Pinchas Zukerman comes to town!
By Matthew Heil
Marketing & Public Relations Manager
A little belatedly, the news: Pinchas Zukerman is coming to town! The virtuoso violinist will be conducting and playing in the concert this weekend, along with Amanda Forsyth on cello. (For those who are curious, Mr. Zukerman will play on the Mozart Concerto No. 3 for Violin and Orchestra, while Ms. Forsyth will play on Boccherini's Concerto in B-Flat Major.)
An added bonus, for you Elgar fanatics out there. Thanks to the Elgar Foundation, and some great displays they were able to send us, you can peruse the life of this composer before the concert or at intermission. You can learn more at www.elgarfoundation.org.
I hope you enjoy this weekend's concerts, and be sure to check out the next couple of weeks of concerts!
Marketing & Public Relations Manager
A little belatedly, the news: Pinchas Zukerman is coming to town! The virtuoso violinist will be conducting and playing in the concert this weekend, along with Amanda Forsyth on cello. (For those who are curious, Mr. Zukerman will play on the Mozart Concerto No. 3 for Violin and Orchestra, while Ms. Forsyth will play on Boccherini's Concerto in B-Flat Major.)An added bonus, for you Elgar fanatics out there. Thanks to the Elgar Foundation, and some great displays they were able to send us, you can peruse the life of this composer before the concert or at intermission. You can learn more at www.elgarfoundation.org.
I hope you enjoy this weekend's concerts, and be sure to check out the next couple of weeks of concerts!
11 Comments:
What a wonderful concert this was! It is so nice to see the orchestra look happy and play so beautifully. The intermission was so nice and quiet that my wife and I could quietly chat together. We wonder what is happening to the older musicians. We have gotten used to seeing them in their chairs for decades and now they are disappearing and being replaced by much younger people. We are not going to renew our season tickets for next year, but will order a la carte when there are interesting guest conductors. Just magnificent!
I'm glad you enjoyed the performance last night. I was there as well and enjoyed a rare opportunity to hear the orchestra from the patron's viewpoint.
Some members of the orchestra have taken leave (approximately 4) and a couple have left for various reasons (2 people). Just so you are not surprised next year, there will be up to seven new musicians on stage after the summer break. Some positions are vacant and will be filled permanently and a couple of people have asked for the year off.
I'm sorry you are not planning to renew your subscription. We are trying very hard to create a season that is diverse and interesting for the orchestra and the audience alike. I think there are a great number of performances that will be stand out evenings so I hope we see you at many performances "a la carte".
Hey Michael Christie, I am very excited about the upcoming Zukerman concert tonight, and I'm also excited to see you at the TPSC rehearsal next Monday to keep hacking away at Beethoven's Missa Solemnis. Now, I know that this is off topic from the current discussion, but I want to ask you this; do you really give a pretalk before concerts? Because I've only heard about this feature from a ticket taker during one of the previous Classics concerts that I attended, and I was amazed at that point. I've never heard about these pretalks, and I'm sure that if you voiced out the presence of these pretalks that more people might wish to attend these concerts (I know that I would come earlier to the concerts if this were the case).
We have preconcert talks one hour before our Thursday and Saturday evening performances as well as one hour before those on Friday morning. They are hosted by PSO timpanist Bruce Pulk and KBAQ radio personality Katrina Becker. The guest artist for the evening is often interviewed or if I'm conducting the concert without a guest soloist I will often be their guest. I hope you'll check it out sometime. I hope you enjoyed last night's performance!
Maestro Zuckerman during his pre-performance interview made a comment about not talking about the music but rather listening to it (Hint to Michael Christie, you talk to much). It was nice to Mr. Zuckerman enter the stage take the podium and conduct without commentary.
Also on another blog there is mention of missing orchestra members, what about those dismissed quietly by Mr. Christie. The ones that have not been made public.
Sonny, I always enjoy reading your comments. I will not dispute all that you wrote. However, I thought it was the best Mozart I have ever heard live. Most of the other string players said virtually the same thing. This week left most of the orchestra thinking the same thought. It was a reminder of why we do this is the first place.
Zukerman and Perlman clip.
youtube.com/watch?v=SR_oJXyokww
We too attended the Zuckerman concert and enjoyed it enormously. It is always a joy to hear the Symphony playing with vitality and life. This sadly has not been the case for the past few years. We are former season ticket holders who chose not to renew after the remodel. We attend ala carte as the program or conductor or special guest move us. We also attended the Strauss/Schubert concert and hearing Borivoj and Maggie Martinic-Jercic playing together on the Vienna Waltz brought tears to our eyes - first for the pure beauty of their playing and second because we cannot believe that the Symphony is losing him in the coming year. He has been a constant source of joy and talent to all of us who have been loyal to the Orchestra for years. While we wish him much success on his new venture, the Orchestra is much poorer without him and many of the other faces that have left or been moved. Change is a necessary part of life, but change for change sake or to prove who is in control is never good. Thank you Phoenix Symphony members for all of the beautiful music you have given us over the years. See you next time.
First off, I would like to comment that I believe that I am in agreement with the two cats as I was on Saturday night; I was entirely entrigued by the Serenade for Strings, and I thought that Zukerman did quite a fine job with it. To be frank, however, I personally believe that his conducting style is . . . strange. (He did the downbeat as an upbeat . . . . who does that?? hmm) It is also peculiar that he is able to conduct the strings whilst he plays on his violin; they probably have to keep a very good beat on their own then, because I met the man after the concert and he has to be one of the strangest conductors/violinists I've ever met. When I shook his hand and inquired about his technique, he only mumbled a few words to me . . . what I picked up was, "Keeps them on their toes, upbeat's as important as downbeat . . ." and as interesting as that was, it must have been confusing to the orchestra when they had to count their measures on something as difficult as a Mozart concerto.
And to answer your question, Sonny, the chorus is doing fine at the moment. We have had quite a surge in sopranos, as well as the altos as well. Tenors and Basses, however, have not been AS successful (which was something to be expected; lets face it, it's more common for more girls than guys in choir than the other way around :( ), but we have been making up for it quite well in my opinion. All of us are putting the same amount of effort into the piece, and I'm sure that the Missa Solemnis will be an absolute HIT come performance time. I promise you that you will find me busting a gut those nights, so have no fear!
Also, about those tips; if I'm not mistaken, I believe that Beethoven's list of choral works is not very large, so I'm not sure there are a whole lot of things to think about (I'm sure that Dr. Greg Gentry would have something to say at this point). However, I will tell you this; At this time in his life, Beethoven was rather on the verge (if not already there) of becoming deaf, and he began to lose hold on some of the limitations of a choir. While he is always ruthless with choirs in all of his music (because he treats us as if we were live instruments, with NO MERCY), he is especially brutal in the Missa Solemnis because we ARE the center piece of the music; the orchestral part is mainly background for us in this mass. Here is actually a note for you to learn; listen for our consonants, especially in the opening passage of the piece. Our pronouncement of KYRIE should be given with a crisp, light K, so if anything listen for those. Other than that, listen also for our operatic releases, such as "eleison(nuh)". Me being the youngest member of the choir (17yo baritone), I just try to keep up. I think I do well at that :).
I think that should appease your appetites of choral knowledge for now. Until the next time, this is your chorus respondent, Mr. Delahunt, signing off.
"Also on another blog there is mention of missing orchestra members, what about those dismissed quietly by Mr. Christie. The ones that have not been made public."
As a professional musician and administrator in another orchestra, (I do not live in Arizona, but used to live in Phoenix and enjoy keeping in touch through this blog), I would just like to comment briefly on this. The Collective Barganing Agreement, or sometimes referred to as the Master Agreement, between the American Federation of Musicians and the organization, in this case TPS, has specific rules and guidelines for dismissing musicians. I do not know the specifics on TPS master agreement, but usually there is a rigorous procedure that the organization must follow in order to dismiss a tenured musician for artistic reasons. I cannot imagine that Mr. Christie has been given carte blanche to get rid of any tenured player that he wants to.
There is most likely a completely different set of procedures outlined for new/probabtionary players who have not yet received tenure. These players, although having been awarded the job after an audition, still must go through a tenure process as described in the Master Agreement. Mr. Christie would have some say in this, probably along with a committee of the player's peers (sometimes the audition committee that awarded them the job in the first place). There are many different reasons why someone may not be given tenure, but no matter what they are, it is a hard decision to make for conductor, orchestra and organization, not to mention the player who has been told they aren't wanted after the end of the season. In order to help the player after this decision is made, often organizations will not rub it in but publicizing it, but continue quietly, organizing another audition to fill the position. Just because you win an audition does not mean you automatically get tenure and have a job for life. Every professional musician knows that winning the audition is just the first step.
So please do not think that Mr. Christie is dismissing people on his own. There is a process in place agreed upon by the musicians' union and the organization and anything done outside of that would be in violation of this signed union contract.
I read with interest the Sunday Times article about the search for a new music director by the NY Philharmonic. The write mentioned many possibilities as he compared what should be with what the L.A. Symphony recently did, hiring a now 26 year old. Of all the candidates mentioned both old and young, there was no mention of the Music Director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic among the 30 something possibles. I guess he is not considered an "A" list conductor.
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