresses interest in having a concert next month, can they do it?  Yes.  Does any of this interfere with the quartet’s efforts in other areas, perhaps applying for Chamber Music Two at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center or auditioning for Young Concert Artists?  Not at all.   In the string quartet you have a formidable musical entity that presents with full force the vivid masterpieces of western music (and all sorts of other music, too) and it is an organization that can turn on, and function on (!) a dime.

Get a good sound engineer and amplify the group to play in the city park like the bands of the past.  Add live music to a local theater production.  Play music underneath a silent film.  Play the Cavatina for a church’s Easter service. Get the local Library to support a concert series with explanation about the music.  See if the library could stream videos of the concert on its website. Where creativity and curiosity lead, there are extremely few limits on the quartet’s ability to try new things, and the next morning they can still hone in on some of the tougher intonation in the Haydn “Sunrise” Quartet.

There is a worry when I mention all of these projects that no one will pay for them.  Well, this is where I think the real flexibility of a string quartet comes into play.  If the quartet insists on a modest, mutually workable fee for many of the ideas I just mentioned, the players will be able to supplement these small resources with income from teaching, and that, I think (actually I know), can start to add up.  I have not even mentioned the chance to link up with larger local institutions such as universities where an ensemble can serve as Quartet-in-Residence.  It is natural that this might happen but better if it is built from the ground up by a group’s active engagement with the community.  Such a progression would lead to the healthiest combination of raw materials that will benefit the group and also the University.

The isolated ideas I am discussing are not new, but the equation-changer is utilizing the string quartet as a vehicle.  An individual could try to make the efforts I have just mentioned, but doing them alone is totally different than working with a steady group, where standards can be continually elevated and where fully realized masterpieces of music are within arms reach at any moment and in any situation.
You can play Beethoven Op. 131 ANYWHERE for ANYONE at a moment’s notice, or you can read or transcribe a song that a child just sang, or play the theme of Star Wars, or repeat a cell phone ringtone.  The last are gestures to bring music into contact with contemporary life, but two seconds later the group can blast into the last movement of Bartók No. 4, and I guarantee everyone in the room is in for a thrilling ride…

And consider that the group is self regulating.  Ensembles tend to pressure their members to aspire to ever higher standards and, though this can cause internal tension, it tends to work.  This quartet’s steady improvement then inspires all those around them and creates a virtuous cycle from which everyone can benefit.

So I am proposing that the string quartet is a fantastic cell of local musical production.  Having a professional quartet functioning, performing and teaching in a locality will inspire students, amateurs and listeners to get in on this very exciting action. It will also be musically fulfilling for the quartet.  Once again, for players and audience there is no limit to the musical quality that can be achieved.

Now, could a group fail to create this inspiration, fail to achieve the critical momentum to make this work?  Oh, yes!  And how!  Succeeding at what I am suggesting requires tireless work, unquenchable enthusiasm, fanatic persistence and selfless commitment.  But if Beethoven and Bach and Mozart and Haydn and Brahms and Bartók and Shostakovich and Schoenberg and Dvorak and Debussy and Schubert (I have to end the list somewhere) don’t inspire these qualities in a musician who has just studied at the Conservatory…  just think for a moment of the determination of Beethoven who, even at the moment he almost lost faith in the battle with his deafness, turned around to write music that changed the world.

Actually, I am not worried.  There are cases of failure in determination and inspiration, but not that many.  The determination and inspiration that gets most young musicians to NEC is not so fragile and I am sure it is the same at other conservatories.

And what I foresee is young musicians  going out in communities, not with a vague hope that something good MIGHT happen, but with the confidence  of knowing that the powerful self-sufficient cell of a string quartet can overcome ALL obstacles. These musicians can create great performances of some of the greatest music ever written, and this music can be made anywhere they choose to make it, simultaneously in places big and small.  How exciting and empowering!

And how many communities are there which might be open to this friendly invasion?

They are not even countable, and in every one of these places there are people who are curious and sincere seekers of learning.  There are adults who continue to educate themselves; parents of children who want to give their children learning of value; even that precocious entity of a child already determined to plumb the depths of musical meaning.

Quartetutopia.

And, by the way, what if a couple of town quartets get together to make an orchestra concert?  Why not!