SLSO Blog

Intense in Colorado

2009-07-02T15:36:42Z

Cellist Bjorn Ranheim, who the last time I saw him had shaved his head just before the last Casual Classics concert, sent me a note about the "intense music festival" he's already in the thick of in Boulder, the Colorado Music Festival, aka "Michael Christie's summer band."

So I went to the CMF website to check out what Bjorn was talking about, and found this concert listing for July 15 in downtown Boulder:

DUO VIVANT Performed by Calin Lupanu, Violin; Bjorn Ranheim, Cello

Bartok: Hungarian Folk Melodies for Violin & Cello

Kodaly: Duo for Violin & Cello, op. 7

Handel: Halvorsen-Passacaglia for Violin & Cello

Ravel: Sonata for Violin & Cello

On top of that, Bjorn is playing principal with the CMF Orchestra, so he's practicing. "Intense" is a pretty good word choice.

After the CMF is done Bjorn heads to Idaho for the Sun Valley Summer Symphony--with a number of other SLSO notables.

If you're passing through Boulder and take in the CMF (through July and the first week of August), you may also see SLSO musicians Shannon Farrell Williams, playing principal viola; Jonathan Reycraft, playing principal trombone; and horn players Greg Roosa and Amy Jo Rhine.

Meanwhile, in the Lou, a lot of folks are heading for the new sculpture garden downtown, along with the annual Fair St. Louis fireworks down by the Arch, or hanging out and eagerly awaiting the new Son Volt album.

Whatever you're up to on Independence Day Weekend, have a great, glorious and safe holiday. I'll post again on Monday. There may be some pics from the Adam Crane/Danny Lee New England Summer Tour.

Golijov to Janacek

2009-07-01T22:18:19Z

I got a call from Silvian Iticovici, one of the three Romanian violinists in the SLSO. He wanted to write about something "exciting" for his 0910 Musician Pick, and asked if I had a recording of Osvaldo Golijov's Azul, which SLSO Principal Cello Daniel Lee performs with the orchestra on Opening Weekend. "Golijov is a composer who I find to be very interesting," Silvian said.

But, sorry, I have no recording of Azul.

"Well then," said Silvian. "What else would be exciting?"

I looked up the online calendar and immediately went to Janacek.

"What Janacek are we playing?" Silvian asked. "Tarus Bulba?"

"No, Sinfonietta."

"Sinfonietta," Silvian said, sounding intrigued. "That would be good. When do you need it?"

I told him.

"Oh, come on."

"Send it when you can."

"That's better. I will."

Works Every Time

2009-06-30T20:02:12Z

Some of my colleagues have been asking me questions about the upcoming season as they prepare to send me their Staff Picks for 0910. I ask both staff and musicians to send me their Hot Picks, and some staff members actually like to do some research. I recommended to one colleague, who I already knew enjoyed more uncommon fare, to listen to György Ligeti's Violin Concerto, which is paired with Holst's The Planets on a program in March, with David Robertson conducting.

György Ligeti isn't the most common name, and my colleague looked at me a bit quizzically. Then I told him what I always tell people who haven't heard of Ligeti: If you've seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, you've heard Ligeti. Those eerie sounds around the monolith--that's music by Ligeti, which Stanley Kubrick used without permission.

And after I told my colleague that, and as always happens when I tell people the Ligeti/2001/Kubrick connection, his face brightened with recognition.

That's All Folks

2009-06-29T22:17:15Z

The final Casual Classic concert was Sunday, as was the finale to the Opera Theatre season, with Salome.

The Henchmen were bringing stuff back from the Loretto-Hilton Center Monday morning, and a few of us bade farewell to the 0809 season with malts and cholesterol busting sandwiches at Crown Candy Kitchen.

Aspen Calling

2009-06-26T17:01:43Z

While I was out tracking down a memory Thursday afternoon, I stopped in at the Central Branch of the St. Louis Public Library to check out a few CDs for my summer listening of the SLSO 0910 season. As sometimes happens, I ran into an SLSO musician doing the same thing, percussionist Tom Stubbs, who was turning in multiple versions of Mahler 5, Janacek Sinfonietta and other selections. "Hearing the different interpretations is really the fun part," Tom told me.

And since it was blistering hot outside, I had to ask Tom when he was heading to Aspen, just so he could rub it in. Tom has been a member of the faculty at the renowned Aspen Music Festival and School for many years, along with David Halen, Katy Mattis and Mark Sparks from the SLSO.

"Monday," Tom said with a big rub-it-in smile.

Casual Classics celebrates American music Sunday afternoon. No sparklers will be handed out, but the music will sparkle on its own.

Scott Joplin Ate Here

2009-06-25T20:02:06Z

With Scott Joplin's "The Ragtime Dance," "The Entertainer" and "Maple Leaf Rag" on Sunday's Casual Classics program, I ventured out into Heat Advisory City to track down a memory. In the summer of 2000, Opera Theatre of St. Louis opened its 25th-anniversary season with Joplin's Treemonisha, his sole surviving opera. It's known that he wrote an opera prior to Treemonisha, A Guest of Honor, which dramatized Booker T. Washington's visit to Theodore Roosevelt's White House. Joplin toured a production of A Guest of Honor around the Midwest, and pretty much went broke because of it. The opera score and libretto have disappeared. If you happen to find it in your great-grandparents' attic, you'll have truly found something.

I wrote about the OTSL production of Treemonisha for a local newspaper, and during my research walked around the part of town where Scott Joplin once lived. I used to imagine a Scott Joplin walking tour: the house on Delmar, the block where his 13-room home on Lucas used to be, the corner on Market St. where the Turpin brothers' Rosebud Saloon was once the "Vatican and Wailing Wall of ragtime"--as Joplin historian Jan Hamilton Douglas told me--and on to Union Station, through which most everybody, white and black, entered the city. Although, for the most part, one group went east and the other went west once they got here.

But not entirely. By 1901, the German director of the St. Louis Choral-Symphony Society, Alfred Ernst, had befriended Scott Joplin, and praised him in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "Scott Joplin of Sedalia, a negro, an extraordinary genius as a composer of ragtime music." Joplin played ragtime for Ernst. Ernst played Wagner, especially Tannhauser, for Joplin.

The St. Louis Choral-Symphony Society would later be known as the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. So when the SLSO plays Joplin Sunday, it's playing the music of a St. Louis composer to whom it has a direct and poignant link.

Along my walking tour, I came across the empty brick shell of the Original Restaurant, "EST 1905." Given where it sits in Joplin's St. Louis universe, I figured he had to have eaten there.

And here it is today, crumbling on Olive St. Accompany these photos with a slow piano rag, for as Scott Joplin said: "It is never right to play ragtime fast."

The Entertainer

2009-06-24T22:17:42Z

The big top is all the way down. The circus passes, the dogs bark, and so on.

I look forward to hearing the orchestra Thursday morning in rehearsal for the final Casual Classics concert this summer, which features the American music of Aaron Copland, Charles Ives, Meredith Willson, Leonard Bernstein, John Philip Sousa and Scott Joplin.

The Scott Joplin House, a state historical site, is just a few blocks from Powell Hall. Joplin didn't live in that house all that long, moving there from Sedalia, Missouri, during a leaner time of his life. Before long he was living in a multi-room mansion not far from Union Station, with music students boarding there. That house is long gone, a sadly familiar story known in cities all over the country.

Passing the Baton

2009-06-23T22:05:53Z

I've solicited the musicians for their top picks for the 0910 season, trying to catch them before they disperse to places clear and cool for festivals and such. Violist Chris Woehr placed the weekend with André Previn high on his list. The SLSO has a significant history with Previn, as he made his conducting debut with the orchestra in 1961. Chris wasn't around for that, but he has a much more intimate Previn connection that he shares:

"I am fascinated by the program on March 19 & 20: Previn Diversions, Mozart Piano Concerto #24, Rachmaninoff 3rd. It's conducted by André Previn himself, and he might still be using one of my dad's batons. (My father made sticks for most of the conductors of his generation, and was Previn's music librarian in the Pittsburgh Symphony. I'm wondering if Previn will freak out that the 57-year-old bald viola player in front of him is the son of his former colleague.)"

Summertime St. Louis

2009-06-22T22:07:52Z

Circus Flora's big top is going down in 97-degree heat today.

A step outside Powell Hall is followed with the words "Where's the air?"

"Blistering" is an apt modifier for the current state.

Horn auditions were held today, and I saw two players standing in the blistering heat, their black horn cases on their backs, and talking over their audition experiences, seemingly oblivious to the lack of air and extreme temperatures. Auditions must be intense.

Cool, Clear Water Music

2009-06-19T16:48:43Z

David Robertson is back in town to get his fill of St. Louis summer heat and to conduct the Casual Classics concert tonight (Friday). A very go-for-Baroque program; or an if-it-ain't-Baroque-don't-fix-it program and so on. The trumpets are sounding very bright and sunny, and Andrea Kaplan's flute makes the Bach Suite No. 2 a festive occasion. Pachelbel's Canon, Handel's Water Music: big hits to cool the evening. Many of my colleagues are in their blue Casual Classics polos. The foyer glows with butter-colored table cloths and those darling little sand-bucket centerpieces. Come early for food and drink. Tap your flip-flops to the Baroque.

Christie Tweet

2009-06-18T22:07:35Z

Michael Christie is in the pit conducting Ghosts of Versailles at Opera Theatre of St. Louis. He was last at Powell in December conducting Barber, Chopin and Tchaikovksy, and he's obviously grown fond of the orchestra, as he wrote on Twitter the other day: "Fourth time working with saint louis symphony. Their professionalism and musicianship are thoroughly uplifting. Superstars that value teamwork."

Gotta Sing

2009-06-17T22:15:59Z

Wednesday morning I went to the press conference announcing the International American Choral Festival that will come to St. Louis November 17-21, 2010. Powell Hall will serve as one of the venues for the Festival, which you can learn more about on the Regional Art Commission's website and watch a cool video. Click here. There may be anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 participants, with all varieties of choral music represented. My favorite quote from the press conference: "...not that there's anything wrong with Grandma's choir..."

Tooth Music

2009-06-16T16:15:32Z

I was in the dentist chair for much of Monday afternoon so I couldn't quite find the inspiration to get into the blog zone. I can tell you that before my afternoon procedure I heard many good things about Simply Sinatra, with the SLSO morphing into a big band and getting all sassy and brassy for those boffo Ol' Blue Eyes tunes. Both Steve Lippia, who so closely approximates the Sinatra croon, and conductor Victor Vanacore received kudos all around.

Now back to the dentist chair. A couple years ago I had a similar procedure, and I was offered a selection of CDs to listen to as a way to mitigate the discomfort. I remember especially a recording of Beethoven's "Eroica" Symphony, Otto Klemperer conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra, which I suspect was in the CD stack because the folks in the dentist's office knew I worked for the SLSO.

At any other time and place, I would have thought the Klemperer "Eroica" a real find, but not as accompaniment to the minor demolitions that were about to occur in my lower jaw. Again, there was this idea of classical music as "relaxing" or "soothing," when the "Eroica" is anything but--a musical revolution was not what I wanted in my ears along with the whirring and buzzing and snarling of the dental tools.

This visit my dentist had gone totally modern, with a mini-iPod provided. Once again, I steered away from the Rachmaninoff. The music I selected was so lame I'm too embarrassed to identify it, but it's nice to say that for a walk on the wild side--a totally unrelaxed experience--I'd go with Rach 3 Piano Concerto any day, but to mellow things out a little soft rock is acceptable in extreme circumstances.

Classical music was made to stir you up and leave savage beasts unsoothed.

Saturday Night

2009-06-12T16:57:28Z

There won't be any Rat Pack martinis at the bar, and if you smoke you have to do it outside, but the sounds of Simply Sinatra, with Steve Lippia providing the vocals to the Sinatra Songbook and the SLSO delivering the big-band accompaniment, will make for a swingin' evening, 7:30pm, Saturday, June 13 at Powell Hall. You can slide into a Saturday night's bad behavior after the show. It'll probably be done before 10, and that's early, baby.

News Day

2009-06-11T15:37:26Z

The SLSO has been in the news a lot lately, even beyond its connection with the Catsup Bottle Festival. The new contract garnered attention from media outlets large and small, and was the top story on artsjournal.com this morning (Thursday), with the headline "St. Louis Symphony Players Get New (And Healthy) Contract." Click here for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch coverage (the same article to which artsjournal linked).

This morning my colleague and Mensch of the Century Adam Crane (named as such at Nathaniel Ayers most recent birthday party) accepted the SLSO's ASCAP award for Adventurous Programming at the League of American Orchestras conference in Chicago: first place under the category "Awards for Programming of Contemporary Music." Adam picked up a plaque and three grand. For the Post-Dispatch report click here.The plaque will go somewhere in the hall. I don't know where the money goes. A trip to Ted Drewes for everybody?

Also in artsjournal.com today, Amanda Ameer, in her always engaging blog Life's a Pitch, discusses the phenomenon of Tweeting and texting during concerts. You can read the complete post here, but I was most taken with Hilary Hahn's perspective of Twitter consciousness in the concert hall (Hahn is one of the artists Ameer promotes). Again, you can read her full response by clicking above, but here is Hahn's finale, with its strong rhetorical flourish:

"Finally, it seems to me that listeners make things difficult for themselves by observing themselves in the third person and putting their thoughts into a narrative before those thoughts can fully form. I feel that concerts can be a break from outside pressures and influences. For audience members, a concert should be like a vacation on a distant beach with a stack of good books. Comfortable seats. No one trying to call you. No one breaking into your trains of thought. No way to reach the outside world. Just a time to shut off and calm down and treat yourself to something truly wonderful. If we can't sit through a classical concert we pay decent money for, and we can't take two hours out of an evening to shut out everyone else's demands and opinions and thoughts, where does that leave us?"