An Unexpected Fiend...

I took a very highly anticipated trip to RDG Woodwinds in Los Angeles last week in order to have all of my oboes professionally looked at for the first time in a year. While always good news to hear that cracks and major malfunctions were not discovered, an unusual culprit was the cause of much distress this visit; mold.


The eastern coast of South Africa, specifically in the KwaZulu-Natal province and right off the Indian Ocean coast, is an obvious vacation destination for many people within the country, and for good reason; it is a beautiful location and the sub-tropical location is incredibly alluring. Of course, having lived there now for a year and a half, we constantly battle to achieve bio-sphere levels of regularity when it comes to the environment inside our flat. The constant moisture in the air, along with something about the hilly area that we are in, results in a perfect combination for mold. While very easy to brush off, there is no surface that it avoids including fabric, wood, tile, paper, etc.; it's all fair game. The only method that prevents the steady accumulation is regular breezes, as in every single day. Instruments that do not get daily use and remain snug in their cases, be at a BAM case or other, will almost certainly succumb to some level of mold resulting in drier wood. Putting in a humidifier theoretically would prevent this from happening, but the catch is that it is also acting as a magnet for mold. This mostly effected my back-up oboe, (not the Loboe), as I had not actually used it consistently in rehearsals. The Loboe actually had a great check-up and because of its regular use, was not really effected by the fiendish mold.

The advice is this for all of you sub-tropical wind players; regular open-air contact (as in keep that case open!) and play the instrument at least once a week if it is not your primary instrument. My strategy is that I will leave the case open on a chair that faces our terrace door since we try to keep it open as much as possible. Keeping doors and windows open is essential since we do not have air conditioning, however, we also have the unique dilemma of potential monkey invasions and yes, I am serious. In Durban, South Africa, vervet monkeys roam the streets with the same frequency as squirrels in the United States. For some illogical reason, screen windows do not exist there, though I am fairly certain the monkeys could figure out a way to get through them. There are also two house cats on the property, Mango and Max, who also frequent our place but they are more likely to be found sleeping on the couch than puttering around a case. So, as long as I am in the room keeping an eye out for unwanted guests, I think my other oboe stands a much better chance for a great check-up next year.

When the Audience Impresses the Orchestra

For most orchestral musicians, community concerts and educational performances are generally not embraced with quite the same enthusiasm as a concert featuring a work like Bartok’s “Concerto for Orchestra”. However, in the last few months, it is during these more intimate concerts that I have been privy to some rather interesting behavior from outside of the orchestra.

The first instance that comes to mind was during a typical community engagement concert. Along with a narrative guide, the orchestra performed a series of typical symphonic works for an attentive audience. Likely a first exposure to classical music for most of the crowd, the orchestra’s speaker for the program encouraged participation during a march by prompting them to clap along. Unintentionally, he set up an 8-bar beat pattern that happened to correspond to the phrase we were just playing (the music naturally dictated an increase of beats at that moment). I was a bit taken aback when the audience didn’t continue the faster beat pattern but in fact returned to the start of pattern and continued it in its entirety. And perfectly together at that! Musicians generally try to tune out group-clapping as the sound falls behind the beat almost instantly.

Perhaps the next instance exemplifies the age we live in more than anything else, but an amusing interaction happened recently between the orchestra and a guest soprano. I could not help but notice that during a rehearsal for a pops concert, the soloist kept glancing down at something, yet she held no score or sheet music. She had no trouble with the words, so it was not a series of memory lapses that was causing her to continually glance downwards; what was she doing? And then I realized, of course! She was using her iphone to check the lyrics as she performed. It was no different to her than a soloist having a score off to the side during the dress rehearsal (it should be noted that she sang all the words beautifully during the performance, without the help of her phone).

The final instance that comes to mind is something one never sees in the United States; people singing a national anthem in tune. In purely musical terms, it is quite a feat to sing the US anthem well and thus makes everyone wait with baited breath for a guest singer's inevitable "really high note" before a baseball game starts. Growing up, I remember reciting the Pledge of Allegiance daily but when we did sing something patriotic, it was usually "America the Beautiful".  I think many young kids probably assume that is our national anthem; goodness knows it is sung more than the real thing in schools. Of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't admit that I have always enjoyed the following interpretation of the anthem from a classic "Simpsons" episode:

While the South African National Anthem does not have the vast pitch range that the US anthem requires, it does boast an impressive language requirement; the South African anthem consists of versus sung in five different languages. Our outreach concerts take us to many schools around the KZN province and are always concluded with the students singing the anthem along with the orchestra. Without fail, students and community members alike not only sing this anthem with a noticeable sense of pride, but also a noticeable since of pitch. Frequently the students sing the anthem complete with harmonization and always with a dramatic crescendo at the end which leads to them erupting in applause. For an anthem sung in Xhosa, Zulu, Sesotho, Akrikaans and English, all while modulating to a different key in the middle, it is most enlightening to see students as young as five and six that seem to have no trouble at all with this repertoire. It is an anthem that does its best to represent a country with eleven official languages, as well as a troubled political past, with music that is both compelling and easy to sing. While a midi-version hardly embodies the emotion that one typically hears the anthem sung with, the first Youtube clip gives a clear idea of the languages/lyrics used. See how accurate your African language pronunciation is as you read along; my attempts only make me respect these students all the more. In terms of sheer musicality, I quite like the anthem and that it even features a meter change (be it one measure). Interestingly, the second Youtube clip features the South African anthem from 1957-1994; note that is only in Afrikaans and just a bit different in tone and feel…

Indeed, most orchestral musicians, if given a choice, will prefer to perform concerts that features serious classical literature, but then again, the smaller outreach concerts are certainly not without their valuable points. There are countless musical differences from living in the US vs. South Africa, and one certainly learns more about their audience through these more intimate performances. As always, just like in the US, I feel that both country’s audiences are ready for more contemporary music…

Chills at the National Arts Festival - Grahamstown

The National Arts Festival is an impressive collection of diverse musicians and artists representing the best of South African culture as well as from overseas. These two weeks of non-stop events is a testament to the incredible marketing and management staff of the festival who attract audiences ranging from the conservative to the thoroughly Bohemian. Grahamstown is a charming college town which one would imagine is quite peaceful and tranquil for 50 weeks of the year.  Theatre, classical music, jazz and everything in between finds its niche at Grahamstown and everyone seems eager to be a part of the events, resulting in a few more daring repertoire choices by a few ensembles which was nice to see.
Our own experience at the festival was overwhelmingly positive with one distinct exception; the temperature. Now writing as someone who has spent 22 years living in Chicago and Rochester, NY, I am no stranger to the cold. I am not used to, however, having the cold follow me into the pit. The beautiful Monument Theatre, one of the central venues of the festival, is built of stone and quite massive. The pride in this venue comes from the tragic burning of the last theatre, a result of a faulty heating system. Thus the situation today is that the theatre simply has no heat. When performing "Swan Lake" with the Cape Town City Ballet Company, the frustration would mount as we huddled by the small space heaters that our orchestra managed to fit in the tight space. As an oboist, temperatures dipping below 13C/55F not only affected one's concentration on a rather demanding part, but made for a simply exhausting performance experience. The moment we had a few bars rest, I would begin the ritual of attempting to keep the oboe's head joint from freezing, swabbing out the instrument and re-wetting the reed as to compensate for the exceptionally dry atmosphere that the little space heaters were creating.  As if that wasn't enough, this particular production of "Swan Lake", while beautifully performed by the ballet company, chose to frequently release dry ice "forest mist" which would then cascade down into the pit causing a briefly moist breeze followed by extreme cold when it evaporated. The audience was not spared from these chills as they all came prepared with heavy coats and blankets for the performance. I suppose one amusing element was that the loboe was so cold once that I could actually get the "low A" to sound as a "low A-flat"...
Cold weather aside, it was inspiring to see the enthusiasm and excitement of the festival, especially when it came to advertising. With literally hundreds of performances, lectures, and exhibits to see in such a short time, the marketing prowess of certain artists really came through as they battled for their next audience. There was everything from strategically placed flowers with performance info at restaurants, free demos and excerpts of shows at the restaurants and creative Facebook updates.
The overall impression of the National Arts Festival is that the organizational staff should be commended on their year-long efforts to promote, run and report back on all of the high-quality events. This festival has everything going for it, with the exception of unnecessarily cold venues which is a turn off for both artists and audiences. With that being said, I still greatly look forward to returning next year!

Outreach with Prokofiev 7

Prokofiev's Symphony No. 7 was originally commissioned for a children's radio program yet unlike the iconic "Peter and the Wolf", this symphony has no story, no characters or even as much as a hint as to what the composer intended his young listeners to imagine while hearing this exceptional work. Fortunately, this total lack of guidance was the perfect blank canvass (literally in our case) to help local primary school students connect to classical music. With the help of a fellow orchestra colleague, we were able to connect to students in a multitude of different ways, all of which culminated in the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra's performance of the full symphony and the creation of the Prokofiev "Children's Art Gallery" at the Durban City Hall.

Knowing that we wanted to introduce as much of the full work as possible during the hour long presentation, we selected both short themes and full movements in our agenda for the students. Normally educational programs involve our entire orchestra so with just two presenters, we started with the very basics: what is music? We wrote down word associations like colors, shapes and emotions on the board. We attempted to delve deeper than the typical first responses of "happy" and "sad" as our aim was to teach specific classical music listening skills if they were going to make it through an entire symphony concert the next week.

Before we even played a note of the actual symphony, we turned the tables on the students and had them create music for us to play. I was particularly excited about introducing some basic graphic notation and improv concepts to them. While they drew simple lines and shapes on the board, we "played" the music through our own interpretations on oboe and cello. The students connected with the idea of this new sound being our own personal creation and there was no wrong interpretation (though they could visually follow our musical choices which were not held hostage by a set tonality). With the presence of lines and shapes that coincidentally looked like certain extended technique indications, it was fantastic to introduce flutter tongue and other techniques to the students (and of course, a few "low A's"!).

Finally, it was time to get to the Prokofiev. We isolated two main and contrasting themes from the first movement. After listening via a cd player, they broke up into small groups and came up with short story ideas inspired by the theme. There was everything from kids at a playground and ballet to a mouse sneaking into a kitchen and mountain ranges.

Up until this point, the students were working from their desks. For the next part, we got them up out of their seats and into the action of the second movement, a waltz. This humorous music is a great example of excellent orchestration choices and the students learned to identify these musical attempts at humor through our three "characters"; free waltz/dance, interrupting/pounding and mischief/jester.  Each time one of these "characters" appeared, we would all do the body movement we associated with each (so much easier to demonstrate in front of kids than adults...). We could go beyond simply identifying a free waltz feel to the music by adding elements of growth and decline through the height and width of the body gestures.
 As the third movement is quite calm and nostalgic, it was time for the students to tackle their blank sheets of paper in order to create a drawing inspired by the symphony. As we let the third and fourth movements play, we noticed a whole range of methods taking place. Some students immediately began creating very specific nature scenes while others choice to listen and create abstract art. My favorite was a student who literally drew to the phrasing of the music.
 We would see the finished creations only on the day of the concert as they were mounted in make-shift gallery walls in the Durban City Hall. Musicians and audience members alike stood and absorbed the incredible range of creativity.  Interestingly, most students picked up on the slight ominous quality to Prokofiev's symphony.  Most students showed this stark contrast in mood in some way, though I really enjoyed the drawing that included both the sinister "Friday the 13th" half with the contrasting "Thursday the 12th" half.  Our concert days include a dress rehearsal which is open to the public. Both schools, despite one being on a holiday, attended the rehearsal and saw their creations first-hand. They were all eager to tell us which one belonged to who and what their picture meant. A considerable number of students returned that evening to attend the full concert with their parents.
 It was inspiring to see that even young students were able to grasp more than just a movement of Mozart and in fact tackled an entire symphony (and a 20th century one at that, imagine that...). There is something rewarding about being able to engage with a group of people, whatever age, who have not been corrupted yet as to the labels that are so often associated with this "more modern music" by parents and others. Whether it is Beethoven or Boulez, it is all new to these students and without some basic methods of interpreting and grasping this type of music, students and audience members alike too easily gloss over anything they do not already know.  The experience left me with the pleasant image of these primary school students showing their parents how they learned to listen to a symphony.

"Schallbecher auf!"

The purpose of the Loboe Project is primarily to serve as a forum for topics relating to the unique instrument. For the first time, I must share a slight drawback that I have discovered about this otherwise exceptional instrument; it’s really difficult to do “bells up” in Mahler 5.
While it is not impossible with the Loboe, and goodness knows it is not a natural position for any oboist, I think I had far more difficulty than the rest of my section when the instructions read “schallbecher auf” simply due to the slight increase in length and weight (which otherwise are never a problem during performances). On the plus side, knowing that there is an additional note on the instrument increases one’s confidence of very delicate entrances in the lowest register, which Mahler 5 is also full of, and thus my overall opinion is that the benefits outweigh the one small drawback.
It seems every wind player can put their two cents in about the purpose and practicality of this motion. Having performed Mahler 5 last week, the perception I am left with is that there is an impact both audibly and visually. One audience member made the comment that the “bells up” sections instantly gave the winds a “band” quality to the sound in addition to just increased dynamics; an overall positive effect.
Personally, I am all for doing these sections even if the instrument is a little heavier (this technique is called for multiple times in every movement that the winds play in). It is also refreshing to know that wind sections everywhere just go with these directions; if Mahler were a contemporary composer today asking for this, one would wager that there would be major backlash from players for the exact same request...thank goodness Mahler has proven himself beyond a shadow of a doubt the he knows what he is asking for in his music.   

"Winnie: The Opera" - a view from the orchestra pit

Unlike most Americans, my exposure to the life-story of Winnie Mandela this year will not come from the upcoming feature film starring Jennifer Hudson, but instead through the production “Winnie: The Opera” which took place last week in Pretoria, South Africa. I sat directly below the highly controversial political icon in the orchestra pit as she gave live feedback about the premiere performance she had just witnessed. But unlike most of the opera’s reviews, I will focus on the musical experience first; politics will come second.

While new operatic productions do occur in South Africa, it would be incorrect to imply that they happen with the frequency that they do in the US and in Europe.  To the chagrin of new music lovers everywhere, I did overhear a few instances of singers uttering the classic notion that “well, it’s contemporary music, nobody will know if I make a mistake”.  While certainly the score was modern sounding to the audience, at the end of the day the music was completely tonal.  The difficulty for some singers in tackling this work simply reflects the need for more contemporary opera and a resurgence of classic opera of the 20^th century in this country.

In general, there was a very noticeable determination on everyone’s part to master the challenges that the opera provided.  The conductor, Jonas Alber, showed an excellent knowledge of the material and ability to work with singers of different levels of experience.  For an opera written in both English and Xhose (mother-tongue of the Eastern Cape), Alber managed to give vocal cues in either language with ease to the singers on stage. 

In terms of language, Xhosa (featured in the opera) and the Zulu language (spoken in the province where I now reside), there is a great deal of potential when it comes to new music. The naturally occurring “clicks” of these languages were of course featured in the opera but simply as part of the natural occurring words. The sound that these “clicks” make when a chorus of 15-20 sing in unison is truly fantastic.

A nice moment in the opera was the theme that occurred whenever “Desmond Tutu” sang. I later learned that this theme was a quote from an African lullaby called “Thula, Thula” and was very recognizable to the more musically-inclined members of the audience. As an outsider to the heated world of South African politics, this idea of needing to be South African to catch certain allusions was prevalent throughout the opera.

There was one scene in particular where my lack of personal knowledge about the specific details of Winnie Mandela’s life resulted in my missing a key allusion.  Winnie sings an aria in which she ponders the impact that her imminent militant actions will have on her own political perception. She sings “for what I am about to do…with our rubber tires and boxes of matches, we will liberate this land” and general chaos/rioting immediately follows. Below is a photo (by Thrishni Subramoney) from earlier this month at the University of KwaZulu-Natal where students were setting tires and debris on fire in acts of protest. This was the general association I gave to Winnie’s aria but learned only later that this scene was representing Winnie’s support of the “necklacing” style of execution; the placing of a rubber tire filled with petrol around a person’s chest and arms and then lighting it on fire. As an audience member, it would have been more intriguing to see how the opera dealt with this barbaric practice directly instead of only referencing it. Of course, to an all-South African audience intimately familiar with the story, this was hardly a problem. 

In the US, some of the most anticipated productions are those based on larger-than life figures.  Whether it is out of musical respect or just sheer curiosity, there is something intriguing about controversial productions like “Grey Gardens”, “Anna Nicole Smith”, David Lynch’s “Lost Highway” and even the now tame by comparison, “Nixon in China”. While I do not think that this production of “Winnie” was in any way trying to be outrageous or avant-garde, the perception of Winnie Mandela in this country is sharply divided and like any Michael Moor documentary, one probably will not go to see it unless they already fundamentally agree with his viewpoint. When Winnie took the stage immediately after the performance, she revved up the crowd with some protest chants before she gave her glowing praise for a production that was attempting to not take sides. For a grandmother in her 70s, even an outsider like myself could see how her demeanor still connected with the crowd and incited a new level of energy in the theatre. She said that this production was the greatest accolade her country had ever given her. She followed this with a laugh and said that it was her first time in the State Theatre; her militant group had never been successful in bombing it back in the day. 

(Top photo by Themba Hadebe of The Guardian)

Loboe and New Music in South Africa

This week we presented a concert of contemporary chamber music, including the world premiere of American composer Hannah Lash’s piece for the solo Loboe, Silvers. What made this a unique experience was that the concert almost didn’t happen due to a combination of increasingly violent riots and strikes at the University of KwaZulu-Natal campuses last weekend. Indeed, Durban is not immune to academic budget cuts, though the official reasoning from the student-base was never completely made clear in the papers covering the story. What was made very transparent to us on the day of the concert was that after a weekend of rubber bullets and protesting, about half of the University staff was on strike and the concert hall management could not guarantee that we would even have an audience, should we choose to go ahead with the performance.

Well, the threat of a small audience is hardly a set-back for new music people. We preceded anyway, considering the concert involved three other members of the KZN Philharmonic and rescheduling would have been a nightmare. As long as there was no immediate threat of tear gas at the concert, we were on.

Despite all of the drama over the weekend and that morning, we had a good turnout of University students, orchestra colleagues and other guests. There were several people who later said that they could really hear the distinct timbre of the “low-A”, especially as it is featured in the ending of Hannah Lash’s work. A few words were said about each piece and the program was as follows:

Sylvia by Moerane/Blake

Violeta Osorhean, Violin and David Plylar, Piano

Partita Canonica by Hofmeyr
David Cohen, Clarinet

Phantom Vignettes by Plylar
Violeta Osorhean, Violin and David Plylar, Piano

Skirmish by Plylar
David Cohen, Clarinet, Alison Lowell, oboe and David Snaith, viola

Silvers by Hannah Lash (world premiere)
Alison Lowell, oboe

Fractured Colloquy by Plylar

Alison Lowell, oboe and David Plylar, piano

Solace; A Mexican Serenade by Joplin/Plylar

Ensemble

My colleagues all performed beautifully and it was very enjoyable to work on contemporary music again with such fine players. It was wonderful to see so many curious audience members come back stage and ask questions about the works, how certain effects were notated, etc.
Durban is not exactly over-run with new music yet, but performing at a University is a good place to start.