Action…Adventure...Sick bass clarinets! It’s all here in week 1!!!!

Long time no blog and I apologize for that. They had told us that the first two weeks would be a killer, and they were absolutely right. Two weeks of coming into the office at 7:30am and leaving it consistently after 10pm can wear a bit on the soul. Fortunately, the madness has passed (knock on wood). At this point, just about all the students have auditioned, are placed, and many already have one concert under their belts. From now on, I can focus on performing fairly regular weekly duties and expanding into other facets of the organization.

As you may recall, my primary job this summer at the Aspen Music Festival & School is managing the Aspen Festival Orchestra. This past week was our first set of rehearsals and our very first concert. The program included two Christopher Rouse pieces (from an actually living composer!) and Beethoven’s third symphony also known as the “Eroica” (it means heroic). The concert was conducted by our resident music director, David Zinman. Well everything was going just fine and as expected during our Thursday and Friday rehearsals. Then, suddenly on Saturday, a day before our performance, my faculty bass clarinetist, who of course has a HUGE solo in one of the Rouse pieces, tells me that he is not feeling well and later checks himself into the emergency room! Wow, talk about a week 1 crisis. Well, later that day, I went to visit him and talk over the situation. We were able to track down the student Fellowship bass clarinetist, resolve a scheduling conflict with her, have her coached in the hospital by the faculty member, have her sit in the dress rehearsal and meet with Zinman, and ultimately she ended up playing wonderfully on Sunday afternoon. Since then, our faculty member has been released to outpatient care and will once again be able to jump back in the rotation for the upcoming concert.

So concludes a bit of the madness of week 1. I survived, all my musicians survived, and the concert was spectacular. Now it is time to look forward, work ahead, and catch up on a few aging blog ideas.

Thoughts on the Concert Companion and beyond from Conference

As you may have figured out by now, for the past few weeks I have been living a double life. On the one hand, I have my responsibilities as manager of the Aspen Festival Orchestra and on the other, I am building a holistic "future executive director" perspective as a League Fellow. One job causes me to deeply delve into the intricacies of orchestra operations (organizing logistics for auditions/rehearsals/performances and beyond) and the other calls for dipping into the bowls of every other administrative department (artistic, marketing, PR, development, finance, education, etc.). Living both lives simultaneously can be quite exhausting but I like to think doing well in one category makes be better at the other. Such is my life for the next year.

So, now please allow me to switch gears from the busyness of student registration and auditions to reflect on an observation from Conference. The theme for this year’s 59th annual League Conference was “ORCHESTRAS…in today’s fast-paced, multi-choice, mass-marketed, high-tech, bottom-line…world.” Coming from a bit of a tech background and being a huge advocate of using emerging technology to further any cause, I naturally gravitated toward anything that hinted high-tech throughout the week. Here is one of my many observations:

On Thursday night at the Pittsburgh Symphony concert, a fairly new device known as the Concert Companion was introduced to the audience. This device is pretty much a very tediously pre-programmed palm pilot with dynamic program notes that change with the music. It also, from what I hear, contains an added self-explanatory feature I will call the “conductor cam” that allows audience members to see what the musicians see. A good idea? I definitely think it has potential, at least it is trying something new. In my eyes, it is a step forward toward making the concert experience more interactive for the concertgoer (key for building new audiences). Perhaps in the future we can see additional improvements such as instant messaging, scrolling scores, or even program selection by vote (think “why is American Idol so popular”) to further involve and engage the audience. My only complaint about the use of the Companion was the fact that despite being its big debut, I hardly heard a peep about it until I noticed its little booth in the lobby after the concert. Let’s just say that I would have, in a second, rented a unit had it been flashed before me prior to the concert. Hopefully sometime in the near future, I will have to opportunity to actually give the Companion a test run and comment from firsthand experience.

Whether or not we see the Concert Companion thrive or die in years to come, I think it is vitally important that people are taking risks in evolving the concert experience. The real accomplishment with ideas such as the Companion or in-concert large projection screens or 3D holograms of the conductor or any of the other new ideas floating around out there is not the invention of a new device but the larger mindset that technology can be used to enhance the interactivity of a concert and subsequently capture the attention of a younger, more tech-savvy audience. This mindset and the willingness to take risks IS the future of art and I plan on exploring it throughout my professional career.

Pittsburgh thus far and an answer to the “Only Three Fellows?!?” question

Hello from the rainy but glorious city of Pittsburgh! As expected, the past few days have been a whirlwind of meetings, concerts, and faces blended into one semi-coherent but enlightening introduction to the field. Most notably, I was glad to see key members of the industry leading discussions on challenging issues facing orchestral music today (as opposed to just ignoring them). As Jim Collins says in his bestseller Good to Great, any institution striving for lasting greatness MUST have the courage to “confront the brutal facts.” Of course, I seriously doubt that anyone will walk away from the weekend with answers to any or all of these questions but at least it is a start.

In addition to including numerous sessions on every facet of the business, Conference is also a major time of networking and, as we all know, a major tool of networking is the business card. Fortunately, the League provided us with two overflowing boxes of totally sweet folding cards that list our contact info as well as the locations and dates of our assignments. Business card frenzy, at times, is so overwhelming that I feel like I am back in middle school trading Magic or baseball cards again (“hey man, I’ll trade you my sandwich for that Henry Fogel rookie card”).

One of the coolest things about networking is meeting the huge family of Fellowship alumni. Including the graduating class of ’04, there are 151 grads of the program and so far, I have probably met somewhere around 50. Speaking of numbers, this brings me to the topic of this year’s “three and only three” Fellows subject.

The Fellowship program was started be the League way back in 1981. Looking back through the records, there have historically been anywhere between 4-8 Fellows each year. In recent years, as you can see from their bio postings, the numbers have tended to drift toward 5 Fellows per year. This year, however, there are only three of us. Observing the trend, it would be easy to conclude that perhaps the League is whittling the numbers down in an attempt to downsize expenses or do away with the program altogether. Well…this easy conclusion would be very wrong. In fact, during finals weekend in NY early March, we were told that once again, five would be chosen just the same as recent history had dictated. We were also told that the selected Fellows would be notified within two days and announced by the end of the week. True to form, by the time I got back to Indiana on Monday morning, I had already received word of my selection. The collective announcement of all the Fellows, however, was not received for quite some time (well over two weeks). In the end, it turns out that for personal and professional reasons, two potential Fellows and one alternate declined the offer, the League decided not to follow up on more alternates, and we are left with a trio for the class of ‘05.

So there you have it. Hope this blog answered some questions. Check back soon for my reflections from Conference.

One crazy week

How do you sum up one of the craziest and busiest weeks of your life? I haven’t a clue but here’s my best shot at the abridged version. After successfully making the drive to Aspen through the notorious Independence Pass (picture soon to be added), I settled down in my Aspen apartment and officially began my life as a League Fellow and Aspen Festival Orchestra Manager (often times two completely different worlds). A good portion of my time these first few crucial days was devoted to meeting Aspen staff and establishing foundations for relationships that will last long past the close of this year’s Festival.

Then, on Thursday, Hilary, the League program director in charge of the Fellowship, arrived from New York and led an intense two day Fellowship training session for the three Fellows (check back soon for a blog about the “Only Three Fellows” question). After this, we began our training specifically as Aspen orchestra managers for the summer festival with our three wonderful and highly talented colleagues (in all there are six orchestra managers).

Now, similar to our two training days, Edgar, Kevin, and I must once again change gears and prepare for a week in Pittsburgh at the League’s National Conference. At Conference, we will participate in a seminar called “Boot Camp for New Executive Directors,” meet and greet key managers in the field (including the executive directors of our host orchestras), experience James Galway performing with the Pittsburgh Symphony, the list continues. Then, after Conference ends on the 12th, we will once again fly back to Aspen, rejoin our colleages, and prepare for the arrival, registration, and auditions of nearly 700 students.

And so it goes, I have hit the ground running. Over the next week, I will do my best to search out computers and blog directly from Conference. Stay tuned for that and many many more posts.