After an afternoon of a typical tech rehearsal (play 10 minutes, break for 20, play 15, break for 30....), we put on our best colored concert dresses and began the evening concert with "It's a Small World" conducted by five 6-year-olds. Japanese children are overly cute and while backstage, my friend Christy decided to engage the young maestri.
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| Christy teaching young conductors about the basson |
Following this endearing spectacle, we played a piece of traditional Bon dance music in which people filled the aisles and children crowded the front of the stage, hypnotically swaying their arms to a tune arranged for orchestra, taiko drum, and cow bell. Then we played the Radetzky March by Johann Strauss followed by a reprise of Bon dance music. It's funny to be unable to understand the dialogue which threads these things together. I'm not sure I'd be able to write copy that sandwiched the Radetzky March between two performances of traditional Japanese dance music, but then I'm neither Japanese nor a writer. More and more I feel that something making sense is not such an objective matter.
Following this was one of my favorite all-time gimmicks: pull people from the audience to conduct the orchestra. Of course the musicians all know the piece well enough that we can do this despite most curve balls that happen on the podium. It's fun to see how people hear music and how they understand the purpose of conducting. It's fun to see the way that they move and to hear how this effects the orchestra. We had three (well, four) winners tonight, all enthusiastic about conducting twenty measures from the last movement of Dvorak's New World Symphony. First was a middle school girl , who was cheerful and giggly as she spoke to the hosts, but immediately sincere and graceful as she led the orchestra. We'd hire her. Second up to bat was a 79-year-old, who gave several of us a scare as he patted his chest before he started. He got slower and slower and slower as we went through the section, creating a more deliberate and laden interpretation than I ever would have imagined possible. We all made it. Finally was a girl from the middle of the audience wearing green and the guy from the back of the audience, also wearing green, who mistakenly thought he had been chosen. It would have been against the jovial nature of the evening to make him return to his seat so they both conducted us at the same time. There was a little confusion, but that happens even when a conductor is getting paid, which is why we have a concertmaster.
While we enjoyed an extended intermission backstage, a school jazz band played several numbers and a dixieland jazz combo played and sang "Oh When the Saints Go Marching In." Following the intermission, we performed the most interesting rendition of the last movement of Gershwin's piano concerto that I think I will ever have the privilege to hear. The contestant was an older jazz pianist who improvised freely during composed sections and cadenzas. Occasional memory slips and missed entrances during rehearsals made me wonder how he had learned the piece, and while I'm familiar with the phenomenon in jazz in which players move around the beat, all the while knowing where it falls, I'm not sure if he was always aware of what the orchestra was playing. The sound and the feel, the freeness of it and even the luxuriously paced tempo, gave it a soulful feeling, if not unpredictable, vague and slightly erratic.
Following his inevitable encore of solo jazz improv came our equally inevitable encore of–what else could it be–the Radetzky March. Audiences love clapping their hands, and the Radetzky March loves clapping audiences. A match made in heaven.
Of course there was a lot of talking to make all of this last over two hours. If any of this doesn't seem to fit together, assume that it's covered in the parts you don't understand. That's what I do, and I don't think there is anyway it could be wrong.
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