Greetings to all and welcome to my very first attempt at this new found way of communicating - "blogging"! Well, it's new to me at least. In fact, I must confess that, having steeped my life in an art form that communicates, lives and breaths above and beyond words ("Words, words, words") the idea to start my own blog never occurred to me (and seems even, somehow,strangely distasteful). However, here I am, resulting from a delightful evening I had over martinis and oysters last night with dear friends of my personal manager who is based in New York. In the midst of conversations ranging from classical music to corporate America and the symbolisms of the Mahler symphonies to the social commentary aspects of the movie Babette's Feast, I was engaged in a thought provoking line of discussion - how to engage a wider audience with whom to share thoughts and musings about my experiences, realizations and perspectives formed across 43 years as a music director and conductor of professional symphony orchestras. My hope is to share my thoughts through this blog, partly as a way to encourage the next generation of performers and audiences to maintain and, in some cases, rekindle the fires of lives lived in the presence of a glorious art - lives informed by and shaped by the art itself - in other words, "getting back to the nubbin", as they say, and making our way through all of the surrounding and, at times, diverting, persiflage and hyperbole to take charge of nurturing our own relationship with the art, itself.
So, here's a beginning. Think of your favorite restaurant - it's ambiance and your favorite offering on that restaurant's menu. How many times have you been to the restaurant and ordered that meal? Is it ever exactly the same experience in every way? Can it be captured? Perhaps taking a photo of the meal would accomplish that? Yes, maybe we could take a photo of the meal and then make copies of that photo and when we wanted to relive that experience we could just eat the photo. How about that? This way we wouldn't need to go to the trouble of leaving home after a long and tiring day at work to go to the restaurant and have our favorite meal. We could just pull out one of our photocopies of the meal and eat that. Another advantage is that this way we can make that one, wonderful dining experience we had at the restaurant immortal, instead of its reminding us, somewhere within the deep recesses of our awareness, that we just had a once in a lifetime experience - which, could, perhaps lead us to the thought that perhaps life, itself, is a once in a lifetime experience and, therefore, precious in each of its delectable and even not so delectable moments. Oh dear - not sure we want to think about that. Hmmmmmmm...........
Let's go a step further. I'm about to begin a restudy (when I finish here in a moment) of Mahler's First Symphony for the umpteenth time. Where does this work of musical art exist? Are the black dots and expression marks and various jottings left to us by Mahler and accumulating to 171 pages of full score the music? Where and (importantly) when does this work of musical art exist?
Enough for today for us both. On to Mahler, who has something pressing to communicate.
So, here's a beginning. Think of your favorite restaurant - it's ambiance and your favorite offering on that restaurant's menu. How many times have you been to the restaurant and ordered that meal? Is it ever exactly the same experience in every way? Can it be captured? Perhaps taking a photo of the meal would accomplish that? Yes, maybe we could take a photo of the meal and then make copies of that photo and when we wanted to relive that experience we could just eat the photo. How about that? This way we wouldn't need to go to the trouble of leaving home after a long and tiring day at work to go to the restaurant and have our favorite meal. We could just pull out one of our photocopies of the meal and eat that. Another advantage is that this way we can make that one, wonderful dining experience we had at the restaurant immortal, instead of its reminding us, somewhere within the deep recesses of our awareness, that we just had a once in a lifetime experience - which, could, perhaps lead us to the thought that perhaps life, itself, is a once in a lifetime experience and, therefore, precious in each of its delectable and even not so delectable moments. Oh dear - not sure we want to think about that. Hmmmmmmm...........
Let's go a step further. I'm about to begin a restudy (when I finish here in a moment) of Mahler's First Symphony for the umpteenth time. Where does this work of musical art exist? Are the black dots and expression marks and various jottings left to us by Mahler and accumulating to 171 pages of full score the music? Where and (importantly) when does this work of musical art exist?
Enough for today for us both. On to Mahler, who has something pressing to communicate.
