What not to do at a staff conductor audition...

For a several years in the middle of this decade, I was the unofficial king of staff conductor (assistant/associate/resident conductor) auditions, with an amazing yield of invites to the semifinal or final round. Unlike instrumentalist auditions, which can accommodate dozens and dozens of live auditions in the first round, staff conductor auditions have to be limited to as many candidates as can be fit into a single orchestra service, which represents a cost of many thousands of dollars. Unfortunately, there wasn't a Subway Club Card type deal where they just automatically gave me a job after my 10th audition. I suppose I was typecast in the conducting equivalent of the Ralph Bellamy role in the 1940s romantic comedy vein -- would have been nice to be Cary Grant just once.

So, learn from my experience! (or have a laugh or two at my expense) Here is a list of suggestions (well, mostly "dont's") based on those many lonely marches onto unfamiliar stages filled with strangers:

• Read the info carefully that you get in the period leading up to the audition and in the packet at the hotel/at the audition site (it wasn't an audition, but I once learned the wrong Mozart symphony for an ASOL conducting workshop). Know with absolute clarity what the audition rep is and how the audition will be run
• If you have carte blanche as to how to use the time, know exactly where you're going to start and stop and how much time you will use for each excerpt
  
• Don't go out on stage without having attended to your bodily needs (including eating) first
  
• Don't change your game plan based on what you hear the candidate before you doing
• Don't forget to take a moment to see where exactly the brass, percussion, harp, piano etc. are located once you're out onstage
• It's like having a blind date with 80 people at the same time -- you just have to hope you connect with enough of them that they'll want to shack up with you for a few years
  
• Don't wait for them to play after your first downbeat -- if you've never conducted an orchestra with a big-time lag, you just have to keep going. You really have to have the music inside you to keep your shit together, though
• Don't forget to study the scores ahead of time
• Don't do a halfassed (or even 3/4-assed) job preparing the preconcert lecture/educational program etc. presentation(s) that you'll undoubtedly be asked to deliver. I slacked on this once (I'd always done well with previous ones), and the result wasn't pretty
  
• Don't be distracted by the obvious hatred between the concertmaster and principal cellist -- it actually has nothing to do with you
• Don't give in on your tempi -- stop and start again if you don't get what you want
• Don't try to save money by staying with a friend who lives further than walking distance away from the audition site
  
• Don't stay up late drinking wine and discussing the vagaries of life with said friend the night before the audition
• Don't assume the next morning that the cab will show up at the time you asked for it 
• Don't mumble on the podium
• Don't start conducting without taking a moment to be still and focus
• Don't forget to breathe
• Don't explain why you want to modify a phrasing/articulation/bowing, etc. 
• Don't make jokes (unless, like me, you can't help it)
• If forced to "rehearse",  focus on "quick wins" -- don't get bogged down by minutae. Fix as many things as you can on the fly with your "conducting technique" such as it is...
• Just make music! If you have a good experience in that dimension, you can't go wrong
  

Everyone should play!

via Frank Almond's blog:



If you believe that making music with others is an essential part of the human experience (as the anthropological evidence suggests), it's clear that, while this orchestra may be "terrible", it's immensely valuable given what it provides its members. The tragic byproduct of the technical advances that made recording sound and disseminating those recordings possible is that the experience of hearing music has become almost completely separated from making music -- we get flavor without nourishment. Karaoke and music-based video games do get people active in making music themselves, but the communal experience of making music with others is still neglected.

Classical music is culturally relevant!

...and serving useful purposes for my favorite team, the Seattle Mariners, according to onetime prodigy turned grand old man Ken Griffey Jr:

Yeah, I always have fun. Our third baseman is out after getting hit in the nuts. When he comes back next week, his first at-bat, his theme music is going to be the Nutcracker Suite.


And I worry about the music I study and perform being disconnected from the larger culture!

Gmail, why must you taunt me?

... by putting this link at the top of my mailbox periodically when opening emails that touch upon music...

Mozart Opera Manuscripts - mozart.packhum.org - Full-size,
Color Facsimiles of Mozart's Autograph Manuscripts

At $175 per set on the linked site (the price on Barenreiter.com is 248 Euro), the offer brings on the "I have to buy it, it's on sale" mentality that one can be infected by at the Barney's Warehouse sale when coming upon a $400 t-shirt that's been marked down to $250...

Addendum to last post....

... and eating, can't forget that. Have fallen way off the wagon into the stagnant sewage filled ditch when it comes to sweets this week. Found in the Whole Foods shopping bag tonight while putting away groceries: carrot cake, dried apples, Darrell Lea Australia liquorice (addicted!), a dark chocolate bar, as well as a chestnut pastry bought after work at Cafe Zaiya and forgotten. Similarly, the inspiration of speculating about some programming ideas put me on an online score shopping binge. En route: the Dover Daphnis Suites (is there any difference from the score of the full ballet? I guess I'll find out...) , Adams' Violin Concerto, Rach Paganini Rhapsody (somehow the ex-library hardbound pocket score with yellowing pages bought ~20 years ago at a used bookstore doesn't cut it anymore), large Breitkopf Schubert Unfinished (apparently got an older copy, price has gone up), the Dover complete Nutcracker, and finally, a rather extravagant item that I'll write about once it arrives.... 

Time to switch to Ramen noodles in advance of the bills showing up!

Actually...

... so far this blog appears to exist at the nexus of my passions for music, shopping, and wasting time...

Why, oh why doesn't Breitkopf and Härtel have a US distributor?!

You'll find as this blog goes on that I'm all about showin' the love to Breitkopf and Härtel . I start jonesing for each new Orchestra Urtext score from the time they announce them; I can usually hold off buying until they print the study score size (lag time of a year or more) but I've let myself be lured into buying a few in full size, such as the Beethoven Leonore #3 that came out last year. The Juilliard Bookstore carries a few of the Breitkopf urtext study scores (the Schumann Symphonies, Sibelius 2nd, some of the Beethoven Symphonies); Theodore Front seems to carry a decent stock and is generally a good shop to check out online. But for this impatient, instant-gratification oriented boy, it's very frustrating to have to order online from B&H and wait for shipment from Germany (which ain't cheap) if one of those shops doesn't happen to have music in stock. So if anyone out there has the combination of adequate capital and inadequate business sense to enter the print music distribution business, have at it!

Eulenburg Audio + Score series -- some great critical/urtext editions for cheap!

When I saw that Eulenburg/Schott had begun publishing a 50 volume, glossy-covered, study (not pocket) score-sized editions of standard orchestral rep with companion CDs inside the back cover, I thought it was a clever way to repackage their existing library in a more marketable form but, with my usual snobby reflexes was doubtful I'd want to be seen with a score that came packaged with its own CD.  I was pleasantly surprised to discover that, while many of the volumes preserved the comfortably familiar 10%-too-much-ink-on-the-plate orthography of the old school pocket scores, there are a number that present very affordable and readable reproductions of the best available urtext/critical editions published by Schott and Breitkopf and Härtel.

Particularly noteworthy:

Dvorak Symphony No. 8 in the new (2004) edition by Klaus Döge that incorporates tempo markings and other information from Dvorak's conducting score that was also used as an engraver's copy. I unfortunately didn't discover this until after I'd spent $70+ on the full size score (the consolation being that the full score has the detailed critical report at the end)

Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6 in Thomas Kohlhase's 1993 edition from the new collected works published by Schott (it doesn't appear that this particular collected works has made any progress past this volume and an album of piano pieces, unfortunately).

Other volumes, such as Dvorak Symphony No. 9 appear to have had corrections applied to the old plates; the score of Mozart Symphony No. 35 (Haffner) is newly engraved, though the critical provenance is unclear.

Overall, the series is worth checking out. And if you happen to make it to a good book or record shop in China, you'll find that this series and a fair number of the Eulenburg pocket score are available for very low prices -- 38 RMB for the Dvorak 8, which is around $6 US.

Update, 9/5/09: Had a chance to look at a few volumes from this series at the Juilliard Bookstore. A large number are re-engraved and list Richard Clarke (presumably not the counter-terrorism expert) as editor but offer no other provenance or list of sources, etc. Probably not a bad alternative to Dover reprints, given their improved readability and free CD, but not necessarily any more reliable than the older Eulenburgs.

First post

The idea for this blog has been rattling around in my skull for at least a year, generated in equal parts by my frustration with how hard it is to track down useful, practical information about orchestral editions and by the pleasure I get from sharing the things I manage to discover on my own. So, without further ado, I'll get the first few posts written and splattered on the wall to give a sense of the range of topics I aim to cover...