The point of this blog is not about the orchestra or non-profit arts business. Its purpose is to be about conducting. However, there were three articles that I read this morning that struck me because of their relationship to each other. One is a comment on another which is a commentary on the situation of the Utah Symphony and how orchestras need to stop being the victim in this economic mess and start being leaders in the recovery.
The other article I found interesting was yesterday’s New York Times piece on Eli Broad’s (rhymes with road) philanthropy which apparently always comes with strings of steel attached. He is a major player in the arts world of Los Angeles. Broad has no problems with leaving the board and pulling his money out of an organization if he doesn’t agree with the direction or choices being made.
Are the articles related? Sorta. They are about different cities, different organizations, and focus on different elements of the arts business, but I think it is interesting to read about a conductor’s call-to-arms to get out and make your orchestra matter to a community in these hard times rather than being a drain on it.
Rather that the “riding out the storm approach” that most seem to be taking, there needs to be a proactive approach with the mission to become one of the anchor organizations that actually helps the economy recover. This would not only better serve orchestras, but also show that we are leaders in helping to solve the crisis!
And to then read about a major arts supporter’s choice to reduce his support from an education program he had previously supported:
But Mr. Broad is fond of using a specific matrix to judge the success of his giving. Museums should see attendance rise and giving increase by board members. Schools should see test scores go up.
In the case of Strong American Schools he suggested to Chad Kolton, the communications director for the campaign, that one way to judge its impact would be the number of column inches newspapers devoted to the subject.
In the end, Mr. Broad said, the campaign did not have the impact on voters that he’d hoped, so he reduced his pledge to about a third of the original promise.
“If we’re not getting results,” Mr. Broad said during an interview in his offices in the Westwood district, surrounded by modern art on the walls and framed by the spread of Los Angeles behind him, “why should we spend all that money?”
I think there is something here that needs connecting, but I’m not sure how to articulate it yet.
Any thoughts?
There is a great blog running that works to maintain a current list of all the conducting masterclasses, workshops, jobs, announcements, etc.
I’ve added it to the blogroll but it is also here.
It’s a great service and project. Go check it out!
Nothing to say tonight other than enjoy the ride!
Ensemble/Conductor/Movie director/ in prime form. Totally awesome to watch.
I recently had an amazing evening listening to the final round for the ISU Symphony’s Concert of Soloists competition. It was a fantastic mix of singers, percussion, strings, pianists, woodwinds and brass players.
Amazingly, what was shown on my local PBS station the following night? The Audition – a fascinating documentary of the semi-final and final rounds of the National Council auditions for the Metropolitan Opera. This documentary is a MUST SEE for anyone who is interested in a career in classical music – opera or otherwise.
One of the most striking elements of the documentary is how UNLIKE American Idol the process was. It was intense, it was focused, it was competitive. But it was less sensational. There was no effort to embarrass or humiliate the finalists.
Having the two evenings in a row got me thinking about auditions and audition success which then got me thinking about all of the advice I have received over the years. During the documentary, I jotted down quotes that seemed significant. Some of these are from people like Renee Fleming or Thomas Hampson, and others are from people like Peter Gelb, the Executive Director of the Met, the singers and the vocal coaches that were featured in the documentary.
I still am finishing my list of 101 Do’s and Don’ts for Student Conductors, but I now have this new list inspired by the past two nights of audition experiences. It’s quick and dirty, nothing is attributed, it might not all make sense. My real goal is to expand it. Do you have a nice tidbit to share with your fellow conductors and musicians? Some sage advice, wisdom handed down through the ages, ace up your sleeve? Share it, add to the list.
Dress up.
Be on time. (actually be early, way early)
Do you have something to say?
Quite frankly, if you sing well and are as boring as batshit , we don’t care.
It’s about communication, not just about singing.
4 years of work for 10 minutes.
Immediacy
Tell a story, convey a character.
How good are you today?
The rep you perform matters.
Mean what you say, and say what you mean.
Know why you are singing what you are singing.
To thy own self be true.
Know who you are and what it is that makes you shine.
Stay in the moment.
Don’t get distracted by the past or the future.
Don’t apologize.
Don’t give excuses.
Go make music. The rest is a distraction.
Back from the 2009 annual Midwest Band and Orchestra Conference in Chicago and still pondering some of the stimulating words of wisdom from Craig Kirchhoff.
During his presentation at Midwest, Maestro Kirchhoff had a few primary points to make about what conducting is:
- Expressive conducting is listening and reacting
- Non-verbal conducting must reinforce verbal instructions
- Find gestures to create the right sound
- While talking to the ensemble, use hands always.
- Everyone has a “membrane” which keeps us from freely communicating.
In point number one, Kirchhoff was alluding to the predilection conductors have to “choreography.” It is hard to listen and react and change one’s gesture if one has already determined a singular way to elict a sound from an ensemble. I think this is a good point; the conductor must have a repertoire of gestures from which to draw in order to change the sound they hear from the ensemble.
Point number two seems a bit obvious, but to clarify: It is illogical to ask the ensemble to play legato then proceed to conduct with a staccato beat.
Kirchhoff’s third point relates to his first: Find a gesture. Conductors become too inflexible and not intuitive enough at times with their gestures. It is important to have any kind of expression at your disposal.
The fourth point is an interesting one. Kirchhoff believes it is important to use your hands while giving verbal instructions to the ensemble. He maintains this will continually draw attention to your hands and their musical inflection. Plus, this process continually integrates the conductor’s mind and body. The concept winds up being beneficial for both conductor and ensemble.
In his final point, I believe Kirchhoff is using the word “membrane” as I would use the word “filter.” But, in this case he is not talking about propriety in rehearsal discussion. He is encouraging the conductor to be free and accessible enough to their own consciousness to articulate what they hear inside that the music should be.
I find these five points interesting and compelling. Any reactions out there?
Hello Everyone! Brian and I are working on a slew (spelling?) of FASCINATING posts for the Conductorsblog in 2010. Brian’s escapades at the the Midwest Convention are soon to be posted and will, I’m sure, go down as legendary. In addition, his research on graduate conducting programs is completely fascinating in that super geeky, super music-nerdy kind of way. Look for his future posts on these topics soon!
I am currently finishing the rest of the 101 Do’s and Don’ts for student conductors and working on ideas that have been percolating for how undergraduate conducting programs are organized.
We are also working on some guest bloggers, but you will just have to wait for those surprises!
We hope you keep checking in with us in 2010 and keep commenting, participating, and sending us your ideas.
Happy New Year to everyone! We hope it is a great start to a new decade!
And just for some fun, a rip-roaring finale to Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony. It has little to do with the tempos suggested by Mr. Shostakovich and a lot of great late 70’s-Early 80’s camera work, but it is still a lot of fun!
What was Berioz’s dirty little secret? All is revealed in this shocking, SHOCKING I say, documentary.
My beautiful, wonderful, talented, graphic designer wife just emailed me 2 great articles on deliberate practice. The first from the guys at Freakonomics on How A-Rod Got So Good and the second is from Global Maverick on How Ben Franklin Got so Good. Both articles are quick primers on what it takes to accomplish greatness.
My favorite discussion is from Global Maverick who quotes the book Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin. Colvin discusses Ben Franklin’s efforts to improve as a writer by working on his own perceived weaknesses which he identified as: Expressiveness, Vocabulary, and Organization.
I think these are directly transferable to musical practice and serve as fantastic guides to developing one’s conducting practice. And of course by practice, I mean deliberate practice. Which is what the fellas at Freaknomics were discussing. So let’s discuss deliberate practice quickly. Mr. Dubner provides a good summation:
1. Focus on technique as opposed to outcome.
2. Set specific goals.
3. Get good, prompt feedback, and use it.
Obviously, the best tool for a conductor to use for implementing these ideas is the video camera. I agree with those people who think we should be taping ourselves as much as possible. And, no, not just because we are egomaniacal narcissists who love to stare at ourselves. Just as audio recordings help train musicians to have better intonation and tone production, video can help conductors really develop their technique.
I think we should video tape ourselves not only during rehearsals and concerts, but also while we practice by ourselves. Patterns, gestures, actual scores, all of it. Stand there in your living room looking like a doofus and imagine the ensemble around in the room, and conduct the music while a metronome is going. You can really start to see if you are expressing the music, using a variety of vocabulary, and you can watch to see if your gestures and ideas are organized to fit the music’s needs.
Dubner talks about A-Rod’s efforts to specifically target his practice. Mr. A-Rod didn’t just throw the ball around and knock the stuffing out of the ball everytime he was up at batting practice. (“Knocking the Stuffing out of the Ball” is my preferred method at the batting cages. But then mine is more for stress relief.) No, A-Rod worked diligently at specific areas with specific goals.
This Times article by Tyler Kepner describes how Bobby Meacham, the Yankees’ new third-base coach, recalls seeing a young Alex Rodriguezapproach the game. At the time, Meacham was a minor league manager whose team was hosting A-Rod’s minor league team:
“I said, ‘This guy goes about his business not like he wants to get to the big leagues, but like he wants to be the best,’” Meacham said.
“He knows he’s going to be good, but he wants to be great. There was just a method to it.”
In fielding practice, Meacham remembered, Rodriguez would ask for grounders to his right and to his left, and he would ask for fielders at second for a double play and at first for throws across the diamond. In batting practice, he would focus on specific disciplines — grounders the other way, liners to the gaps, and so on.
“At 18 or 19 years old, he already had a plan,” Meacham said. “It was pretty awesome to watch.”
Working on specific areas of weakness and focusing on technique is absolutely necessary in order to improve. He recognized that the success would come when he could hit and field better than everyone else.
So let’s get back to Mr. Franklin, his three areas of focus and how I think they relate to conducting practice: Expressiveness, Vocabulary, and Organization.
1. Expressiveness: I don’t think of this as one’s melodramatic emoting at an orchestra, rather I think of it as a guide for identifying how much you are able to express the musical idea? Or even better, how able are you to communicate the musical idea? The crescendo for two bars? When watching the tape with the sound turned off, did your physical gestures reflect what was supposed to be happening in the music?
2. Vocabulary: How many gestures do you have available to make what you need to happen, happen? Do you always go back to a couple of moves to solve a similar rhythmic problem in Mozart and in Shostakovitch and in Adams? How expansive is your vocabulary? Apparently, Ben Franklin would write an essay, then rewrite it in metered rhyme forcing himself to expand the vocabulary used in order to accomplish the task. Once finished he would put it away for awhile then write the essay from verse into prose and then compare it to the original prose essay.
3. Organization: How we move, where we gesture, how large/small we gesture, should be in relationship to the organization of the piece. We want to have a wide vocabulary of gestures available, but we don’t need to use every gesture every time, just as we don’t want to only use the same word. Additionally, we need to gauge the dynamics of the work and how we affect those gestures.
Obviously, there is not any one way to approach this stuff. But I remember when I was starting out, and now that I am teaching beginning students, what it was like to be told “Go practice,” and I have no idea what to do from there. So I would say, okay, cool here I go and then just start winging it.
Developing a sustained and deliberate practice is vital to future success. Thank you to my wife for sending me these articles that show how Ben Franklin’s efforts more than 200 years ago still are affecting the research and practice of peak performers and that A-Rod can be an inspiration for getting back to basics in our conducting practice.
I came to Chicago for the annual MidWest Band and Orchestra clinic. It is the first time I have been here as an adult – I came here many moons ago as a young musician playing in the Oklahoma Youth Orchestra under the direction of Legh Burns and John E. Clinton. That trip was among my favorite high school memories (along with going to Scandinavia and Australia with that same orchestra!).
Last night I had the wonderful opportunity to listen to a master teacher of conductors, Craig Kirchhoff from the University of Minnesota. In the next few posts I will share with you some of his “bullet points” about great conducting and great teaching.
He began the hour-long seminar with what he termed as his “three basic principles” about teaching music:
- Every student has the potential to be moved by music, regardless of that student’s age or skill level.
- The teacher’s task is to get the student to understand the reasons why they are moved by music.
- The only way to get the student to understand truly why they are moved by music is to expose them to great music.
There are more points about his conducting and teaching philosophy coming. I thought this would be a good way to get the ball rolling!
I had the pleasure of meeting Drew McManus a few years ago when he visited the Arizona State University graduate conducting program. He is an extremely well informed and thoughtful individual and it was a great fun to meet and throw a bunch of questions at him.
His blog Adaptistration is all about the orchestra business in the US, and I think it is the go to source, much like the Washington Posts The Fix Blog is for politics, on what is really going on out there. He’s got the real scoop on what is really happening with the real world knowledge of how the american orchestra business functions. For real.
The actual point of this post is that he had a FANTASTIC post on how arts organizations can expand and improve upon their social media efforts. It’s all laid out step-by-step here. Go read, learn, improve upon your twittering.
Really.
Jacob Harrison
brianstjohn