Shostakovich had never had it worse: his latest opera, Lady Macbeth, had been panned. And not just by an ordinary critic: Joseph Stalin himself had paid a visit to the opera house. The official Soviet opinion of the work? “Muddle instead of music.”

Shostakovich therefore pulled his Symphony No. 4 out of rehearsals and regrouped. He determined to write “a Soviet artist’s response to justified criticism,” a work that would become his Symphony No. 5.

Join me and Akiko as we talk Shostakovich, Saint-Saens, and Francisco Coll, along with guest artists Gustavo Gimeno, conductor, and Javier Perianes, piano!

Have you ever “discovered” a major piece, live, in the concert hall? Nathan remembers sitting right next to a big star performing Prokofiev’s second Piano Concerto, with its massive and breathtaking first-movement cadenza. Then he and Akiko talk about sitting right next to another big star this week for the same piece.

They also reminisce about those stacks of records, cassette tapes, and ultimately CDs from which they learned all the repertoire.

Finally, they debate the categories for this week’s rep: Qigang Chen’s l’eloignement, Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in g minor, and Smetana’s Ma Vlast, with Bezhod Abduraimov as piano soloist and Xian Zhang conducting.

This week’s landmark episode marks the return of Akiko, plus a pair of fellow stand partners for life: violists Kate Reddish and Eric Lea! We discuss the slings and arrows of a career in music, what you can and can’t get from music school, what it’s like to be part of a string-playing pair, and much more.

Kate Reddish is a Los Angeles-based freelance violist. She enjoys a busy and varied career subbing with nearly every major orchestra in the Southern California area, performing as a chamber musician, and teaching and coaching individuals and groups. Kate can be heard on hundreds of film scores, albums, and TV shows, and has appeared on television and on film.

Kate comes from a “numbers” family: her father was a tax attorney and CPA and her mother a bookkeeper; her sister followed that path to work as a bookkeeper and financial analyst. Meanwhile, Kate, who started playing the viola through the public school system in Riverside, was certain that a life in music was the only life she wanted.

Kate earned her BA and MM from UCLA (go Bruins!), studying with former Los Angeles Philharmonic principal violist Evan Wilson. Feeling nothing like a Master, she then trotted across town to USC (go Trojans!) to complete an artist’s diploma with eminent pedagogue Donald McInnes. Since finishing her formal schooling, Kate has also participated in intensive courses with Burton Kaplan, Rob Knopper, Noa Kageyama, and Nathan Cole.

In June of 2021, Kate started her own business, KMR Creative, consulting for online educators and coaches. She currently works closely with Nathan Cole to design and implement his many online offerings and to build the communities that rise up around those courses.

Kate enjoys yoga and dance, good food and wine, card games and crossword puzzles, and creating order out of chaos. She currently lives in South Pasadena with her husband, violist and composer Eric Lea, and their sweet kitty, Misha.

Eric Lea is a reasonably tall violist. He has a BM from the University of Arizona and an MM from USC (see above re: Trojans), both in viola performance. He has subbed with many symphonies and played and recorded with many bands. As the violist for the band Get Set Go, his playing could be barely discerned by millions under snappy dialogue in several episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, and he has toured Japan with songwriter/producer Mike Viola (coincidence?), with whom he and Kate recorded an album called Acousto de Perfecto. He fancies himself as something of a composer now, and his song cycles can be heard at ericlea.bandcamp.com.

I’m joined in the backyard this week by Violympian and VMC participant Travis Maril, as well as his fellow USC alum and my Director of Operations, Kate Reddish. Our wide-ranging conversation includes no small measure of pedagogical geekery, as well as such diverse topics as Tae Kwon Do bribery and Michael Jordan’s private Space Jam gym.

Violist Travis Maril is String Coordinator and Viola Faculty at San Diego State University (SDSU), where he has taught since 2007. At SDSU he also serves as Co-Director of the Community Music School’s String Academy, a pre-college program for young musicians, which he co-founded in 2012. 

As violist with the Hyperion Quartet, Travis was a prizewinner at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. Over the years he has collaborated in chamber music projects with principal players of the LA Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony, San Diego Symphony, and members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Miró Quartet, and Brooklyn Rider, among others.  Locally he performs frequently with Camarada, Art of Elan, and with the San Diego Symphony.

Inspired by the Violympics in 2021, Travis started String Gym, his own online program for violinists and violists. Through String Gym, Travis works with players across the US, Australia, Germany and Taiwan.  From time to time he also writes about music-related topics on his blog, String Theory. You can also follow Travis on Instagram.

If you’re interested in joining us for the fifth iteration of VMC, starting in 2023, you can find out more information here, and apply here.

Nathan, Kerstin and Kate (and Kate’s SPFL Eric) in Pasadena

Today I’m talking with Kerstin Tenney, VMC violinist par excellence, as well as my Director of Operations, violist (and VMC alumna par equally excellence) Kate Reddish. We talk about Kerstin’s musical education, her experience in the Virtuoso Master Course, and the new album she’s recorded with Simon Kiln and the English Symphony Orchestra!

Violinist Kerstin Tenney finished recording her first solo violin album in England earlier this year, and is now preparing for its release in the early months of 2023. Her 16-track album, Light, features four newly commissioned pieces, and 8 new arrangements written specifically for this project. Following a lifelong desire to learn, Kerstin has worked with Nathan Cole in every iteration of his Virtuoso Master Course. She plays with the Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah, does freelance work, and has a private violin studio, teaching in person and online. In her teaching, along with focusing on the musical and technical aspects involved with playing, Kerstin incorporates the mental in addressing thoughts and fears that inhibit progression, the physiological and anatomical components of playing in understanding the structure of the body and how this affects one’s playing, and looks at the role the neurological system has in playing the violin. 

Kerstin can be found on her website at http://www.kerstintenney.com, her newsletter at https://bit.ly/KerstinsNewsletter, and on Instagram at @kerstintenney.

If you’re interested in joining us for the fifth iteration of VMC, starting in 2023, you can find out more information here, and apply here.

It’s tour time! While you’re listening, we’ll be flying, driving, and playing our way through Boston, New York, Mexico City, and Guanajuato. So to kick off the trip, let’s talk tour repertoire and hand out some awards.

Tour rep includes Copland’s Third Symphony and Mahler 1 as the “big pieces”, plus violin concertos from Arturo Marquez and Gabriela Ortiz. Which composers would we love to have dinner with? What are the scariest moments in these concerts? And what was the most memorable on-stage exchange during tour prep?

Akiko and I are back for the 2022-2023 season! In this first episode we share with you a fun new format: awards in all kinds of different categories. Next week we’ll focus on the season-opening tour prep weeks at the LA Phil, but for today we’re handing out some All-Time awards.

Discover which composers we’d love to have dinner with, which excerpts terrify us in auditions, and which conductor gestures stand the test of time.

And don’t forget to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, just by clicking the link below the podcast player. Welcome back to SPFL!

We took quite a long break from recording the show with everything going on at the moment, but we are so glad to be back. To kick things off again we thought we would use this episode to go through a bit of what we have been up to, staying home with the LA Phil out of action, some of the work and practicing we have been doing and then to field a bunch of listener questions.

We look back at the last few days of regular work before quarantine began and then talk a bit about how we adjusted our schedules after things completely stopped. Nathan talks about his Violympics group, Akiko shares some of her dreams of home fitness and we explain the home recording process we have been working on.

This unusual period presents a somewhat useful possibility to musicians; we all have areas of our playing that we wish we could improve and spend more time developing — and this could be the time to do it.

After the complete rundown of our work-from-home life, we get into answering questions on quieting inner critics and protecting the joy of playing, practical concerns of changing strings and re-hairing bows!

Key Points From This Episode: 

• The last days of work and the changes in our schedules since the pandemic began.  
• Shifting plans and changing the focus of our practice for time at home.   
• The video recording we did and the insecurities that arise in watching yourself.  
• Unusual repertoires and more practice time in the work from home world. 
• The ‘Violympics’ and the questions that came from the group. 
• Staying motivated and practicing during this time with the LA Phil on hiatus.  
• Considering the plight of young musicians finishing music school right now.  
• Investing in different skills and upping your game during this downtime.  
• Personal qualities that lend themselves to a successful career in an orchestra.  
• Tips for quieting the inner critic when performing or recording.  
• Separating and protecting the joy of playing from the need to do it for a living.    
• The importance of friendships and connection within a job in an orchestra.   
• Changing strings, re-hairing bows, off the string strokes and more.
• Divisions for practicing a new piece and ways to focus on tricky passages. 

Tweetables: 

“I think it is scary to think of coming back together. I think we’ve all changed. I think it’s going to be such a substantial amount of time that we all would have changed in a lot of ways.” — Akiko Tarumoto [0:24:20] 

“Our whole lives I think so much of our self-worth is wrapped up in how we play. I don’t know that that’s healthy or right, but it’s inescapable.” — Nathan Cole [0:25:10]

“It is reassuring to know that orchestra or no orchestra, we’re still musicians.” — Akiko Tarumoto [0:25:25] 

Transcript

EPISODE 39 

[INTRO] 

[00:00:00] NC: Hi and welcome back to Stand Partners for Life. I’m Nathan Cole.  

[00:00:05] AT: I’m Akiko Tarumoto. 

[EPISODE] 

[00:00:19] NC: And last time we came at you, the world was a very different place. Needless to say, we’ve taken quite a long break, but we’re happy to be back talking with each other and talking to you. Yeah, even though things have changed quite a bit. We were just trying to come up with what our last episode had been and we were talking conductors. How important is a conductor? Do we really need a conductor?  

[00:00:43] AT: Who knew we wouldn’t need a conductor for months? 

[00:00:46] NC: Yeah. We got our wish. Didn’t see any conductors for months. Yeah, it’s like the monkey’s paw. Got more than we bargained for.  

[00:00:56] AT: The corpse showed up at the front door.  

[00:00:58] NC: Yeah. I mean, we certainly won’t be the first people sharing our thoughts about the changed state of the world on classical music since the pandemic began. Maybe our thoughts don’t have to run too deep. But what do you think about our musical and our artistic lives since this all took route? When was the last time we were at work?  

[00:01:26] AT: It was what? March 12th to 13th. Something like that. Yeah.   

[00:01:31] NC: Mid-March. It was a week full of children’s programs, right? Children’s or young adult programs. Our big challenges that week, we’re keeping all the books straight. Got this book for this program and transferring bowings in and out of this part and that part and just – 

[00:01:51] AT: I think there were three different concert masters playing the same solos. That was a challenge too.  

[00:01:57] NC: Was one of them you? 

[00:01:59] AT: I was sitting next to all of them, I think. 

[00:02:01] NC: Oh, okay. 

[00:02:01] AT: I was not one of them. But yeah, I was trying to make myself useful.  

[00:02:07] NC: I do remember stressing about a solo. Yeah, it’s one of those weird – Something like when you’re a kid, some assignment is due and you pay for a snow day or some fake disaster call the next day that would spare you from having to go in.  

[00:02:22] AT: Here now, you got like a snow year.  

[00:02:24] NC: Yeah, unfortunately. I mean, who knew that that would be the last day there. I really haven’t been back at the hall. I know you haven’t. I’m sure it won’t come as a surprise that for the next couple of weeks, because it started to sync in, I mean, I’m not sure that I took the violin much out of the case. I had been practicing a lot actually right up until that moment and it came to a screeching halt and then I just didn’t want to play at all.  

[00:02:53] AT: Yeah. It was strange. I had somehow injured myself. I think we’ve been doing a lot of like the Ives and Dvořák on the regular subscription concerts. I forget why. I sort of felt like I was susceptible and maybe I wasn’t doing enough individual practice and I was like playing maybe kind of without paying super close attention to my technique.  

[00:03:21] NC: Well, it was that point in the season too, where athletes always have that point in a basketball season right around March, April.  

[00:03:29] AT: Right. Everyone’s got something going on.  

[00:03:31] NC: Yeah, dings and I think we have that too. I often notice by March or April. It’s just been a lot of weeks in a row, and the little things start adding up. 

[00:03:44] AT: And we had extra stuff too that we were playing some kind of extra concerts. Yeah, I don’t know. Yeah. I mean, of course we’re getting – we, I’m getting older.   

[00:03:53] NC: Well, I think I am too.  

[00:03:55] AT: I guess we’re all getting older. It’s becoming more significant. Yeah, I’m just starting to notice a little more wear and tear. That was happening then for me. Maybe not so much for you, but yeah, I immediately just did not play for two weeks because my wrist really hurt. My right wrist. I have to be careful not to say that I was grateful to have a little time to recover, because it’s been such a horrible, horrible thing that’s happened to everybody in the entire world, which is it’s crazy. Nobody wants to say that somehow there were silver linings.   

[00:04:29] NC: Well, me too. I thought, “Okay, it’s been kind of a pain to do all these practicing. I’m going to appreciate a few days off, maybe.” 

[00:04:39] AT: Yeah. I guess we also didn’t know what the scope of it was going to be so much. There’s that. At first it was like, “Hey, we can hang out with our kids more.” Yeah, just sort of appreciate life getting slow, like really slow. But eventually we did feel the urge to the feel a little bit normal I think. Then we picked up our instruments again, and I fortunately at point had recovered from that problem, and then another problem came up from practicing. But we’ll get into that.  

[00:05:12] NC: Yeah. What’s the first thing you remember playing again after – I mean, was it about two weeks? That’s what I remember.  

[00:05:18] AT: It was about two weeks. Then I think at that point, it was starting to become obvious that was going to be long. I think it was going to be at least a couple months away from work. Then I feel I wanted people to be able to see LA Phil people playing. So they put out a call for some videos, and I thought – I mean, I think you took a little convincing, but I thought wouldn’t it be nice to take advantage of having two violinists in the same house and doing some cool violin duo repertoire? A lot of that is very technical. I thought that might be a nice chance for me to work on a side of my playing that I am usually really not confident about, which is sort of just fun, technical playing.   

[00:05:59] NC: It amazes me.  

[00:06:02] AT: I mean, it’s just not – It hasn’t really been my thing. But it’s been back on my mind that I want to do some duo stuff with you, and it just felt almost like a little opportunity to finally do that.  

[00:06:13] NC: Yeah, it really was. That made me get the violin back out and try to brush those things up. Yeah, you were alluding to the fact that we both sort of seem to reinjure ourselves a little bit. I think we’re very enthusiastic about playing that Wieniawski. 

[00:06:29] AT: Oh! So silly. Well, it just goes to show you. I don’t think of myself as a very technical player. Then the first time I try to really work up something technical, then I injured myself. It’s like great. Because I was right.  

[00:06:42] NC: Well, so neither of us seems to permanently hurt. But I think we’re just – We’re sore for a little bit.  

[00:06:51] AT: I think you pair that with like my sad attempts at home fitness. I think that created home physical fitness combined with home violin fitness, and that was kind of a potent formula for injuring myself.  

[00:07:08] NC: Well, almost every time I have gotten hurt, I think it has always been a combination of doing something physical that I’m not quite used to and then a lot of playing at the same time.  

[00:07:19] AT: Yeah. One time we were moving, and so you were lifting a lot of heavy stuff and moving around and you’re practicing a bunch of – yeah, you were working up like I think a solo recital, something like Paganini and stuff. Then you were out of work for like two months. 

[00:07:35] NC: That’s the only time I’ve really missed an extended stretch of work. Yeah, it’s always like that. During this time, everybody’s routine is different, right? We’re seeing a lot more, the kids — I’m picking up the kids more playing with things a lot closer to the ground. I feel like my back has gotten weird from time to time.  

[00:07:55] AT: Oh yeah. I spent a lot of time like in a 90 degree angle. 

[00:08:00] NC: Picking up Legos.  

[00:08:01] AT: Like bent in half just like picking things up. They always say, “Oh! You should make your kids do it.” It’s like, “You know what? It’s just so exhausting telling them to.” Like the job that they do is not their own.  

[00:08:14] NC: Easier just to do it yourself. 

[00:08:16] AT: Yeah. If I don’t want to step on a Lego, then I better pick it up myself.  

[00:08:20] NC: But I have to say, it felt great to do that Wieniawski. I mean, first of all, it was really fun to play it with you. We should say what it was that we played. Is it Opus 18? I can’t – Anyway, it’s the set of A to Caprice’s. And there are 8 of them, 8 of them or 10 of them, but a few that seem to be more famous than the rest. We did a couple of the better note ones. There’s a really fast one, number 4 in A minor that we did, and then we did also number 2. That’s in E flat. Yeah, it was really fun to play those with you and nice. Because the idea was not just to audio record, but to get a video as well.  

[00:09:07] AT: Right, which was tricky for a number of reasons. Because like I don’t know if I’d rather – I mean, like in the audio, then you’re really focusing on the sound because you know the picture. But then the picture, I was a little freaked about, because first of all, speaking of home fitness, it hasn’t been happening as much as I might hope. Yeah, I felt like I was going to surprise people with how like much weight I gained or something. Anyway –  

[00:09:39] NC: If you looked any different at all. 

[00:09:39] AT: Yeah. I mean, all these like little weird insecurities about the video. I was glad that we did it and I won’t look at it because – I still haven’t watched it.  

[00:09:51] NC: Oh! That’s right. Yeah, you never watch, and I had to watch it. I mean, it was a pleasure, but anytime you’re watching and listening to your own playing, there’s a lot of pain too. I have to watch that 20 times to put the shots together. You hear one of your out of tune notes, you hear it once, and it’s sort of pains you. But when you have to listen to it 25 times in a row to get a shot cut just right. It’s like even the stuff that’s in-tune starts sounding wrong to you. You just have to finish the job and pick up – 

[00:10:28] AT: Yeah. I’m not going to be watching that anytime soon.  

[00:10:30] NC: But you sounded great. 

[00:10:32] AT: Thank you. I’ll have to take your word for it. But then I kind of felt like it’d be fun to record other stuff. There’s more violin duos maybe we could think about maybe with less technical ones. There’s Leclair ones that are really pretty. But then part of me is like dying to – This is something that’s happened  during – You notice so many things about your playing in this situation because you’re finally playing by yourself a lot only basically.  

[00:11:02] NC: We always complain about that, how an orchestra, “Oh! I can never hear myself.” Now, all that you can do – 

[00:11:07] AT: That’s kind of amazing. I was reading something in the New York Times about how there was a joke among Broadway performs that they’re all going to come back and really like well-rested and in good shape.  

[00:11:20] NC: Oh, yeah.  

[00:11:20] AT: I was like, “Yeah, you could say the same thing about us. I mean, everyone is practicing a ton at home. Just kind of incredible. Not to say that we don’t normally, but it is easy to get caught up in the everyday of playing an ensemble. Then to be able to, on a really regular basis, reacquaint yourself with your own playing is kind of amazing.   

[00:11:43] NC: It’s gone somewhat in streaks too, right? I mean, there have been stretches where you or I, or both of us, have played a lot. Then other weeks where it’s a little more slack. Because you don’t want to – There was that time when nobody was playing right in the beginning, and then all of a sudden it seemed like everyone had all these energy and everyone was putting up all these videos and concepts and then you’re like, “Oh! Now I’ve got to practice all the time.”  

[00:12:09] AT: Yeah. That gave me the courage to make a video, because people were like, “There are so many videos right now that no one will even see yours.” I was like, “That’s what I needed to hear. Thank you.” 

[00:12:19] NC: Then you sort of mentally you have a backlash that like, “This is silly! I’m not going to practice and play stuff just because everybody is and everybody expects it.” It’s like this rapid back and forth pendulum. 

[00:12:35] AT: Yeah. I mean the fact is that we have to keep up our playing.  

[00:12:39] NC: Yeah, because there’s always that fear of if you don’t, will it come back when you need it?  

[00:12:46] AT: Yeah. Like I said, I am getting older and I think I’ve had some lucky escapes where like I can play in the past. I didn’t play for a while and I came back. Yeah, it’s still there.  

[00:12:58] NC: Still got it.  

[00:12:57] AT: One of these days, I’m going to come back and it will still be there. That’s – Keep track. 

[00:13:02] NC: I’m going to guess that far in the future for you.  

[00:13:06] AT: You never know.  

[00:13:07] NC: Well, what else have we been doing musically since then? I mean, I’ve had a number of my own online projects. I think it was right after or right around the same time that we’re playing Wieniawski, and it was good that I had to get in good shape for that because I decided to do some Bach, and that’s not original because so many people have played and recorded and streamed Bach and all that. I wanted to do it from a teaching standpoint primarily. I called the series Bach on the road. Basically, every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for six weeks, got on live on Facebook and YouTube, and every week, looked at a different sonata or partita. In the six weeks, did all of them. I didn’t do a complete performance of every moment. I think for at least three of four of the pieces I eventually play, I did complete play throughs of the movements. But the main thing was to take people through them and come in pitfalls and how to prepare and all that. All that’s on YouTube if you want to check out Bach on the road.  

The sort of silly idea with that was I was imagining that Bach – I call it that because I imagine that Back secretly toured the world with these compositions and played them himself even though, as far we know, he never even left Germany. Using my fantastic green screen technology, I was in a different city. So managed to go all the way around the globe over the course of the 18 sessions.  

[00:14:46] AT: That’s amazing. It is.  

[00:14:48] NC: Certainly amazingly weird. People are like, “Wait are you in Azerbaijan right now now?”  

[00:14:55] AT: I mean, nobody wants to watch something that’s already been done many times.  

[00:15:01] NC: Yeah. It was a really fun crowd actually, because they were real Bach on the road regulars. It was nice to spend time with them them. Some great questions and discussion and all that, especially about tuning, because that’s – I mean, that’s one of the hardest things, in general, about playing the violin, but especially when you got all those double stops and chords in the Bach.  

[00:15:23] AT: Remember my story about how I chose my one Bach movement from my audition?  

[00:15:28] NC: No. 

[00:15:28] AT: It had to be something without a ton of double stop, without a lot of chords and also without a lot of fast notes.  

[00:15:35] NC: When was it?   

[00:15:36] AT: Didn’t leave a lot of options. I went with the slow movement of C major sonata.  

[00:15:42] NC: Yeah, that’s so beautiful though. 

[00:15:44] AT: Of course, it’s beautiful. Yeah, it was amazing to me that you’re out there in the garage recording this. Because yeah, I mean, that just takes a lot of confidence and technique. It’s not easy at all. But yeah, and I would love to – I think in the pandemic, I think we’re – Or I, personally, I’m really focusing on repertoire that I don’t normally do in Bach is definitely one of those things, because you can play it by yourself. To have an amazing, fulfilling musical experience on your own, it’s a nice remember. We don’t have to be in an orchestra to make great music. 

[00:16:22] NC: Yeah. That has been a great reminder, also a reminder of just how great that music is. I suppose you probably won’t find too many people disagree that Bach is great. Even you mentioned Leclair. We’re reading some duos by Ludwig Spohr, and those were really fun.  

[00:16:42] AT: They are. Yaeh.  

[00:16:44] NC: Whether that’s something we’ll record that or the Leclaire. We’ll have to see. It’s a big bonus to have two violins in the house. I mean, I think the only thing that could match that would be a solo instrument and piano. 

[00:16:58] AT: Yeah. That would be awesome.  

[00:16:59] NC: But two violins. Yeah, I feel lucky. It’s not everybody that can record with not just podcasts.   

[00:17:08] AT: Yeah. It was nice. I feel like if you’re listening regularly to us, it’s nice to finally to have – You have tons of recordings out there that people are going to watch, listen to. I feel glad that I have something a little out there to pull up on YouTube.  

[00:17:28] NC: Yeah. People love watching and listening to you. 

[00:17:31] AT: Yeah. Your voice is one thing, but violinists – 

[00:17:35] NC: I think, yeah. I can’t decide which annoys people more. My voice, or my playing. I make sure to put plenty of both out there.  

[00:17:45] AT: Yeah. I think it’d be nice to do a little bit more of that.  

[00:17:50] NC: Yeah. Okay. Let’s do it. I’m saying it publicly here.  

[00:17:53] AT: All right. We’re going to it.  

[00:17:55] NC: Actually, the main focus of today’s episode is going to be to answer a lot of listener questions, or as many as we can get to. In fact, we thought that would be a great way to spend the next few episodes, because I’ve been spending some quality time with a lot of folks online in various programs that I’m running. There are a lot of questions that I just can’t get to in the depth that I would like to. We’re going to do some of that today. Did you have some more thoughts about just – our current situation before we get to those?  

[00:18:33] AT: No. I think just talking about the kind of repertoire you’ve been able to do and what we’ve been doing. I think sometimes people will come up to me like, “What have you been doing?” With a tone of voice that implies there’s not that much to do.   

[00:18:48] NC: Yeah, right. You mean because the orchestra isn’t playing.  

[00:18:49] AT: Yeah, and it always amazes me. It’s like my kids are at home. It’s been nice being with the kids and reading, and like everybody else, we’ve been cooking and baking. 

[00:19:02] NC: Right, and fighting along with everyone else to get flour and yeast.  

[00:19:07] AT: Yeah. That’s a little bit easier now maybe. That was kind of crazy for a while.  

[00:19:12] NC: Yeah. First few trips to the store, because I mean we do a fair amount of cooking under normal circumstances anyways. We’re in the grocery store every couple of days. Those first couple of times were a shock.  

[00:19:27] AT: Yeah. I remember the trip to Trader Joe’s right before this all just shot down, and there were tons of us. Just the line went all the way back to the back of the store.  

[00:19:37] NC: Yeah. 

[00:19:39] AT: I hated myself for becoming one of those people. I started throwing random things into my cart.  

[00:19:43] NC: Not just the Jojos, but the – 

[00:19:46] AT: No. I didn’t get the Jojos. What was I thinking? I should have gotten the Jojos. But I don’t know, like frozen vegetables – I don’t know. Things we don’t normally get. People were just taking and putting in their – It’s funny. I don’t know. The human reaction to crisis is –  

[00:20:04] NC: Well, that’s like the time that, in Chicago, you went to the famous running of the brides. What was the name of that bridal shop?  

[00:20:12] AT: No. It was [inaudible 00:20:13]. 

[00:20:14] NC: [inaudible 00:20:14]. But is that what they call it? The running of the brides?  

[00:20:17] AT: I think.  

[00:20:18] NC: You had to show up at 6AM. 

[00:20:21] AT: 6AM. Well, that was when the doors opened, I think.  

[00:20:24] NC: Okay. You have to show up.  

[00:20:24] AT: Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they opened up like 7. Yeah. I showed up at 6, and it was already like a line around the block.  

[00:20:30] NC: The point of it was it was like a once a year clearance sale on wedding dresses. Was that it? 

[00:20:35] AT: There are stories about somebody getting like a $5,000 wedding dress for like $200 or something.  

[00:20:43] NC: Okay. But you said the way people did it, so they worked in groups or like gangs even. 

[00:20:47] AT: If you were serious about it, you had to bring a team.  

[00:20:49] NC: You said people would just grab a handful of whatever. 

[00:20:53] AT: Yeah.  

[00:20:54] NC: Was closest at hand. Then they could kind of sit on their bounty and then they would trade with other – 

[00:21:00] AT: Because it was valuable for trading. Yeah. 

[00:21:02] NC: Okay. 

[00:21:02] AT: So it didn’t matter if it wasn’t your size. You just – People, members of your team. They will be a member of your team that would help you find your size. But the rest of the members of your team would be just snatching whatever they could so that they could – it was pretty crazy. It didn’t do the female members of the human race a lot of credit.  

[00:21:26] NC: Yeah. Luckily the situation didn’t get to that. Well, maybe the online videos are going to get like that too, fighting over who gets to record the Chacon.  

[00:21:36] AT: I was thinking that, because I wanted to record Chacon and I was like, “Gees! What if I get it all ready to go?”  

[00:21:44] NC: It’s already been hoarded.  

[00:21:44] AT: Then the day I send it in, like it already goes up with somebody else I don’t know. Feel terrible. 

[00:21:52] NC: There’s room for everybody.  

[00:21:54] AT: Bach hoarding.  

[00:21:56] NC: My rendition of it is certainly not going to take any space away from yours. Well, are you ready and willing to get some listener questions? 

[00:22:07] AT: Yeah, I love questions.  

[00:22:09] NC: Yeah, and the first few of these. Where these come from, because the other major project after Bach on the road was done – I decided to do something called the ‘violympics’, and that has just pretty much just started actually. We’re in the third week of a 12-week ‘violympic’ games. But a few weeks before that, I did the trials. Instead of the Olympic trials, these were the violympic trials, and I wrote a little piece that everyone was going to have to learn if they’re going to participate. They had to learn this little dinky piece in five days and actually record it. Every one of those five days, I was going to show up live and help people through it.  

At the end of that, we had a kind of a wrap party and just spent some time kind of going over what we learned, and I took some questions then, but then there were many questions in the chat that I couldn’t possibly get to. These are some of those with names attached when I have names, and my thought is that as we put out more episodes, we can just get to more of those questions, because there are such good ones, and they’re for me and for you.  

Darlene actually asked, “How are you staying motivated right now with the LA Phil not performing?” I think you’ve already touched on that quite a bit. But let’s say worst comes to worst and the LA Phil doesn’t perform for month and months and months, or the rest of this calendar year. How are we going to stay motivated?  

[00:23:45] AT: Yeah. That will be a tough one. I mean, and this thing has changed on every level so quickly from day-to-day and month-to-month. Like we said at the beginning, “Oh! This is just between us a nice little break,” and then it became like, “Okay. Well, this is going to be more than that, and better start doing something.”  

I think the answer right now is kind of like, “Well, I guess we’ll keep trying to record things together, play things together and stay in shape on our own.” I think it’s the best motivation. I mean, I think it is scary to think of coming back together. I think we’ve all changed. I think it’s going to be such a substantial amount of time that we all would have changed in a lot of ways. That will be the challenge.   

[00:24:35] NC: Yeah. Do you think fear, is it all a motivation? I mean, you were mentioning this before too, like if I don’t keep improving or working, then what’s going to happen?   

[00:24:45] AT: Yeah. I mean, part of me thinks like everyone is at home practicing their asses off. I got to keep up. Everyone’s getting better and here I am picking up Legos. Get to it.   

[00:24:56] NC: Well. I mean, it’s not just to compete, right? I mean, there’s a pride as well. You want to feel like, for better or worse, I mean, our whole lives I think so much of our self-worth is wrapped up in how we play. I don’t know that that’s healthy or right, but it’s inescapable anyway. Since it’s always been a part of who we are, it’s hard to let go of that.  

[00:25:26] AT: Yeah, it is. But it is reassuring to know that orchestra or no orchestra, we’re still musicians.  

[00:25:31] NC: Yeah. That has been a great reminder, and I hope that that stays even when we do come back together. Maybe everybody has a little bit more that awareness than, “Hey, we’re not just cogs in a machine, but each of us has their own voice.” Maybe using that voice will actually enhance the group, the group sound.  

[00:25:54] AT: This is probably the longest we’ve – I mean, other than maternity leave for me, I suppose. I mean, we haven’t played in an orchestra in our lives, since we started playing.  

[00:26:05] NC: Oh, yeah. Definitely. Yeah.   

[00:26:07] AT: It’s crazy.  

[00:26:08] NC: I would say ever since I was maybe 10 years old.  

[00:26:11] AT: Yeah. That’s really weird.  

[00:26:14] NC: Yeah. That first time back will be strange whenever that happens, and whatever the piece is I’m sure I’ll always remember what it is.  

[00:26:23] AT: It will be like Beethoven 9 or something. Start taking bets. It’s got to be Ode to Joy.  

[00:26:30] NC: Here’s an interesting question. I don’t have a name for who asked this, but this could be a tough one. Advice for pre-professional musicians who are between graduation and a career now that there are no public concerts or auditions. I mean, wow! Can you imagine if that was your last year in music school and it basically ended in March? Now, that’s it. I mean, if that had been me, my last year at Curtis, I would not have been able to take the audition in May that gave me my first job. At that point, I was thinking I don’t want to do more school. I just want to get out there and play. Would  I’ve kept trying to live in Philly? Would I have moved back home to Kentucky? I really have no idea. 

[00:27:21] AT: I’m sure you’d be at home. I mean, where else would you go?  

[00:27:25] NC: Right. And then what? I mean, I might have been able to keep taking lessons with my old teacher, Dan Mason, which would have been a good thing. I might have found myself with – 

[00:27:36] AT: Maybe it would have been like awesome. Maybe your whole life would have been better.  

[00:27:40] NC: Yeah.  

[00:27:43] AT: Personally, I always think that I – well, I missed out on kind of a chunk of learning years and have that impostor syndrome thing going on, because I went to grad school and I had this great teacher, but I felt like, basically, at that point, I was like I’m going to get an orchestra job. So the actual business of becoming a stronger musician wasn’t really the main point.  

I mean, let’s just say theoretically, that could have – It could have been the time when that would happen. Maybe what I’m doing now in a much earlier form where you’re trying to identify – You have to think about the one thing you have now, which is time, and to identify the things that you wish were different about your playing for me now. I wish I were just more technically confident. I wish I could just get out there and knockout, I would say, a Paganini Caprice, but not even that. I wish I could just get up and knockout a movement of solo Bach, like something fast or challenging and just do it with confidence and with just feeling like it was like old hat.  

[00:29:00] NC: You’re saying the fact that there are no performances or auditions now, just take that. Look only at the good side of that and say, “Okay, I’m out of public view for a little bit. I could reinvent.” 

[00:29:11] AT: Yeah. I mean, I think most of us have something that we wish we could add to our portfolio, and it sucks that there’s not more options for what to do, but that I think is a huge thing to become more confident as a player. Is there anything better? I don’t think. 

[00:29:34] NC: Well, I was just reading an article, which makes a lot of sense. I mean, it was about a business, but basically saying that the unfortunate reality is that a lot of companies won’t survive this time or won’t survive in their current form. But the ones that have the means and the resources to actually invest during this time, that it will pay off really bit, and it’s not all companies that we would maybe with to get bigger and more successful. But companies like Apple and Facebook, they’re buying up assets left and right in the hopes that when this is done, they’ll be in a better position. For those players who can basically make that investment of time and work now, it will pay off.  

[00:30:21] AT: Yeah. I say that it is not everybody who’s going to have the luxury of just being able to use this time for personal development. I don’t mean to sound glib or callous, like everyone should just sit at home practicing.  

[00:30:38] NC: Right. No. I mean, that’s not what we do. I think we’ve had our times of doing that, our times of picking up the house and cooking and whatnot.  

[00:30:48] AT: You’d be surprised how little time picking up the house takes – 

[00:30:52] NC: You’re casting an eye around right now.  

[00:30:54] AT: Not because it’s so immaculate in here.  

[00:30:57] NC: No. I think that’s great advice. Just to turn it a little bit in a more specific direction, Simon had asked, for someone who knows they want to become a professional in an orchestra, which qualities – I think this refers more to personal qualities, which qualities are the most important and would set you up for long term success in an orchestral career?   

[00:31:22] AT: Personal qualities, do you think? 

[00:31:24] NC: We could branch out to playing qualities too, but this seems more like how to succeed in the job rather than how to win a job. 

[00:31:32] AT: Right. I mean, obviously, to be someone without a positive outlook in general is pretty invaluable I think. I think the people who have the hardest time are those people who don’t have that naturally.  

[00:31:47] NC: Yeah, that’s a good point, because I don’t know how it seems from the outside. If it seems like it’s always fun to play in an orchestra. I mean, if you’ve been listening to our show for a while, we try to give the unvarnished view and you know that it’s not all peaches and cream. 

[00:32:07] AT: And sunshine. I think the other thing I think is that you – If you see the job as a means to an end, that end being security. It’s ironic I’m saying that now, because for the least secure time for orchestras. But I think if you’re just happy that you know what you’re getting out of it. You’re going to have stability. You’re going to know what you’re doing a year from now.  

[00:32:34] NC: All the things we don’t know already yet. 

[00:32:35] AT: Again, things we don’t have right now. But I think that if you don’t look deeper into it, then that sounds bad in some ways. If you realize that you’re going to find your satisfaction in a lot of ways, and you don’t expect to find all your satisfaction at your workplace.  

[00:32:53] NC: Right. No. That’s a good – 

[00:32:55] AT: It’s probably for any profession. I know. 

[00:32:58] NC: Yeah, professions and also – I mean, I remember people giving that advice about marriage and kids too. It’s like you can’t – 

[00:33:04] AT: True. Or just your relationship with anybody. The more you expect from people or things, like the less satisfied I think you’re going to be. We’re not really turning this into the meaning of life here, but I think you would have to tell yourself that that’s going to have to be the way it is. Because I think that least people are the ones who keep thinking that maybe the job is going to surprise them. You just have to tell yourself, there are very few surprises, and that’s good and bad.   

[00:33:35] NC: Yeah. I mean, the musical surprises maybe the best of all, like the only way to play Mahler 5 is if you’re playing in a big orchestra. I don’t mean that it has to be a full-time professional orchestra, but that’s an experience that you can’t just conjure up for yourself. It has to be in that context. If you like doing that all the time, then that’s the reason to try to join an orchestra.  

[00:34:06] AT: I think, yeah. If you tell yourself the satisfactions will sometimes be on that level, like you’ll take them home with you and it won’t necessarily something that other people are going to notice. You’re just going to know it yourself.  

[00:34:20] NC: Right.  

[00:34:21] AT: That kind of person would be happiest, I think someone who’s generally optimistic, realistic expectations and just gets a lot of personal satisfaction from playing.  

[00:34:33] NC: Maybe, or someone who decides that their entire worth is going to be wrapped up in the fact that they’re a member of whatever orchestra.  

[00:34:41] AT: That’s true.  

[00:34:42] NC: If you can just decide that – 

[00:34:43] AT: If you’re just so happy to be in an orchestra. That happens. 

[00:34:50] NC: Yeah.  

[00:34:51] AT: That’s just enough for you. You’re just so glad to have that.  

[00:34:55] NC: I think that’s how most of us start, right? I mean, that’s how I – I just figured like, “Wow! I’m a member of this great team now and that’s – What’s going to be better than that? Why would I ever want more? Surprise! I wanted more.  

[00:35:13] AT: And that happens too. I think that’s sending yourself up for long-term happiness if you can do all those things. 

[00:35:23] NC: Yeah. Well, here’s another good one. This is trending more towards some of the projects that we’ve done during this time, like this one. How does one silence the little voice in one’s head that keeps pointing out the mistakes while trying to record?  

[00:35:39] AT: While trying to record. 

[00:35:41] NC: I mean, we could maybe extend that to say while performing too. 

[00:35:44] AT: That’s hard. It’s weird. While performing. We talk about this all the time, and you have like an actual system to silence that voice.   

[00:35:56] NC: Really? What is it? Because I seem to have forgotten. 

[00:35:58] AT: No. I mean, because – It doesn’t go back to when you first read The Inner Game of Golf, right? 

[00:36:06] NC: Well, yeah. I mean, where he kind of breaks it down into two people, self-one and self-two.  

[00:36:12] AT: Right. I think I even – I’ve been reading this Trotsky biography like kind of pestering you with these little point about bolshevism and menshevism, and meanwhile I can’t even sort self-one from self-two in the inner game of golf. I think maybe Trotsky maybe a little bit beyond me. But yeah. I mean, it’s a huge. The little voice is a huge problem, especially for someone who works like me. I think we’ve talked about this before. My style of playing and working – my style of practicing is extremely criticism-based. I don’t actually have a system. I just play something and I go, “That sounds terrible, or that sounds okay, or I think I’d do better.” It’s like a whole bit. It’s like this very emotional set up I have for myself. It’s so easy to just – Like today, I had a bad day practicing, and like, “Argh!” Do I know why? No. Not really. It’s like I just – I felt bad, and nothing sounded good.  

I mean, you have those days too, but you are much more like systematic about it. When I work with Noa Kageyama, who helped coached me for auditions and stuff. We talked about the voice that you have trouble silencing, and like one of his things is you have to keep your mind occupied so that the little voice doesn’t have time to drown-out. You keep your mind occupied on something non-judgmental basically, right?  

[00:37:50] NC: Yeah.  

[00:37:51] AT: Again, since I can’t even handle clearly recollecting his advice. I’m not sure that the particulars of the Russian Revolution are destined to stay in my brain. But yeah, something like that. It’s like you have to keep focused on something constructive in order to silence the useless voice.  

Because the problem is, of course, when you’re practicing that voice, there’s a function. Then when you’re performing, it’s not useful, because you can’t fix anything. It’s done. It’s out there. That voice becomes 100% not useful. Whereas in your practice room, it was like super useful. Yeah, I mean, that’s something you have to work out. Although recording, I have to say, in my limited experience when we did the video, I was surprised I was not more critical.  

[00:38:44] NC: Was it just the awareness of, “Look, you get to do this a few times,” and just having that pressure of you got to take two or a take whatever, did that really take the pressure off for you?  

[00:38:59] AT: It did, and I found that I was enjoying myself. I didn’t have to worry the things that I normally worry about in performance. Yeah, like not being able to stop or – I think the not being able to stop is a big one in a performance, a live performance. That is completely taken away in a recording, especially we’re not talking about we’re not in a recording studio. There’s not a bunch of engineers. You’re not wasting their time. This is kind of the ideal set up, because we’ve got home recording stuff. It’s true, we don’t have all day, because we’ve got kids, we’ve got other things to do. But the fact is I’m not wasting anybody’s time. I think that that made the recording lower pressure, obviously, than a performance.  

[00:39:44] NC: Yeah. I mean, that’s great. Certainly, Glenn Gould, for him, it wasn’t night and day. He just simply stopped performing in front of people because it was such a completely different experience. I guess I don’t – it’s different. I might still prefer performing in front of people I guess because I know there’s no take two. Whatever happens happens, and that’s that.  

[00:40:15] AT: Yeah. I experienced a little bit of that in a very small way. We recorded it and then we’d played it on somebody’s porch.  

[00:40:22] NC: Right. A week or two later.  

[00:40:22] AT: A couple of week later. We didn’t practice in the interim. We just sort of let it sit there. Yeah, we’re on someone’s porch. So no big deal. I felt that. I felt it was fun. I didn’t have to worry if there was a scratch on something we were playing. It was just like, “I’m going to just go for this. The spirit will come across and the actual details are going to be forgotten.” It will just be people remember that it was fun or whatever. I get what you’re saying. The impression is what matters in the performance, not the excruciating little details.  

[00:40:57] NC: I think to the original question. I mean, if you’re talking about – it sounds like during this time, we’re talking about self-recording, home recording, and that is just – ah, I wish I could remember who I was talking to who’s had a lot of experience recording commercial albums. Oh! It was Gil Shaham. Sorry. Just some guy.   

[00:41:19] AT: That guy. 

[00:41:20] NC: No. And he was really reminding me. He said with the way that a recording comes out, a CD, when you’re talking about the highest standards, and obviously Gil Shaham can play at those highest standards and all of that. But even so, he was saying the final product really is an equal collaboration between the performer and the engineer, the people making the disk, making the recording. We’re human. We’re going to make mistakes. Those professional CDs come with a lot of professional support.  

Again, not to say that he could slack off and not do his homework and all that, but it’s a completely different animal. If you’re trying to record yourself and keep all the plates spinning yourself, you just – it’s kind of foolhardy to think that you’re going to get perfection, because it takes a team to dot all those ‘I’s and cross all those ‘T’s. You have to be patient with yourself. Allow for some human error, I think.   

[00:42:27] AT: Yeah, comfortable. Do whatever you had to do. That’s the beauty of being at home. You can just stay there wearing your favorite fuzzy socks while you record. I guess your ankles aren’t showing. Yeah.  

[00:42:42] NC: Let’s have one more that applies to this time and then also to a more sort of normal work time. Then I think we’ve got a bunch of rapid fire sort of violin type questions.  

[00:42:55] AT: Free association.  

[00:42:56] NC: This one is how do you – and this is interestingly phrased. How do you protect your relationship, your joy with your violin playing from the pressure of doing it for a living?  

[00:43:08] AT: That’s a really good question.  

[00:43:09] NC: Yeah. Unfortunately I don’t have a name with that question.  

[00:43:14] AT: Yeah. It’s a tough one.  

[00:43:16] NC: Because it’s true. I mean, what you’re asking, I think, is at what point does the pressure, the grind of the job make it seem like, “Ah, this is just isn’t fun anymore. I don’t care how good the music is. I can’t see these people anymore.”  

[00:43:37] AT: I think it’s less that the waking up one day and realizing I haven’t chosen what I wanted to play in like as long as I can remember. I mean, I think every week if you’re somehow lucky enough to be just playing a repertoire you love, you feel great. I think there’s a lot of exhilaration that goes to that. I think that if you’ve realized after a while, I think probably everybody, when they do this job for long enough you go, “You know what? I miss playing this or that. I don’t feel like I’m using my skills enough playing X or Y.” And enough of that I think starts to erode the joy of playing.   

[00:44:27] NC: Erode to joy. Sorry.  

[00:44:32] AT: Yeah. I think that – Everybody says this. You have to have projects of your own choosing, because I think that the disappearance of freewill is what ultimately will really destroy joy. Freewill in whatever form, as a player, I think that’s probably pretty essential.  

[00:44:56] NC: Yeah. We’re in agreement. I was going to say the same thing as outside projects.  

[00:45:01] AT: I mean, everybody. It’s such a cliché. I mean, like – I think when I first started working, it was like, “Make sure –” You’re going to have to make sure you do a lot of chamber music, because that’s how you’ll stave off the satisfaction.  

[00:45:15] NC: Yeah. I remember hearing that.  

[00:45:16] AT: And you’re like, “Yeah.”  

[00:45:17] NC: I was like, “Yeah. I played chamber music.” Then you don’t realize you take it for granted. You’re like, “Well, you may go years –” 

[00:45:23] AT: Well. I mean, but it has to be chamber music with people that you really love playing with, and that’s very tricky. Because if you just say yes to everything that comes your way, that’s not going to spark joy. It’s not going to Marie Kondo your musical life or anything. You need to be with like people you really respect and trust, and that’s a rare thing even for people who are full-time chamber musicians to find these people.  

[00:45:53] NC: And because that’s really not – I mean, just to talk specifically about orchestra. The same skills that are essential in a full-time professional chamber group are not the same skills necessary to be successful full-time in an orchestra year after year after year. If all of the chamber music you’re playing is with other members in your orchestra, your first priority really is to preserve that professional relationship in the orchestra, because that’s what you’re going to have year after year.  

What that means is if you’re in a string quartet for one week or two weeks with people in the orchestra, it’s not really wise to get in a bunch of shouting matches about retards in a Beethoven quarter.  

[00:46:41] AT: Well, that’s never really become an issue, right? I mean, I don’t remember ever getting in a – 

[00:46:46] NC: Well, because I think you and I tend to look at the job in a similar way.  

[00:46:49] AT: Oh! You mean Chicago. No names. Right. 

[00:46:56] NC: Yeah. No. Because it’s so easy to happen. You’re playing a piece that you love and you don’t want to give up your ideas. Then it’s like, “Oh, wait. Once this Beethoven quartet is done, I’m going to have to sit with this person for 20 more years,” and we’re not going to have any choice about how we play things. We’re just going to have to agree on how to turn pages and who gets how much space in front of the stand.  

[00:47:22] AT: Right. Since you – Fortunately, you’re my favorite violinist to play chamber music with. I don’t want to ask you if it works the other way, but – 

[00:47:32] NC: Absolutely, and you have all kinds of holds over me.  

[00:47:36] AT: Right. So you had to say that. But yeah. So we have to think not only should we not get into an argument about this dynamic, because I’m going to sit next to this person at work. It’s like I’m also going to sleep next to this person at night.  

[00:47:50] NC: Yup.  

[00:47:52] AT: That’s complicated, but it’s a long answer to the question. I mean, I think projects of your own choosing, whatever that means. Exercising your ability to choose what you want to play. Chamber music doesn’t always mean that, because sometimes people just come to you and you didn’t choose that piece. But maybe there’s so much great music out there. New music too, if that’s your – if you just love new music, then make sure that you get out there and you’re doing that. Otherwise, I think, like I said eventually, if you’re the kind of person who starts to chafe at being told what to do because that is most of an orchestral musician’s life is being told what to do. That’s how terrible in some ways, and I don’t mean it in a bad way.   

[00:48:37] NC: That’s reality.  

[00:48:38] AT: Yeah. You balance that with deciding what you want to do. Then I think that will preserver some semblance of joy in your life.  

[00:48:46] NC: Yeah. Yeah, that’s a great way to think of it.  

[00:48:48] AT: Also, here’s a note. Sorry. Sub-answer. I think your friendships, that sounds cheesy. I think you’re not just playing with people you respect in the orchestra. I think you’re spending time with them and that’s certainly for us been a huge part of being happy. Work is just looking around knowing there are likeminded people sitting, and it can be as simple as just being able to eye contact with someone across the stage because you know they’re thinking what you’re thinking. I have that so much with Johnny.  

I’ll just say it. With Johnny, our friend, who has been on the podcast, who often sits across from us in the second violins, and I’m just looking over at him and somehow that – That can make an entire day fun just to – And then say, “Yeah, I was thinking that too.” Making sure you’re not shutdown. You’ve developed your social circle outside of playing even. It’s going to be huge and only more so as you get older.  

[00:49:54] NC: Well, I remember talking to my grandpa who was in the Philadelphia Orchestra back 40s through the 60s, and yeah, the musical stories always seemed to morph into the personal stories. He rarely would dwell on this or that piece or musical moment. It was always what someone did on the break or what someone did on the train or – 

[00:50:20] AT: They had so much more togetherness than we ever – the nine-week tours?  

[00:50:27] NC: Yeah.  

[00:50:28] AT: Where they’d sleep on the train, they get one shower a week. Can you imagine? You get real comfortable with your colleagues.  

[00:50:34] NC: Yeah. Oh, exactly. Then it was – That orchestra was a real musical machine too, but you really – You had to get along with the people you are around or you were just sunk.  You couldn’t even function. Yup, friendships like you say.  

Well, here are some quick, or we can do this pretty quickly I think. How often do you change strings and re-hair your bow? For me, it’s probably changing strings every three or four months, and maybe about the same for re-hairing the bow. Why?  

[00:51:07] AT: This is like the Seinfeld one. Was it Kramer who asks Jerry how often he cuts his toenails?  

[00:51:16] NC: I don’t remember this.  

[00:51:17] AT: I’d say every two to eight weeks. That’s how I feel. It’s like, you never really know. 

[00:51:27] NC: Strings. Can I tell everyone that I change your strings? 

[00:51:31] AT: Yes. I think pretty much everyone knows that you carry my violin, change my strings. You don’t tune my violin.  

[00:51:39] NC: No. 

[00:51:40] AT: I still do that.  

[00:51:43] NC: Now, Lily asks how can you get a solid tone even in off – 

[00:51:48] AT: Wait. No. I feel bad. I just feel an over flipping answer to that.  

[00:51:52] NC: Okay. Well, let’s have some real numbers.  

[00:51:55] AT: This is a good question.  

[00:51:58] NC: Why? I gave my answers.  

[00:52:00] AT: What did you say?  

[00:52:02] NC: I said strings every three to four months and re-hair is about the same.  

[00:52:06] AT: Yeah, okay. Good. That’s about right. I think my strings, it’s like when I start noticing that like I play a four-note chord and it seems to dip. It’s like the Doppler effect once I lift my bow from the string. Then it’s time to change your strings.  

[00:52:24] NC: Yeah. That’s like a false string. 

[00:52:27] AT: Yeah. That string is done. We talked about the fact. I’ve never had a string break on me in concert.  

[00:52:35] NC: I mean, that is nuts.  

[00:52:36] AT: I mean, we don’t play that many concerts.  

[00:52:40] NC: Still – Well, I mean, a lot of the E strings that I’ve broken I’m sure have been because I hit the E string with the metal of the bow, which I know you still don’t understand how that could ever happen, but it’s definitely happened. Now, it hadn’t happen to me in I would say a good 10 years.  

[00:52:58] AT: The string committed suicide.  

[00:53:01] NC: Yeah.  

[00:53:02] AT: And the bow hair, I do in an ideal world, if I could swing it, I would change my bow hair every two months, because I feel like the little teeth, and it depends on the quality of the hair. Actually, the quality is not so great these days. I think every weeks, like a haircut. I feel like I would – I think that’s what they tell you. You get your haircut every eight weeks. And I don’t know how many people actually do that, probably men.  

[00:53:27] NC: I think businessmen, it’s like every two weeks. 

[00:53:30] AT: Well, that’s true. Yeah, I would – The bow hair, I’m actually more concerned with than the string freshness, because I feel like I’ve got enough intonation issues on my own. Like the falseness of my strings doesn’t come into play as much – But I feel like that, really, I like the grippy hair and it really bugs me when the little microscopic teeth start noticeably disappearing. Then I have to rousing like twice a day or something.  

[00:53:55] NC: Yeah. Shlomo Mintz.  

[00:53:59] AT: Yeah. I think, the quantity of rousing can make up for non-rehairing. But it’s depressing.  

[00:54:10] NC: Well, is that a good enough answer for – 

[00:54:11] AT: Yeah. I’m done with.  

[00:54:13] NC: Awesome. I don’t know if that counts as rapid fire, but – 

[00:54:17] AT: I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was the rapid fire.  

[00:54:19] NC: Well, I mean, we’ll just do a couple more.  

[00:54:21] AT: All right.  

[00:54:22] NC: These are more violin-related. Lily had asked how to get a solid tone even an off the string notes? I think a lot of folks, they may feel good when they’re sustaining notes, but then as soon as they take it off the string, the string doesn’t seem to catch.   

[00:54:41] AT: Get your bow re-haired. You’re the teacher. I mean I would say probably just superficially you’re working with bow angle, hair angle. Probably more hair with equal more sound.   

[00:54:58] NC: Yeah. I usually find that people’s bows behave very differently on and off the string. For any off the string passage that you’re trying to work, there is an on-string equivalent that you should try to find. So if you, for example, last note in the Tchaikovsky concerto, and he’s very aggressive. If someone said you have to play that on the string and you found what that stroke was, you would notice how much bow you were using. What the contact point is. How into the string you are? All of that needs to say the same when you take it off the string. Same contact points, same amount of bow and same depth. 

[00:55:48] AT: You’re a really good teacher.  

[00:55:48] NC: Into the – well, I mean, this question comes up all the time.  

[00:55:54] AT: That’s very interesting. I have a whole thing about how there’s no such thing as an off the string stroke. It’s not one of my – 

[00:56:02] NC: What? I almost feel like that goes along with what I’m saying too. 

[00:56:05] AT: Yeah. I think maybe it’s another way of saying what you’re saying, but I think certain – like the velocity will make it come off the string. But as you say, I think the basic element, or maybe the same – Even like if you actually watch like a super slowed down video of someone’s off the string stroke, I think personally I haven’t done it, but you’d be surprised how little it actually comes off the string. There’s not a lot of air. Not a lot of distance from the string. I think that it’s just more aural than visual.  

[00:56:37] NC: Yeah, I agree. I think there needs to be more connection to the string usually.  

[00:56:46] AT: Yeah, and I think the big problem, and we see it in a professional level all the time, people will sacrifice some basic elements in music making to getting a stroke off the string. I mean, it seems obvious if you just think about it, but it’s like the time taken, the rhythm, that all has to come first. Then the stroke, whether it comes off, is a different matter.  

[00:57:12] NC: Yeah. I mean, one time I played for Zukerman, he reminded me there’s only sound when the hair is on the string. Well, I mean, there may be ring after that, but basically you’re only making sound when there’s contact with a string. Better have a good reason for taking it off.  

[00:57:32] AT: He knows what he’s talking about.  

[00:57:35] NC: Two more, and they’re very closely related. The first, and neither one of these has a name. But do you usually divide and practice by sections when you’re tackling a new piece? Are you organized in that way or is it more just I’m going to play through the piece and then just kind of work on it bit by bit?  

[00:57:57] AT: When was the last time you learned a new piece even? 

[00:58:00] NC: Well, now I’m doing it all the time with the violympics. I’ve got a new challenge.  

[00:58:05] AT: You go for it. How do you do it?  

[00:58:07] NC: Piece, but well it’s kind of like the – This is like the whole Instagram culture, right? Where everyone gets to present the idealized version of their lives and all of that. The way I teach is, yeah, you divide things into sections and figure out the difficulties. I think I’m like everybody else. I probably try to play a piece through and see what parts seem hard and what don’t. I’m a little better than I used to be in recognizing, “Okay. This whole section is stuff that I’m comfortable with, I’m familiar with. There are some annoyances in there or some things that aren’t happening the way I want. But here’s the section with some new challenges and some things I really have to work out before I can even begin the real process of getting it into performance shape.”  

[00:59:03] AT: Yeah. Yeah, that sounds random, and I wouldn’t dream of trying to play through something repeatedly if there was like a difficult passage. You really focus on –  

[00:59:14] NC: Right. But I mean that is the way we practiced as kids probably, right? I mean, you just keep sort of ramming your – 

[00:59:20] AT: Yeah, I don’t remember. I mean, of course, you focus on the technical. Then once you feel more comfortable, that if you see if you can integrate it. Then if you can acceptably, then you start doing it slowly, right? You’ll integrate it. You’ll play through it slowly so that your brain can get used to the idea of continuing, starting at the less hard part, continuing through the hard part and then continuing past that.  

[00:59:47] NC: Are you fine now – I mean, like if every section of a piece doesn’t have the same tempo in practice. Are you fine with that, or like do you have to – 

[00:59:56] AT: I don’t love that. I don’t love that. I do it, but I find that playing under tempo always has benefits.  

[01:00:04] NC: Right, because the next question is basically is the best way to learn a piece just to get it all to one tempo and then put the metronome up a little bit and get it faster?  

[01:00:15] AT: I see. To play the entire thing at the same –  

[01:00:18] NC: Or, basically, do you treat each section independently?  

[01:00:24] AT: I think that there are parts that you will feel comfortable playing at tempo always. I’m not sure. You shouldn’t mess around with that too much. The parts that you don’t feel comfortable, you should have margin on either side of the passages you find difficult and make sure that you work those up. But I don’t see any need to include all the parts that you’re already comfortable with to play those at a tempo, because I think that if you do the parts that you’re already okay with under tempo repeatedly, maybe start ironing in strange habits that you wouldn’t – 

[01:01:01] NC: Yeah, I think so too.  

[01:01:04] AT: I think focus on the parts that are causing trouble and the parts immediately before that. There’s a physical element to it. It’s almost like a long jump or something. You want to envision everything going up to the part that’s hard, and part of that is just getting super comfortable to set up to the hard part. But I don’t see any need to – The entire piece doesn’t have to be worked at at that pace.  

[01:01:30] NC: I think the second part of that person’s question was for the parts that are a problem and let’s say they’re slow at the moment. How do you get them faster? Basically the question was is it always just a matter of putting in the repetitions, getting it a little faster, a little faster? Is that the long and short of it or are there tricks you can use to circumvent that?  

[01:01:59] AT: Well, it’s like Homer when he’s trying to – 

[01:02:03] NC: You mean the Simpson, Homer? 

[01:02:04] AT: Yeah, Homer Simpson, when he’s trying to figure out how to make more money at the bowling alley and he like buys a textbook on like advanced economics or something and then he seemed – In each scene, it cuts to him downgrading. It’s like then it’s like basic economics and that’s like a dictionary.  

[01:02:22] NC: He’s looking up the work economics.  

[01:02:24] AT: But I always feel like that. It’s like when am I going to tackle this, I better figure out how to play thirds. It’s like, “Oh. I’d better just play like a scale in this key.” There is some downgrading that will happen if you can’t get it. Then for me, if I’m – I’m really sensing. It’s not getting any better after X number of repetitions. Clearly, I have to go down to the next more basic rung.  

[01:02:51] NC: Yeah. I mean, I think that’s a smarter way, because you could just sort of mindlessly put the metronome up and then – 

[01:02:58] AT: I never use a metronome when I practice. Do you?  

[01:03:01] NC: Rarely. I will use it – 

[01:03:03] AT: I mean, is it bad?  

[01:03:05] NC: Well, I’m like you. I find it helpful to check the seams between sections.  

[01:03:13] AT: Interesting. For auditions, it’s more useful, because like – yeah, for auditions, definitely, because the steadiness is an issue. But I haven’t used one in a while I think.   

[01:03:29] NC: Yeah. I’ll use them to keep a record kind of where I am, but I’m sort of militant. I’m kind of against just turning on the metronome and leaving it on for very long.  

[01:03:42] AT: You’ve always — I mean, I remember that.  

[01:03:44] NC: Yeah. I mean, the whole idea of working things up. The reason is that unless you solve some underlying problem, you’re always going to hit a wall. Something like feels okay at 62 and you want to get it to 80 and it just – like you can’t get it past 62. There’s some reason for that. Just setting it to 64 and trying to play it over and over again is not really – that’s not solving the problem.  

[01:04:13] AT: I think you should really have to target what the problem is. It’s funny I have been trying to — talk about basic, but I’ve been trying to work up the E major preludio.  

[01:04:22] NC: Basic. 

[01:04:23] AT: It’s hard.  

[01:04:24] NC: It’s a hard move. 

[01:04:24] AT: E major is a hard key and it’s a tough movement to get. Today I was thinking – It’s just giving me a really hard time and I realized I was playing it just a couple clicks faster than usual, and those couple clicks were causing the problem. It was like even that small percentage of increase was making everything a lot less accurate. Sure, I think that working with metronome is not a bad idea. It can give you a more concrete idea of why things aren’t feeling right.  

[01:05:01] NC: Again, just as a check. You can write that number down and know kind of where you stand, but you wouldn’t just put it on and keep it on.  

[01:05:10] AT: Like I said, for orchestral excerpts, sure, maybe. For something like solo Bach, no. I kind of find that stultifying.  

[01:05:21] NC: Okay. So we agree – 

[01:05:22] AT: Anti-creative.  

[01:05:24] NC: You try to figure out what the problem. If you can’t figure out what the problem is, then that’s – you need some outside help. You need another ear. Because if you can’t figure that out, then you’re sort of just left with – 

[01:05:37] AT: You just got to figure it out. I think you have to play it slowly enough that you understand, and you do this. You have this whole exercise with visualization. I always thought it was kind of a strange way to go about it, but you’re right. It’s like if you imagine you’re playing and something strange happens, like your violin flies out of your hands, that happens. When you’re practicing, you realize that something strange is happening there.  

It may not be – if you’re actually holding your violin, you’re not going to imagine that your violin is flying out of your hands. But I feel an insecurity. If you actually think about, it’s like tapping on the wall and hearing something, something that indicates some kind of structural flaw. That’s what’s happening. Like you have to really to tap on the walls and find, “This is the problem.”  

[01:06:22] NC: Right. House hasn’t collapsed yet, but you hear that hollow sound and you’re like, “Oh, good. That’s –” 

[01:06:26] AT: Yeah. That’s bad news. There’s black mould. Yeah, I mean, I do that a lot because I sense like, “Hey, this finger is going down.” Even though it’s technically going down in the right place at the right time, it’s not securely doing that. Recognizing the different between it happening fortuitously and purposefully, that’s the difference I think between feeling insecure and secure about a performance.  

[01:06:58] NC: Yeah. I think where we’re going to go from here is in the next few episodes we’re going to take questions from our violympics group, because those people with me in the violympics are going through six events, each with its own challenge piece, and there are lots of great questions that we just don’t always have time to get through in the group, and you and I can answer them here, because everybody is interested in your perspectives too. They hear way too much from me. That’s where we’re going to go in the next few episodes. If you’re up for that, we’re going to be quizzing you about our challenge pieces.   

[01:07:37] AT: Oh! I’m always full of opinions.  

[01:07:42] NC: That’s what we want. All right. So thanks so much for joining us here, and I will look forward to your questions. If you’re in the violympics groups, keeps those questions coming. If you’re not, then hopefully you can join the next time around. We will come back at you with more Q&As next time on Stand Partners for Life.  

[END] 

Here at Stand Partner HQ, we get this question a lot! And that should tell you something without even knowing the answer. Nobody asks what a pilot does, or if we really need one for our airplanes. But the conductor’s role isn’t nearly so obvious, to our audiences and even, at times, to us!

Do we really need someone up front “driving the train”? Do a conductor’s responsibilities begin and end with a downbeat and a final cutoff?

Key points

• Akiko’s forthcoming appearance on the Every Little Thing podcast
• Audience fixation on the conductor as the focal point of an orchestra
• The job of the conductor during rehearsal and performance
• Giving instruction vs. providing a “guiding current”
• Examples of time wasting, directionless rehearsal
• Examples of showing appreciation for the work of the players; giving credit where it’s due
• Petty retaliation: talking in rehearsals and other signs of discontent
• Setting aside grudges for the concert and putting the music ahead of everything else
• Do musicians always agree who’s a great conductor?
• How to balance exerting control and letting go of it
• The “dreaded hand”: play quieter!
• Components of a perfect conductor; designing the Robo-conductor!

Links

Every Little Thing Podcast

Gimlet Media 

Jeopardy

Sean Connery

Full Metal Jacket

Andrew Manze

Robocop

Kurtwood Smith

Transcript

EPISODE 38

[EPISODE]

[00:00:01] NC: Hi and welcome back to Stand Partners for Life. I’m Nathan Cole.

[00:00:04] AT: I am Akiko Tarumoto.

[00:00:18] NC: And today we are talking about conductors and not just because we see a conductor all the time at work, see many conductors. There’s actually a special reason, that’s because you are going to be a featured guest on another podcast.

[00:00:33] AT: Yeah.

[00:00:33] NC: I couldn’t be more proud. It’s like a spinoff of Stand Partners. It’s great. We got a call from the show Every Little Thing, which is a Gimlet Media show. They answer or try to answer questions that you can’t find out just by Googling. Their recent example was how to police sketch artists really. Can they really come up with a picture that’s so close to the person you’re thinking of and they went through it. It was really fascinating, and all the episodes come from listener questions. It’s actually a great idea for this show.

[00:01:13] AT: It’s true. Should steal that.

[00:01:16] NC: I know. I think I might. They actually play the call – If someone calls in and leaves a message, it’s very 90s. You have to leave a message on the machine. In this case, someone was calling up to say if, “I were ever the victim of a crime, I would be the worst witness. There was no way the police could ever pick up the person because I wouldn’t be able to describe to a sketch artist anybody’s face. I’m the worst and I really don’t believe the sketch artist could help me. Do they really work?”

They actually found a sketch artist. So that was the expert on the call and they had this person describe his best friend, I believe it was.

[00:01:58] AT: Aha. And it worked?

[00:01:59] NC: And it worked.

[00:02:00] AT: That’s just too much pressure. I can’t produce on this level tomorrow.

[00:02:04] NC: In this episode, they have someone asking about conductors and about all kinds of things that go on in orchestra rehearsals and concerts. So that is going to be you. Now, you do have to share the episode with a conductor in addition to the caller.

[00:02:23] AT: Yes. Not in real-time, but yeah.

[00:02:24] NC: Right. Since you might – I don’t know. You might feel like you couldn’t say everything you wanted to about a conductor. Who knows? We thought this might be – They might not give you all the airtime. You might –

[00:02:37] AT: Did you say this conductor? Right. I mean, I hope that I won’t be carrying the entire episode. It would be funny if I described my ideal conductor and just synthesize this person to see if they’re really an effective leader.

[00:02:51] NC: That’s true.

[00:02:52] AT: That’d be pretty awesome. That would be like the equivalent of the sketch artist, but I won’t be doing that. I’ll just be pontificating.

[00:03:00] NC: Look for that episode. The show again is Every Little Thing. It’s a great show. You should subscribe anyway. Yeah, listen for Akiko’s episode coming out hopefully in the next month.

Today is our chance before that happens to expand on this idea of conductors. Yeah, I mean speaking of people calling in or at least approaching us after concerts, what’s one of the first things they always want to talk about.

[00:03:27] AT: A conductor. Yeah. We really like this conductor. I hear that a lot, which is great. I mean, I don’t want to hear we really hated that conductor.

[00:03:36] NC: That’s true. Because then we might feel that we didn’t somehow do our job in the concert.

[00:03:41] AT: Right. Sure.

[00:03:41] NC: If all you came away with was that you hated the conductor. We’re supposed to be the ones coming away with that. Not the audience.

[00:03:48] AT: And we do.

[00:03:50] NC: Why do you think that is? I mean, besides maybe the obvious reason, the conductor is up on a podium waving arms around and their name is really big in the program. I mean, why are audience members fixated on the conductor? Is that right? I mean, is the conductor’s job that big that they should be so fixated?

[00:04:10] AT: Yeah. I mean, definitely, I can see how someone’s attention is automatically drawn there. I mean, where else are they going to look? I mean, there’s a lot of moving parts and we’re all supposedly tuned in to this one person. So that makes sense that the audience would feel that they’re getting something of our experience by watching this person.

[00:04:33] NC: Yeah. Ideally, right. I mean, we’re focused on the conductors so that should also draw their attention to the conductor. Well, I mean that’s a great place to start, is what the role of a conductor is or should be at least according to us. After that we’re going to get into maybe what their job shouldn’t be things conductors do and don’t do that we dislike. Is that the longest section of the show?

[00:05:03] AT: Yeah. I mean, it’s something I’ve certainly thought a lot about.

[00:05:06] NC: All right. We’ll try to keep that constructive though. After that, I know we’re going to get into perhaps what happens when those conductors sort of spend their time and their energy doing the things that aren’t productive. What are some of the ways that orchestras, not necessarily us or our orchestra, sort of retaliate?

[00:05:26] AT: I think things we’ve definitely seen, we’ve witnessed.

[00:05:29] NC: Yeah.

[00:05:30] AT: Yeah. I warn you, they’re not all super mature or maybe none of them are. But –

[00:05:34] NC: All right. But human nature, musician nature nonetheless.

[00:05:38] AT: It is a glimpse into what it’s like, the dynamic of being subordinate to this person.

[00:05:46] NC: Right. Then finishing up I think with some examples of what we really love about great conductors and great conducting.

[00:05:54] AT: Yeah, and on a positive note.

[00:05:56] NC: Yeah.

[00:05:56] AT: Sound like a bunch of complainers.

[00:05:58] NC: Yeah. Okay. We’ve got the role, conductor’s role as it should be. Then maybe conductor’s role as it shouldn’t or needn’t be. Ways that orchestras respond to those bad uses of time and energy.

[00:06:13] AT: Sound like Jeopardy categories.

[00:06:15] NC: Yeah. We’d need pithier names, and we’re at least Sean Connery here to do the categories. Great! Well, we’ll start it up. What should a conductor be doing up there? Why should the audience as well as the musicians focus on the conductor in the best of circumstances?

[00:06:34] AT: I mean, obviously the very basic thing, they tell us when to play, how fast to play, how loud or soft to play. Shows how many beats are in every measure.

[00:06:44] NC: That’s sure. As you said, on the most basic level, that includes – Yeah, starting and stopping, tempos, dynamics.

[00:06:53] AT: Yes, that’s the very basics, right?

[00:06:56] NC: These are things that would matter in the performance. There are things they need to do in the rehearsal. They have jobs in the rehearsal as well, right?

[00:07:03] AT: Sure. I think one of the things that I’m always surprised is that not very many conductors are great at addressing and fixing problems efficiently and it always seems to stun me when somebody is good at that stuff. It really seems remarkable. It seems sort of basic.

[00:07:24] NC: Right. I mean, deciding when to start and stop in rehearsal as well and what to say and how to say it.

[00:07:30] AT: Yeah, and who to say it to.

[00:07:32] NC: Yeah.

[00:07:33] AT: It’s a big one.

[00:07:33] NC: I have a feeling we’ll get to some details in the next section.

[00:07:38] AT: Yeah. It’s a big deal. This stuff sounds like it should just be sort of standard, but surprisingly not.

[00:07:43] NC: Anything else you’ve taken down there in some notes?

[00:07:46] AT: I think for us, we always love when a conductor – First of all, of course they have to really love the music. That sounds basic, again, but it somehow doesn’t feel like a given in actual practice. They have to love it to the point where everything that they’re saying to you and doing physically is in the service of the music and not for any other reason. It sounds – This is going to sound petty or not very nice to say, but there’s a certain amount of vanity I think that can go with conductors, conducting.

I think it’s a little bit on display. Even the great ones, everybody has that vanity. It’s not really a natural thing to want to stand in front of a bunch of people and tell them what to do in a very exposed way. I think that kind of personality who’s attracted to that, of course, there’s a certain amount of vanity to that. But I think that great conductors, ultimately, what they do seems just very much about the music and you feel like you’re being drawn into a collaboration to present this music in the way that they choose.

But you don’t feel like your will is being bent to theirs. Again, this sounds basic, but who wants their will bent to somebody and then present it as art? But it does sometimes feel that way. There can be a little bit of a struggle.

[00:09:08] NC: Well, I mean you said something that I think is important. I mean, to play the music, for the orchestra to play the music as the conductor sees it or understands it, I mean, is it – it’s pretty necessary I think in the best performances that the orchestra pulls together. I mean, there has to be a common vision and that pretty much has to come from the podium. I mean, in rare circumstances you can get a hundred people going in the same direction without that one unifying force, but then you’ve got to be playing music that everyone’s familiar with and there has to be a shared tradition or understanding among those hundred people on stage. Otherwise, it’s going to come from that person who’s up there.

[00:09:54] AT: You hear about I’ve never played obviously in Berlin or Vienna, like a place where people really have trained in a very similar way, in similar schools, same schools. The part of the beauty of an ensemble like that is that there’s a certain uniformity that’s expected and has been trained into these people, and that’s an incredible thing. I think it’s one huge advantage that orchestras like that have, because you’re just going to hear something extraordinary that you wouldn’t really get where some orchestras, it’s like the beauty is actually that everybody brings a different strength to the table when that’s all brought together in a right way. The energy is really incredible, and that’s a different thing.

[00:10:43] NC: Yeah. The downside is no women in the orchestra, right?

[00:10:48] AT: Seen a few. In Vienna, yeah. In Berlin, it’s like normal there.

[00:10:52] NC: Yeah. Berlin is always been a bit more cosmopolitan, I guess.

[00:10:57] AT: I guess there are several reasons I won’t be a member of the Berlin Phil anytime soon or ever. But I think I come back to this theme a lot. Probably it’s going to sound a little shopworn, but I have this thing about conductors and how their rehearsal time should be spent, and it bugs me when a conductor rehearses gets very hung up on something like an ensemble issue and they just keep rehashing and rehashing it and like realizing, “This has to be together. Let’s play this together.” To me that is one of the least effective comments that a conductor can make, but they’re really supposed to be doing is training everybody’s focus and facilitating everybody’s connections.

Not just with a conductor, but with each other. So that the hypothetical conductors so good at getting everybody to play a passage and to listen to each other, because this person is not just drawing attention to themselves and saying, “Look at me.” They’re drawing attention to the music, and I think that’s a much more important thing to do. I think if you’re just telling people to play together, it’s a very vague and not particularly lofty goal. I think it’s not as effective as just getting in the general mindset of playing together.

[00:12:22] NC: Yeah. I mean, it sounds like we’re definitely now into the portion of things where we’re talking about what ineffective ways that conductors can run things. Yeah. That’s the good stuff.

[00:12:33] AT: Sorry. I couldn’t — the allure of complaining was too strong.

[00:12:38] NC: No. I think, again, I mean you’ve really hit on it. I mean, playing together is a great thing, but when that is your focus, you get tunnel vision, right? You can lose sight of why it needs to be together.

[00:12:52] AT: I mean, it’s not really achievable on an individual basis.

[00:12:59] NC: That’s true. Yeah. How am I personally supposed to –

[00:13:01] AT: That’s the other thing, it’s like you’re telling individuals to play together and it’s like – It’s as if we’re just like kind of swimming along in like a school of fish and it’s like we’ll swim parallel to that person with our fish from the other side of the school and we’re like, “I don’t know what that fish is doing. They’re all the way over there.”

[00:13:22] NC: True.

[00:13:23] AT: We need a current.

[00:13:24] NC: I mean, if everybody is swimming towards something.

[00:13:27] AT: Yeah, if the current is guiding us and like – That’s when we need a current. We don’t need instructions.

[00:13:34] NC: Yeah, very true. At the very least, I mean, if there are two individuals, let’s say, two solo lines that aren’t together, then it’s possible if those two people know each other very well and they simply weren’t aware that their lines were supposed to be together, then sure, maybe you could say, “Okay. The two of you need to be together there,” and maybe that would work.

[00:13:56] AT: I would respect that. That would be an effective way that you say, “You need to play faster, or this needs to be slower, or this –” That works.

[00:14:05] NC: Yeah. Then that’s – I don’t know if some people would be surprised to hear that, that actually that would be effective and perhaps better respected for a conductor to say, “Actually, you need to play faster. You need to play slower,” if they’re right about it.

[00:14:23] AT: That is one of the things we like. Yeah. Because then you’re not wasting – And this gets to one of the things we hate. We hate wasting of time.

[00:14:30] NC: Sure.

[00:14:31] AT: Maybe that sounds like something uniquely American, because we have these rules of rehearsal time, and breaks, and blah-blah.

[00:14:40] NC: You got to be efficient.

[00:14:41] AT: Yeah, basically. But I mean, I think the great ones really are efficient. I mean, not that they don’t need a lot of rehearsal time, but they don’t waste time on things that can be done more quickly.

[00:14:53] NC: Do you have other examples you’ve thought off of ways to waste time? Then maybe we could also pair those with –

[00:15:01] AT: Well, first of all – Okay. Sorry. The number one thing I think we notice sometimes that we’ll remark on — so let’s just start the movement and then you play the whole thing.

[00:15:11] NC: Right. When they don’t say why.

[00:15:12] AT: They don’t say why. That’s one thing. How can you say why? You’re playing the whole thing. It’s like, “Yeah, I was just –” Oh, yeah. Why are you even starting it? But they can say I want to hear the beginning again. Which is legitimate. You want to get off to a good start. So then you start playing and then keep playing and playing, then you realize, “Hey, we’re more than halfway through this movement now. It looks like we’re getting all the way to the end,” or then they’ll stop like a couple of lines before the end and be like, “All right. That’s enough.”

[00:15:36] NC: Right. Yeah.

[00:15:39] AT: The last 8 minutes of my life back. The one conductor will be – He or she will ask for a passage and then you’ll play it and then look up and this person is rifling through the score, still waving their arm around.

[00:15:53] NC: They’re still conducting.

[00:15:54] AT: Kind of absent-mindedly giving a beat and meanwhile flipping pages through their score. They’re just going to let you play. They’re just going to let you go and just keep cranking out the music while they figure what they want to do next.

[00:16:10] NC: Yeah. Well, they’re terrified of the silence, right? They think if they –

[00:16:14] AT: I can’t say why they do it, but it’s certainly irritating to see someone just sort of looking down into huge think of music and just – The right hand just continues to wave around.

[00:16:24] NC: Yeah. I mean, that’s the sign of someone who knows they’ve lost the orchestra, and if they stop, if they’re silenced, they know there’s going to be – Everybody’s head is going to be swiveling in a hundred directions and talking and –

[00:16:38] AT: Well, that’s not good. I mean, that’s not an appropriate response.

[00:16:41] NC: I’m not saying it’s good, but that’s when people do it, is when they know that’s what’s going to happen. They want to transition directly from putting their arms down to immediately yelling out the next part to start. That of course virtually ensures that no real information is going to –

[00:16:56] AT: Yeah, it increases our lack of focus, for sure.

[00:17:00] NC: Anything else?

[00:17:01] AT: I don’t know if this falls under time wasting, but we definitely don’t like comments that are geared to the worst players. I’m saying this as a person who plays in a section of players, so that it’s not just us. There’re 16, maybe, first violins. Our comment will come our way and it’s like don’t put a big accent on this note and it’s sort of – It could be that there is a little bit of an emphasis on the wrong note there. But I think the best conductors will find a much more productive way to phrase that, and it’s sort of the classic management thing. You don’t say, “Don’t do this.” You say what you want instead.

[00:17:44] NC: Right.

[00:17:46] AT: But I think it is, it’s effective, and that engages everybody, including the – I don’t want to say talented players, but it gets everybody interested. I mean, I find a big thing is like I feel like, “I can’t hear that,” and I wasn’t doing it myself and I find that frustrating after a certain number of those comments go by then everybody thinks, “Well, these comments don’t apply to me.”

[00:18:09] NC: Right. Yeah. Because, I mean, let’s say one time I put an accent on the wrong note, immediately the conductor stops and it’s like, “You guys are accenting this note,” and probably I already knew that I did that and then everyone else who didn’t do it, they’re like, “Well, it doesn’t really matter what I do, because I’m just going to get yelled at,” as long as anybody does anything.

[00:18:32] AT: We did have a colleague at one point who used to say, “I didn’t do that. Did you do that?”

[00:18:39] NC: Right. Yeah, pretty loudly.

[00:18:41] AT: Always found that really entertaining.

[00:18:44] NC: Yeah, sometimes in a string section it feels a little bit like the marines discipline or something, like in the movie, Full Metal Jacket, where the drill sergeant says, “All right, new tactic. From now on, whenever this guy screws up, you’re all going to run laps or have to scrub toilets or whatever.”

[00:19:04] AT: Yeah, it feels like that.

[00:19:05] NC: But there is another way, which is to, yeah, sort of holdout the – I was going to say donut. I guess it’s a carrot. Well, carrot is more of a reward, but –

[00:19:16] AT: Jelly donut.

[00:19:18] NC: Yeah, to say, “Here’s what we’re all after or what we should be after and let’s do what we need to achieve that.”

[00:19:26] AT: Yeah. Again, maybe that seems kind of obvious, but I do feel like it’s kind of consistent. It happens all the time and I really wish it wouldn’t. I think there’s also a feeling that – Again, I think this evaporates when we’re in the presence of someone who really is great and makes us not want to complain. But I think we have spent so much time with our instruments over our lives, that I think that we’re very sensitive to ideas that seem not particularly well-baked, musically, and we get a lot of those, I think, or some of those, anyway, in a less than ideal rehearsal and we’re with a less than ideal conductor.

Sometimes I’ll turn to you and say there’s a conductor who says something like – I don’t know, something that seems sort of rudimentary to me, and I think honestly if we were in a chamber music rehearsal who’s just four people sitting there playing music, I don’t think that this would even qualify as a legitimate comment to make about how the rehearsal is going. Because we’d be playing instead of talking – I mean, I think there’s a lot of instruction that goes on from the conductor that isn’t necessarily doesn’t have to be there.

I think that we love when the majority of things are shown or I think a big rule for us in chamber rehearsals is that instead of talking about it ad nauseam, you just say, “Let’s just play it again and see what works.” Certainly that’s not possible necessarily in such a large group of people, but I think that spirit should prevail over a lot of instructional rehearsing, which I think eventually you will lose people if you’re just talking, talking, talking.

[00:21:15] NC: Oh, absolutely. Some really enjoyable rehearsing that I remember was, for example, when Andrew Manze who was – I think I can say now at this point was a great violinist, because when I asked him he said he hadn’t performed at a long time. But he would often say, “I’m not sure which direction I want to go with this. Could we play it a couple of different ways and let’s hear how it sounds?”

Everybody was more than willing to do that. Ultimately he has to be the one to say, “Okay, I’m going to go with option B,” or whatever, and obviously you can’t make every decision that way. Some things should probably be thought out in advance. I found that a really great way to make a decision rather than coming up with, as you said, half-baked justifications for arbitrary things and not even hearing an alternative.

[00:22:15] AT: Yeah, I think that if you tell people to do something, I mean, you can write things down. You can write in sort of basic things. We’re not going to write down every word they’re saying into our music. It’s just not practical. You’re coming up with ideas that seemingly require like a paragraph of verbal explanation. It’s like this is just not going to happen. You have to find a way to put that into gesture.

[00:22:39] NC: Don’t you find words written in your music sometimes, like we’ll come to something and it will say ‘luscious’ in our part. I wonder which conductor use that word, because obviously that —

[00:22:52] AT: You mean like it’s been written in like as a joke, like a –

[00:22:54] NC: I feel like it’s probably a joke.

[00:22:56] AT: Yeah. There’s some of that. Then one of our very favorite conductors, I mean, he was not even a fan of rehearsing very much at all and that had its downsides, but I mean like what an incredible feeling it was to – that is one way to get everybody looking at you.

[00:23:14] NC: That’s true.

[00:23:16] AT: Everyone is wondering what’s going to happen.

[00:23:17] NC: They have to.

[00:23:18] AT: That’s incredible. There’re some amazing performances that happen. Sure, there are moments that — turns and the music that maybe a little messy or pretty messy. But the very best results are so much more musical than something that’s been planned down to the last –

[00:23:38] NC: Yeah. That definitely pulls focus. It always reminds me kind of like in an NBA game when there’s two seconds left and one team is down by one and they’re about to inbound the ball and they have like one great three point shooter or just one great shooter on the team and then the announcer, before the ball is thrown in there, like, “All right! You know it’s going to Philips. Everybody on that court knows it’s going to Philips.”

[00:24:03] AT: Has the longest arms doing jumping jacks in front of that guy.

[00:24:09] NC: There’s one famous example where that was the situation and then inexplicably the person who is in charge of guarding Philips or whoever it was, at the last second, ran away from them to like double team somebody else. So the guy who was obviously going to take the last shot took the last shot wide open and – Yeah, that’s like – Anyway, I’m imagining a conductor who didn’t rehearse at all and you basically have to be staring at them for this vital piece of information in the concert and you decide you’re going to look down and flatten out the page or something.

[00:24:49] AT: Yeah, we’ve certainly seen that too.

[00:24:53] NC: Yeah. Any other either time wasting or ineffective or just wrong actions from conductors?

[00:25:00] AT: Fake accents. We were complaining of the fake accents or something. That’s wrong and should not happen.

[00:25:06] NC: You’re talking about speaking, accents.

[00:25:08] AT: Yeah. We get some over pronunciation of – It can range from just full-on where are you really from to just over pronouncing certain words. That’s nitpicking. That’s sort of – It’s what the halo effect is, or it’s like you’ve already just kind of written this person off when they start doing that stuff, and that’s – Yeah, the fake accents. It’s a really petty one that we get annoyed with.

I think in the end, I think the resentment is partially because we’re kind of slaving away and it’s hard work up there in the podium too. Don’t get me wrong, but I do feel like we’re working very, very hard to produce something special and then it’s just the nature of orchestra players anonymous. They’ll take the credit and some of them are much too happy to take the credit and seem very pleased with themselves.

[00:26:10] NC: That was the very episode before this one.

[00:26:13] AT: Yeah.

[00:26:12] NC: Titled Orchestra Players Anonymous.

[00:26:14] AT: The double edged sword of anonymity there.

[00:26:17] NC: Well, yeah, and that really cuts across industries, right? I mean, no matter what your job is, if you feel like you’re working hard toward a certain result and the person in charge of you is not or does not give the impression that they’re also working hard for that result. I mean, that’s just instant morale killer.

[00:26:37] AT: Well, they’re still working hard. It’s just there’s no music without us playing. I think, again, veering into the great conductor thing, I think the great conductors do make their players feel appreciated even – You say what are they supposed to do? They can’t shake everybody’s hand. That’s true. But they don’t have to. There are lots of ways where appreciation is expressed in nonverbal or non-gestural ways. It’s just either the feeling or we can get more into it later.

[00:27:10] NC: Yeah. Well, let’s – Like you said, we can save a little of that so that we’re going out strong and positive. I know at a certain point you had some fun, and as you said, slightly immature things maybe that orchestras do when they’re faced with the bad conductor behavior. Is it time to get into those?

[00:27:32] AT: We could. I fear what people were going to sound like – We haven’t done these. There’s just things we know about.

[00:27:41] NC: Things you’ve seen, friends heard it through the orchestra, grapevine. Such as –

[00:27:49] AT: Number one, we’re not looking up.

[00:27:51] NC: Right.

[00:27:52] AT: Whenever someone comes up to us and say, “We really loved that conductor for the concert.” I think, “Geez. Did you notice that we weren’t looking up at all?” Because that’s something that we do. It’s not even an active thing that we are trying to do necessarily. It’s just that after a certain point we feel that we’re pretty tired and this person isn’t really giving us anything to – Any reason to look up. So we’re going to go ahead and just play the music to the best of our abilities without unnecessary input from the podium.

[00:28:22] NC: It’s like when you go to a restaurant and as soon as you pick up the menu, they come over, the server comes over and gives you the 5 minute speech at a certain where you can’t even crane your neck up anymore. You start staring at the menu and you just – It’s like I’ve gotten whatever I’m going to get. I’ve checked out. I haven’t heard a word you’ve said for the last three minutes. All of a sudden there’s silence and, yeah, it’s like the end of the piece. You suddenly look up and like, “Oh, is it done?”

[00:28:56] AT: Yeah, exactly.

[00:28:57] NC: Time to place my order.

[00:28:58] AT: After a certain amount of droning, you just start tuning out. That’s probably number one. We were joking the other day that if you really want to know, if the audience really wants to know how a concert is going, don’t bother trying to stare at the podium. Don’t scrutinize necessarily. Just look at the body language of the orchestra and that’s how you’ll know how good the week has been, how great the music-making has been.

[00:29:20] NC: Well, this really came back to bite me once when I was asked at an LA Phil concert, I was asked if at the end of the concert I might stick around, because there was going to be a post-concert Q&A with some audience members. Was it the two of us actually and the conductor.

[00:29:39] AT: I’m not sure.

[00:29:41] NC: Concert is over. We clear the stage. I come back along with the conductor and a moderator. The very first question came from the audience, “Now, I noticed, maestro, that for the first movement of the symphony you used the baton, and for the second movement, you didn’t use one. Could you tell us why?” Instead of just directly answering the question, the conductor actually passed it along to me and he said, “What did you think of that? Did that make a difference to you?” I actually laughed and I said, “I have to be totally honest. I didn’t notice that.”

[00:30:23] AT: I don’t remember this.

[00:30:24] NC: Yeah. It must have just been me on stage. But I mean, the audience laughed and I wasn’t trying to make any kind of a point and I actually was a little embarrassed, but I think I probably even was looking up and I didn’t notice that detail.

[00:30:38] AT: Yeah. That’s not too bad. That’s not too bad.

[00:30:40] NC: But at least I think the audience took it as –

[00:30:41] AT: They switched the conductor on you and you didn’t notice.

[00:30:44] NC: That’s true.

[00:30:45] AT: The hobo.

[00:30:47] NC: The audience took it as I hadn’t looked up for two solid movements.

[00:30:51] AT: Yeah. It didn’t make you look so great, as most of this won’t make us look very good. During rehearsal, one of the things that we do, and this sort of starts imperceptibly and starts rippling outward, the talking, the inattention manifests this sort of like people talking to each other, whispering and sort of shifting around your seat. There’re a lot of creaky noises.

There are people who will make those noises on purpose to be cute, funny. It is annoying. It does drive me crazy, for the record. But that is one of those things, trying to telegraph in a very immature and impotent way that we’re unhappy. Also some place where I’ve played, one of the sections at the strings would make a weird noise with their bow to express unhappiness with how time is being spent in rehearsal.

[00:31:48] NC: Oh, that’s right.

[00:31:51] AT: Yeah. It was a snapping noise that they would make.

[00:31:54] NC: That’s right. It was like the weird little plastic tubing on a cello bow.

[00:32:00] AT: I was trying to avoid which section it was, but –

[00:32:03] NC: Oh! You didn’t even say which orchestra.

[00:32:04] AT: I didn’t.

[00:32:07] NC: Yeah. I forgot about that.

[00:32:07] AT: It was like a piece of rubber that’s on the stick and they would pull it back repeatedly so it’d make a noise. We’ve seen open sort of – I wouldn’t say disrespect. Well, I guess maybe it verges on disrespect. I mean, once it starts to get a little bit chippy between a specific musician and the conductor, that definitely happens.

[00:32:28] NC: Don’t you wish we had referees sometimes? Again, I’m thinking of basketball or football too where, yeah, the announcer – Yeah, they’ll use that word chippy too, “And things are good and chippy out there. Refs really have to take control of this game before it gets out of hand.” Yeah, I’ve definitely felt that in rehearsals. We need a break. We need a timeout. We need someone to come on and take control of this thing before it gets out of hand.

[00:32:54] AT: Yeah. It’s happened a couple of times. Of course, we’ve actually witnessed the worst things have been between musicians, actually, where I really felt like somebody need to come out and separate the players and –

[00:33:06] NC: Yeah, like pro wrestling referee for that.

[00:33:10] AT: Yeah. That’s happened. But with regards to the conductors, yeah, we’ve seen – Maybe we’d mention the time that a conductor actually left after rehearsals over. Got in the car and told the driver to take me to the airport because he was so unhappy with the question that he’d gotten from the concert master.

[00:33:28] NC: Right.

[00:33:29] AT: Yeah. That’s happened and they had to be talked back to actually finishing out the week. Yeah, I mean, that was in response to what we felt was playing needlessly without any actual rehearsal.

[00:33:45] NC: Right. That was a situation where the orchestra started letting their displeasure be known. The conductor took the bait basically and said, “Oh, so you’re not happy? Then we’ll just play and I won’t stop you and then we’ll all be happy.” Then, yeah, that was at the end of that rehearsal that the conductor tried to leave town.

[00:34:07] AT: Yeah, these are all – Those are the big things I think, the big ways in which we express our unhappiness with a situation.

[00:34:17] NC: I mean, in less direct ways – I mean, there’s musical retaliation not in the sense that people try to play badly, but people perhaps stop trying to play their best. I don’t think there’s any way you can play your best when that’s the collective mindset on stage. Things really regress to sort of bare minimum, the baseline.

[00:34:41] AT: Sure. I think at the concert, I don’t really ever think of a time when we all shutdown playing-wise. I don’t really think that happens. I think that we are sometimes successful in shutting out what’s happening out there.

[00:34:57] NC: Yeah.

[00:34:59] AT: That’s unfortunate because that’s supposed to be a connection that makes the whole thing work. But I mean, the orchestra is like it’s some little organism. We can function with a bare minimum of information from up there.

[00:35:11] NC: I think too, I mean it’s hard for me to remember a time that a grudge was held in both directions, like all the way through the concerts too. I generally feel like even when rehearsals have been kind of can’t wait to get this person out of town. I feel like the concert starts and there’s something in the body language almost guaranteed. Somebody in the body language of the conductor that says, “All right, guys. You know everything that happened before. It was just kind of like – I didn’t mean any of that. We need each other now, so let’s –”

[00:35:44] AT: Yeah. I think it’s a feeling like let’s – Ideally, we’re all here just in service of this music. Let’s do that.

[00:35:52] NC: Yeah, I really do feel that does win the day. I mean, it’s like there’s no more fooling around. I mean, there’s people that are listening. We’re all going to spend the next two hours together and we do need each other. I mean, the players need the conductor. The conductor obviously needs the players. I the end, the necessity – Well, there’s probably some great expression that starts with the word necessity.

[00:36:19] AT: Necessity is the mother of ensemble.

[00:36:21] NC: Yeah. That works.

[00:36:24] AT: Let’s use the mother of getting through the concert.

[00:36:28] NC: Well, is this a good time to close out with what we love about great conductors, great ways of bringing an orchestra through a week of wonderful music?

[00:36:40] AT: Yeah. Do we always agree when our conductor is great? I mean, that’s a tricky one. I think it’s easy for me to say, “Oh, when a conductor is great, we do this or that.” Certainly there isn’t always 100% agreement on that.

[00:36:52] NC: I mean, if you mean we as in you and me, it’s easier for us to agree because I think we sit so close to each other and our perspectives are –
[00:37:01] AT: You’re scared of me.

[00:37:03] NC: A lot more –
[00:37:04] AT: You’re out of your mind.

[00:37:06] NC: That’s for sure.

[00:37:08] AT: I stink.

[00:37:09] NC: But if you’re saying we as in the orchestra, then no. Wow! There are some different perspectives.

[00:37:16] AT: There can be, but I feel like there is surprisingly a good amount of agreement, I would say. I know this partially because I was in charge of telling responses, actual survey responses for a while. I’d have to say it’s surprisingly unified. There’s always a few outliers.

[00:37:34] NC: Yeah. I mean, I think there’s always an understanding. If one person in the orchestra says this conductor is just fantastic, it’s rare that someone else who had been through those same rehearsals and concerts would say, “I just don’t understand where they’re coming from at all. There’s nothing great about that conductor.”

I mean, I think generally there’s at least the sense like, “Okay, they must be talking about this aspect. Even though I really didn’t like this person overall, I could see what – There’s something there. I can see what they’re talking about.”

[00:38:09] AT: Yeah. That’s true. I think that the great ones, they’re not conducting in a sense that they’re in-charge of us. They’re our medium for our focus to flow into the audience. That sounds sort of cheesy, but I think they’re conducting in a sense like a filament to conduct or something. It’s not dictatorial. I think the worst situations are you feel like that’s the case. Although there are different types of great conductors. We had one was extremely scary. Great musician and everyone’s focus was – It was like their way or the highway.

[00:38:50] NC: This person might still be conducting, which is why we’re not going to say who they are in case we play for them again.

[00:38:55] AT: There’s no change that this person is ever going to hear about this podcast, but it wouldn’t have worked without them being a great musician. That’s for sure.

[00:39:01] NC: Right. If you’re going to do things that way, then you have to be right 100% of the time.

[00:39:05] AT: Yeah.

[00:39:05] NC: Which they pretty much were.

[00:39:07] AT: Either you thought that or you could leave.

[00:39:09] NC: Yeah. That’s a tricky thing though. Yeah, to appear as though you’re helping all the musicians out. You’re channeling their music, but yet to remain really in control, because you have to be. That’s a tricky balance.

[00:39:28] AT: I mean, if everyone is thinking of this the right way, then we realize our energy has to go in that direction. I think that ends up lining everything up. It’s like a magnet that pulls all the little magnets into a line and go around and adjust each magnet by hand. That’s not going to happen, fish magnets or whatever.

[00:39:47] NC: Either a magnet or a fish.

[00:39:50] AT: Can’t swim next to a magnet and expect it to line up. I think we always come back to this, and this is also going to sound maybe kind of vain, but it’s like we love being appreciated, and you think it would not be possible to appreciate everybody in this situation, yet it’s sort of is.

I mean, we’ve seen great conductors that they sincerely say, “This is great. This is really wonderful,” and when they get what they want. I mean, they’re not happy when they don’t get what they want, but they don’t take out their anger in an unfocused way. It’s okay to get annoyed, but get annoyed at the source of the problem and in the service of fixing it. Don’t get annoyed just to vent some frustration. That’s one of the number one things that starts turning us off.

I think the great ones, they just know how to – They either make eye contact. They look pleased. I mean, it’s the very basic things that I think we really respond to. In the end, music-making is a visceral thing and we respond to visceral queues.

[00:40:54] NC: Yeah. It is weird how – I’m not even sure that flattery is the right word, but it’s weird. You’d think – or I would think, “Okay. I’ve been playing for 30 some years. I’ve been a professional for 20 years. It shouldn’t matter to me if some conductor I’ve never met before says to my section, “Oh, you have a beautiful sound.” That shouldn’t really mean anything. It just sounds like empty flatter. But somehow you’re right. In the middle of a rehearsal, you play a phase and the conductor says, “That’s just a gorgeous sound you make.”

[00:41:30] AT: It can just be as much as just like just saying yes and then –

[00:41:35] NC: That’s true.

[00:41:36] AT: That’s all they need to say or not even. They just have a smile on their face that you did it right.

[00:41:41] NC: It’s true. It really means something. You think, “Yeah. Yeah, I am playing well.”

[00:41:46] AT: Oh, it’s an animal thing too. It’s like you crave that positive reinforcement. It’s like when we were training our dog when we first got her and she was a mess. You don’t obviously zap them with shock collar. You don’t do these terrible things to them. You give them a treat when they do something right. We like the metaphorical treat.

Another goes hand in hand with things I don’t like, but we don’t like when a conductor just decides – Again, this is from string perspective. Conductor has obviously decided strings are always too loud, and they make a joke out of it. Oh, it’s already too loud before we start playing or something. That’s not really funny.

[00:42:33] NC: Right.

[00:42:34] AT: Then you spend the whole time – We say the hand and the face. We’re looking up but this person, one of the best ways to get a section and stop looking at you is every they look up, palms up stretched to suppress the glory of your sound and to –

[00:42:53] NC: Right. You mean palm down. Yeah.

[00:42:56] AT: Yeah.

[00:42:56] NC: Not outstretched, like give me more –

[00:42:59] AT: Yeah. That palm up. No, it’s palm down or to the side. Like stay over there.

[00:43:02] NC: Out of the way.

[00:43:03] AT: You stay in your corner. How dare you. Infringe on the glory of the rest of the orchestra here. Yeah, and I think that a great conductor – Part of feeling appreciated, clearly, because you don’t feel appreciated when someone’s hand is urging you to play less. They coax exuberant playing from you as well as asking for expressive softness. You’re being expressed of in all aspects. You never feel with a great conductor that you were just – You got music written there, but you don’t really want to hear it.

[00:43:37] NC: Right. Yeah, it’s amazing. I mean, certain conductors have a way of making every dynamic seem as though you’re playing too loud. I mean, obviously pianissimo, that’s too easy. You can always tell a string section that a pianissimo is too loud. Piano, you have piano. Why are you playing forte? Mezzo piano and mezzo forte. Well, same thing. This is not forte.

[00:44:03] AT: It’s not forte.

[00:44:04] NC: Then you have forte, but, “Oh, please. You’re playing this like it’s an aggressive forte. This needs to be – Then fortissimo.

[00:44:11] AT: It’s like you may have forte, but guess what? The oboe has double forte.

[00:44:16] NC: Right.

[00:44:16] AT: Like, “Oh, okay.”

[00:44:17] NC: Fine that you get a fortissimo with accents. Why so aggressive? We have three fortes at the end of the movement. Right. You got to –

[00:44:27] AT: Let the brass lead there. Okay.

[00:44:31] NC: All right. Now we’re venting for sure. But we say we saved it till now.

[00:44:35] AT: We haven’t started in on each other yet. It’s tearing down the other sections.

[00:44:42] NC: Yeah. I mean, as long as a conductor gives you reign sometimes, then it makes sense. Those are the times when you can’t just run wild.

[00:44:53] AT: Yeah. I can’t think of my favorite conductors doing a whole lot of shushing, unless it was really warranted.

[00:45:01] NC: Right.

[00:45:03] AT: You don’t like to be shushed. That’s for sure.

[00:45:06] NC: What’s the final recipe? We build the perfect conductor in a lab. We program there. It’s kind of like Robocop. We have to program in there all their primary directives. They have to direct traffic well enough to keep things from falling apart, but I guess they have to manage rehear time in an efficient way. Solving problems quickly.

[00:45:31] AT: Quickly and in a targeted fashion.

[00:45:33] NC: While keeping everybody motivated and aligned toward the common musical goal, common musical vision. They help everyone feel valued for their contributions.

[00:45:46] AT: Yeah, I think they let you know when they’re not particularly pleased, but they also let you know when they’re happy.

[00:45:52] NC: Yeah. That sounds great. Sign me up. No. I mean –

[00:45:59] AT: Robo-conductor.

[00:46:01] NC: Robo-conductor. If you’ve not seen Robocop or haven’t seen it in a while, it is an awesome movie, and Robocop has a secret directive too. I don’t know if we have to put one of those. I don’t want to give any spoilers, but he’s programmed –

[00:46:17] AT: This movie is from like 30 years ago.

[00:46:19] NC: I know, but if someone hasn’t seen it, they should experience it for the first time. A bit of trivia, the bad guy from Robocop did come to an LA Phil concert.

[00:46:27] AT: It’s true. Beethoven Missa Solemnis.

[00:46:30] NC: Kurtwood Smith, if you’re out there –

[00:46:32] AT: We haven’t seen him since. I’m not sure that we –

[00:46:34] NC: Maybe he’s just – Missa Solemnis was Beethoven’s favorite piece that he wrote. At least he said it one point. Maybe that was Kurtwood Smith’s favorite piece and he goes to every performance of it that he can find. But when I saw that face out there, I was not looking at the conductor. I’m sorry Michael Tilson Thomas, because I loved playing for MTT, but I could only look out at Clarance Boddicker

[00:47:01] AT: Wishing. Wishing he were on the podium.

[00:47:07] NC: No. Robocop was programmed with not only the good upholding law and order kind of directives, but he had a secret directive that even he didn’t know about and I feel like we’d have to program our perfect conductor with some secret.

[00:47:23] AT: Believe me. Someone out there is programming in a perfect orchestra musician right now.

[00:47:28] NC: That’s true. They’re going to replace us.

[00:47:29] AT: With all kinds of directives.

[00:47:32] NC: Robo-fiddle. Yeah. All right. Whoever is out there working on that project, cease. Cease the work immediately.

[00:47:41] AT: Yeah. Send them an email.

[00:47:44] NC: Well, great. Remember to check out the podcast Every Little Thing, because yeah, I can’t wait to hear their episode on orchestra concerts.

[00:47:54] AT: Or maybe you should wait till I tell you how it went and then –

[00:47:56] NC: Okay. Akiko will tell us how it went at the next episode.

[00:48:00] AT: Then you can listen to that.

[00:48:02] NC: We’re so grateful that you spent this time with us. Can’t wait to invite ourselves back into your earbuds or car radio or wherever. Thanks so much and we’ll see you at the next episode of Stand Partners for Life.

[END]

Twelve-step programs have helped millions of people, including some of our colleagues. But their constant references to a “higher power” rub some people the wrong way.

As orchestral musicians, we only know one “higher power”: the conductor, who rules every aspect of our musical lives! Here are some slightly rewritten twelve steps toward embracing musical anonymity in the orchestra of your choice.

The Twelve Orchestral Steps

1. Admit you are powerless over your musical decisions and life has become unmanageable.
2. Surrender those decisions to a higher power to reclaim musical sanity.
3. Turn your musical life over to that higher power (the conductor).
4. Make a searching and fearless inventory of your audition self.
5. Admit the nature of your wrongs to yourself and a practice buddy.
6. Be ready to have the conductor remove your defects of character.
7. Actually ask the conductor to humbly remove those defects.
8. Make a list of colleagues you have musically harmed, and seek to make amends.
9. Make direct amends to these colleagues, especially if you must sit near them.
10. Continue taking inventory and promptly admit wrong accidentals.
11. Through meditation and score study, improve conscious contact with the conductor.
12. After your musical awakening, carry this message to other musicians in the orchestra.

Quotes

“If you join an orchestra, you’re just a shareholder, but you’re still receiving dividends.” — Akiko Tarumoto [0:08:47]

“Getting a job is truth time.” — Akiko Tarumoto [0:11:12]

“There is that hope that joining this group, it’s like there’s a power greater than yourself. There’s power in experience.” — @natesviolin [0:17:57]

“It’s okay to be wrong a lot as long you admit it.” — @natesviolin [0:24:20]

“You could follow these steps and actually be a great orchestral player.” — @natesviolin [0:27:46]

“There’s just no way around the anonymity being an orchestral player, but there are positive things about being in an orchestra nevertheless.” — Akiko Tarumoto [0:27:52]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

• Colburn
• Sir Laurence Olivier
• LA Phil
• Chris Still

Transcript

EPISODE 37

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] NC: Hello and welcome back to Stand Partners for Life. This is Orchestra Players Anonymous. I’m Nathan Cole.

[00:00:08] AT: We’re supposed to be anonymous.

[00:00:10] NC: Oh! I already broke the rule. All right.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:00:27] NC: Well, I have to figure you already know who we are. That’s Akiko Tarumoto over there. Welcome back. If you haven’t seen the website in a little while, head on over to standpartnersforlife.com. We got a bit of a new look and as it befits the new year, 2020 episodes of Stand Partners for Life. There you can make sure you’re subscribed on iTunes, on Google Podcasts, however you get your podcasts.

Today we are talking about the anonymous nature of orchestra playing, and this actually came up recently. I teach the violin orchestral rep class at Colburn now, and I got a really good question just today actually.

[00:01:10] AT: What was that question?

[00:01:13] NC: That’s for that prompt. They asked, they said, “Well, we have a friend,” who that’s always kind of a tipoff, but they said, “We have a friend who says that he would never play in orchestra because you would lose your artistic identity. You’d become anonymous.”

First of all, I love how you can’t really talk about orchestra. It’s kind of like how kids learn about the birds and the bees on the playground. It’s like playground wisdom.

[00:01:43] AT: You can’t talk about –

[00:01:44] NC: Well, I just feel like there’s not a constant dialogue about orchestra playing. You have to kind of ask in secret like, “I have a friend who says this is how it works.”

[00:01:53] AT: Right. Well, sure. I mean, we all know why that is. It’s like the vast majority of working musicians, working – Not pianists obviously, but that were out there and orchestra is not being soloists or chamber musicians necessarily, right?

[00:02:12] NC: When you’re in school, the ideal is not to play in an orchestra.

[00:02:16] AT: Right. It’s like a weird version of your expectations and your training or something. You’re supposed to want to do something not anonymous and “better.”

[00:02:27] NC: Right. Well, that’s what we’re going to talk about. But I will say the folks in my class at Colburn, I love the attitude and they’re asking because they really want to know. I honestly do believe they have a friend who said this. They asked and I told them when they said, “Is it true that when you join the orchestra you can become anonymous?” I said, “Absolutely.” I mean, if you just join the orchestra and that’s all the playing you do, you will very quickly lose the ability to –

[00:02:59] AT: Even if it’s not the only playing you do. It is tough to bust out of that rut.

[00:03:04] NC: Yeah. We thought that we would call this episode Orchestra Players Anonymous, and obviously we’re having a little fun with the 12-step programs, AA, and we should say that we’ve had friends and colleagues who have struggled with addiction and found these programs very helpful. So, while not at all demeaning these particular programs. I think we’re drawn to the fact that, that concept, they talk about this higher power and an orchestra that are really going to be one higher power.

[00:03:43] AT: Who’s that?

[00:03:44] NC: Who’s the higher power?

[00:03:47] AT: Prompting you.

[00:03:49] NC: You’re really playing along today. Obviously, the conductor who rules our lives in orchestra. Before I took my first job in orchestra, I did have a friend who I’d play a lot of chamber music with and they said, “How can you do this? How can you join an orchestra?” They actually used the word anonymous, and they said, “You’re going to become anonymous. You’re going to lose every part of you that’s you. You’re going to lose all your musical decision making.”

[00:04:16] AT: That’s interesting. I never thought about that. Maybe I should have.

[00:04:19] NC: You never got the warning?

[00:04:21] AT: No. I’m sure it’s because of people I interacted with thought this is probably the best I could do. Probably like, “We’re not going to warn her. We’ll tell her this is really – She can’t really aspire if she’s really lucky.”

[00:04:33] NC: It’s best that you remain anonymous.

[00:04:37] AT: Yeah. You were going to be lucky to remain anonymous, lady.

[00:04:41] NC: I did get that warning and I really – Everything in me cried out against that. I was like, “I will not. You’ll see.” Sometime in that very first season, and this is was in the same Paul Chamber Orchestra. So not even a giant machine, but a chamber orchestra and I still felt, “Who am I? What am I doing? Do I still sound like Nathan when I play or is the transformation complete?”

[00:05:04] AT: It’s possible that my style of playing, like it’s always been so bland or something that like maybe people thought that sound belongs in an orchestra.

[00:05:16] NC: You mean like how certain people’s voices kind of sound like newscasters?

[00:05:20] AT: Yeah, like you’re not going to be Laurence Olivier. You’re going to be like the weather guy.

[00:05:26] NC: So, it just fits.

[00:05:27] AT: Maybe that’s what they heard me and they were like, “Okay, weather guy.”

[00:05:30] NC: Okay. I can say I’ve heard you play on the very recent side and nothing generic about you.

[00:05:37] AT: Yeah. I think I have a good sense of how things are “supposed to sound”. Whatever that’s good for, I think orchestra probably – It’s good for orchestra.

[00:05:49] NC: But you could easily see how it could happen, right? How somebody –

[00:05:53] AT: Well, has happened obviously, right?

[00:05:56] NC: Yeah. I mean, that’s why people warn and that’s why there are the rumors, school yard rumors about –

[00:06:01] AT: Yeah. I don’t think it’s like so much you’re going to lose how you play. I think you’re going to lose recognition. That’s certainly a huge deal. You’re going to start being comfortable being anonymous and you’re not going to want to seek the recognition, but your ego will still kind of wonder what happened. There’s some of that.

[00:06:18] NC: Right. For the purpose of this episode, as we rewrite the 12 steps, I think we’ve got to put ourselves in the shoes of someone who – Let’s say we have to imagine we’re someone that welcomes that. They want to become anonymous. They want to just blend in, fit in and not have to make any musical decisions anymore. We’re going to have to pretend that we’re –

[00:06:44] AT: Wait. This isn’t a very good advertisement for joining an orchestra, but sure.

[00:06:48] NC: I mean, I think we can – We have always resisted this even so in some of our darker moments. I think we might crave or embrace the anonymous aspect. But I think in this episode we’re going to pretend that we’re one of those folks that just wants to become anonymous forever.

[00:07:09] AT: Okay.

[00:07:10] NC: Yeah. These would be the 12 steps to do it.

[00:07:13] AT: Okay. I’ll play along.

[00:07:14] NC: Yeah. The 12 steps of Orchestra Players Anonymous, and the first one is we admitted we are powerless over our musical decisions and that our musical lives had become unmanageable, right? That’s the first step. I’ve rewritten it and –

[00:07:32] AT: Yeah.

[00:07:33] NC: Well, because just imagine. I mean, we were saying, you’re playing in string quartets. You’re playing in smaller groups and you’re constantly having conflict with other people and they’re telling you that you don’t phrase clearly and need to play more here.

[00:07:51] AT: Right, and you were sort of burdened with these decisions that you had to contribute.

[00:07:55] NC: Right. Because you’ve got to argue against that or you’ve got to say, “No. I disagree,” or, “No. I like to play it shorter and here’s why.” Maybe you just get tired of that. It’s become unmanageable.

[00:08:07] AT: From what I see, it doesn’t seem like people get tired up. Sure.

[00:08:10] NC: Certainly, some people might. If that happened and all that stress became unmanageable, then you would admit that you’re powerless over all these musical decisions that you have to make.

[00:08:21] AT: Right.

[00:08:22] NC: All right. Well, that’s step one. If you’re going to assume this character, then you would have to admit that.

[00:08:30] AT: Okay. All right.

[00:08:31] NC: Step two is we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to musical sanity.

[00:08:40] AT: Yeah. I think I got there.

[00:08:41] NC: Was that power greater than yourself, a conductor?

[00:08:45] AT: I think it was just like the idea that if you join an orchestra, you can – Sort of like you’re just a shareholder, but you’re still receiving dividends.

[00:08:55] NC: Okay. It’s more like the power greater than yourself is the orchestra, the collective.

[00:08:59] AT: Yeah.

[00:09:00] NC: Okay.

[00:09:01] AT: I like that idea. I think when I was looking around for what I was going to do with my life, it’s not going to be all the pressure won’t be on me and all the glory won’t be mine either, but it will be sort of a fair trade.

[00:09:15] NC: Okay, because it’s about to get more personal, more singular in the next rule. I’m not sure that higher power can still be the whole orchestra. We made a decision to turn our will and our musical lives over to the care of – In the original rule, it’s God, as we understood him. I think it’s pretty clear it’s a single – I think all signs are pointing to a conductor.

[00:09:42] AT: I still think you can apply it to the orchestra, the blob. The entity

[00:09:50] NC: In any case, you have to make a decision to turn your musical will and life over to that higher power as you understand it, or him, and most conductors at this point are him, although we do see more and more female conductors at the L.A. Phil.

[00:10:08] AT: I get in trouble.

[00:10:10] NC: Get in trouble for saying that we see more female conductors?

[00:10:13] AT: No. For saying that mostly they’re male.

[00:10:16] NC: No. I mean, they have been overwhelmingly male. I mean, most people think it’s kind of funny that these original rules always talk about a him anyway.

[00:10:25] AT: True.

[00:10:26] NC: This is interesting, because step four made us searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Would you call that part of the audition process really? Because I feel like you kind of have to do that when you’re auditioning.

[00:10:41] AT: Yeah.

[00:10:41] NC: Searching id fearless moral inventory. I mean, that’s pretty much –

[00:10:45] AT: Yeah, it describes an audition.

[00:10:47] NC: Because you’ve talked about many times how you really have to come to terms with what your strengths and weaknesses are.

[00:10:53] AT: Yeah, not in a depressing way though. I think that you – It’s like a chance to show off your side. But for the purposes of this, sure. It’s also daily taking inventory of how things are going.

[00:11:05] NC: Yeah. Because I think overall this is supposed to be depressing either. I mean, it’s truth time.

[00:11:10] AT: Yeah. I mean, sure. I mean, getting a job is truth time.

[00:11:15] NC: Let’s say you’re looking at your weaknesses. I mean, what does that mean in terms of the audition?

[00:11:20] AT: Yeah. You really are trying to disguise them. I’m not sure that works for this particular analogy. It doesn’t work, because the thing you’re not supposed to do in the 12-step programming is hide. That’s the basis of insecurities, is sort of things that you feel that you’re scrolling away from light of day.

[00:11:41] NC: Could you really hide who you are as a player?

[00:11:46] AT: Yes. We’ve seen it. No names. We’ve seen it. It’s anonymous.

[00:11:53] NC: It’s true.

[00:11:57] AT: Maybe we should do an orchestra auditions anonymous.

[00:12:01] NC: This is really more of a whole life, whole musical life type process. But, on, that also would be – You say you can hide it.

[00:12:10] AT: In an audition? Yeah.

[00:12:13] NC: Okay.

[00:12:15] AT: You’re not refusing to play things. Obviously, that doesn’t work, but you can really look out not having ugly little secrets not be unearthed.

[00:12:25] NC: But in any case, you would have to do that inventory, the moral inventory, in order to know what things you’d even want to hide.

[00:12:33] AT: Well, no not really, because the audition, it’s not up to you what they’re going to ask. Some ways, yeah, you’re facing, like they could ask anything. You’re not willfully hiding it. Sure.

[00:12:44] NC: I mean, for you to do your best, you should know what your strengths and weaknesses are.

[00:12:50] AT: Yes. Yeah, because as we’ve gone over this, the choices that you have in an audition, such as choosing your repertoire, even like your tempos and your dynamics that you’re capable of doing. If you’re savvy about it, sure, you can sort of draw people’s attention to your strength and hopefully away from your weakness. But I mean, there are certain weaknesses that once they get exposed, it’s like you’re out.

[00:13:20] NC: Yeah. There are some strategery as they say.

[00:13:24] AT: Yeah, for sure.

[00:13:26] NC: All right. Step five, next step, is admitted to, well, this higher power. Admitted to higher power to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Well, this is the concept of the accountability partner, really. It could be like your audition buddy, your practice partner, your practice buddy with whom you hide nothing.

[00:13:56] AT: I mean, for me, that’s really you.

[00:13:59] NC: Okay.

[00:14:00] AT: Is that helpful? Sure. I’m not sure everybody has that. It’s really helpful to have you as that person.

[00:14:09] NC: We’re lucky in that way because we’ve been there for each other for so many years and we do share this musical life. It was interesting hearing our friend, our colleague, Chris Still talk about this, and he has his website, if you haven’t seen it, honestypill.com. He works a lot with audition prep and he was telling me his story once about how he really had an audition partner or even more than that, a practice buddy.

He was living in an apartment where he couldn’t practice. I mean, he plays trumpet. I think most places you live, you can really practice. He agreed to play a certain number of services, I think it was, at a church. In exchange, they would give him access to their space. I forget if it was a whole gymnasium. I think it was some kind of big space and he had the key. Especially at night, he could go there and then he had this practice buddy, another trumpet player, and they would make appointments to go meet there at a certain time. I think it was usually in the evening. For that reason, he couldn’t really cancel because he knew the other person would be there waiting for him before cellphones.

If we say we’re going to show up at the church basement or whatever at 9PM –

[00:15:32] AT: Just play for each other.

[00:15:33] NC: Yeah, you got to be there. Play for each other. I think they took the – At that time, it was the Walkman Pro or maybe the minidisc player or something like that, record. Yeah, this idea of admitted to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. I don’t think it gets more naked than playing for someone else.

[00:15:56] AT: Yeah. You’re really going to do that. Yeah, it’s hard to schedule those times to say, “Can you listen to me play?”

[00:16:02] NC: Yeah.

[00:16:04] AT: And then not move them around. You’re like, “Actually, do you mind if we do it in two weeks instead of now?”

[00:16:09] NC: I’m not warmed up. But if it’s part of a whole process with steps, then you might do it.

[00:16:17] AT: It’s true. But you have to do it. Sure.

[00:16:20] NC: These steps are – Obviously, this is more about the whole life than just auditioning. Now, some of these steps as in the originals, they got – They’re a little bit the same. I still –

[00:16:32] AT: In case you try to get out of any of them, they’re like, “We got you.”

[00:16:36] NC: Right.

[00:16:37] AT: Step 9 and 3.

[00:16:39] NC: We’re up to step 6. I still think it’s funny to think this is a conductor, but you can think of it how you like. We were entirely ready to have the higher power remove all of these defects of character. Because remember that we’ve admitted that we’re powerless over having to make these musical decisions. We’ve revealed what our weaknesses are and now we’re admitting that we’re ready to have someone else remove all these defects.

[00:17:09] AT: Okay. But I don’t really think it’s how it works.

[00:17:13] NC: But if you were going to be someone that sought anonymity in an orchestra, you might feel that joining that orchestra was finally – That was actually going to make you a great musician. You could remove all the defects in your playing.

[00:17:27] AT: Or how about the defects in how you approach music? You’ve always felt so – Because I could personally say like when I perform, there’s so much pressure. I feel like there’s so dysfunctional, this relationship with playing in public and stuff. But when you join the orchestra, it’s like you’re going to be cleanse with those defects. You’re going to have somebody there who finally makes you understand why you love doing this.

[00:17:55] NC: Yeah. I mean, there is that hope that joining this group, it’s like there’s a power greater than yourself. There’s power in experience.

[00:18:05] AT: I mean, we have friends like that. We know people who – I mean, that’s what we do when we joined orchestra. We agreed to start to hear ourselves as part of this group, and therefore you take on that identity of the group. It does seem like sometimes people do that not in a great way. They’re not the best players necessarily, but they love just being associated with this group.

[00:18:31] NC: Right. After a while can be sort of a crutch if you forget. I mean, I think part of the point of these steps is that you’re supposed to keep thinking of them too. If you ignore your own personal defects, you can pretend that because you’re part of the group, that they don’t exist.

The next step, step seven, largely the same. Well, step six, you’re ready to have these defects remove. Step seven, you humbly ask to have them removed. I guess it’s just taking it literally one step further. I’m not really sure what the equivalent is here.

[00:19:09] AT: It’s just showing up for rehearsal and seeing what the person on the podium’s –

[00:19:11] NC: Is that like asking questions at the conductor in rehearsal?

[00:19:17] AT: That’s not humble. That’s the opposite of humble.

[00:19:19] NC: Okay.

[00:19:19] AT: That’s fighting the anonymity.

[00:19:22] NC: Well, maybe it’s asking your stand partner for help, because that takes humility.

[00:19:28] AT: Yeah, but I also think you need to that. You probably shouldn’t be there.

[00:19:33] NC: In any case, you’re humbly asking for a shortcoming to be removed. Step eight is – I thought this is a justifiably famous step. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. In the course of an orchestral career, you probably rack up a fair number of offenses. I mean, what counts are harming a colleague? If you come in wrong really loud, is that –

[00:20:04] AT: No.

[00:20:05] NC: Do you have to tally those up?

[00:20:06] AT: No. I think like making a face if something goes wrong.

[00:20:11] NC: Okay. Yeah, that’s not good.

[00:20:14] AT: Yeah, anything where you’re sort of giving in to your base or instincts and reacting to something.

[00:20:20] NC: If you’re asking the conductor a question, maybe that’s something that you need to tally up and make amends for.

[00:20:26] AT: Depends on the question, but yeah, we’ve seen once. I mean, really doing wrong to your colleagues. I think playing like super loud because you think you sound so great and basically drowning people out.

[00:20:38] NC: That’s true.

[00:20:39] AT: Hanging on to notes too long so you can hear yourself.

[00:20:43] NC: All kinds of bad orchestra habits. I mean, wouldn’t it be amazing if let’s say they were a serial offender as far as that went and the end of a year they came around to everybody and said, “I realized that in every loud and fast passage I’ve been playing a lot louder than everyone else and hanging on to every note really long.”

[00:21:03] AT: We fantasize about these things. Every day I go to work, wishing that somebody would – Many people would embrace step eight.

[00:21:12] NC: Well. So then step nine is actually making direct amends to such people wherever possible except when to do so would injure them or others. I mean, direct amends to the orchestra. I mean, I’ve heard of situations where people, they really didn’t talk for a long time and then there was some kind of reconciliation, and it’s always a nice story. I like hearing about those things. I actually never had a big beef or feud in orchestra.

[00:21:43] AT: Can you share one? I don’t remember.

[00:21:44] NC: Yeah, just like wind principals who didn’t speak for a long time and then usually there was some kind of intermediary –

[00:21:53] AT: The ones I’m thinking didn’t end well.

[00:21:56] NC: No. I mean, I think a lot of them don’t end well.

[00:21:58] AT: Okay.

[00:21:59] NC: But there are ones that do and then that’s a case of whether you want to call it making amends or just brokering a truce. Maybe hard to make direct amends in an orchestra, but we should make a note to do it if we’ve harmed someone.

[00:22:18] AT: No thanks.

[00:22:20] NC: All right. Well, step 10 is –

[00:22:22] AT: A long time to be there –

[00:22:24] NC: I know. Yeah. It’s stand partners for life. Not just for a week. Step 10 is continue to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.

[00:22:36] AT: I do that all the time. I do that every day.

[00:22:39] NC: Well, I feel like you admit things to me all the time, but these aren’t things where you’re actually wrong.

[00:22:48] AT: No. But I feel like I’m always trying to work on stuff and I’m always finding things that weren’t totally right.

[00:22:55] NC: Well, I mean you do that to a fault.

[00:22:58] AT: Yeah. I got that one covered.

[00:23:01] NC: That’s true. I mean, this is not like a test for you to see if you’re fine with all these steps.

[00:23:06] AT: That’s what it feels like. It feels like I’m being like quizzed about my 12-step worthiness.

[00:23:13] NC: Remember, this is only really if you truly wanted to be anonymous in the orchestra. But I was actually thinking of times when I have been concert master and maybe phrased something in a way that wasn’t great.

[00:23:30] AT: Oh, never. You mean like verbally?

[00:23:34] NC: Yeah, just this concept of when you’re wrong, promptly admitting it.

[00:23:39] AT: Everyone always – They say like you are the best person they’ve ever encountered in terms of like being able to give direction on a really neutral non-hostile way.

[00:23:52] NC: I’m maybe overly careful about that.

[00:23:55] AT: I don’t think there’s any situation where you’ve said anything in a way that you need to apologize for.

[00:24:02] NC: Well, let’s say you make a Boeing mistake or you tell the group something that you heard and then it turns out the conductor said the opposite thing. I mean, I think it’s important to – It is important to admit it right away.

[00:24:16] AT: Well, sure, and you do. I mean, it’s the way people respect you.

[00:24:20] NC: It’s okay to be wrong a lot as long you admit it. Step 11, this is like one of those constitutional amendments that has a whole bunch of clauses. It’s a long one. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with the higher power as we understood him. Praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out.

[00:24:42] AT: There is that. I mean, that’s what an orchestra is. In the end, all you’re really hoping is that you carried out your instructions properly.

[00:24:51] NC: Would you call these instructions from the conductor or more from the composer? Let’s say we’re playing a Beethoven symphony, would you you’re say trying to improve your conscious contact with Beethoven as we understand him?

[00:25:04] AT: In the end, you’re right. I mean, it has to be – You have to think that the conductor is being like an intermediary. Otherwise, everybody’s got like a slightly different opinion of how this should go or it’s not going to really work if you got all those different ideas. Hopefully the conductor is the unifying force and they’re supposed to be.

[00:25:32] NC: Praying only for knowledge of his will [inaudible 00:25:34].

[00:25:35] AT: I do that. I pray.

[00:25:39] NC: Please let me know how many beats prep we’re getting. That happened in rehearsal today. We had [inaudible 00:25:47] was up there and he said, “I’ll give you 3 4 and then you play, and it was about 8 times in a row. It was like, 3 [inaudible 00:25:57]. Then he said, “All right. Wait, one more.” We’ll see what happens in the concert. See how many people have meditated.

[00:26:08] AT: He’s a little scary. I feel like that will be the unifying force.

[00:26:13] NC: I know. I’m going to get that looked from him and it’s going to freak me out and I’m going to come in on four instead of waiting.

[00:26:18] AT: Yeah.

[00:26:19] NC: I’m jinxing myself.

[00:26:22] AT: It’s a tough repertoire this week.

[00:26:24] NC: Finally, step 12, having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other orchestra musicians and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

[00:26:38] AT: Well, that’s tricky. A lot of conflict comes from trying to get everybody on the same page. I feel like you just get thrown in the whole 12 steps again.

[00:26:50] NC: I think that’s part of the point, right? They can be repeated as necessary.

[00:26:54] AT: It supposed to feel like Sisyphus. I mean –

[00:26:59] NC: I’m pushing that boulder back up the hill.

[00:27:01] AT: It’s like 12 steps to be repeated all day, every day. No.

[00:27:05] NC: No. Not every day. I mean –

[00:27:08] AT: If only everybody obeyed these tenets, I think we’d be in a lot better shape.

[00:27:13] NC: Well, that’s what step 12 says, that you share it with other orchestra musicians and it’s kind of what we’re doing in this podcast, right?

[00:27:22] AT: Yeah, I think. I don’t know.

[00:27:24] NC: I think there are other orchestra musicians listening in.

[00:27:28] AT: Hopefully the right ones.

[00:27:30] NC: Well, I mean, now are these steps – I think we kind of started by saying these are the steps to follow if you really do want to become anonymous in the orchestra. I feel like you’ve managed to turn them in a more positive direction. You could follow these steps and actually be a great orchestral player and –

[00:27:51] AT: Well, because as I understand it, there’s just no way around the anonymity being an orchestral player, but there are positive things about being in an orchestra nevertheless. I think there is a spin that you can put on it that’s like you’re toiling in relative anonymity and hopefully you’ll be rewarded –

[00:28:15] NC: In the musical afterlife.

[00:28:18] AT: Yeah. Maybe hopefully some in the current life too. Maybe even at this week’s concert?

[00:28:29] NC: This week’s repertoire is tough [inaudible 00:28:31].

[00:28:32] AT: Yeah, actually there’s no way that we’re going to step out of the lime light in this program in any good way. I mean, as we jump right in a hole or something.

[00:28:43] NC: Yeah. I think you can – Falling off the wagon will definitely get you some temporary fame or notoriety. I this week, it’s probably best to remain anonymous.

[00:28:55] AT: Yup.

[00:28:57] NC: All right. I like the twist. I like the spin you put on it. I am always struggling against the anonymity, but I think the – If you could embrace.

[00:29:05] AT: I mean, you. You’re not anonymous. Hey, when I was in the hospital, my doctor knew right away who you were.

[00:29:15] NC: Well, he knew the color of my hair.

[00:29:18] AT: But that’s very pertinent, I’m sure.

[00:29:24] NC: Well –

[00:29:26] AT: Whereas for me, he said, “I’ve never seen you.”

[00:29:29] NC: Yeah, that was kind of strange for someone who claimed to go all the time.

[00:29:33] AT: Yeah, I’m sure he’s there this week.

[00:29:38] NC: Well, then he’ll see us fulfilling our –

[00:29:40] AT: Hospital doctors anonymous here.

[00:29:42] NC: Yeah, that’s true. I wonder in other professions, do you want to remain anonymous also? I mean, for doctors, maybe the highest calling is to be that person that just save lives and nobody knows your name.

[00:29:58] AT: You’d have to ask around. I’m pretty sure some of them want to be known.

[00:30:03] NC: That’s true. Those ones like in the Pasadena 10 best list.

[00:30:09] AT: Pay $100.

[00:30:10] NC: We’ll get one of them on this show, but thank you all for joining us for these 12 steps of Orchestra Players Anonymous. If you have an orchestral experience that fits into these, I hope you’ll share it with us. Just hit us up at contact@standpartnersforlife. Actually, you could also leave it in an iTunes Review. That’s an awesome way to help your friends and colleagues find us. Just visit our show on iTunes and leave us that little rating and review. That would be fun, and you can leave your thoughts on the 12 steps too. Great to talk with you as always and can’t wait to see you back for the next episode of Stand Partners for Life.

[END]

Violinist Johnny Lee is Akiko's mirror image on stage at Disney Hall: he sits fourth chair second violin, while she's fourth chair first violin. But they have something else in common too. Both went to Harvard, where there is no music performance major. Akiko thought she'd be a lawyer, Johnny a doctor (or was he just pretending?), but they both found their way back to the violin by the time they graduated. The Stand Partners have logged thousands of hours of "unofficial" conversation with Johnny, so we're excited to present him on the podcast. Here's Johnny's path to the LA Phil and beyond! Transcript [00:00:00] NC: Hi and welcome back to Stand Partners for Life. I’m Nathan Cole.  [00:00:04] AT: I’m Akiko Tarumoto.  [00:00:18] NC: And we are thrilled to be here with our great friend on we’ve been trying to get on this podcast actually ever since we started this show. Good friend Johnny Lee, violinist with us in the LA Phil. Frequent hanger outer here at the Cole-Tarumoto residence. You’ve got a heavy dose of the kids tonight. You got to experience dinner, TV watching time, bedtime.   [00:00:43] AT: You missed violin practice time though. Lucky you.   [00:00:47] JL: I have my wine. So it’s fine.  [00:00:49] AT: That’s actually how we got you here. We bribed you with food and drink.  [00:00:51] NC: That’s true. Johnny showed up wearing his Stand Partners for Life t-shirt, which made all of us happy, especially Hannah noticed it right away. If you too would like a snazzy Stand Partners for Life t-shift, go to standpartnersforlife.com/shirts. That’s shirt, plural, and guys and gals designs. But thank you so much for being here, Johnny.  [00:01:12] AT: Yay!  [00:01:13] NC: Yay! There are a few reasons to get you here. One, we talk about the orchestra all the time, and LA Phil life all the time. But in addition to that, you and Akiko have some real similarities, I guess besides the fact that Akiko is 4th chair first violin. Johnny, 4th chair second violin. [00:01:34] AT: He’s my mirror.  [00:01:34] NC: That’s right. We do since first and second, mostly sit across the stage from each other. Here in L.A. Not Akiko’s favorite setup at the moment. [00:01:44] AT: I think everybody is tired hearing my opinion on where the violin should sit.   [00:01:49] NC: But you do get to mirror each other across the stage quite often. The bigger similarity is that you both went to the same school for undergrad and you actually overlapped. [00:01:58] AT: We went to school in Boston.  [00:02:00] JL: Cambridge.  [00:02:02] NC: They went to Harvard. I get to hear about it a lot. No! You guys are good about it. Actually, tonight I really do want to hear about it in quite some detail. But, yeah, neither of you went to conservatory for undergrad. So that’s something that I know a lot of. You guys out there have asked about just the difference between going to conservatory, not going to conservatory, at least for undergrad. Yeah, the different paths that people take to get to the LA Phil. Johnny, if you would back us up from Harvard, from Cambridge, and tell us a little bit about where you’re from, how you got started on the instrument and all that, and then we’ll get to  get to school days.  [00:02:41] JL: Yeah. I mean, I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. So I was at the Cleveland Institute of Music for prepschool – Not prepschool. Preparatory program, age 7 I would say. So I started when I was 5, but started at CIM at 7. But that was of course because my parents were Korean immigrants and they just wanted us to play violin. Us being me and my two older brothers just to put on our college application. [00:03:10] AT: So were you all at –  [00:03:11] JL: Yeah. So would have lessons on Friday after school. My mom would drive us all there. She’d take notes during lessons. Then on the way home we’d get KFC as a reward.  [00:03:24] NC: I thought you were going to say on the way home you’d get yel...