Orchestra Life
:: Concert Experiences
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The New Haven Symphony Meets Robert DeNiro: Orchestra Musicians as Movie Stars! |
I received an interesting email recently from Marvin Warshaw, Principal Violist and Personnel Manager of the New Haven Symphony, asking if I'd be interested in being in a movie with the NHSO and Robert DeNiro. Well, that's a no-brainer...
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Interview with Jeen Fedelich: Avoiding Problems on Orchestra Tours |
Recently (March 2008) there was an article on Orchestra-L about the London Symphony having to play a concert of Mahler 7th in Dijon using borrowed instruments because their truck was held up due to a strike. My first thought was, "Where was Jeen Fedelich?"
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Musings on the New York Philharmonic's North Korea Concert |
While only time can tell what the ultimate outcome will be of the New York Philharmonic's concert in North Korea during our recent Asian concert tour, I think that it will be difficult to overestimate the symbolic importance of what this cultural exchange will ultimately portend for the United States' relationship with this extremely secretive society.
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An Animateur's Journey: A report from the field |
So, what is an animateur? The word is French, meaning, variously: to animate, to bring to life, to enliven, to spark, to create, to produce
The tradition of having an animateur as an integral part of an orchestra is, curiously, British. Many orchestras in the U.K. have animateurs on staff; they are musicians who are committed to community work. That's what an animateur is, but what does one do?
An animateur is charged with seeing that audiences get a chance to connect to the orchestra and its music in new ways. He or she helps the players as they develop techniques for reaching out to the communities in which they reside
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ALIAS: A New Kind of Ensemble |
n 2002, I and a few other Nashville Symphony musicians founded a little group that we called ALIAS Chamber Ensemble. Now in its fifth season, ALIAS has followed an unusual path to become one of the city's foremost classical music groups. Its eleven musicians (along with various guest artists) are not paid; rather, they donate their time, as the group's three yearly concerts are benefit concerts for various nonprofit community organizations. The ensemble's repertoire is selected by the musicians themselves, which give ALIAS programs an eclectic and unique structure.
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The REWIND Concert - An Interview with Conductor Paul Haas by Yvonne Caruthers |
The overarching idea behind REWIND was to create a real "event" - a continuously unfolding evening in which smaller individual pieces are subsumed into a larger whole. We took to its extreme the idea of programmatic connections between the various pieces on a concert.