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How does an orchestra choose its' players? |
The nation is bleeding jobs and unemployment stands at almost 10 percent, but in one microscopic sliver of the economy, the pickings are rich: major orchestras.
The New York Times
July 5, 2010
Need a Job? Help Wanted at the N.Y. Philharmonic
By DANIEL J. WAKIN
The nation is bleeding jobs, unemployment stands at almost 10 percent, and lines run long at job fairs. But in one microscopic sliver of the economy, the pickings are rich: major orchestras.
Next season the New York Philharmonic will have a rare 12 openings, or roughly 12 percent of its instrumental work force, thanks to a confluence of retirements, departures for better jobs and long-unfilled positions. The Boston Symphony Orchestra has 10 vacancies, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra 9, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic 7.
Elsewhere the Cleveland Orchestra has four full-time job openings and one part-time. The Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, San Francisco Symphony and Dallas Symphony each have three openings.
“We haven’t had this many for quite a while, not for 20 years,” said Carl R. Schiebler, the New York Philharmonic’s personnel director and its maestro of musician management. “A lot is six or seven.”
In New York, Chicago and Los Angeles the many openings create unusual opportunities for new music directors to deepen their imprints on their orchestras. They also present, at least in the short term, the risk of subtly eroding the highly cultivated sense of ensemble and tradition of sound and style that exist in orchestras at their level.
The New York Philharmonic, the leader in Help Wanted signs, has openings for principal clarinetist, bass clarinetist and second flutist in the woodwinds; two section violinists, two section cellists and three double bassists, including assistant principal; and associate principal horn player. In addition, the third horn player, Erik Ralske, who has been filling in as associate principal, has confirmed that he is fielding offers from elsewhere.
Not that audiences will be seeing empty chairs. Orchestras hire substitutes for section jobs. Assistant principals move up temporarily into the top positions.
“Nobody wants to see vacancies go unfilled,” said Zarin Mehta, the Philharmonic’s president, “and they will be filled, but we are fortunate that this is New York, and we have an awful lot of very good people out there.”
These posts, naturally, are rarefied and have little to do with the normal job picture nationwide. But the number of openings prompts the question of why so many spots stand vacant in a market glutted with talented musicians looking to move up to better orchestras or just to find jobs.
The economy has had an effect. It is cheaper to leave jobs unfilled and to pay substitutes, who usually receive close to the minimum base pay and fewer benefits. Starting salaries at the 10 top-paying orchestras next season range from $101,600 (Minnesota) to $136,500 (Los Angeles), but principal players can earn two or three times that.
“It happens that you do save money,” Mr. Mehta acknowledged, but he said the lingering vacancies in New York were not cost-saving measures.
Sometimes orchestras negotiate with their unions to keep jobs open for financial reasons. In Chicago the players agreed to let four vacancies stand last season and next for budgetary reasons. At other times management does it informally, said Bruce Ridge, chairman of the International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians. He criticized the practice. “No business ever solved a financial problem by offering an inferior product to the public,” he said.
Music director transitions have also delayed hiring. Conductors on their way out often defer to their successors, who will, after all, have to live with the new musicians, and vice versa. Lorin Maazel, whose tenure in New York ended last year, left several openings to his successor, Alan Gilbert, who in his first season has already filled positions for two violinists, a trombonist, French horn player and, on June 25, a percussionist. The Los Angeles Philharmonic, where Gustavo Dudamel took over last season, provided the same explanation. Riccardo Muti begins his tenure in Chicago in September.
The elaborate logistical demands of orchestral auditions cause delays. First auditions are advertised. Then time must pass for applicants to send in résumés and tapes and practice the assigned excerpts from the orchestral literature. A committee of players, usually in the section, has to be formed, and preliminary rounds of auditions have to be scheduled. After the finalists are chosen, a time must be found when the busy music director and committee members can hear them. The process can easily stretch out for many months.
Often no winner is chosen. That happened last year with the Philharmonic’s principal clarinet job. Two rounds of auditions for associate principal horn player and a double bassist also produced no result. The music director in New York has final say but makes the decision in consultation with the committee.
The Boston Symphony usually has a high number of openings, because the demands on the players — the Tanglewood festival, the Boston Pops and regular concerts — make scheduling auditions especially difficult, as does the orchestra’s system of hiring based on a two-thirds majority in committee.
The finest musician can have a bad day: it’s a paradox of the process, in which less than an hour of playing is supposed to determine whether a musician is suitable for the continual day in, day out life of an orchestra member. And in another contradiction, the aspirants play alone for a job that depends on group effort. (Winners are usually on probation for a year or two, effectively a tryout with the ensemble.) On occasion, when no winner is chosen, established orchestral players from elsewhere will be invited to play as guests in a kind of informal tryout. It’s an imperfect system, but no one has figured out a better one.
Technical proficiency is only part of the test. Members of the orchestra weigh whether a candidate plays with strong character yet can blend, match the ensemble’s style and be a colleague they are willing to work with possibly for decades to come.
“The level of craft of students coming out of music school is as high as it’s ever been,” said Brant Taylor, a cellist in the Chicago Symphony. “I’m not sure the number of really great musicians out there — thinking, thoughtful musicians who are the whole package — has gone up in the 12 years I’ve been here.”
Orchestra officials and musicians are loath to discuss the auditioning process in detail, and screens are used to hide the auditioner’s identity from his judges, in the interest of fairness. In a statement, Mr. Gilbert said, “We’re looking for the best musicians, people with a human quality that makes them uniquely right for the New York Philharmonic.”
Sometimes the auditions lead to uncomfortable circumstances.
Mr. Ralske, the French horn player, joined the New York Philharmonic in 1993 in the third chair. He started filling in as associate principal several years ago, when the incumbent, Jerome A. Ashby, a close friend and beloved figure in the orchestra, became ill.
Mr. Ashby died in late 2007, a harsh blow to the orchestra. “Not a day goes by I don’t think about him,” said Mr. Ralske, who continued in the position. Last year the Philharmonic held auditions for the spot, and Mr. Ralske was the only finalist for a position he had handled well for years. Mr. Gilbert oversaw the audition.
Mr. Ralske did not get the job.
But things took a positive turn. Mr. Ralske said he had received not one but two job offers as principal horn player, a major step up. They came from the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera. Mr. Ralske, a Long Island native, said he was struggling with the decision: Los Angeles has an exciting new conductor in Mr. Dudamel and is in good financial shape, but “the Met is the Met,” and closer to home.
Rather than discuss his unsuccessful New York Philharmonic bid, Mr. Ralske said that his was a “success story.” It is also, he said, an illustration of “how deep the orchestra is in talent. |
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27th Annual Historical Harp Society Conference & Workshop |
27th Annual Historical Harp Society Conference & Workshop" on Sunday, July 18 at 12:00pm.
Event: 27th Annual Historical Harp Society Conference & Workshop
What: Workshop
Start Time: Sunday, July 18 at 12:00pm
End Time: Sunday, July 25 at 12:00pm
Where: Connecticut College, New London, CT |
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Columbia's Rare Book & Manuscript Library Acquires Chaliapin Family Papers |
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Columbia's Rare Book & Manuscript Library Acquires Chaliapin Family
Papers http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/news/libraries/2010/20100428.chaliapin.html
NEW YORK, April 28, 2010 - Columbia University's Bakhmeteff Archive
<http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/rbml/units/bakhmeteff/index.html>
at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library has acquired the papers of Fiodor
Chaliapin (1873-1938), renowned Russian opera singer, and his son Boris
Chaliapin (1904-1979), noted portrait artist and illustrator of over 400
/Time/ magazine covers. A gift from the estate of Helcia Chaliapin, the
papers cover the time period of 1904-2009 and include letters,
photographs, original artwork, and ephemera.
"The acquisition of the Chaliapin Family papers by the Rare Book &
Manuscript Library is an important addition to the very rich collection
of Russian materials in the Bakhmeteff Archive," said Elizabeth Kridl
Valkenier, Resident Scholar and Adjunct Professor at Columbia's Harriman
Institute. "It offers valuable information and sources (ranging from
photos and correspondence to paintings) in three areas: the
extraordinary efflorescence of Russian culture on the eve of World War I
(known as the Silver Age); the contribution of the Russian diaspora to
European and American culture after the 1917 Revolution; and the role of
Russians in American journalism as well as in Hollywood between the wars."
Fiodor Chaliapin was the foremost Russian opera singer of the 20th
century. Largely self-taught, Chaliapin began his career in provincial
touring companies of Czarist Russia, then joined the Bolshoi in 1899
where he played Boris Godunov, the role he would be most associated
with. He made his European debut in Milan in 1902 and his New York debut
in 1907. Chaliapin remained in Russia after the Russian Revolution of
1917, but eventually emigrated to Paris. He died in Paris in 1938.
Fiodor's son, Boris, received his art education in Russia and Paris and
first exhibited his work in the foyer of London's Royal Opera House in
1927. Boris Chaliapin painted a series of pictures of his father both on
and off the stage and in the 1920 and 1930s had a considerable
reputation for portrait painting in Russia. He then moved to New York
City where he supported himself as an illustrator. Between 1939 and
1970, Boris Chaliapin painted more than 400 portraits for the cover of
/Time/ magazine.
The collection includes photographs inscribed by prominent
contemporaries to Fiodor Chaliapin, as well as concert and theater
fliers and posters documenting his career. The archive also features
Boris Chaliapin's series of letters from the Korovine family in
emigration, Sergei Rakhmaninov and Theodor Dreiser, letters from Akim
and Tamara Tamirova discussing film projects with Orson Welles, hundreds
of letters detailing the process of creating a /Time/ magazine cover; a
sketchbook regarding the U.S. release of the 1933 film Don Quixote,
starring Fiodor Chaliapin, hundreds of news clippings, mainly about
Boris and his father, Time/Life photos from Boris's 1960 trip to the
Soviet Union, and many original works of art.
Named for Boris A. Bakhmeteff (d.1951), the last ambassador of the
Russian Provisional Government to the United States and a longtime
professor at Columbia, the Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian & East European
Culture is the second largest (after California's Hoover Institution)
repository of manuscripts, printed and visual materials related to the
Russian and Eastern European �migr� communities outside of the
homelands. The Archive includes almost 1,000 processed collections with
more than 1.5 million individual items, including letters, documents,
manuscripts, photographs, prints, clippings, artworks, and ephemera.
*The Rare Book & Manuscript Library* owns over 500,000 rare books in
some 20 book collections and almost 28 million manuscripts in nearly
3,000 separate manuscript collections. It is particularly strong in
English and American literature and history, classical authors,
children's literature, education, mathematics and astronomy, economics
and banking, photography, the history of printing, New York City
politics, librarianship, and the performing arts. Individual collections
are as eclectic as they are extensive.
*Columbia University Libraries/Information Services* is one of the top
five academic research library systems in North America. The collections
include over 10 million volumes, over 100,000 journals and serials, as
well as extensive electronic resources, manuscripts, rare books,
microforms, maps, graphic and audio-visual materials. The services and
collections are organized into 22 libraries and various academic
technology centers. The Libraries employs more than 550 professional and
support staff. The website of the Libraries at www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb
<http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb> is the gateway to its services and
resources. |
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Why you've never really heard the "Moonlight" Sonata |
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Why you've never really heard the "Moonlight" Sonata with musical samples - well worth listening to! http://www.slate.com/id/2245891/ |
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HELDENTENORS: WHO THE HECK SANG WAGNER BEFORE MELCHIOR? |
THE VOCAL RECORD COLLECTORS SOCIETY presents:
HELDENTENORS: WHO THE HECK SANG WAGNER BEFORE MELCHIOR?
a talk by Harold Bruder
A few years ago Harold Bruder gave two programs on early Italian and Hispanic tenors. He's finally returning to complete the cycle with tenors who concentrated on Wagnerian singing - otherwise known as "heldentenors". Again focusing on the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Harold will begin with the creator of Parsifal in 1882, Hermann Winkelmann. You'll hear the dulcet sounds associated with "Bayreuth Bark" as it takes the form of some passionate declamatory singing. Recordings from 1900 - 1922 will document this grey area, since most of these tenors (who are not only German, but also Polish, Czech, Dutch, Belgian, Danish and Austrian) are long forgotten. If you've experienced the trials of contemporary heldentenors in the past couple of seasons, you'll know that these steely-voiced singers of long ago should finally be given their due.
Harold Bruder is a noted artist and Professor Emeritus of Art at Queens College, a longtime opera-lover, a voice student who has studied with the likes of Vera Schwarz and Vittorio Weinberg, and a member of the VRCS Board of Directors, acting as our much-put-upon Program Coordinator. His writings have appeared in OPERA QUARTERLY and THE RECORD COLLECTOR, and on many CD reissues of great singers of the past. His particular interests in schools of voice, teacher-pupil influence, etc., have been excellently demonstrated in many previous programs for the VRCS, no more so than in those aforementioned evenings devoted to Italian and Hispanic tenors. It is therefore guaranteed that he will make even "Bayreuth Bark" a thing of surpassing interest to your mind and transcendent beauty to your ears, so do plan to be with us for another of his superb programs.
DATE: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2009 (THE SECOND FRIDAY) TIME: 7:30PM SHARP
PLACE: CHRIST CHURCH BASEMENT AUDITORIUM, PARK AVE. & 60TH STREET, N. Y. C. |
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