Wanted: Gutsy, Exuberant Orchestra

I’m looking for an orchestra that is ready to step out of a 300-year-old box and into a new model of music-making. Show me an orchestra where traditional ideas, values, mentalities, structure, and assumptions are all up for questioning and review. Let me work with gutsy and exuberant players, staff, and audience members. I am ready to renovate the orchestra!

First, let’s agree that it’s about the listeners and the musicians. Let me work with an organization that recognizes the inherent value of the player-audience relationship, knowing it can only be actualized through live performance. It’s not just about making beautiful sounds, it’s about the moment when we sit together, listen, and meet somewhere in Concert Time. Are we about the Pageantry: the tuxedos, forced silence, muted emotions, protocol, and stiffness? Or are we about the Festival: the celebration, wonder, beauty, and spontaneity of live orchestra music?

Let’s start by shedding the penguin suit (see Campaign Pledge No. 1). Right there some three-hundred years of baggage falls away. And what do we find hidden underneath? People. There are living and breathing people who play those instruments. Let’s give them full acknowledgment, something more than mass alphabetical lists in the program book. Let’s occasionally use verbal introductions and speak their names out loud! Why not encourage listeners to know their players and create new ways for audiences to interact? Let’s consider ways to directly connect players to their fans. Let’s look at audiences as fans.

Let’s revive the custom of audience feedback. It was still a norm well into the twentieth century for listeners to audibly express their opinion via clapping or other noises. Audiences gave feedback after individual movements, completed pieces, and sometimes demanded repeat performances. (I do ask listeners to give the music a ‘picture frame’ of silence to distinguish music time from regular time and to avoid prematurely stepping on the music before it has completely passed.)

Let’s allow musicians to behave with the awareness of a live audience, too. The current protocol limits who is allowed to interact with whom. Based on old, ingrained, rules of class etiquette, the conductor receives applause ‘on behalf’ of the orchestra, while orchestra members stand anonymously and facelessly in the background. An individual player may receive applause and recognition for a solo, however, the current code of behavior limits the player to acknowledging it by just standing with a blank, i.e. ‘modest,’ expression. Do you stand at vacant attention when receiving applause from your fans? Let’s renovate these out-dated class roles and give musicians space to create new images of the musician as artist.

Musicians might notice and interact with their fellow players, too. I’d love to pass along an occasional ‘high-five’ to a player. Shaking hands is sometimes too stiff and judgmental. “Congratulations, well done. Thank you, dismissed.” Handshakes don’t always convey the exuberance of what was just achieved. “You just performed a mind-bogglingly beautiful, heartwarming moment - and we all felt it!” Yes, sometimes a good high-five captures the spirit much better. Spirit and exuberance - I tend to walk on stage with a bit of an impulsive dash because I can’t wait to get started. This is exciting! Sometimes excitement trumps the indifference of decorum. Oh, gutsy, exuberant musicians, let’s renovate the orchestra.

Is there a group out there that would be ok with letting at least one concert per season be “Of the moment?” Let’s occasionally perform music selected with the moment in mind, rather than what we thought the audience should hear three years ago when we started to book the season. Let’s dare to have a bit more significance through temporal relevance and spontaneity. Why not put on a performance without prior program information? We’ll let you know from the stage. Risky? Very. But only if our audiences don’t trust our artistic instinct. Let’s renovate this trust, too.

I consider orchestra players to be an elite group of poet-athletes. The multitude of physical and mental actions, adjustments, and finesse executed by players is outstanding. I see a gutsy, exuberant orchestra as giving priority to musicians’ physical well-being. Let’s bring fitness concerns to the table, discuss stretching breaks during lengthy rehearsals and provide for adequate water and hydration. (Especially for wind players who lose a great deal of water through their breath) Let’s discuss bringing in a Feldenkrais trainer and re-visit workplace ergonomics.

I’d love to see an ergonomic plan that allows players to easily shift eye contact to the conductor and each other, creating the possibility for quick feedback loops. When I can listen and give instant feedback where needed, players can play with more spontaneity, agility, and ‘at the verge.’ An earnestness evolves that otherwise is hindered and stifled if players are left waiting for ‘approval’ before venturing forward, or they are simply ‘pre-programmed’ and hit the recall button on demand.

I’d love to work with players who believe that individuality is important. (Players who might also notice, with a smile, that I refrain from calling musicians by the name of their instrument. The orchestra is not compiled of trumpets and violins, but trumpet players and violinists.) Musicians who live multi-dimensional lives and take inspiration from events outside the practice room (the perfection room) and concert hall, bring more life to live performances. I’d love to be involved in renovating an orchestra in a way that encourages players to expand their musicianship through teaching, composing, chamber music, conducting, etc. and also supports players’ non-musical pursuits.

Such a gutsy and exuberant orchestra would likely be open to a co-op style of management and structure. Be open to seat-rotation, and apt to pursue organization endeavors based on artistic quality rather than quantity. I’m concerned that in the spirit of organizational development we squeeze as many concerts as possible out of our players – and audiences -when the quantity of tickets sold says little about the quality of Concert Time.

I firmly believe that great music is not squeezed or whipped out of musicians. With this in mind, I “coach up,” rather than ”conduct down.” That is to say I see each player as a musician on their own trek towards excellence. I will provide training, conditioning, feedback, inspiration, and invitations for players to stretch beyond what they can see within themselves.

I ask gutsy players to go beyond reproducing perfection, i.e. identicalness on demand. Each performer, fully aware of their involvement and contribution, receives feedback and guidance that lets them respond to the moment. My conducting is about laying out the blueprint, and then stepping back and letting it happen, making brief adjustments as they arise. I will coach up, show possibilities, and create frameworks that lead to excellence. My goal is to bring each player closer to their place of ‘flow’ or being in the zone, what athletes (those who don’t make sounds) refer to as excellence.

Would a gutsy orchestra agree that excellence as a performer is different than note-perfection? Perfection kills spontaneity and kills the imagination. Perfection speaks as a machine. Excellence is the mindset of human beings striving for their fullest expression. If you’ve ever experienced a performance moment when everyone, listeners included, is ‘in the flow’ – that is pure magic. That’s enchantment. It’s why we hone our skills and walk back out on stage again and again. A sweet-spot of being in full connection with the music, listener, and yourself. It is why we do this.

To dance like this requires trust between everyone on stage - being gusty and exuberant. Dear orchestra, if you are out there, let’s have a blast trying out these ideas, and more. Let’s ride the risks that maybe listeners will feel our urgency. This music we are performing live is only now! We will take music out of a 300-year-old box, move it beyond notes on paper, and with excellence, we will convey the wonder, poignancy, beauty, and drama of the human condition through live music.