New Blog Site!
Orpheus fans! Please take note of our new blog at www.blog.orpheusnyc.org. Our most current information and updates can be found on this site. We hope to see you there!
Orpheus on WCBS
New York CBS affiliate,
WCBS Channel 2 recently covered Orpheus' performances at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art on December 14.
The full story can be found on the WCBS website:
http://wcbstv.com/entertainment/local_story_007113147.html
Variations on Think Denk
Orpheus guest soloist
Jeremy Denk wrote about his recent solo appearances with Orpheus on his blog.
You can find his blog entry here:
Five Alarm Brandenburg
The calm before the storm in Suny Potsdam: everyone enjoying their dinner of "Chicken with Montreal Sauce", as was listed in our itinerary.
We had no idea what was in store for us this night...
We walked onto the stage at Suny Purchase, about to take our bow, when we were greeted with a series of ear splitting sirens and flashing lights. Everyone looked around, totally confused as to what was going on. Barely audible above the din of screeching alarms, a raspy voice curtly announced over the loudspeaker, "A fire has been reported in the building - everyone must evacuate immediately!"
We all packed up our instruments in a hurry and made our way to the closest exit.
We gathered at a loading dock, where a police officer brusquely told us we needed to go "all the way outside". In the pouring rain. In our concert clothes. With our instruments.
Easton PA and the Hartke Premiere
We started off our U.S. Tour with pianist Jeremy Denk with a performance at the Williams Center for the Arts in Easton, PA.
During the acoustic checks prior to the performances, it's important to find the right balance within the orchestra, and between the orchestra and soloist, as these things can vary greatly between different concert halls (and pianos, in this case). Many times, the sound production can change depending on where you are situated physically due to the architectural design of the hall. (There is a famous story about a worn-out dip in the stage of La Scala that is known to be the "sweet spot" where all the opera singers stand to sing their arias). To find the "sweet spot" here in Easton, we all had to move about 2 feet downstage.
Looks like everyone is happy with the result:
The concert in Easton also marked the Premiere of Stephen Hartke's "A Brandenburg Journal", commissioned by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. You can read more about it
here.
Before each performance of "A Brandenburg Journal", Orpheus cellist Melissa Meell gave a short lecture describing the piece, complete with musical examples played by the orchestra.
Composer Stephen Hartke (pictured center) listening to his piece during the soundcheck.
On the Road Again
Looks like we're heading back out of town, though this time not out to sunny Napa. We begin this trip at the most friendly of places, the
Williams Center for the Arts, in Easton, PA. Orpheus has performed in this venue over 50 times over the past twenty something years. We are always treated to a sold out house and an audience of music enthusiasts. I don't think they will be disappointed this time as we are performing some treasured works; Bach's Brandenburg Concertos 1 and 2, his Keyboard Concerto No. 1, and a new work by Stephen Hartke called “A Brandenburg Autumn” which uses the same orchestration as the 1st Brandenburg.
The next day we're off to Potsdam, NY to perform at the
Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam and then home on Friday for a
Carnegie Hall performance on Sat. Dec. 2. Finally, on Sunday we hop over to the
University of Indiana, in Bloomington (big
music school there too, I hear…) for a performance that night.
Playing one of the horn parts in the 1st Brandenburg is always something to look forward to and practice for. The tessitura is very high and the playing quite constant most of the time. Guess what I did this Thanksgiving weekend? (I pity my neighbors. Truly I do.)
This is one of the first “indoor” pieces to feature horns as soloists or even have horns at all, for that matter. We horn players are grateful to enter the sonic picture at this point in history. Composers asked for less outdoor raucous blasting and increasingly more difficult passage work from this usual purveyor of heroic hunting calls. Inviting the horns into the concert hall I imagine, would have been like bringing the gardener to a white tie ball…without the benefit of a shower! And as if to emphasize that aspect, Bach wrote the first horn passages in a triplet rhythm that challenges the 4/4 time of the rest of the orchestra. But the occasionally out of tune, natural harmonics of the horn evoked a certain rustic and noble quality that Bach and others would come to exploit in as of yet, unimagined ways. To my ear, these parts signify a return to nature and a more simple order to the universe.
Well, it's back to practicing for me. I played the “Hornpipe” 6 times today and survived.
Fortunately we only have to play it once at the concert!
Hope to see you at one of the performances.
By Stewart Rose, Horn and Personnel Coordinator
The Fruits of Labor: Juilliard Chamber Orchestra debut
I have played in Alice Tully Hall many times, sometimes with orchestras or new music ensembles, and sometimes with string quartets, and I have been at least a little bit nervous before (and during) every one of those performances. But I do not recall ever having been so nervous before a concert as I was before the Juilliard Chamber Orchestra debut concert in Alice Tully Hall yesterday, and this was a sentiment I believe was shared by most of my fellow orchestra members.
This was not due to lack of preparation; we had been thoroughly coached, well rehearsed, and after our three-hour dress rehearsal that very morning, we were certainly warmed up. What I eventually discovered was that the reason for us all being so nervous was a great fear of not showing our audience how much work we had put into preparing the music. We had made so many decisions, so many minute calculations and planned nuances (some decided upon that very morning in the dress rehearsal) that it seemed impossible to reproduce them all in a single performance under the added pressure of having an audience.
concert program from the Juilliard
Chamber Orchestra performance |
So when that first joyous chord of Mozart's D major Salzburg Symphony rang, and it was a chord whose placement was determined by US, not a conductor, the relief of forgetting all these concerns and simply having a great time onstage was about as liberating an experience as one can have on a Wednesday afternoon in all black. I felt this release immediately from the other orchestra members, not only in their faces and body language, but in their playing as well. Whether all the things we discussed, pinpointed, and exhaustively rehearsed were apparent to the audience is unbeknownst to me.
But I sure had a blast.
by Luke Fleming, Juilliard Chamber Orchestra ViolistThe Juilliard Chamber Orchestra is a component of Orpheus' education program known as the Orpheus Institute @ Juilliard, wherein student musicians work directly with Orpheus members to prepare musician-led orchestral performances.
We had no idea what was in store for us this night...
This is one of the first “indoor” pieces to feature horns as soloists or even have horns at all, for that matter. We horn players are grateful to enter the sonic picture at this point in history. Composers asked for less outdoor raucous blasting and increasingly more difficult passage work from this usual purveyor of heroic hunting calls. Inviting the horns into the concert hall I imagine, would have been like bringing the gardener to a white tie ball…without the benefit of a shower! And as if to emphasize that aspect, Bach wrote the first horn passages in a triplet rhythm that challenges the 4/4 time of the rest of the orchestra. But the occasionally out of tune, natural harmonics of the horn evoked a certain rustic and noble quality that Bach and others would come to exploit in as of yet, unimagined ways. To my ear, these parts signify a return to nature and a more simple order to the universe.