| 30 November 2009
James Judd. (Illustration by Pat Crowley)
When James Judd takes the stage during the first week of December to lead the Boca Raton Symphonia and the Master Chorale of South Florida in three performances of George Frideric Handel’s oratorio Messiah in Boca, Miami and Fort Lauderdale, it will mark his first appearances with local musicians since 2001.
The former conductor of the Florida Philharmonic has been busy leading orchestras all over the world since then, notably as music director of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, with whom he recorded frequently on the Naxos label, particularly in the work of Douglas Lilburn, New Zealand’s most eminent composer.
At 60, Judd’s home base is still a house in Fort Lauderdale, where he lives with his wife and daughter. The British conductor is currently heading up the Miami Music Project, a music-education initiative in the Miami-Dade County public schools working off a three-year, $1 million grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Palm Beach ArtsPaper’s Greg Stepanich spoke with Judd on Nov. 9 in his spacious studio, once a garage but now given over to a piano, scores and books. What follows are transcribed excerpts of their conversation, with questions edited for length and clarity.
Stepanich: The Messiah performances will be your return to local stages. So, are you back?
Judd: Well, we’ve always maintained this house, actually. We’ve been here. My daughter’s in school in Florida. For a while we were living between London and Florida, and she had two schools. The notion was that my wife and daughter could be a bit closer to me, because now I work about a third of my year in Europe, about a third in Asia, Australia and New Zealand, and about a third in North America, South America. I work quite a lot in Canada, every year a few times.
But that became too complicated and crazy. So we’ve been actually living here, my daughter goes to school at Nova, she’s 15. We’re here, there just hasn’t been anything to do here. But now, the Miami Music Project, which I just volunteered for, that’s my passion. Locally we have this incredible opportunity.
So the chorus asked me: Would I like to do Messiah? And I had this time free, and I thought it would be fantastic. Because you know, we started the chorus all those years ago, and they were just getting better and better and better. And I thought it would be lovely, because I’ve done Messiah in different places in the last years, in Seattle, in San Antonio, last year was up in Ottawa. From time to time you get asked to do it, and I’m always thinking, you know, God, it would be so nice to work again with the chorus and with musicians from here. And it’s actually worked!
Stepanich: So you’re doing the complete Messiah?
Judd: Yes.
Stepanich: Not just the Christmas portion?
Judd: No. I’m a real believer that Handel was very careful about the way he organized the story and the way he wanted to tell it. And so when we can, I think we should try to perform it complete. It’s a wonderful drama, isn’t it? It’s not an oratorio, it’s an opera. At times it’s so amazing, the pacing is so incredible.
And so I love the timespan of it.
Stepanich: We see a lot of performances of Messiah at this time of year. It’s always struck me that a lot of it is very difficult for amateur choirs.
Judd: Well, there’s a lot of it, isn’t there? Last week, I was doing [Mendelssohn’s] Elijah in Australia, and realized: My God, there’s a lot of this. But there are two less choruses in Elijah than there are in Messiah.
I mean, it’s a huge sing. And as you say, not only [do] some of the well-known choruses require incredible agility for a chorus to sing properly in Baroque style, but a lot of the choruses that are not sung very much, so often for choirs are a new learn. And they’re wonderful pieces.
So I love the flow of it, I love the way he so carefully juxtaposes recitatives with solos, with chorus, and when you have this big span, when you come to that final Amen chorus, it really means something. It’s like you’re reaching the culmination of a great Wagner opera or a Bruckner symphony.
And you need that stuff before, you need everything, to really get the most out of it. It changes the piece, the spirit of it.
Stepanich: It may be that choirs of the Victorian era had an easier time with Messiah because they were more familiar with those styles ...
Judd: I’m not sure, because that tradition of performing style of Baroque in the Victorian era, in the early part of the 20th century, was a very Romantic version. People did not appreciate, at that point they did not think about, Baroque style. They didn’t have the knowledge we have today.
On the other hand, [Messiah] started in Dublin with very small forces, but it quickly grew, and well before the 20th century, the late part of the 19th century, there were performances with hundreds of voices. And probably, just as with the Fireworks music, with the Water Music, Handel had hundreds of winds. You know, they would double the oboe parts.
It’s funny, today we think of Baroque music, also Classical music, the fact that Haydn, that Mozart, had a Paris orchestra of 100 musicians, is sort of inconvenient for us today to remember because we like to think it was small forces for everything.
Stepanich: And you’d like to think the composers were thinking, this is what we’ve got, but I’d sure like four horns there.
Judd: Of course. We learn everything we can, we keep up to date with performance practice and everything, but eventually it’s about the authentic spirit of the music. We’re going to have around 80 voices for this performance, and I like doing it with just three desks of firsts [violins], three seconds, very small orchestra, a Baroque orchestra.
Then you have this lovely mixture. When you need a bit of heft, you’ve got it, but when you need delicacy, you also have that, a small orchestra playing Baroque style for the solos. We also beautiful young soloists coming from Curtis [Institute of Music], which is lovely.
James Judd in action.
Stepanich: I remember seeing your Messiah performances with the Florida Philharmonic and being struck by the very brisk tempos in a lot of places. It seemed to fit with what Roger Norrington and others were doing with [Baroque and Classical] tempos…
Judd: I think we think that more about Baroque music today. I think that there’s a great variety of tempo, because everything used to be a bit middle-of-the-road. After all, they were also performing Messiah in those versions like Sir Thomas Beecham orchestrated, with trombones and side drums and all kinds of things.
So everything kind of slowed down a bit, and there was a little [too much] uniformity of tempo for my taste. I think you have to go with the text, you go with the tempo of the text. There were no metronome marks, but there is a sense to the drama in the text that kind of dictates the tempo.
Stepanich: You’ve done Messiah many times. Do you go back and review the score each time and find something new?
Judd: Oh, yeah. That’s the fun of what I do. I do a combination during the year of new things all the time and old ones, and having time to just go back and restudy, and rethink, and just – well, first of all, there’s a natural progression I think comes, doesn’t it, just from performing. That fact that you’ve done something before, it’s going to be different next time. There’s a certain maturity or whatever you want to call it that goes on without any thought.
But when you have time to look and rethink things, there’s a lot to think about: What do you double-dot, and what do you not? The tempi, like you were talking about. And you rethink things also on the spot depending on the kind of soloists you have, on the chorus, the level of the chorus and so on. You find a way to get the performance together.
Inevitably, it’s going to be different everywhere you go. The tempi are going to be slightly different depending on circumstances, acoustics. But the rethinking, the restudying, is just one of the great joys and pleasures in life for me.
Stepanich: You’ve got different versions of the music, too: The pifa is longer in one, there are different soloists …
Judd: Yes, there are legitimate choices in Handel’s own time, not just swapping voices –– maybe this time on an alto, this time on the bass, could be either. Also, there are different versions of some of the arias, different time. He redid some of them, even changed some of them from aria to Recit., you know.
Stepanich: How does the English tradition with Handel differ from the tradition here in the States?
Judd: I don’t know that it differs a great deal. When I grew up, they were big performances. Every town had a choral society, 100, 200 people. And we grew up with performances with symphony orchestra.
But before long, the awareness of Baroque styles came, and it probably started in England. There were these scholars and conductors who started to do things well before Norrington and [John Eliot] Gardiner, a generation of new thought about Bach and Handel in particular, and so it started early there. We’ve got a big tradition in England, in Holland, in Germany, of not only Baroque music but Classical music, about the use of vibrato, about the articulations of music.
But we’ve got to the point now, which I find very, very interesting, if you look at people like [Nikolaus] Harnoncourt, who’s worked a lot with the Vienna Philharmonic, with [the Amsterdam] Concertgebouw, for example, with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, with traditional instruments but getting people to play in what they perceive to be authentic style. Although Harnoncourt -- I know I heard him interviewed one time -- said, Look, I’m not doing authentic Bach. All I can do is authentic Harnoncourt. Which makes the point, modestly.
But it’s interesting now that in European music schools, and I think more and more in this country, students are being taught to play in these different styles. If you’re now a string player coming out of the London Conservatory, and you’re asked, you will play Baroque style on a modern instrument. You’ll know how much vibrato to use, the sort of bowing and what’s expected. And more and more, I think, symphony orchestras will be, at the request of a director, able to play in different styles: Mozart this way or that way. And I think that’s fascinating.
Willem Mengelberg (1871-1951).
Stepanich: What’s also interesting is whether musicians will be asked to be conversant with, say, the period practice of the Mahler style, with portamento.
Judd: That’s something I feel strongly about, because that tends to be neglected. People are too shy about that performance style. But if we listen back to [Dutch conductor Willem] Mengelberg, listen to the recording of Mahler Four -- and you know, I’ve studied his score, and Mengelberg marked all these things which are incredibly extreme by today’s standards, but it’s probably a damn sight closer to Mahler than what we tend to hear today. But it’s not convenient. You have to accept that Mahler, who wrote so much detail into his score, [that] that was still only just the beginning.
Stepanich: I think conductors have an unusual problem, and we’ll take Mahler since that’s what we’re talking about, in that they have to try to identify with a mindset that’s impossible to re-create.
Judd: Well, that’s exactly it. For example, you listen to the Mengelberg [Mahler Fourth] recording of the ‘30s. Look at his score, which is there in The Hague for you to study. Read the letters between Mengelberg and Mahler, listen to Mahler’s piano roll, listen to the other performances of the era, read what Mahler had to say about Bruno Walter as opposed to Mengelberg, read what Mahler said about the Vienna Philharmonic’s preparation and the Concertgebouw’s preparation, go and look at the scores – I’ve done all of this – go and look at the score of Mahler Four in Vienna that they have, Mahler’s conducting score.
And even in that score, for example, the horn parts – 1, 2, 3, 4 – he has arrows to say: In the Concertgebouw, this way around, in the Vienna Philharmonic, this way. So he was thinking so practically all the time. But you know, when you put a lot of that stuff together, the circumstantial evidence, you begin to get a picture of a very different sort of performing.
Stepanich: Did you ever get to a point where that picture crystallized in your head?
Judd: Yeah, I think so, but it’s constantly changing, your perception of these things. And what you’re fighting sometimes is safety. I’m lucky enough to work with wonderful orchestras all over the world, but wherever you are, sometimes you’re fighting a tradition where people are frightened to take risk.
And one of the things, to realize some of these ideas -- for example, portamento you talked about. Today, people are embarrassed, often. You say: “Play portamento,” then they play it in a certain way, but the fingering was very different in those days, a sort of shifting, and you have to do it that way, or it doesn’t sound right. It just sounds clumsy. And you have to do it because you really feel it. If you can get an orchestra doing that, then suddenly the music transforms.
…The gulf between how they used to play Baroque music and now is kind of understood. We know the pitch was different, we know more about it, as far as we can guess. But the sort of end of the 19th century, the beginning of the 20th century, to now, they were just as different. I mean, look at the way the orchestra’s changed. Look at the orchestra for The Rite of Spring, the sound of the instruments.
Listen to Elgar’s recordings of his symphonies: even in the early ‘30s, late ‘20s, in England they were still using gutty strings on the violin, even though the metal were available. Strad magazine advertises them from the 1890s. But they couldn’t afford them, probably, in England, so they’re all gut strings. It changes the sound.
The woodwinds in England were still French woodwinds. They were using these pea-shooter tiny trombones, so when Elgar writes “fortissimo,” you still hear the pungent French bassoons playing, it doesn’t drown the strings. So you have to understand all that. And you have to, these days, often with orchestras that don’t necessarily know that, you have to explain a little bit of that, otherwise it’s going to sound overblown and ridiculous.
So there’s so much, it’s so fascinating. I always like listening to dead performers: just listen, not copy, just listen.
Stepanich: Tell me a little bit about the Miami Music Project.
Judd: It’s been in the making for a number of years, actually. And it’s various ideas which have fused together. And so what we are left with is this:
Some time ago, I was put together, so to speak, with Richard Harris, who was a trombone player with the New World Symphony, who was very, very keen on similar ideas. And I’d known Richard a little bit, we’d met before [and decided] Yeah, we can do this.
So we were very lucky to receive a feasibility study project from the Knight Foundation initially. It was about three months in the making. We talked to all the arts organizations in town because we’re a collaborative organization, we’re not trying to pretend we know the answers to everything. But we tried to see where the need is. Richard, with his small team of volunteers, was going around, and thanks to the cooperation of the arts organizations in town – it’s [Miami-]Dade County we were concentrating on initially -- questioning audiences about what they would like to have, and what they thought was missing in classical music.
We produced a big feasibility study which was very thorough, and as a result of that and all the long process, we were lucky enough to get a grant from the Knight Foundation for the Miami Music Project of $1 million over three years, which we have to match. And I do it as a volunteer, like I am for the Messiah; I think we’ve got to give back something, we’ve got to really do something for the arts. I have a great experience going and working with great orchestras all over the world and doing concerts and being well-received or whatever, asked back: that’s great.
But there’s something missing everywhere, and that is everybody’s searching for the new generation of concertgoers. Everybody’s searching to redefine, a little bit, orchestral life. The New World Symphony Orchestra does it in an amazing way down in Miami; that’s fantastic. I’ve always felt that we’re looking for young audiences, everyone wants new audiences. Well, why would young people be interested in what we call classical music --which I hate as a title, anyway, but it’s all we’ve got, I suppose -- when much of it is just subscription concerts, more or less?
I always use the example of Beethoven. Even when we play the Eroica Symphony, for example, there may be a very good program note, the conductor talks about it and we discuss the fact that Napoleon was his hero, then he scrawls the name out [on the symphony’s title page] on realizing he was no democrat. And Beethoven is there in troubled circumstances, with the French bombing Vienna and so forth.
So he’s not writing a familiar subscription menu for us, he’s writing music that is absolutely communicating with people, with issues. He’s writing politically cutting-edge, he’s writing as a humanitarian to connect with people, and today they tend to be, at best: Well, that was a nice whistleable tune.
More and more, I feel, we’ve got to get back to what was the cutting-edge reality of this music. And it might be that it poses difficult questions for us. And you can’t isolate music, or music education, from other things in our society. And if we want a proper society, we have to realize culture can be, in a way, dangerous to politicians. It teaches people to ask questions. And I’ve been very afraid that there is a large part of our community, that despite the great teaching available, the resources for the public schools have been cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.
And it’s sort of convenient to some political mindsets not to have culture, not to have part of the community properly educated generally because we can keep them in fear, and not asking questions is probably very good, so that [Rupert] Murdoch can preach to them. I dare say it looks a very deliberate policy over a certain number of years. And then you tie them up with ludicrous exams, SATs or whatever that nobody likes -- I haven’t found a single person -- it may be convenient for some, but it seems to me to be a very daft way to educate people, with all due respect.
So we thought: “How can we address some of these things? How can we help a little bit with education? How can we put in the minds of people that some of this great music we’re listening to has another dimension as well, if you’d care to think about it and let yourself go into that arena?” So we decided we would audition an ensemble of musicians, however many we can afford. We started off by auditioning for 10 musicians all over the country, the best talents we could.
We selected the musicians, and the goal is, this year we have 10 adopted public schools in the Dade system, 200 kids in each school, 2,000 kids, on a regular basis with our ensembles, sometimes it’s a smaller ensemble, sometimes a larger one. As we get the finances together hopefully it will develop.
My principal responsibility right now is to raise the money. We’ve got a basis of an extremely good board, and now, you know, it’s a big ask, but it’s doable. But we decided to start a little bit smaller than we originally wanted. There’s a thirst, there’s a need, for as many weeks as we can possibly do. It’s been incredibly well-received.
James Judd in his home studio. (Photo by Greg Stepanich)
Stepanich: There are those would say that kids need to be studying math and science, and that music is not necessary, it’s just a frill. I would guess you’d disagree with that.
Judd: Of course. It is necessary. It’s just a political convenience to say it’s not necessary. Music is around us all the time. It’s just a natural human state. We were probably making music, making vocal noises and singing, and had rhythms, before we had language. It just can’t be denied.
It also is a cliché that it is an international language, that wherever you are in the world and you play a minor chord and a major chord: Which is happy, and which is sad? For some reason, everyone’s going to know. When you play a fast rhythm, a slow rhythm, everyone’s going to know which one is going to be exciting, which one is funereal. Why? Why?
So it’s nature, it’s just nature. So don’t ignore it. And as we then go further and further, we realize then the power of music to manipulate, if you want – that’s a derogatory term – but to affect our emotions, or how we can manipulate our emotions with music. This is what composers are doing, they’re bringing us all together.
More and more, the popular music culture has become quite aggressive. It’s quite tough and hard. I think more than ever we need to, through education, not deny that -- I enjoy listening to that, my daughter has taught me a lot about a lot of music I didn’t know existed, and I can really get into it. It’s not one or the other at all.
The great thing about so-called classical music is that the kids they’re used to an age where we concentrate for short soundbites, where music is all about pretty hard rhythms, sometimes very cool, lovely melodies and beautiful lyrics as well, but I think for the most part there will be a tremendous need for music that gives more space around them. I think the sort of music we offer can provides absolutely a sort of oasis, a therapeutic and healing oasis, and by listening to such music, it develops sensitivities, it allows sensitivities to emerge.
And of course, the other side of it is, as you get to listen more and more, and music can teach you to listen, then you start to hopefully listen to language of your neighbor, and language of somebody who looks different from you, and then maybe you’ll start listening to politicians and realizing that you’re being sold rubbish. You know, you start to demand more than the Murdoch headline.
Stepanich: I wanted to ask about New Zealand briefly. You’re now the emeritus conductor of the New Zealand Symphony; is there state support in that country for music?
Judd: Oh, yeah, and it was amazing there, still is. The government really underwrites the orchestra, basically. Anything extra you want to do, you have to find some extra money. For example, while I was there [1999-2007], we did a few tours. We went to the Proms [in England], we went to Japan a couple of times, we went to the Concertgebouw, we were doing lots of recordings. And if you want to start doing that stuff you have to find some other government funding, maybe trade and tourism. And you have to find some individual money, but there’s not a lot of individual money down in that part of the world. There’s no tradition of giving. So there’s always corporate underwriting.
Basically, while I was there, we had this incredible prime minister, Helen Clark , who is now the No. 3 at the United Nations [head of the U.N. Development Program). And she always went, before she was prime minister, bought tickets for everything: symphony, ballet, opera, loved music. And music there, they have an absolutely fantastic music education still in the schools. And I was so impressed being there, and I got to know her very well. We used to have dinners with her and her husband, when my wife was in town, with guest artists, just talking about life.
And I was so impressed, there was a woman who had an idea of how music was connected to how we look after people’s health, how we look after the Maori and the Pacific culture. You know, everything glues together. It’s a natural part of life. And it’s a fantastic example.
It seems to me to be so awful when we give things labels. You would call it a socialist government, but what is a socialist government? It’s just so daft that these labels get given, like “liberal” and “conservative” in this country. Liberal in this country would be sort of a Conservative government in England.
This health care thing I think one has to talk about in connection with music, because if we’re so ungenerous, so inhuman, as to not understand that everybody should have health care, and we use these awful arguments protecting just the insurance companies. Look: I don’t know any conservatives in England who would ever speak out against everybody having the same kind of basic health care, or paying taxes to do that. I mean, it’s part of being a human being. And that’s a problem. It’s a problem.
Because if we don’t understand as human beings that we have to not just pay lip service to, but genuinely just give a little bit more of ourselves if we can afford it, so everybody can have basic health care, so that everybody can have a basic good standard of education, then how on earth can we understand what music is, how on earth can we do it? This is troubling, deeply troubling.
Stepanich: Although we’ve had a lot of problems in music education these days, technology has helped classical music a lot in that it’s gotten rid of barriers such as getting dressed up and going to concert hall for a lot of people. So has it been a double-edged sword?
Judd: I think it’s a good thing. Having said we’re searching for these new audiences, I think we’re in a period where we’re searching for a lot of answers and we’re beginning to find them.
First of all, if you look around, there are more concert halls than ever before. We’re still building concert halls, right? All over the world, and in the United States. More people are listening to classical music than ever before. Now, the big recording companies, the few big ones that there used to be before Naxos was so successful, those became disinterested in classical music, didn’t sell enough, didn’t have enough profits, so they disappeared.
So the headlines were: Classical music is dying. That’s rubbish. The problem we have is, as you don’t educate people in music, decision-makers, be it politicians, individuals, philanthropists, corporate leaders, have no music in their background, therefore, they don’t understand value-cost arguments. It’s like you couldn’t build St. Paul’s Cathedral today because it would be impossible to heat. The bottom line would be so ludicrous they’d say: “Build it 10 times smaller.” But it’s there.
It’s like with Beethoven. If we’re going to keep Beethoven alive, we have to have orchestras to perform it. If we sell out every ticket in a modern hall, we’ll struggle to probably get 25 percent of box office of the costs. But if we want Beethoven to survive, somebody’s going to have to find money for that.
I think government should play a bigger part, because if it considers that music is important and it should -- and it’s wonderful to see Obama at least has had that Classical Day, he’s had a Jazz Day [at the White House]. But we need more than that. We need money from a few missiles to support a few orchestras, a few ballet companies, opera companies. Think of what it would take. Nothing from the national budget, nothing.
Stepanich: I was talking with someone the other day about large and small orchestras, and whether large orchestras are really sustainable these days, and whether you couldn’t just get an ad hoc larger orchestra together when you need it, but otherwise stick with smaller orchestras. I wondered what you thought about that.
Judd: You can have small orchestras, but for the most part they don’t work very well, and the reason is an obvious one. The public, especially in this day and age when we’re trying to attract audiences, likes the bigger pieces. They like the Romantic repertoire. If you try to play that Romantic repertoire with four desks of first violins, and in some places they have to try to do that, it doesn’t sound good. You’re not going to get people coming back.
I often use that argument: You go into a museum, and the museum buys beautiful Renoirs, and it decides that it wants to have smaller walls, and so cuts the Renoirs in half. I mean, you can do it if you want.
I also have one overriding thing, and that is that quality matters. I remember when I was assistant conductor in Cleveland years ago, and the belief was you always are the Cleveland Orchestra, whatever we do. We go into a high school, we take Cleveland Orchestra quality, because kids know quality. And anything that’s not first-rate quality won’t survive. It just won’t. It’s just nature.
Because everything artistic has to be competitive, you have to be better at what you do tomorrow than you are today, you have to. So you can’t fight that, as economically nice as it would be to do. And look, I believe you can probably have a symphony orchestra that has a basic six double basses instead of eight, and adds to them sometimes. There are orchestras that are really just large chamber orchestras in the world, that add players, but people are never happy doing that. There’s always a compromise, and the compromise often is just too much.
Stepanich: Which brings me to the Florida Philharmonic: The funny thing about its demise is that it just doesn’t seem like it should have happened. And I think it seems that way to a lot of people.
Judd: I feel the same. There were just a series of circumstances that kind of somehow worked together, and contrived for it just to happen. And it happened. And so many people did the best they could. Everybody acted in their best faith, everybody tried to do their best to try to find a way out of it. None of us could, and it happened.
It’s sad, but my own perspective on things is yesterday becomes history very quickly to me. And I have, in my life, I always have so much to do, that it’s not that I am not caring about the people who lost their jobs, I’m deeply caring about that. It’s just awful, the way the poor musicians have to scrap around. This is really, really tragic.
But, you know, tomorrow is another opportunity. I don’t have any room for negativity. I just don’t have the energy for it. I used to let things get on top of me, but I learned several years ago now [to] just forget it. I’m only interested in working together with positive people, and trying to do something. Whatever we do in music, we have to try to make an impact with it, and believe in it, and perform with a genuine passion, not a contrived one.
And if we’re going to do education, we’ve got to do it for the right reasons. And if we’re going to keep orchestras alive then orchestras had better perform and look like they mean it, and play well.
It’s a fascinating time. Now, with these incredible initiatives of the Knight Foundation, this fantastic concert hall we have, this opera house, the New World Symphony building their new hall: this is going to become one of the centers of art and culture. Look what’s happening in the visual arts world in this area. The fact that we don’t have a fulltime resident symphony orchestra is a shame, but it mustn’t take our eyes off the fact that there is now so much happening.
Messiah will be performed complete this coming week at three different South Florida venues. James Judd will lead the Boca Raton Symphonia, the Master Chorale of South Florida and four Curtis Institute soloists -- Sarah Shafer, J'nai Bridges, Joshua Stewart and Thomas Shivone -- in George Frideric Handel's oratorio at 8 p.m. Friday in Miami's Trinity Cathedral, at 8 p.m. Saturday at Spanish River Church in Boca Raton, and at 2:30 p.m. Sunday at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts in Fort Lauderdale. Tickets: $30 in advance, $35 at the door. Call (954) 418-6232 or visit the Boca Symphonia and Master Chorale Websites.
| 29 October 2009
Seth Rozin. (Illustration by Pat Crowley)
Playwright Seth Rozin is the founder and producing artistic director of Philadelphia’s InterAct Theatre Company. But when it came to premiering his latest script, Two Jews Walk Into a War . . ., he thought that Florida Stage was a better fit.
So continuing in Manalapan through Nov. 29 is the seriocomic tale of a Middle Eastern Odd Couple, the last two Jews left alive in war-torn Afghanistan, a play inspired by a true story. They should be working together to see that they, and their religion, survives in this hostile land, but they hate each other’s guts.
Rozin was unable to attend rehearsals of his play, because he was busy readying another writer’s work for its opening night in late October at InterAct. Still, he took the time to talk to Palm Beach ArtsPaper’s Hap Erstein about Two Jews, the Torah and the intersection of Samuel Beckett and Abbott and Costello.
Erstein: Seth, tell me about discovering the factual story that led to your play.
Rozin: I was working on a show that was also Jewish-themed here in Philly and my assistant director brought in this article from the New York Times a few years back called something like, “The Last Two Jews of Kabul.”
It was a great story that just immediately suggested a theatrical dramatization. Basically, someone had died and these two guys determined that they were in fact the last two Jews probably in all of Afghanistan. They shared the one remaining synagogue which was partially destroyed by the Taliban, had endured a lifetime of oppression and brutality and the kicker, of course, is that they hate each other. So the truth was not far from what I ended up writing.
It just immediately said to me, “This has got to be written.” I got into it, wrote three or four scenes and was having fun with it when I discovered that there was another play inspired by the exact same story, something that had already been produced.
I read a review; it seems to have had one production, I believe in London, I think the play was called Brother’s Keeper. The review made it sound like it didn’t go anywhere with the idea, all it was about was these two guys who hate each other.
Erstein: Whereas you wanted to use the story to examine the limits of their faith, right?
Rozin: I did. I wasn’t 100 percent sure what, but I knew it had to be more than Grumpy Old Men. What I tend to be interested in with anything I write is exploring why people believe what they believe and what would shake that foundation, what would get them to believe something different.
And this was a great circumstance, two people who hate each other. So what would get them to feel differently about each other? But more importantly, they have been stubbornly, aggressively, defiantly staying in this not very tolerant place for their entire lives while they watched their families and others leave. So they obviously believe strongly in something about the place.
So that’s what I started to invest in and create -- this was all invented -- why each of them stayed and what motivates them to stick it out against all odds, and how that leads to some kind of leap of faith that they need to take together.
Erstein: You weren’t thrilled to hear there was another play on the same subject, but that did not lead you to toss yours away, I guess.
Rozin: Well, right, I thought I was on to something a little different and I now needed to pursue that. It sounded like the first one didn’t go anywhere, so I felt fine about that. But then a few months later, I think it was in February of this year, I learned that there was yet another play called The Last Two Jews of Kabul, written about the same story, the same title as my play at that point.
Erstein: That New York Times sure gets around.
Rozin: And Lou (Tyrrell, Florida Stage’s producing director) called me, this was right after he had expressed interest in it, and he brought this to my attention and I said, “Gee, I didn’t know about this one.” So I went online and read about that, and again it turned out that the very same impetus, but again one production and it seemed limited to just where the story stopped.
By that point my play had been far enough along in a whole new direction, so I was confident in the play itself, but I had to come up with a new title.
Erstein: Your title is meant to sound like the set-up for a joke, I assume.
Rozin: One of the ways I think this play is different from the others was the whole notion of using a vaudeville start to it. I love the phrase “Two Jews” and I wanted something that would let people think it was more comedic. I thought it was better to start comedic and turn dark than to have it be serious and people not want to come because they think it’s going to be a dark play.
Erstein: Dark or not, putting “Jews” in a title is a good way to sell tickets in South Florida.
Rozin: Yes, well, that too.
Erstein: How did Florida Stage get hold of the script?
Rozin: I sent it to just a handful of colleagues in the National New Play Network, either because I thought they would like the play or because they had a substantially Jewish audience. And Lou got back to me almost immediately. It was partly a lucky break in that they had originally planned to have a different play in this slot, a new play by one of the writers they have worked with quite a lot [Deborah Laufer’s Sirens].
Mine was also not 100 percent ready, but I think because it was far enough along in conception, they knew me, and because it was a two-character, very manageable play, I think they felt more confident in it.
Avi Hoffman and Gordon McConnell in Two Jews Walk Into a War…
Erstein: It seems to have echoes of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Intentional on your part?
Rozin: I was very aware of Godot, but that comparison is almost inevitable because of the story in the first place. It was hard not to think of the existential, absurd predicament that these guys were in. So anybody who was going to write that play, I think, was going to seem at least a little bit like Beckett.
But the play surprised me, frankly, because I am not a religious person. I was not brought up with any allegiance to Judaism, I’ve never read the Torah, I was not bar mitzvahed, I didn’t have any religious upbringing at all, though I’ve always been somewhat interested in religion in general and in why people believe what they do.
So when I came up with the whole idea that they were going to try to recreate the Torah, I had a lot of reading to do. So I started looking through it and it was fun and challenging. I didn’t read literally the whole thing, but I poked through and found the parts that were useful, both in terms of funny or meaningful.
Erstein: The other influence I hear is Abbott and Costello. Are you a fan of theirs?
Rozin: Yeah, and the Marx Brothers, that sort of whole tradition of schticky dialogue, fast-paced, witty banter between people who are angry at each other, as opposed to just Bob Hope lightness. I like humor with an edge.
Erstein: How did you turn the corner into more serious territory?
Rozin: I think it was after I had written three or four scenes and I realized that all I had done was what the others had done. That that was fun, but there wasn’t really a play there. There had to be a journey, something had to change. That’s when I realized that something had to happen between them, that they had to do something together, something that would force them to work together that would either blow up into tragedy or bind them in some way. The thing I was really trying to avoid was sentimentality. I wanted there to be a friendship, but a dependence that grows without them being aware of it or wanting to acknowledge it.
Erstein: While the two characters sift through the Torah, they find some humorous contradictions in it.
Rozin: I’ve always believed that there were all kinds of hypocrisies and contradictions in religious thinking. I thought the whole sexuality thing was going to be useful, because it’s such an opportunity for comedy. And then the other stuff, like with the animals, that stuff I mostly found in service of the larger question, which is that there are things to interpret.
What happens is Ishaq seems to be the more devout, the more serious Jew, so to speak, in the beginning. But as we go on we learn that he in fact is a little bit of the take-it-at-its-word, don’t-question-anything type. That this is God’s word and that’s that.
And Zeblyan, who is in some ways more irreverent and less serious, and less faithful in a classic way, I guess, is actually asking the real questions. He’s losing his belief a little bit, but he’s asking the big questions, along with the stupid little ones.
Erstein: Do you tend to outline carefully or just put your characters in a room and watch where they lead you?
Rozin: Actually, I usually start with some kind of a question or circumstance that thrusts me into something and then I start to say, “What would they do?” “What would they say?” “What would they feel here?” And then as I get to know these people better and better, they start to tell me what they would ask, what they would do, what they would say. So, no, I didn’t know where this was headed.
Erstein: Why isn’t InterAct premiering this play?
Rozin: Well, first of all, when I sent it to the few colleagues I sent it to, it was in a slightly different form. It was a little less political and our mission is more overtly political. That’s one reason, but frankly, as much as I’ve been incredibly grateful to InterAct, it’s always nice as a playwright to have your plays get the affirmation that somebody else likes them before you put them up yourself.
Erstein: You got to know Florida Stage through the National New Play Network that your theater and Lou’s belong to?
Rozin: Absolutely. We became very, very close colleagues. Nan Barnett and I served together, I was president and she was vice-president of the network, for four years. And I’d gotten to know Lou a little bit through that and since working on the play I’ve gotten to know Lou really, really well and that’s been a real pleasure.
Erstein: Have you seen any of Florida Stage’s work?
Rozin: I’ve seen, I think, four productions there and I just know the high quality of the work. And it just felt right.
Erstein: How have you and Lou worked on the play together?
Rozin: I knew I wasn’t going to be there for rehearsals, so they brought me in for a three-day workshop in August with the cast. That was awesome, because we were really able to talk through the text. For me it was great to hear the actors. For Lou, it was great to try things out. I made some adjustments, I rewrote a couple of scenes and a whole bunch of little sections in scenes.
Then, since rehearsals started, I’ve gotten a rehearsal report every day, in which there is usually a couple of questions about lines or sections for me to look at and occasionally Lou would have to call and have me explain something.
Erstein: There doesn’t seem to be much stage action indicated in the script.
Rozin: I think that Lou is adding some stuff, some vaudeville stuff that I think is appropriate. There’s a scene where there’ll be some door slamming, because I think it needs some of that. There’s a real danger that it could be a little static.
Erstein: Were you concerned that Gordon McConnell, who plays Ishaq, is not Jewish?
Rozin: No, he’s a terrific actor and had no problem getting the basic sense of the character, though he was playing it with a kind of stereotypical New York Jewish accent. That was not quite right, but apart from that there really was no issue at all.
Avi [Hoffman, author-performer of Too Jewish?, who plays Zeblyan] of course brings all kinds of history to it. They also brought immediate chemistry to it, they had a great time together and that was fun to see. Because there has to be a lot of chemistry there.
Erstein: The Torah was new to you. Did you have what you wrote about it vetted by a rabbi?
Rozin: I did not. As I was writing it, I was actually working off of official sources so I didn’t feel like it was inaccurate. The interpretation is obviously up to whomever. But we did a reading here in Philadelphia, and one woman there asked me if I had consulted a rabbi because she thought it was very appropriate in terms of its content. So I mostly got affirmation.
Erstein: Are you prepared for the humorless audience members who will be offended by your play?
Rozin: Yeah, I know there will be some. Every show I’ve ever done, someone in the audience during the run says, like if we were doing Waiting for Godot, “Well, I have a son whose name is Estragon and he would never act like this,” or whatever. There’s always one person who thinks that their experience, as it relates to the play, trumps everything that’s in the play.
But probably the biggest surprise in writing it, and I think the surprise for those who are going to see it, is that it ends up being an affirmation of faith. I didn’t expect to write that. I’m not a person who is all about writing about faith and how great it is. So I think the people who are going to be the most offended are probably the people who think it’s not true, because in the end there’s real value to this, as opposed to there not being.
Erstein: Three theaters in the network will be producing Two Jews this season, won’t they?
Rozin: Actually four. Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey and New Jersey Repertory Theatre, who are pretty close to each other, are doing it together as a co-production, December through February. And then Florida Studio Theatre in Sarasota is doing it, sometime in the spring.
Playwright Seth Rozin.
Erstein: You’ve written several other plays. What do they have in common?
Rozin: I think they have two things in common. One, as I said before, this notion of beliefs. There’s always characters that believe things and they have some kind of journey in which those beliefs are challenged and either shaken or not. And the other thing is there’s always at least one character who is impenetrable or stubborn or has a major blind spot, who at the end -- usually at the very end -- has some kind of a breakthrough.
Most of my plays have a lot of intellectual discourse, but resolve in a very emotional place. That’s really important to me.
Erstein: So why should we come see Two Jews Walk Into a War …?
Rozin: Well, I think it’s funny, I hope it’s funny. I think it’s human, in that you will go on a journey that has a satisfying, emotional punch to it. It’s short. I think it doesn’t overstay its welcome. I think you’re going to see two terrific actors have a good time onstage.
And I also think you’re going to be provoked to think about some interesting things that are relevant in the world today, about how we interpret things that we’ve been told or that have a particular meaning. Whether you’re religious or not. If you’re not religious, you’re going to resonate with the questioning, and if you are religious, you’re going to appreciate the affirmation of faith.
| 06 September 2009
Jon Robertson. (Illustration by Pat Crowley)
It is perhaps not generally realized in the wider world of area classical music that Palm Beach County has a thriving music conservatory, that it is in the middle of building a $15 million concert hall that will be a major addition to the area’s art scene, and that its dean, Jon Robertson, used to run the school of music at UCLA, one of the largest music schools in the country.
But Robertson (whose first name is pronounced “Yon”) is happy to be here, and in the five years since he has been dean of the Lynn University Conservatory of Music, the school’s public presentations have improved significantly. Its Philharmonia, the student orchestra, now rarely uses faculty members to flesh out its ranks, and tackles such literature challenges as the Tenth Symphony of Shostakovich. Its upcoming season is just as ambitious, and includes the Fifth Symphony of Prokofiev and the Five Pieces for Orchestra of Arnold Schoenberg.
Robertson, born in Jamaica in December 1942, was a piano prodigy as a child and moved to California as a toddler when his minister father needed specialized medical care only available in the States. By age 10, he had made his recital debut at Town Hall in New York in a program of music by Schubert (Sonata in E, D. 459), Bach (French Suite No. 4, in E-flat) and Liszt (Polonaise in E, S. 223). [The New York Times reviewer, probably Noel Straus, said that while the pre-teen pianist had not fully grasped all the music he was playing, “there were times, as in the second Scherzo of the Schubert sonata, or the Courante and Air from the Bach suite, when the boy’s work … became laudably smooth and clean, showing promise for the future.”]
He went on to Juilliard, ultimately earning his doctorate there in piano performance. But in the meantime he had tried his hand at conducting and education management, which were to be the chief occupations of his career. He ran music departments at colleges in Alabama and Massachusetts, furthered his conducting career by studying with Herbert Blomstedt, and then took the reins of the Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra in Norway for eight years.
Robertson became conductor of the Redlands Symphony Orchestra in California in 1982, an ensemble he still conducts, and took over the music department at UCLA in 1992, where he remained for 12 years. He came to Lynn in 2004, and currently lives in Delray Beach with his wife, Florence, who holds a doctorate in French studies. The Robertsons have three children and seven grandchildren.
Palm Beach ArtsPaper’s Greg Stepanich sat down with Robertson last month to talk about his career and the challenges and benefits of running a small conservatory. Here are excerpts from that conversation; questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity:
Stepanich: Before you got this job, had you ever heard of Lynn University?
Robertson: I had not heard of Lynn, but I knew Harid [Conservatory] very well. And the big attraction, of course, for me if I was to come here and do something with the conservatory, was that it was formerly Harid, and that the faculty had come over, the students had come over. And so I saw it more as a name change than it being something new.
This [Lynn] is not a music department. This is a genuine conservatory that was relocated. And there would have been no need to go to a music department and try to build a program. In this day and age, that’s almost impossible, to build something from nothing. So when I wanted to attract world-class faculty here -- and fortunately we had a number of people who stayed that were world-class -- it was less difficult for me to say, “Well, you know, it used to be Harid.”
Our [conservatory] is very strongly focused on chamber music being something that you just don’t get in the big institutions. Chamber music exists, but there are so many students, a lot of it you end up doing yourself. I went to Juilliard, and I had one semester of chamber music. And that was a two-piano thing.
Our size, quality of our faculty, and the level of our students, makes what we have very, very special.
Stepanich: You came from UCLA, which is a much larger institution…
Robertson: It’s a monolith. It’s a monster.
Stepanich: …so did you say to yourself: Here’s a smaller thing where I can make a mark?
Robertson: Exactly. It was a situation at that point where there were students that were concerned about the future, even faculty: What’s going to happen if it’s not Harid anymore? Can the university sustain this level of program?
So the university said they’d make that commitment, and it was just a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do it, to do all the things that you’d wished all the major conservatories that you’d been to or knew of had the opportunity to do, but basically because of their size couldn’t always do.
Stepanich: Is chamber music the key thing at Lynn?
Robertson: That is probably what sets us apart. Look, we only take four flutes, four oboes, four clarinets, four bassoons. We only take a certain number, and we have figured it out; we sort of backed into what numbers we need. And we’re at about 94 students now.
So right under 100 gives you enough students to have a first-rate orchestra, and for your various ensembles, keeping these various ensembles at set numbers, allows you to group them into these ensembles in a very real way, not catch as catch can.
There’s something else, I think, about our conservatory that is kind of special. And that is the amount of performing that we do. It is not uncommon for a student to go to a conservatory and the only real performance opportunity they get, basically, is their recital, their junior or senior recital they give. Here, in our forum, every week one is performing in front of their colleagues. Dean’s Showcase, you’re performing for the public.
And because South Florida is the depository of retirees from New York, Chicago, the world, people who attended concerts, people who went to the New York Philharmonic, and [the] Philadelphia Orchestra, we have 1,200 to 1,400 people attending our orchestral concerts.
At UCLA, if we had 300 people come to an orchestral concert, we were overjoyed. Four hundred people: Let’s build a new hall! And the people who were attending these concerts are not people who have nothing to do. They’re coming because this is what they’re used to. There’s a standard, and if a community imposes upon you a standard that you must reach, that’s when you start to grow. If they give you a standing ovation because you showed up, you’re not going to grow.
Stepanich: If you’re going to be an orchestral musician, a violist, say, a lot of your professional life is going to be in chamber music.
Robertson: The beauty of chamber music is that, and this is really true of course for orchestral musicians, but for those who take a solo career very seriously, your way of playing solo is going to change for the better if you play chamber music. You listen to yourself, you listen to the parts that you’re playing yourself in a very different way. Your ear is trained in a very different way, there’s a sensitivity, there’s a sense of phrasing and musical intelligence that comes to light when you play chamber music. This quality enhances your musical growth in a very, very special way.
Something else about our program: We are a genuine conservatory, but the bachelor’s degree you get from this university is an honest-to-goodness bachelor’s degree. I think back to my years at Juilliard: Fortunately for me, opportunities opened for me to enhance my musical background, I came in as a child prodigy, so I’d had a history prior to coming to Juilliard, what happens if a person decides, you know I think I’d like to make some alterations in my musical life? Or, I’d like to go in a slightly different direction within the arts, but not necessarily that of performing?
Well, your bachelor’s degree is not worth the paper it’s written on. You’ve had one course or two in the humanities or something like that, it’s not worth anything. And if you want to make a change along the way, you’ve got to go back to school. Now, the kids that come out of her have an honest-to-goodness bachelor’s degree, yet they’re still studying with world-class faculty, they still are playing at an exceptionally high level.
Stepanich: So where are you from originally?
Robertson: I was born in Jamaica, and came to the United States when I was 4 years old. I had the great opportunity to study with one of the world’s great teachers, Ethel Leginska [1886-1970], starting at 7 years old. By the time I was 10, I made my debut at Town Hall in New York.
By the time I got to Juilliard, the amount of literature that I had covered, and the whole idea of where people go there to get opportunities to perform four, five, six or 10 years later, this is something that had been a part of my life, all of my life, just about.
Stepanich: Do you come from a musical family?
Robertson: My father was a very fine musician, even though that was not his profession. He was a minister, but he played piano and organ exceptionally well. Really amazing. He could play anything in any key.
It’s been in my blood all this time. This is what I’ve been doing with most of my life….
Stepanich: Now Leginska was a student of [Theodore] Leschetizky, who was a student of [Carl] Czerny, who was a student of Beethoven.
Robertson: There you go. There was that lineage. And I had lessons every day. I was supposed to have one a week, and so forth, and she’d call my father and she said, “Someone isn’t coming. Bring him over.” It was a life-consuming way of going about the art form that was really very special.
I was privately tutored until I went to Juilliard. I never went to regular school, because [of] the hours [I spent] touring, playing. Now in that process, too, there was that old-school [idea of] the amount of hours you put in, so when I came to Beveridge Webster [1908-1999], he was really one who got me to start thinking [that] there are a lot of other things that you have to know.
Stepanich: Leginska came from the core repertory, while Webster is famous for his work with Ravel. How did those two teachers work?
Robertson: What Leginska gave me was a fundamental approach to piano playing that was so phenomenal [that] I can go a year and not touch the piano, and within a week get my technique back up to speed. It was so fundamentally based, this playing in a relaxed way. So many kids today are having tension problems and hand problems. There is this, you know, trying to get a bigger sound and so forth, they’re approaching the piano with so much tension, it’s killing them.
When I went to Webster, that was all in place. His idea was, of course, because of his French background, thinking about music in terms of colors. Because you can’t play French music unless you have a color palette in your head somewhere.
Now, with Leginska, you’d go to play, and you’d be about to start, and she would say, “Oh, it’s way too loud.” And she would know. That the angle of what you’re doing, and what you’re about to do, it’s going to be too loud. You can’t get that sound from that distance. And we’d work on a measure, a bar of music, for an hour.
So when I went to Webster, I remember he gave me something to play, and I came in and I started playing, and I kept waiting for him to stop me. You know: what’s going on? And he said, “No, it sounds great, keep playing.” I hardly had much prepared, because I never got past half a bar [with Leginska].
So, the volume of repertoire changed. His premise was: I don’t care how you play. If you want to play with your toes, and it’s beautiful, I couldn’t care less. So that was a completely different approach to making music, the product more so than the process. With her, it was the process and the product. With him, it was the product.
Jon Robertson directs the Lynn Philharmonia.
Stepanich: At some point, you got interested in conducting. How did that happen, and what appealed to you about it?
Robertson: You know, by the time I got to Juilliard, I was concertizing a lot, but way back in the most secret inner sanctum of my soul was this desire to conduct, to be a conductor. And every season with the L.A. Philharmonic, my father would take me. Every week we had a [ticket] for the entire thirty-some, 43 weeks, every Thursday up in the nosebleed section there, listening, and just watching the conductor.
And I remember when I went to Juilliard, I talked to my father about conducting, and he asked me a question which kind of stunned me. He said: “Do you know of any black conductors?” Well, I had not thought of conducting as being whether you’re black, white, red or purple, but he was making a point. The opportunity to get to that podium – I remember when [Seiji] Ozawa became [conductor of the Boston Symphony] – God, an Asian on the podium! What does he do differently? Well, nothing. Absolutely nothing.
So, that kind of caught me in my tracks. And it wasn’t that I shouldn’t do it, but how do you get there? What’s the process?
Well, when I was at Juilliard I decided to study choral conducting because that was a lot easier way to get into it. And I had the opportunity to work with a really fabulous conductor, Abraham Kaplan, who had the Collegiate Chorale in New York and taught at Juilliard.
And when I went back for my doctorate at Juilliard in piano, one day my wife said to me – and this is one of these earth-shattering moments – “There’s something I don’t understand about you. When your manager calls you to do a concert tour for the piano, you say, ‘What are you going to pay?’ If a conducting opportunity comes by, you walk naked in the streets to do it. What do you want to do with the rest of your life?” It was one of those things where you don’t want anybody to ask you that, particularly not your wife.
And I’ll never forget: She asked me that around 10 o’clock one night, and it was not until about 1 o’clock, that I finally, with tears in my eyes, just said: “I want to conduct. I want to conduct an orchestra. That’s what I’ve wanted to do all my life.” And of course, saying that is really treacherous, because if you’re not able to do it, then you’ve failed, you’ve failed at a dream. And she said, “Well, let’s start managing our life in such a way that this might be possible.”
And I’ll never forget, when I finished my doctorate at Juilliard, I was asked to join the faculty at Oberlin [College], in piano. And at the very same time that came up, there was an opportunity for me to go to a small department in Lancaster, Massachusetts, at Thayer Conservatory [Atlantic Union College]. But they had an orchestra, which I would have the opportunity to conduct.
And I’ll never forget talking to the head of the music department at Oberlin, and he’s saying: “I don’t understand. You’re going to do what?”But I made that decision, to go that route. So I had an opportunity to conduct an orchestra, and about a year or two after that, I was still concertizing as a pianist, but a year after that, Herbert Blomstedt was doing a workshop out in California. And my wife says, “Well, why don’t you go? Are you afraid to go?”
Well, the answer was Yes. I was afraid to go out there and have somebody who was really of his stature say: “Why don’t you stick with the piano.” So she literally challenged me, and I went out, and I was selected to be one of the 12 conductors to work with him.
And at the end of which, he said to me: “You know, I really think you’ve got some talent to do this. I’d be willing to have you come live in Sweden, where I live, and work with me personally. You’ll be the first person I’ve ever taken under my wing. I’ll set up housing, I’ll make all the arrangements.” And I remember looking at him and I said, “Do you mind if I call my wife and ask her to fly out here so you can tell her this, face to face?” We had three children, and this meant literally packing up and going off to [Europe]. And he said, “Sure. I’m serious!”And my wife literally got on an airplane and flew out, and he said, “Yes, this is what I will do.”
And that following September I was in Sweden, working with him, traveling with him to Dresden, sitting in rehearsals with the Dresen Staatskapelle, day after day after day.
Stepanich: Sounds fabulous.
Robertson: And it was so serendipitous in a way, that this was supposed to happen. Because this kind of thing just doesn’t happen. You couldn’t plan this, you couldn’t make this happen. You couldn’t pay him enough money to do this. And from that point on, opportunities came, and my whole conducting career just took off.
Stepanich: What was the most important thing about conducting that Blomstedt taught you?
Robertson: Technical discipline. Being able to express your musical ideas with your technique. And when you think of really great conductors who don’t have really good technique, they know how to rehearse, they have great musical ideas. And he used to say that good technique does not make you a fine musician. If you are a fine musician, it helps you express it.
The other thing he did for me was one of those statements that someone makes that just changes your life. We were walking, and we were in Dresden at the time, and one of the things, one of the most exciting moments in my life, is when we’d go walking in the forest. And we’d walk, and we loved to walk, and that’s when we’d talk about music. Or he’d talk about music and I’d listen.
One day we were walking and he said to me, “You know, Jon, you have a lot of passion in your music-making. But there’s something you need to do. You need to sift your passion through your intellect, and what comes out will be just right.” Listen, I can remember the spot [where he told me that].
He always used the term “organic”: “Do an organic ritard here.” Which, in turn, has a lot to do with how you interpret, because you tend to connect things more naturally together than this big ritard. Then something new comes here. And something new comes here.
The bigger picture begins to [come out], which to me is what it’s all about, being able to step back and see, which is not to get rid of detail. Quite the opposite, because those details will make the bigger picture all the more real.
What a wonderful experience in my life!
Robertson began musical life as a piano prodigy.
Stepanich: You’ve been very fortunate.
Robertson: Blessed, blessed. [Blomstedt] said to me, when I went to live with him in Sweden: “Here is my library. It’s at your disposal. And so I would go and take some scores, look to see how he’d – and I remember one day he said to me, “Do you notice anything about my scores?” And I said, “Yeah, there are no markings in it.” He said: Exactly. At the top he would have maybe three or four recordings timed. And I said, “Why are your scores empty?” He said, “Because when you go to study it again, you’ll only see your old markings. You won’t see what’s new. And everytime you go to conduct, you have to start all over again. Because you’re going to see things that you’ve never seen before.” So my scores are clean now.
Stepanich: You’ve conducted all over the world. How did audiences in all those places take to you?
Robertson: In all places, it was a novelty; when I was conducting in China, wherever, there just are so few black conductors in the business. Obviously, in the final analysis, really fine orchestras, within two bars, three bars, they know [whether the conductor is any good]. In fact, Blomstedt used to say, in the old, great orchestras, they knew watching you walk out if they were going to play for you or not.
I remember I did Beethoven’s Ninth in Cape Town, and people literally packed the place and came after and said: “We came because we have never seen a black conductor.” The chorus, working with them, I had people who wrote me letters, who said, “As Afrikaners, to have a black man make music with us at the level we did – it was an experience.” I had people come to me with tears in their eyes, hug me … and it wasn’t just because I was black. It was the artistic level: that’s what made being black special.
Stepanich: In Los Angeles, you were noted for your music outreach programs in the inner city. How did that come about, and do we have something similar going on here?
Robertson: We don’t, and it’s something I want to do.
At UCLA, we chose two high schools, predominantly black schools, and we’re talking the deepest part of the ghetto.
Stepanich: Compton.
Robertson: Exactly. That’s exactly where it was. Where teachers fear to tread. Some floors of the school you don’t go to, because you’re scared to death.
But there was this one school that had a young guy who headed up the music, and that’s why we chose that school, because he was just phenomenal. The guy was like a Moses, the guy was a trailblazer. And we also picked a predominantly Latino school, and a middle school, again predominantly black, and one Latino.
And my students would go into these programs and give free lessons. Because that was the component they couldn’t have. I mean, you take a band program, you learn to play an instrument but you don’t get a private lesson. And I got funding from Toyota, and another foundation that thought this was the best thing since sliced cheese, and we went in and my kids – and I said, God, please, don’t let this program end in a bloodfest in the streets. There’s this white kid from some nice family and so forth that gets killed in Compton doing this program. And I tell you, that part of it scared me almost more than anything else.
But these kids loved it, and the kids they worked with, they were like sponges. They’d leave a lesson drained. Do you know, that after we invented that program – I was there 12 years, we started it in my second or third year, all those years it ran – 98 percent of the students at the black school went to college? And at least four of them got into UCLA. You know what I did? In the 10th grade, I bused them into UCLA to teach them how to take the SAT.
And that was probably among the more exciting things I’ve been part of in my life. I’d like to do something similar here, but what I first have had to do, though, is to consolidate the conservatory and get it where I wanted it to be. And I think our brochure, four years in the making, you will see when you look at the faculty, you look at the programs, that we have come into our own.
Now I would like to start doing some outreach things here that are well thought-through and can make a meaningful contribution.
Stepanich: Technology is a much bigger part of being a musician today, both for classical and pop musicians. Are you taking advantage of that here?
Robertson: Absolutely. There’s a course we teach that goes in depth into this.
We bring in people to counsel [the students]. For example, next year, the next time we teach this, we’re going bring in a tax consultant. There are all kinds of rules and regulations, you’re going out here, you’re self-employed. Do you know what you’re doing?
During our J-term, which happens during January, it’s a month where we do things that we normally couldn’t do, or don’t do, during the regular school year. There are no classes, we bring people in, we’re bringing in an Alexander technique specialist [bodily coordination] to work with the kids who are having tension problems and so forth. And we’re bringing in a woman from San Diego State who has a tremendous program there that I want her to duplicate here, where she goes into depth into the whole business of how to use the computer to do things for you, ways and means that are available to get your career started in the 21st century.
She actually has a program there where she goes to booking conventions, and where they have a talented string quartet, gets them performances in different places, a booking agency. Which I want to have here, with the talent we have here: Oh, my God. The whole running the gamut, when you come out, you are prepared: How to make a brochure, how to craft a fine resume, how to use a blog, how to advertise what you’re doing, specifically, in detail. It’s made a huge difference with our kids.
We are trying to really package something that is practical. You come out of here with some real-world knowledge, real-world experience, and if we haven’t done that, we have ripped you off.
Stepanich: What’s the final bill going to be on the new concert hall?
Robertson: Oh, gosh, it’s going to be almost $15 million.
Stepanich: And how many seats?
Robertson: 750.
Stepanich: And it’s got good acoustic engineering, I imagine.
Robertson: Oh, we’ve been all over it, man. It’s going to be sweet.
| 07 July 2009
Maude Maggart (Photo by Monique Carboni)
They were born two years apart in New York City in the mid-1970s to Broadway performers Brandon Maggart and Dian McAfee, who'd met while in in the Broadway musical Applause with Lauren Bacall. The sisters' grandmother, Millicent Greene, was a dancer in musical revues; grandfather Johnny McAfee a multi-reed musician and vocalist for the Harry James Big Band.
Apple forged ahead at an early age, writing brooding original tunes after her parents' separation and signing with Sony as a teenager. Late-bloomer Maggart, on the other hand, looked backward to the music of the Great American Songbook. She was influenced by the multiple styles of music being played at her household, including jazz, but thought her torchy, throwback soprano distanced her from the genre. Yet as a teen, when her relocated father took her to see singer Andrea Marcovicci in Los Angeles, something clicked.
The veteran cabaret star sparked Maggart's interest in the theatrical style of musical performance, prompting her to attend open-mic nights in Southern California. Another mentor, Michael Feinstein, introduced Maggart within the New York cabaret scene by having her make a guest appearance in his 2001 Christmas show. Her 2003 Manhattan debut as a featured artist --singing 1920s songs at Danny's Skylight Room -- formed the theme to her debut CD Look for the Silver Lining.
The Venice Beach, Calif., resident's subsequent releases, With Sweet Despair, Maude Maggart Sings Irving Berlin and Live, all reflected the themes of her preceding touring shows. At work on her next CD, Maggart's latest release is 2008's Dreamland, a collaboration with Brent Spiner. Her concerts now attract celebrities such as Philip Seymour Hoffman, Neil Simon, Lynn Redgrave and Garrison Keillor, who has featured Maggart twice on his weekly National Public Radio show A Prairie Home Companion.
Maggart has been well-decorated despite starting her recording career nearly a decade after her sister's. In 2005 alone, she won the Time Out New York Award for Special Achievement, the Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs (MAC) Award for Best Female Debut, and the Back Stage Award for Special Achievement. She appears regularly at venues such as Feinstein's at the Regency and the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel, both in Manhattan, the Plush Room in San Francisco, the Gardenia in Hollywood, and the Colony Hotel in Palm Beach, where she appeared on the first two weekends of last month.
Palm Beach ArtsPaper's Bill Meredith talked with Maggart on June 19 from the Park Lane Mews Hotel in London, where she was performing at Pizza on the Park from June 16-27.
Meredith: Do you feel that your parents encouraged you and Fiona toward careers in show business, or did you both venture in that direction on your own?
Maggart: Our parents were always very encouraging, although we weren't pushed or anything. We were just natural musicians. Fiona started playing piano and singing when she was quite young; I started singing quite young, and it was a natural progression.
Meredith: Was it obvious early on that you and your sister would take such different stylistic career paths?
Maggart: Maybe so, even though we've always had similar voices. But I never wrote any songs, and Fiona was always writing songs. We both loved all different kinds of music. Fiona was the one who started listening to Judy Garland first. She loved listening to her in her room. And I was listening to Madonna then! Go figure.
Meredith: So you weren't any kind of mentor to her?
Maggart: Oh no (laughs). No way. But we loved to sing together, and both just loved music. I liked Judy Garland, too, but Fiona was more into her.
Meredith: Do you recall meeting celebrities through your parents while growing up?
Maggart: Yeah, but they were mostly Broadway people. I do remember meeting Jerry Lewis and Sammy Davis Jr. But for the most part, I was so little that I didn't realize they were famous.
Meredith: Do you feel that you discovered cabaret, or was it more of a matter of it finding you after you listened to so many styles while growing up?
Maggart: It found me, I'm sure of that. When my father took me to see Andrea Marcovicci as a teenager, I didn't even have a thought in my head that I'd like to do that. But I did think it was a special kind of performance. I couldn't have imagined anything like it. It was so unique. Andrea and Michael Feinstein were the ones who encouraged me to put an act together myself. They both were very helpful. They're my mentors.
Meredith: What distinction, if any, do you make between cabaret and jazz?
Maggart: Well, I don't consider myself a jazz singer at all. But cabaret is a tricky word, because I do such a wide range of songs. If I were forced to give a definition, I'd say cabaret songs are story songs, where the lyrical content is key. In jazz, it's more about the melody and where you go with it, not necessarily the lyrics.
'I try to sing every song as if it were new.' (Photo by Monique Carboni)
Meredith: But the two merge at the American Songbook, right?
Maggart: Sure. It's interesting, because a song like You'll Never Know can be performed both ways. And even Sophisticated Lady, which is a great story song. But it's Duke Ellington, so it's also really meaty musically. I started my cabaret career concentrating on songs from the '20s and '30s, but I've always tried not to make them sound dated. My voice can sound like it's from that era, but my sensibilities are clearly not. So I try to sing every song as if it were new.
Meredith: Did you have any formal musical instruction?
Maggart: I had voice lessons at LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts in New York City [the setting of the film and TV series Fame]. We were taught basic music theory, but overall, I had limited vocal training.
Meredith: Have you ever studied any instruments?
Maggart: I play a little guitar, but I'm mostly self-taught.
Meredith: Have you ever done any composing?
Maggart: A little. I was in this rock opera/ballet at the Ivar Theater in Hollywood about five years ago called The Garden of Reason, and I wrote some lyrics for it. But it was industrial rock, a very different kind of music from what I usually do. Which is exactly why I wanted to do it.
Meredith: Who are some of your primary singing influences?
Maggart: I have a wide variety of them. If this gives you a broad enough spectrum, I love Kathleen Battle, Jo Stafford and Bonnie Raitt.
Meredith: What was it like to perform with Garrison Keillor on A Prairie Home Companion?
Maggart: Oh, that was really a thrill. I did it twice, both times in 2004. The first time was at Town Hall, and I sang 42nd Street and Boulevard of Broken Dreams. It was really fun, first because it was A Prairie Home Companion, after all, but also because the Guy's All-Star Shoe Band was so much fun to play with. I'm used to playing with just a piano, and maybe a cello or guitar, but that was an entire band that was kind of bluegrass-rooted. My second appearance was at the Hollywood Bowl, where I got to sing Over the Rainbow. That was with just a dobro and piano, so it was an interesting arrangement, and really special.
Meredith: Do you ever notice the celebrities who attend your shows while you're onstage?
Maggart: Oh yeah. That's how I ended up meeting Garrison Keillor. He came to a show and sat right up front. There's no mistaking that face.
Meredith: How are the London shows going on the heels of your Palm Beach concerts?
Maggart: Lovely. Pizza on the Park is very nice, and everyone is very friendly and accommodating. It may be nowhere as fancy as the Colony, but it's the same format, with tables and a center stage, and they do have very nice lighting and sound.
Meredith: Didn't you also perform your Good Girl/Bad Girl show in London last year?
Maggart: Yes, and I also did that show in the United States two years ago, at rooms like the Colony and the Algonquin.
Maude Maggart on the Colony : 'I love that room, and hope to perform there again as soon as possible.' (Photo by Monique Carboni)
Maggart: That's the surprise in that show, that there isn't really either side. It's all somewhere in the middle. But having said that, it's still probably more fun to be on the bad side.
Meredith: Are you working toward a new CD?
Maggart: Yes, once I figure out which songs to put on it. It'll probably be somewhat of a compilation from the past two shows, Speaking of Dreams and Parents and Children. And I hope to have it available by somewhere around Christmas.
Meredith: Will you be back at the Colony Hotel anytime soon?
Maggart: Oh, I hope so. I love that room, and hope to perform there again as soon as possible. Maybe sometime during season.
Bill Meredith is a freelance writer based in South Florida who has written extensively about jazz and popular music, including for Jazziz and Jazz Times.
| 30 May 2009
Alexander Platt.
The Boca Raton Symphonia is, along with the Master Chorale of South Florida and the Delray String Quartet, one of the few area cultural institutions to have emerged and thrived from the demise of the Florida Philharmonic in May 2003.
Since October 2007, the Boca Symphonia has been led by Alexander Platt, 43, a New York-born musician now resident in Chicago who, in the manner of most conductors today, has other directing jobs. He leads two other orchestras (the Marion Philharmonic of Indiana and the Waukesha Symphony of Wisconsin), serves as resident conductor of the Chicago Opera Theater, and runs the Maverick Concerts chamber music series each summer in Woodstock, N.Y.
His leadership of the Boca Symphonia has been distinctive for its fresh, challenging programming. In the season just ended, the Boca group performed music by two contemporary American composers – Libby Larsen and Jonathan Leshnoff – as well as rarely heard works by Benjamin Britten (the Suite on English Folk Tunes, Op. 90) and Antonin Dvorak (the Symphony No. 5 in F, Op. 76).
The upcoming season promises the same kind of inventiveness, as Platt has scheduled works by four American composers – Aaron Jay Kernis (Air for Violin) and Ned Rorem (Violin Concerto), as well as Aaron Copland (Music for the Theatre) and Samuel Barber (the Capricorn Concerto) – and European rarities including the First Symphony of a teenage Franz Schubert (in D, D. 82), and the Second Symphony of Felix Mendelssohn (in B-flat, Op. 52, Lobgesang).
That Mendelssohn symphony has a big choral finale, but Platt will replace it with a rarely heard Mendelssohn overture, Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, which Platt says will flow seamlessly out of the third movement of the Second, creating a new all-instrumental Mendelssohn symphony.
Palm Beach ArtsPaper’s Greg Stepanich talked with Platt on May 13 from the conductor’s home in Chicago.
Stepanich: The programs for the Boca Symphonia have been distinguished by some rarely heard music and some contemporary music in what you have referred to as the “house style” for the orchestra. It’s something you feel strongly about, and I was wondering whether you could walk me through why you think it’s so important.
Platt: I think in the crises that all these orchestras, not only in Florida but all over the country, have been facing, I think it’s more important than ever to do concerts that really matter, to create a concert that is a work of art in itself. And half the reason I stay in this business is for the joy of putting together for an audience a great combination of works that somehow speak more powerfully together than they even do on their own.
Stepanich: How have audiences reacted to this approach, especially in Boca?
Platt: I think we’re slowly but surely building up a solid audience that recognizes the quality of the programming and responds in kind. That program we did around works like the Dvorak Fifth Symphony or the Tchaikovsky First Orchestral Suite, where we did these great 19th-century works that had basically been forgotten, along with these great works of more recent vintage, such as the Libby Larsen songs [Sonnets from the Portuguese], or that wonderful Benjamin Britten Suite on English Folk Tunes – I’m still so, so proud of how perfectly the orchestra played that piece – that really is what inspires me to stay on the site, in Boca, in South Florida, and keep this orchestra going.
Stepanich: How do you choose programs for the orchestra? I noticed you did [Britten’s] Owen Wingrave at Cambridge, and the Chicago Opera Theatre is doing it next week….
Platt: The preview is tomorrow, actually. I’m doing the penultimate of my Tragedy of Carmen [an adaptation by Marius Constant of Bizet’s opera] tonight and Friday. And tomorrow we’ll do the preview of Owen Wingrave, where I’ll be there very enthusiastically, but as a spectator. Steuart Bedford’s conducting it.
Stepanich: When you were doing Wingrave, did you say, ‘I’ve got to find some good Britten to do with an orchestra some day?’ Is that the kind of thing that leads you to the kinds of programs you do?
Platt: Yeah, all these passions had their crucible in my teenage years. Like a lot of musicians, a lot of creative people, I had a somewhat lonely childhood. I was drawn to the obscure, drawn to the forgotten masters, drawn to the works that had been overlooked.
I guess you can say when I was in college, when I did Wingrave, which I think is a work of real greatness, I was instinctively attracted to it because it had been neglected.
Stepanich: When you got to do the major pieces, was your faith in the quirky ones justified?
Platt: You know what? I think I can say nine times out of 10 my faith is justified. I’m only human and sometimes I get it wrong, but most of the time I get it right.
I’ll give you an example: This Dvorak Fifth Symphony that we did so beautifully together in Boca, where, to my astonishment, at the beginning of the first rehearsal, I blithely asked: “How many of us have ever played this piece before?”
Assuming that, say, half of the orchestra had played it because it’s always been on the fringes of the repertoire, you know; I remember a couple years ago hearing the New York Philharmonic play it with Riccardo Muti.
And to my astonishment, not a single hand went up. And that was how my sort of lonely fight for this piece was so vindicated in that performance.
I remember years ago, on the other side of the coin, in Racine [Wisconsin], I did the Dvorak First Symphony. And let’s just say I sorely realized why that piece is never performed. It’s the only one of the nine symphonies Dvorak never got to revise.
It’s that famous story of how he wrote out the manuscript and sent it off to Vienna for some competition and never heard back, and the score surfaced in the 1920s in some antique shop in Prague. Crazy. I’d like to go back to it, but I’d have to completely reorchestrate it, because it just has a lot of problems.
But I’m very proud to say that nine times out of 10, I’m right.
Stepanich: That reminds me of the work you did restoring the Erwin Stein [chamber orchestra] version of Mahler’s Fourth. Is doing that work preferable to conducting?
Platt: Oh, no, it’s not preferable. I just think it’s important for conductors to have some other vocation in their lives as musicians.
Because there are a lot of conductors who, as you know, also are great pianists, there are a lot of conductors who are great violinists. I think for me, since I’m neither of those things, doing arranging and orchestrating, creating new visions of great works, allows kind of a sideline that brings me back to earth, that brings me and keeps me inside of the music.
And then running a chamber music festival in the summertime [the Maverick Concerts] also just allows me to be the maestro while not being the fellow in the hot seat. And it also allows me to experience music in a different kind of way.
I think conductors for their own benefit need something like that to keep them human. I worry about conductors who just conduct. I worry about those people. I think the evidence is telling, without naming names.
This is just a vital sideline for me, and as you know I still have a great vision of bringing to Boca this other chamber orchestra arrangement I did, which is David Del Tredici’s Final Alice, which I’m still in the process of revising. I think the Mahler Fourth was a tea party compared to this. It’s even more vast a project.
Stepanich: I had to sing that [in the chorus] when I was a composition student at Boston University in the early ‘80s. That piece was such a big deal at the time.
Platt: It was such a big deal, and I grew up with that recording made by the Chicago Symphony with Georg Solti. And then it just kind of dropped out of sight, and I think the main reason being that it’s so incredibly expensive to perform. He basically has written for an orchestra of about 123 people, and I’ve reduced it for an orchestra of about 23 people. And it’s still massively difficult, but it really, really does work. It really, really, really works.
Stepanich: This is something that Del Tredici sanctioned?
Platt: Oh, yeah, he completely sanctioned it. It’s been an amazing experience working with him and making it happen, and revising it. He is really one of the supreme musicians in America. He’s like a kind of Richard Strauss. To watch him work has been an amazing experience.
Stepanich: You’ve worked with a lot of smaller orchestras, Waukesha, Racine…
Platt: Yes, in fact, last night I was rehearsing the Rachmaninov Second Symphony in Waukesha.
Stepanich: The long version?
Platt: Oh, yeah, the long version. I make one little cut in the finale, but I’m not saying where.
Stepanich: We’ll see if anyone notices.
Platt: Alexander Platt, prince of the blue pencil.
Stepanich: Since you’ve worked with all those regional orchestras, that raises questions about the future of orchestras in general. Some say big orchestras won’t make it, but if we do smaller orchestras we’re in better shape. Are you a partisan of either side in that debate?
Platt: No, I’m actually totally non-ideological about that. I think in some communities, like Boca, I feel this really is perfect, the Symphonia is the perfect-sized orchestra. And you’ve got such a depth of talent in the string section, as we have proved this past season.
And I’m so grateful that you’ve recognized this, because there are works, carefully chosen by the principal conductor, that are big works that can be played by a lean orchestra.
Other communities – you know, I’m rehearsing this Rachmaninov Second with a very large orchestra in Waukesha. I know this is an orchestra that few people have heard of, but it’s a very serious orchestra, and has always been, for 62 years.
And this Rachmaninov Second, given the hall that we have, given what that
community wants to hear, this is the perfect kind of music for that community.
So I’m totally non-ideological about this. I can conduct orchestras of 15 or 150. It all depends on what works in the situation.
alex
Stepanich: Let’s go back a little. What is your major instrument?
Platt: I’m a viola player. I was a viola player.
Stepanich: You don’t play much anymore?
Platt: No, I don’t take that thing out of the case.
Stepanich: How did you get excited about music in the first place?
Platt: I grew up in a community where my parents were not both musical, but we had a great public school arts program. And it actually was the viola that took me into music, because I was a very bored and not-at-all-accomplished violinist.
Back in those days – it really isn’t true anymore, now we know that viola sections of the major orchestras are just like, monsters, they’re amazing – but back when I was a kid, nobody wanted to play viola. It was the ugly duckling of the string section.
And I guess this says something about my personality, but I said, “I’d like to play viola.” I was fascinated by this instrument for which there were almost no concertos, this ungainly, large version of a violin. And I said, “OK, I’ll do that,” and from the moment I started playing I got hooked.
I loved being the middle voice in the orchestra, because you had to listen to everything around you. I think there’s a reason why a lot of the great conductors were viola players, like Pierre Monteux and Carlo Maria Giulini, many great conductors.
And that really got me interested. This ties into something that’s become my credo: Love of the neglected, the inner voice, the obscure. There’s something about that that keeps me going.
Stepanich: The vital but unrecognized.
Platt: Yeah. So then when I approach a work like last night, the Rachmaninov Second Symphony, it feels so fresh. I’m not at all jaded about this. I can just look at the majesty of this piece like a kid.
Stepanich: You must have been a rather good violist, to get into the Tanglewood program.
Platt: Let’s just say I got in not by talent but by hard work.
Stepanich: So when did you decide to pursue conducting?
Platt: It was actually at Tanglewood. I can tell you exactly when it happened, because I had a summer as a teenage viola player, and curiously [I sat principal in the orchestra], even though it was quite obvious that I was not the best player – I was not the worst, but I wasn’t the best; I was somewhere in the middle of a rather large viola section.
And at the end of the summer we all had to present a work in recital. I played the Darius Milhaud Viola Sonata incredibly poorly. And I had to play it for the jury, for the professors, one of whom was Victor Yampolsky, who is a major conductor and pedagogue, and a professor at Northwestern here in Chicago.
And it was just terrible. It was horrible. And at the end of it I was out on the lawn, that beautiful lawn at Tanglewood, and I saw him. And I said, “Professor Yampolsky, maestro, I have to ask you. I’m clearly not the best player in the viola section. Why did you seat me as principal for most of the summer?”
And his answer, which came back instantly, and which just stunned me, was: “Well, you obviously weren’t the best player, but you were the best leader. So that’s why we put you there.” And a little light went on inside, and I think that was the moment I realized that maybe being a conductor was the best way that I could be in music.
Stepanich: When did you pick up the baton for the first time?
Platt: It was in high school. In my last year of high school, I conducted my high school choir, and from then on I was hooked. I began at Yale, and in the grand Ivy League tradition, I just put out my own shingle and formed my own orchestra.
When other guys were out drinking with their frat-boy fellows, I was up all night begging musicians to play in some ad hoc orchestra where I was doing the Mozart Requiem or something. I had an amazing four years. We did what I try to do in Boca: We put great events together.
We did things like liturgical performances of the Mozart Requiem, the Faure Requiem, on All Souls’ Day. We did Walton’s Façade with people from the American Repertory Theatre. We did all these crazy things, and often to really, really large audiences.
I’ll never forget doing Battell Chapel, the university chapel at Yale, the Mozart Requiem on All Souls’ Day, and the proceeds were going to go to AIDS Project New Haven, and there was all this – you could feel the controversy in the air. But it was packed. You could really feel the energy, that idea of music being dangerous.
Stepanich: That sounds very Ivy League. It’s always got to be something big.
Platt: But then I turned around and did my first opera, which was Benjamin Britten’s [chamber opera] Rape of Lucretia, which also still had kind of a capacity to shock in the early 1980s.
Stepanich: Then you went off to England, and you got interested in 19th-century music. Was that the kind of music you felt the most affinity for?
Platt: It’s interesting: I have this great interest in a modernist composer like Britten, but at the end of the day I’m definitely a man of the 19th century.
And that was a time, remember, in the 1980s, when in academia the 19th century was seen as fusty, and sentimental, and totally unfashionable. And I think now in this splintered and volatile age in which we live, I think people are finally going back to look at the 19th century as actually a great, great era.
Of course, there were a lot of horrible things that happened, but when you look at the history of the European imperial powers, there is actually a lot of what they did that made a lot of sense. And I always go to the -– I know this is horribly idealistic, but I’m very attracted to the Habsburg Empire as really the founders of multiculturalism. They really were.
It’s not for nothing that my favorite novel is probably Joseph Roth’s The Radetzky March. It’s just this paean to all the glory that was gone in the Habsburg Empire, which eventually obviously creaked under its own weight, but this idea that as long as you followed a certain tradition and allegiance, you really could basically be anything that you wanted. And this idea of this diverse group of people under one crown: I think there’s a lot in this day in which we live, I think there’s a lot to commend the 19th century.
So I’ve always been kind of attracted to that. I think that’s when I began to delve into that world, because I was doing other modernist things or I was doing Mozart Requiems and things like that.
Stepanich: Is there any composer from the 19th century you thought was shamefully overlooked?
Platt: I’ve always been a huge fan of Dvorak. Mendelssohn I’m very attracted to, and I think Mendelssohn has finally come into his own. I think we’re finally getting to the point where we can say that Mendlessohn is not underrated.
I mean, there are works of his that are still underrated and unplayed, and as you know I’m doing this symphonic portion of the Second Symphony, the Lobgesang, which is going to be a concoction of my making, and I’m totally confident is going to work like hand in glove.
But of all of them I think Dvorak is the most neglected. I remember being at Tanglewood and hearing the great Joseph Silverstein, the longtime concertmaster of the Boston Symphony, say something that would be unthinkable today. I’ll never forget him telling the conducting class: “We all know that Mendelssohn is the greater orchestrator, but Schumann is the greater composer.” That’s a totally ridiculous thing to say, which you couldn’t say now, because in the last 20 years, we have delved more finely, we have truly delved more deeply into the world of these two great composers, and have realized they are truly great composers and great orchestrators in their own way.
Similarly, to this day, I think when we think of Dvorak, we think, “Well, he’s not as great as Brahms, but they were buddies, and isn’t that nice? They were kind of like Haydn and Mozart.” But Dvorak is an absolute towering genius, it’s just that his kind of genius is totally different from that of Brahms. Dvorak could have never written the Brahms Fourth Symphony; Brahms could have never written the New World.
And there’s a reason why we hear that piece all the time. Because the New World Symphony is like a Brahms Fourth: it’s perfect. It’s a perfect piece. It’s like Beethoven. There’s not one note that’s extraneous. And Brahms could have never written that piece. They’re equally, profoundly great, but in profoundly different ways.
Again, I love the idea of a culture in which a Brahms, a totally German Viennese, and Dvorak, a butcher’s son from Bohemia who could then become the musical monarch of Prague, could all exist in one apostolic empire.
Stepanich: And he was a viola player, too.
Platt: (laughs) And he, like me, was a hapless viola player. The unsung hero.
Stepanich: And Brahms could never have written the Dvorak Cello Concerto, either.
Platt: No, and he could have never written the unbelievable late Dvorak string quartets. Let’s be honest. I mean, I love the Brahms quartets, but Dvorak’s string quartets are superior.
Stepanich: I wanted to ask about working down in Boca, how you came to work here, and what makes it different than your other jobs.
Platt: It’s totally different than any other job I have because the weather’s great. (laughs) When I go down there, the moment I’m getting into my rental car, I feel like a new man. It’s just the feel of the air, the sunlight: It’s something I really need for myself.
You know, this job just happened by pure luck and timing. I was one of several people who came down to conduct in the early days, one of several rotating guest conductors. And I was invited to do the Festival of the Arts Boca. At the 11th hour, [flutist] James Galway decided he couldn’t play and conduct at the same time, and so they brought me in at 48 hours’ notice to conduct that program with him.
And that was such an electric experience -- that culminated in that magical Mendelssohn Italian Symphony that we did together -- that the die was cast. And they created a kind of post for me.
It’s really been a blessing in my life, and I think my wonderful board of directors agree that I bring something also unique to them. It’s been great all around.
Stepanich: These programs you do have your own personal stamp on them, so how do you consult with your board on what’s going to be on the programs?
Platt: We have an artistic advisory committee, very devoted people who work on these. And a couple of these programs – I won’t go into details – a couple of these programs in the brochure that I’m doing still could be tweaked a little. Watch this page; I’ll get back to you on this.
Even the one I’m not conducting, the one that the very talented Scott Yoo is going to conduct [March 21, 2010], that’s a program I put together with my committee that I’m just very proud of. I mean, look at that: you see Copland, Mendelssohn and Rodrigo, three composers from three totally different worlds.
But then – and I’m glad you asked me, because I think this is very, very important – think of those three composers from three totally different worlds, and yet what unites those three works: Music and theater and magic, and music of the night, the slow movement of the Rodrigo, much of Copland, the Mendelssohn Midsummer Night’s Dream. Think of how, on a more subtle, much deeper level, those three totally disparate works just go together so beautifully.
That program was a joy to put together, and I’m deeply envious that I’m not going to conduct it, but I’m sure Scott Yoo will do a lovely job.
Stepanich: They all have that sort of magic feel….
Platt: Right, and programs like that just don’t come together. You have to have a certain background culturally to have the mental equipment to do that. It’s not like saying, Let’s do a Mozart overture, a Beethoven concerto and a symphony by Brahms. Anyone can do that.
Stepanich: Which begs the question: How do you go about creating such a program? What kind of things are paramount for you?
Platt: It really is like a chef in the kitchen putting together a great meal with the ingredients he has. We, as a committee, we talk about soloists we’d like to bring in in the coming season, major works we’d like to bring to our public and then we set about putting these things together into beautiful programs, and I do very sincerely work with this committee, and it’s understood I have the final say, but that doesn’t mean I don’t work with them.
At the end of the day, somebody has to be the boss, like any part of life. But these programs really are better -- and I’m not just saying this to be politically correct – at the end of the day, I have to have the final say. That’s just how it has to be, and any conductor would say that. But with equal sincerity I would tell you that these programs would not be as good as they are if it hadn’t gone through the process of consulting with the committee.
Because you really do learn from other people’s ideas and feelings. I know that sounds like I’m a Lutheran pastor or something, but it’s really true. This is where it really is true that, as Daniel Barenboim says, music really can be the school for life. It is this laboratory where people really can work together.
Stepanich: Let’s take a look at that last program. The Copland [Music for the Theatre] is not often done….
Platt: I can’t think of a piece that captures the spirit, the real, real, real inner spirit of New York in the 1920s, [better] than this piece. It is the equal of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. But because it’s a little thornier, we don’t hear it as often.
Stepanich: Because it would be the end of the season, were you trying to do something ….
Platt: Something celebratory. I wanted to do the Mendelssohn Midsummer Night’s Dream, but I also thought: music and theater, I thought, gosh, Copland’s Music for the Theatre, I’ve always wanted to do that piece. And it’s also got these amazing trumpet solos, it’s a great showcase for our principal trumpet and director of artistic operations, the wonderful, the indispensable, Jeff Kaye.
Stepanich: You’ve got a lot of different gigs and you’re wearing a lot of hats. That has to be difficult to juggle. How do you manage all that? Do you use, I don’t know, a whiteboard or some technical application?
Platt: No, I’m the last Luddite of my generation. I mean, at 43 I still have a morocco leather pocket calendar. I don’t have an iPod, I don’t have – I guess I’m just sort of a 19th-century eccentric who’s just making his way in this post-modern world. I’m totally non-technological. As my friends know, it’s totally pathetic. Or, depending on your viewpoint, it’s a breath of fresh air. I think the world needs a few people who still write in longhand.
Stepanich: Personally, I think we’re going to get to a point very soon where we’re going to get a whole lot of Luddites and refuseniks, because there’s so much technological push … there’s going to be a lot of opting out, I think.
Platt: I kind of realized, maybe ahead of a lot of other people, that basically a lot of this high technology – especially in communications, I mean, e-mail is great, it’s fantastic, it’s a great way to communicate at any hour of the day or night. It combines the best, and I should also say sometimes the worst, attributes of a letter and a telephone call. But it’s a great way to communicate, and that’s terrific.
But I think the problem, what people are realizing with a lot of this high technology, is: A, it has a way of sucking up all your money, and B, it really doesn’t make your life any better. I mean, how much do you need a cellphone to do?
Stepanich: With something like an iPhone, you’re never going to use 80 percent of the power that thing has.
Platt: There are a lot of people out there who think it really changes their lives. There’s a part of me that admires those people and envies their technical facility, and then there’s a part of me that feels a true – and I don’t mind saying this for a recording – a true revulsion, because I want a Dvorak symphony to change your life.
Stepanich: How many different jobs do you have? I know you’re doing the Marion [Ind.] Philharmonic…
Platt: I just got back from there, actually. And Waukesha, Wisconsin, and Chicago Opera Theatre, and then Boca, and then the Maverick …. I’m also getting more involved with the Chicago College of the Performing Arts. So yeah, I’m a very busy man.
Stepanich: Does all that work leave any time for any sort of personal life?
Platt: Yeah, on a very limited basis. I have a very devoted group of friends in Chicago and New York, and I see them when I can see them. That’s my life.
Stepanich: The last question is about the purported death of classical music. But it seems to me that it’s mostly critics that are saying that.
Platt: They’ve been saying that for about 30 years now. And isn’t it amazing how the vast majority of all these orchestras still exist, and they’re still playing for very large and enthusiastic audiences.
Stepanich: And why do you think that is?
Platt: Because it is. I’m to the point where I’m so tired of navel-gazing about this. I’m tired of navel-gazing, I’m tired of political correctness. All I’m interested in is bringing great concerts to audiences, and communicating to them musically and verbally about why this music still needs to be part of our lives.
You know, I’m like an itinerant pastor, that’s what I do.
