Symphonies & Scorpions: Hector Whack-a-mole
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Hector Whack-a-mole
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Saturday, April 26
Playing Symphony fantastique is like an hour of musical Whack-a-mole. There are so many little rhythmic and balancing traps that you have to constantly be on your toes to get through it all unscathed. At tonight’s performance, our last in Boston, the spots that had been sloppy on Friday are much cleaner, and the whole thing definitely has more pizzazz, but you never know when the ornery rodent will raise its unpredictable head.
[image error]What I feel like while playing Symphonie fantastique
Sunday, April 27
Shifting Populations
Being in Boston for two weeks has been a striking intermediate demographic step for me between Salt Lake City, which has a substantially different ethnic mix, and cities in the Far East where there is much greater ethnic homogeneity. As of the 2010 census, in Salt Lake City, whites accounted for 66% of the population. Hispanics were the largest minority at 22%, with communities of Asians, African Americans, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans each in the single digits. Boston’s mix had a white population of 47%, African Americans comprised 24%, Hispanics 17%, and Asians 9%. Compare either of these to Tokyo, where the ethnically Japanese population is 99% and the largest minority, Chinese, is 1%. That doesn’t leave much room for anyone else.
When I lived in Boston in the ‘70s and ‘80s, a modest Asian population was centered in Chinatown and clustered around the big university campuses; the Irish, Italian, and Jewish communities still were going strong, and most likely still are, but now seem much less insular. Since then, however, an Asian influx has transformed the cultural landscape. Even Brookline, that bastion of the Jewish community—where the running joke was, “Why is Brookline so beautiful? Because there’s a Rosenbloom on every corner”—is replete with a burgeoning Asian population. Though conflict and strife are the occasional byproducts of diverse peoples living side by side, shifting urban multiculturalism is one of the things that gives American cities a unique vitality, and is one of the great strengths of our society.
The ethnic landscape of American symphony orchestras has similarly undergone a transformation during that period of time. Until the mid-twentieth century, the procedure for hiring orchestra musicians was much different from today. If a music director needed a musician, he would call people he trusted for recommendations. Then there would be a private audition with the maestro and if the musician was up to snuff he was in. (Please note that I’ve been using the masculine pronoun exclusively. That’s intentional. Until the ‘60s, a female orchestra musician was as rare as a polar bear in Florida. Thankfully that situation has changed, except perhaps in the tradition-bound Vienna Philharmonic, but that’s another story). This word-of-mouth process tended to restrict equal access to the profession. On the other hand, because full-time orchestra jobs were so coveted, musicians who made it to the big leagues usually spent years in the minors, honing their craft, moving up the ranks.
When I joined the Boston Symphony straight out of college in 1975 at age twenty-two, just about everyone in the orchestra seemed like an old coot to me. There were still some musicians sawing away who had joined before World War II. One of my friends, violinist Rolland Tapley, was a New England Yankee born in 1901. Though Tap was well past his prime, as concertmaster of the Pops he occasionally played the solo in Leroy Anderson’s lovely arrangement of The Last Rose of Summer that I would pay a million bucks to play as sweetly. When Tap took his final BSO bow after forty-seven years of dedicated service, he was joined at the podium by Peter Gordon, a wise-cracking French horn player who was leaving after only three years to pursue a more adventurous life of freelancing on the West Coast. As the two left the stage, Peter put his arm around Tap’s shoulder and said, “You know, Tap, between the two of us, we’ve been here for a half century!”
These days, when I go to Tanglewood to play with the orchestra, my colleagues appear inordinately underage. At what point, I ask myself, does one become a coot?
When I was a kid, instrument choice was still highly gender based. Boys played string instruments, brass, and percussion. Girls played piano, harp, and flute. Other wind instruments were up for grabs, though a female bassoonist would be walking on thin ice. Now, if you see a boy playing the violin it’s a front-page headline. Hell, you even find women playing trombone these days!
Another major change is ethnic. In 1975, many of the BSO musicians were either first or second-generation American men of European ancestry, having come to the US during or immediately after World War II seeking asylum and/or work. Major orchestras still attract musicians from all around the world, but Asians and Asian-Americans—especially women—have clearly taken the baton from Jewish boys for embedding string playing into the bedrock of cultural and family life. Who knew? And why? It just seems to be one of those things that change over time, but there’s no question it’s a bull market for classical music in Asia, and without doubt it’s one of the reasons the BSO is going there.
Since the ‘60s, American symphony orchestras have developed a fairly standard audition procedure for filling vacancies in which just about anyone who can hold an instrument is eligible to apply. There are many disincentives for an unqualified person to do so, however, including the cost of travel, a couple of months of backbreaking practice, the grueling experience of the audition itself, and the statistically infinitesimal odds of an even highly-qualified candidate to win the job.
Auditions are administered jointly by the musicians and management. A musician audition advisory committee listens to all the candidates. The first round is often by sent-in recording, after which weaker candidates are discouraged from further participation in a letter from the personnel manager. Music directors, who have the ultimate say in who is hired, typically attend only the final round. And though there’s occasional disagreement between the committee and the music director, the committee’s opinion is generally seriously considered. There are flaws in the system—sometimes wonderful musicians slip through the cracks while others who are great auditioners but mediocre artists get hired—but orchestras bend over backwards to try to be fair. The result of all this is that in recent decades a lot of young, well-trained musicians, still wet behind the ears and right out of the college music programs and conservatories, have landed jobs in major orchestras. I consider myself lucky to have been one of that bunch.
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NEWS FLASH: MY FIRST POLITICAL THRILLER, THE BEETHOVEN SEQUENCE, IS SCHEDULED FOR RELEASE ON SEPTEMBER 8! A MENTALLY UNBALANCED MUSIC TEACHER BECOMES PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES! PREPOSTEROUS? STAY TUNED.
