Auditions

Last week, I worked at Orchestra Hall as the check-in person for the preliminary round of auditions.  Each candidate came in, gave me his or her name which I checked off my list, and one of us working there would take the candidate to a warm-up room.  An easy but important job.  When a lull occurred, I read The Writer or thought about auditions in life and music.

For the Minnesota Orchestra, their Music Director, Osmo Vanska, makes the final decision on hiring a candidate after the final round.  So, if Evan Quinn were an orchestra’s music director, he’d have the final decision, too.  But he’s not yet a music director in the Perceval series, although one orchestra has its eyes on him for that position, so he guest conducts orchestras all over the world.  Each of his performances is an audition.  How he performs will determine whether or not he’s invited back to conduct.  It can also be an audition for a music directorship — he never knows who’s in the audience.  A member of a search committee from some other orchestra could have traveled to observe him.  Like most conductors, though, Evan focuses on the job and not on the audition aspect.  If he does his job well, he’ll advance.

Musicians and actors audition for jobs.  For the rest of us, we go on job interviews.  But they are auditions, too.  We must demonstrate our knowledge and skills as related to the open position.  In fact, we are screened in just about every thing we do by every person we meet.  Would we make an honest and loving spouse?  Tenant? Friend?  Member of our group?

Fictional characters rarely audition for writers.  They choose writers to tell their stories or to be included in the stories of other characters.  Writers, then, are the ones who audition for their imaginations and the characters that live within.  Writers need to make friends with their imaginations, preferably at a very early age, and build trust so that their imaginations will feel comfortable revealing their gallery of characters.  At the same time, the characters must feel comfortable and trust the writer to write their stories with integrity.  An open mind, rapacious curiosity, and a drive to solve the mysteries everywhere in life are essential characteristics for a writer.  A love for storytelling and language serve as the vehicles for the writer’s journey.

I’ve been fortunate to have characters choose me, not only Evan Quinn.  They began when I was in sixth grade.  I’ve had my share of job interviews, but although I was a musician for a while, I’ve only auditioned once or twice.  Both times were for spots in choirs.  As I worked the auditions last week, I observed the candidates — some showed their nervousness, others withdrew into themselves, still others needed help for even the smallest of mundane tasks.  All focused with complete dedication on the task at hand.  It takes strong nerves, outstanding skill and musicianship to advance through the audition rounds to a job offer at a major orchestra.  As I watched the candidates, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d continued in music would I have been able to survive going from audition to audition.

But that’s what writers do with agents and publishers…..from one audition to the next until their writing hits the right chord…..

Mischa Santora and the Minnesota Orchestra

Evan Quinn’s predecessor at the Minnesota Orchestra, Associate Conductor Mischa Santora, conducted the subscription concerts this past week at Orchestra Hall.  This is Mr. Santora’s last season as Associate Conductor here, and these concerts were his last subscription concerts.  Unlike Evan, however, Mr. Santora will not be stepping up to a co-music directorship at the Minnesota Orchestra.  He built this week’s program around the Bruch First Violin Concerto (Leila Josefowicz, violin soloist), focusing on romantic stories of lovers — Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde (the ancient Celtic source material for Romeo and Juliet), and Daphnis and Chloe.  

As I sat in Orchestra Hall listening, I could remember a time when this ensemble sounded rather so-so.  Not bad, but also not great.  This week, the orchestra’s ensemble playing was so together, so disciplined, so intense, as if Mr. Santora were playing one instrument, not an entire orchestra, concentrated, passionate, completely inside the music together.  Absolutely breathtaking.  The energy dazzled and took me back to the day when I knew I’d finally gotten chapter 1 of Perceval totally right — the balance between Evan’s conducting and Evan’s memories –  a visceral tingling and a mental and emotional high.  I’ve had “peak” experiences before listening to the Minnesota Orchestra and I welcome them.

In the selections for the orchestral suites from Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and Juliet, Mr. Santora and the Orchestra took us to the masked ball where Romeo and Juliet first meet.  But first, Mr. Santora set the musical stage with the feuding Montagues and Capulets, one of my favorite of Prokofiev’s themes.  Then, off to the ball, the delicate dancing, the removal of masks, and finally the two new lovers on Juliet’s balcony at daybreak.  The selections contrasted the belligerence of the hatred between the two sets of parents and the fluttering, exciting and all-consuming feelings of first love.  I’d never heard those particular selections from Prokofiev’s ballet in that order and that sound landscape led almost organically into the Bruch.

Max Bruch’s First Violin Concerto premiered in 1866 and represents romantic sentiment in sound at its highest level.  I’d heard many recordings over the years, but had never heard it in concert.  Leila Josefowicz commanded this concerto with intelligent virtuosity, equal partners with the orchestra throughout, and a rich, golden tone.  This concerto also has a muscular aspect to it, especially in the demands it makes on a violinist’s stamina.  Bruch gives the soloist few moments to rest.   

Richard Wagner’s Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde began the second half of the concert.  That amazing chord!  I never tire of hearing it.  I’m not a huge Wagner fan, but I was impressed with the coherence of this rich, theatrical music’s performance in this concert.  Mr. Santora had saved the best for last, building up to the joyous music of Maurice Ravel’s Suite No. 2 from Daphnis and Chloe.  Nobody does orchestral colors the way Ravel does them.  Ravel’s musical voice sang, rising in a spectacular crescendo at the end.  Bravo.

For me, sadness tinged this concert.  As I’ve written before at this blog, Mr. Santora’s 6 feet 5 inch lanky frame makes him unique in the world of conductors and has given me a precedent for Evan Quinn’s height.  As with Evan, Mr. Santora’s height has no effect on his superb conducting.  I have enjoyed his concerts with the Minnesota Orchestra and I’m sad this is his last season with them.  I hope that he is moving on to equally interesting and fulfilling endeavors in music in the years to come.  And like Evan Quinn, will know much success as a conductor and musician.

One final Perceval thought:  I’m saving this program for Evan to conduct perhaps in one of the later novels…..  

   

Rachmaninoff

Sergei Rachmaninoff’s music, whether for solo piano or full orchestra, sounds rich and passionate to me.  Listening to it this morning, a saying about performance popped into my head: if the performer is more interesting to watch than listening to the music, it’s not a musical performance.  My teachers allowed for movement, certainly.  But, extreme, vain or dramatic movement makes the performance more about the performer, not the music.  A performer is not there to distract but to play the music.

Listening to Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony earlier today, my thoughts wandered to the question of why it’s not performed more often, then to visualizing a conductor conducting it.  Of all the romantic music in the world, this symphony is probably in the top ten.  To conduct it means to either go the schmaltzy, sentimental, freely interpretive route, or adhere strictly to the score.  Rachmaninoff’s music tends to be challenging to play, so I’d think this symphony would require a lot of work, both off and on the podium.  A conductor would be too busy, I should think, to indulge in any overly dramatic movements or to be thinking about himself in any way.

However…there is in conducting a certain amount of showmanship, specifically during concerts.  The conductor also has the unusual position of his/her back to the audience, and being alone on the podium.  There are no other musicians in his/her “section” to blend in with.  The best conductors I’ve seen generally use their showman position to guide the audience on their journey with the music.  It’s extremely rare to see a conductor conduct in an extremely overly dramatic way that calls way too much attention to him/her.  The best ones do try to “blend” into the action on stage so that the music seems to manifest into the world of matter. 

Now, I’d love to attend a concert with the Rachmaninoff Second Symphony on the program….

The Life of the Long-Distance Conductor….

…or Planes, Trains and Hotels….

Over at the Inside the Classics blog, conductor Sarah Hatsuko Hicks has written about her travels and what it’s like to be on the road most of the time, her activities, rehearsals, free time, food, etc.  Conductors travel a lot.  So Evan Quinn needs to travel to gigs in other places.  I needed to think about where he’d settle as his “home base,” too.  Perceval opens with him on tour, conducting at the last stop on this tour — Vienna.  I’ve lived in Vienna and had always wanted to set a story there, so almost by default, Vienna became Evan’s home base.

For Evan’s travels, I have a choice of either showing him during the actual trip or skipping that travel to place him immediately at his destination.  What I include depends on the purpose of the travel and how it affects Evan or moves the story forward.  Any kind of actual travel, whether Evan walks from one room into another or boards a plane to fly to another city, threatens to be what I call “narrative dead time.”

But travel is a part of a conductor’s life.  Even conductors with stable music directorships accept guest conducting gigs and can travel to the other side of the planet for them.  Evan’s a guest conductor, not yet a music director (or chief conductor), and he must go where the work is.  In that regard, conductors are unique musicians or “instrumentalists.”  Their instruments are a group of people playing musical instruments and its highly unlikely a guest conductor would have his own to carry around as a violinist could have his own instrument, for example.  So, conductors are dependent on invitations from orchestras to conduct — and getting invited back.

What’s it like for a conductor on the road?  Is he treated like royalty because he’s a conductor?  I once saw Georg Solti, music director of the Chicago Symphony at the time, waiting alone at the curb near Orchestra Hall’s stage door for his ride to the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport.  It was a January day with a brutally cold wind chill, but he waited outdoors.  No posse followed him around, no one hailed a taxi for him.  We called him back inside to wait in the warm building and he protested, he didn’t want his driver to miss him.  As if the driver wouldn’t know to run into the building for him…. 

Conductors are like any frequent travelers and few, if any, travel with a retinue.  They deal with TSA security checks, long layovers, crowded flights, missed connections, jet lag (especially jet lag), lost luggage, bad or weird food, indigestion from the bad or weird food, bad weather, how to get laundry done, boring hotel rooms and being alone.  Sometimes they travel with spouses or significant others (I know of one conductor whose wife was his manager), but most of the time, they travel alone. 

On a flight to Albany, New York one August, I observed a conductor immersed in a music score for the entire flight.  He sprinted out of the plane as soon as the doors opened at the gate.  I have kept these images of this conductor in my mind ever since thinking that conductors must work on music scores not only on flights but waiting to board flights or in hotel rooms.   

A guest conductor would spend most of his time at a guest conducting gig in rehearsal, meeting with musicians, doing publicity for his concerts, and conducting the concerts.  Free time activities would be unique to the conductor’s interests and the amount of time he might have.  I know of one conductor who loves baseball and tried to attend games in the places he conducted.  Another enjoyed exploring museums, fine dining and theater.  I imagine Evan going on runs in the mornings to explore the city he’s in and its sights, filling his days with work, then enjoying a really good dinner, some TV and sleep. 

Travel for work, whether for an executive or musician, is not glamorous.  It’s exhausting as in jet lag exhausting, constantly-on-the-road exhausting.  It takes stamina.  The social connections, while warm, friendly and helpful, tend to be superficial.  And as interesting as a new city might be, as exciting and rewarding as the work is, it’s still a lonely life.  Especially for guest conductors like Evan who spend more time on the road than they do at home.  That loneliness can be painful, depressing.  Dealing with the loneliness becomes a challenge.  And fodder for me in writing Evan’s life and his responses to the world.

So, in the end, travel for Evan is an opportunity for character development, Evan’s life as a long-distance conductor.  How does he react to his surroundings, to the people he meets and to his situations there?  I have the opportunity to show his commitment to and love for music, the satisfaction of a performance well done, his joy in making music.  And I have the opportunity to explore the future in travel and urban development (or not), grounded in research.