MUSIC
BY BRETT CAMPBELL
Continued from p. 21
orchestra’s musicians by reading through movements of
Igor Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale.
Even though it was an impromptu chamber music
experience rather than a full orchestral rehearsal, the exercise
still gave the musicians a sense of how each candidate works.
INSPIRING THE COMMUNITY
What was the committee looking for?
“We had a pretty long list, some of it musical and
technical, some relational, some organizational,” Freck
says. “First you need a conductor who’s going to inspire
the orchestra to play really well. If you don’t have a great
core product, the rest doesn’t matter.”
But that’s only the starting point. Orchestras today can
no longer take for granted that just playing the classics
with style can — or even should — guarantee success.
The symphony music director, in a town with few big arts
institutions and deep-pocket donors, has to play a larger
role in the larger community.
“Eugene is the kind of place that values commitment,”
Saydack explains. “Being committed to this orchestra
means being committed to our musicians. We can’t offer
full-time employment to the musicians we have to work
with, so it’s important they be treated with enormous
respect and gratitude for doing the work they do, and to
make an effort to engage with them to make music together.
“It’s not like ‘maestro comes to town and does things his or
her way,’” Saydack continues. “It’s much more collaborative.”
The candidates also have to understand the orchestra’s
audience, he says. “We’re a college town, so our tastes
are somewhat venturesome but also at times surprisingly
conservative. A music director has to understand that
part of the responsibility is to generate support, which
translates into ticket sales, contributions and support,”
Saydack explains.
“The biggest communities in America have trouble
carrying the cost of operas and orchestras,” he adds. “In
Eugene, the base is small but significant, so this person has
to relate to that small community. To do that, they have to
spend enough time here to know the place and people.”
FINAL AUDITION
The committee settled on three finalists.
“All three are wonderful musicians and fulfill the first
and most fundamental criterion,” Saydack says. “Once
we’re satisfied a candidate has the technical skills, it
becomes a question of who’s going to be the right fit, who
has the best chemistry with this orchestra, this audience
and this community.”
So each comes to town this season to lead a regular
subscription concert and spend what Freck calls “a
very taxing week, in a good way” — by meeting with
the symphony’s board and volunteers, community
members, potential artistic partners and local arts leaders,
participating in outreach programs at schools and the
University of Oregon and beyond, and rehearsing and
leading the orchestra in a full concert.
Saydack says each brings substantial assets.
“Dina Gilbert [who led the orchestra’s December
concert] comes from a great culture and tradition of music
making in Montreal,” he notes. “She’s deeply committed
to contemporary music and formed her own group to
present it. If she came, we’d see a style of music making
we haven’t in the past: exploration of classic repertoire
we haven’t dug into deeply and exploration of the newest
repertoire being written now.
“She has a wonderful ability to express herself: a
persuasive and convincing advocate,” Saydack explains.
“Ryan McAdams [who leads the orchestra Jan 26] has
received outstanding recognition for his great power as a
conductor with the classics but also with contemporary
music,” Saydack says. “He’s a highly proficient conductor
who sees the concert venue as a way to explore the arts
in general and is in great demand for innovative concert
performances. If he came, we’d see that idea of the symphony
concert expand in ways we haven’t seen in the past.”
Francesco Lecce-Chong [whose audition concert is
March 16] has been assistant conductor at two larger
orchestras, Milwaukee and Pittsburgh. “He brings
incredible joy to his conducting — he looks like [former
ESO music director] Miguel [Harth-Bedoya] when he
conducts — very fluid,” Saydack says. “Of all the people
I’ve seen come through these searches, he’s probably been
the most passionate about outreach. If he comes, he’ll
make concerts a joyous activity.”
What if none of these three makes the cut? The
orchestra’s excellent track record means it can afford to be
picky, knowing that some of the most promising emerging
conductors will be interested in leading this relatively
isolated orchestra far from major cultural centers.
“We’re talking about three exciting, wonderful options,”
Saydack says. “These folks represent three paths to the
future. Which do you go down? These three finalists all
have that spark that could catch fire, that could inspire the
musicians, the board, the volunteers, the audience. We’ll
know it when we see it. If not, we’ll keep looking.” ■
PINK MARTINI
POP GO THE CLASSICS
A week of everything from Renaissance to swing and beyond
F
leeing the centimeters of snow that turned what was
once America’s hipster capital into an ice-bound
hell, a pair of Portland bands brings music that
appeals to fans of both pop and classical sounds.
Pink Martini returns to the Hult Center on
Saturday, Feb. 4, with music from their long-awaited album,
Je dis oui!, and more. They’ll be missing the bevy of famous
guest artists (e.g. Rufus Wainwright) who decorated the
band’s bubbly ninth recording, not to mention occasional
co-lead singer Storm Large (who’s maintained her own
solo career), but the substitutes are pretty good: original
lead singer China Forbes and our own Eugene Symphony.
Classically trained Martini founder-pianist-bandleader
Thomas Lauderdale, who sits on the board of the Oregon
Symphony, works often with orchestras, which is why the
band’s many orchestral collaborations sound so natural.
On Thursday, Jan. 26, the symphony accompanies an-
other guest classical pianist, Andrew von Oeyen, who’ll
22
January 26, 2017 • eugeneweekly.com
star in an American classical masterwork: Samuel Barber’s
ruggedly romantic, Pulitzer Prize-winning 1962 piano
concerto. The other guest: emerging young conductor Ryan
McAdams, the second of three candidates auditioning for
the orchestra’s music director job. He’ll also lead the band
through Brahms’s first symphony and Mozart’s dramatic
overture to his opera Don Giovanni.
Another band of classically trained, pop-oriented
Portlanders performs the same night as Pink Martini, Feb.
4, at Whirled Pies. ARCO-PDX performs contemporary
and classical music with the charisma, amplification,
lighting and other stage effects we’re used to at rock
shows. This time, they’re playing music by Philip Glass,
the fabulously subversive and entertaining contemporary
Dutch composer Jakob TV, and the rising Portland
composer Scott Anthony Shell, plus some George named
Handel, who was making audiences swoon with his hooky
melodies centuries ago.
More contemporary classical music by Northwest
composers, performed in a decidedly non-classical setting,
highlights this month’s Songs@Tsunami show Saturday,
Jan. 28, at Tsunami Books. Eugene singer Laura Wayte’s
non-stuffy recital series features Eugene Opera soprano
Tess Altiveros and pianist Elisabeth Ellis singing
new songs by Northwest composers Thomas Joyce and
Emerson Eads. They’ll also sing Ravel’s ravishing Five
Greek Songs, Schumann’s A Woman’s Love and Life and
music by 20th-century British composer Ralph Vaughan
Williams.
Two very different string quintets hit town next week.
On Jan. 29, the superb Berlin-based English viol consort
Phantasm plays music by the two greatest composers
of the English Renaissance, William Byrd and Thomas
Tallis, plus music by J.S. Bach and Mozart, in a concert
at the University of Oregon’s Beall Concert Hall. A viol
consort uses the half-millennium-old stringed instruments
that preceded modern violins and cellos. When played by
historically informed specialists like these, the instruments
can produce some of the most emotionally affecting music
you’ll ever hear. There’s more early music at the UO’s
Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art on Wednesday, Feb. 1,
when UO musicians play works by Renaissance masters
Josquin Desprez and Carlo Gesualdo, Baroque titans
Monteverdi and Purcell, and J.S. Bach.
Later Wednesday night at the Shedd, Chico Schwall’s
American String Band plays American folk classics
dating from mid 19th century to the end of the 20th. You
might have heard “Yellow Rose of Texas” and “Wildwood
Flower” in covers by Bob Wills and the Carter Family, but
the rest of the program is rarely heard these days, providing
a wonderful glimpse into the music that inspired David
Grisman, the Band, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash and others.
Also at The Shedd this Friday, Jan. 27, you can hear
another American classic: Best-selling trumpeter-
composer-record producer-philanthropist Herb Alpert
and his wife and fellow Grammy winner Lani Hall,
former lead singer of Brasil ’66, play Brazilian tunes, jazz
and, of course, shagadelic Tijuana Brass. ■