Scott Showalter - the new President and CEO of the Oregon Symphony - talks about his decision to come to Portland and his job

Last May, the Oregon Symphony announced that Scott Showalter would become the orchestra’s President and CEO. Showalter, who is 41 years old, brings an impressive resume with him. He is a classically trained pianist who received his undergraduate dual degree in Economics and German Studies from Stanford University and an MBA from the University of California, Los Angeles. He has served as the Vice President for Development of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, the Associate Vice President of Alumni Relations and Development of the University of Chicago, and the Associate Dean for External Relations of Stanford Law School. Earlier this week, it was announced that Showalter will be participating Chief Executive Program: Community and Culture that is offered by National Arts Strategies, an acclaimed nonprofit organization for leaders in the arts.

I met with Showalter a couple of weeks ago at his office and asked him a few questions. Here is our conversation.

Why did you leave the LA Phil, Dudamel, Disney Hall, and huge budget and endowment to come and take over the Oregon Symphony?

Showalter: I’ve been in development for 20 years, and I’ve loved the work that I’ve done in higher ed and the arts. Coming to the Oregon Symphony has been an opportunity, albeit at a smaller institution but with a broader vision, to make a real difference. The product on stage at the LA Phil is superb. The budget and endowment are tops. It was excellent place for me to get my artistic professional start. Because I am a classically trained pianist and a music lover at heart, it was a natural transition to go from higher ed nonprofit administration to the LA Phil. Now in coming to Portland, it’s a chance to make a difference in a community that has an exceptional artistic product, but doesn’t have the funding. For me, as a leader, this is the real energy. With more resources we can do bigger and better things.

I wouldn’t have come to Portland if Carlos and the musicians weren’t already at a high level. Now it’s a matter of marshaling the resources and creating the vision to get people who are buying tickets excited and the people making donations excited.

Yes, there’s more opportunity to raise donations, but it’s not a matter of hiring the right fundraiser and putting him or her in the corner office and expect them to deliver. There’s opportunity on the earned revenue side of the house to sell the quality of what we are doing and the purpose of what we are doing. Why these concerts should matter. Why this music should interest the community. Why it’s not so intimidating to come to the Schnitz and hear Bach and Beethoven. I’ve been spending a preponderance of my time out in the community, meeting with arts leaders, the board, donors, patrons, and the general public.

There’s more art events being offered than ever before, and a lot of groups have increased the number of performances. That creates a very crowded field. So your effort will not be easy.

Showalter: The difference is between looking at the pool of resources as fixed versus expansive. If you assume that the greater Portland community can give only this much pie, then it’s a zero sum game. But I would argue that the pie with more product and interested patrons is bigger than we might have once considered – even in Portland. It wasn’t all that long ago that the LA Phil itself was in similar position. It needed more funds. That was before moving into Disney Hall, and expanding their programs, and developing the Hollywood Bowl in a new way. That orchestra didn’t have the sure financial footing that it has today.

It’s not that Portland is any less of a city or any less worthy. It’s just at a different stage of its development. There’s a lot of opportunity as I see it.

I know that the marketing of the performances is a tricky thing.

Showalter: We are being creative about that. Jim Fullan our Vice President of Communications, Marketing and Sales, and I talk about how to get the word out through new channels. Carlos and I, a couple of weeks ago, were at the Hillsboro Hops game. He conducted a group of adult marching band musicians in the “Star Spangled Banner” and then again during the seventh inning stretch. We were up on the big screen and got some good press coverage. It was a new way to get Carlos’s face out in the community. Tonight I’m going to the OHSU gala at the invitation of one of our donors to promote an auction item on behalf of OHSU that will garner attention. There are many ways to get out the message.

The expansion of the Waterfront Concert into an all-day event is part of this. Our thought, when I talked to the mayor about the concert, is that the grant we received is not about the Oregon Symphony. It costs a lot of money to put on that event, there’s cleaning up after dogs and geese, permitting the big stage that takes four days to set up, the sound system, the musicians… we thought that this would be a terrific platform to engage our community partners. So we put on a music festival. It started in the afternoon with the 234th National Army Band of the Oregon National Guard, followed by several youth groups, Portland Taiko, Portland Opera, Oregon Ballet. Of course, the Oregon Symphony with the cannons and the fireworks provided the grand finale, but the grant gave us the chance to convene a music festival, and that was a great way to give back to the community.

Your predecessor, Elaine Calder, was noted for coming out on the stage at Oregon Symphony concerts and introducing the orchestra to the audience. Do you plan on doing that?

Showalter: I do! I plan to do that for every classical concert and many of the specials. It’s a great way to put a face on the organization and brag about the orchestra.

Speaking of specials, I’ve got a couple of friends who think that the orchestra is relying too much on popular artists. They want the orchestra to play more new, serious music.

Showalter: We would love to do more new music and help to advance the art form that is classical music. We just need more money. Just to wax philosophical for a moment – as a general rule, people buy tickets to music that they know. So, anything that is new – a commission or a piece that they’ve never heard before – makes people reluctant to buy tickets. If you are in a position where you have to squeeze every last dollar out of every of performance, then you don’t have the luxury to do it for the good of the art form, because you have to sell out the hall. On the other hand, if we are not doing new music, this art form dies. Music has been evolving for hundreds of years. At one point Beethoven was new, and Mahler was new. We want to build to new serious music. It’s just going to take more money.

Are things working well with Carlos?

Showalter: Connecting with Carlos is one of the key factors in making my decision to take this job. He and I have spent a lot of time together while I’ve been here, introducing me to board members and donors. He has hosted me at his house for dinner, we did the Hillsboro Hops game together, we’ve spent a lot of time together. It’s all good and a lot of fun. He is going to be a great partner.

I’m also enjoying going to rehearsals and meeting the musicians. I stuck around for most of the rehearsal at the Waterfront. I’ll be hearing them at our concerts, and at concerts around town. I recently heard our concertmaster Sarah Kwak play at All Classical FM. That was fun.

How did you even hear about this job?

Showalter: Thomas Lauderdale is a good friend of a good friend of mine. Pink Martini performed at the Hollywood Bowl a little over a year ago, and that was when I met Norman Leyden for the first time. He was giving his Bowl debut. Because of the mutual friend who was at the concert serendipitously – he doesn’t live in LA or Portland, I got to be friends with Thomas and the band for the three nights that they were performing at the Bowl. Since I was vice president of development, I was backstage a lot at the Bowl. It wasn’t long after that that Thomas was encouraging me to consider coming to Portland. It took many months of discussion, but it all worked out.

Now that you’ve been in Portland for a little while, have you made any surprising discoveries?

Showalter: The most surprising and heartening thing that I found is how receptive other arts leaders are to my presence. In other cities you might find the opera and the orchestra are a bit competitive, or the art museum and the performing arts world try as much as possible to distinguish themselves to retain board members and our donor base. Here I’m finding that from Portland Center Stage to the Art Museum to OBT to the Opera… everyone is welcoming me with open arms, introducing me to their patrons and board members and thinking about what it means to collaborate. That’s pretty unique. I didn’t expect that.

I’m an avid cyclist. I’ve been getting out and exploring the hills around Portland. I’m a climber; so I’ve been enjoying how easy it is to get to the hills right outside my door on the West side of town.

I’m a beer connoisseur. So I’m in beer mecca here.

But you don’t have the beer gut!

Showalter: That’s the only reason I cycle! So that I can drink more beer. [Laughs!] I love coffee too. I just downed my third cup. I love the culinary scene here.

The environment, culture, and allure of Portland means that it is on the upswing. It’s great to be here and have this opportunity.

Béla Fleck wows the Schnitz with 'Impostor'

Béla Fleck

There was a different crowd and atmosphere than is perhaps usual for an Oregon Symphony Concert when Béla Fleck played the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall on Saturday, September 13. This is no surprise considering the banjo virtuoso's crossover appeal; he has been nominated in more Grammy categories than any other artist in history.

After opening with a flashy Overture to Candide that wowed the crowd and made me wish the opera was forthcoming, OSO got down to the meat of the program: Fleck's concerto for orchestra and banjo entitled Impostor, premiered in 2011 with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. Fleck was warmly welcomed to the stage, and seemed humorously discomfited at being a part of the more formalized world of a classical symphony orchestra, while also amused at his own creation, much to the delight of the audience.

The first movement, Infiltration, began as a gentle threnody on the strings, around which was wound groups of somber, murmuring winds. This gave way to a sudden and violent tempest from strings and percussion as dissonant chordal motives from the orchestra were interspersed with fascinating polytonal fingerpicking by Fleck, who seemed as though he were wandering his own way, independent of the orchestral background before suddenly finding his way back. At times Fleck played an ostinato, and moments of levity found their way into the somewhat dark mood.

The second movement, named Integration, was more sparsely textured, and Fleck's playing at times was reminiscent of a gypsy guitar. After the initial exposition there were times when the thematic material of this movement was somewhat dull; it simply felt unnecessarily long. The last movement, Truth Revealed, was a pastiche of interesting ideas that somehow never found their way into a cogent overarching theme. It could be that was the entire point, but it was difficult to tell. There were some fine textural experiments, and an absolutely brilliant extended cadenza that showcased Fleck's dizzying virtuosity on his instrument. All in all, this was not the work of an experienced symphonic composer (as Fleck took pains to point out in the program notes), but it was rather a largely enjoyable and promising assay into a new sound world for this undisputed master of the banjo.

Big Country, one of Fleck's more traditional compositions, was aptly named, with a broad Appalachian feel, an expansive sweep of sound redolent with Americana. Although Fleck was mic'd, the orchestra often drowned him out in this work, something they'd avoided during the concerto. Fleck treated the delighted audience to a solo encore consisting of the most whimsical and virtuosic rendition imaginable of the theme from The Beverly Hillbillies.

The second half consisted of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's  boisterous and brief Danse Negre, and a suite from of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess arranged by Robert Russell Bennett at the behest of the composer. It began with a heartachingly lush andante, with muted statements from the trumpet sounding forth like dreamy echoes, and featuring a Summertime as languid and sultry as one could want.

Andrés Lopera talks about his work with the Metropolitan Youth Symphony and its upcoming season

Andrés Lopera is starting his third season as the music director of the Metropolitan Youth Symphony. A native of Columbia, Lopera holds a Master’s degree in orchestral conducting from the New England Conservatory of Music, a Master’s degree in trombone performance from the University of Texas at Austin, and a double degree in conducting and trombone from the Universidad EAFIT in Medellin, Colombia.

This past summer was the assistant conductor of the National Repertory Orchestra in Breckenridge, Colorado where he worked with Carl Topilow and Jeffrey Kahane. I talked with him a few weeks ago. Here is part of our conversation

Since you are a trombonist, do you bring it to rehearsals?

Lopera: Sometimes to give a little extra encouragement to the brass section, I’ll grab my trombone and come 30 minutes before the session and do some warm ups with them, talk about technique, and work with them a bit. It’s really good because we have all of the kids from all of different brass levels.

How did you get into conducting?

Lopera: I enjoy the trombone repertoire, but I wanted to go farther. I wanted to expand my horizons beyond playing trombone. I wanted to understand the other instruments in the orchestra. I come from a little town in Columbia, and we didn’t have violins for people like me. Wealthy people had violins, but that was a different situation. I played trombone in salsa groups, jazz groups, a town band, a ska and reggae group, and a university orchestra. I used to put quintets and small ensembles together for little concerts. I got interested in studying conducting, and my teachers said that I had really good leadership qualities. I talked to the professor who taught conducting at my university, and told her that I really wanted to conduct. So, she began to teach me.

So, it was really great that the trombone gave me a lot of versatility. It allowed me to play in different groups and earn some money for my university education. One of the wonderful things about MYS is that we try to instill versatility in our ensembles. We have three levels of jazz, three levels of band, and six levels of orchestra.

One of the things that we are trying to capitalize on at MYS is the international relationships that I have. So we are doing Skype sessions with the musicians of an orchestra called A Far Cry, which is based in Boston, Massachusetts. I know a lot of the members of that ensemble from my studies at the New England Conservatory. So we used Skype to pair up leaders from my chamber orchestra, which is all strings, and they received lessons from the professionals. A Far Cry came to Portland last January for a concert, and after that they came to MYS and worked with my kids. It was really fantastic.

Last year, I conducted a piece on the season-opening concert of the New World Symphony in Miami. It was Gershwin’s Cuban Overture. I also got to work with Michael Tilson Thomas on the other pieces of the program. Another great thing was a discussion that I had with him about Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. We talked about it for three hours. Then after I returned to Portland, I had that piece on one of my MYS programs, and Michael Tilson Thomas called me to find out how it went with the kids. That was a really nice thing to do.

We also used Google hangouts to work with Michael Tilson Thomas and other professionals, like the concertmaster of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. It’s been really great for our kids. We have worked with musicians from the Oregon Symphony. About 20 of them came to one of our rehearsals last season and played side by side with our musicians while Carlos Kalmar conducted. My students learn a lot just by listening and by example. We have a lot of great coaches from the Oregon Symphony, as well as other excellent local professionals. But one of our main interests is to create leaders in our ensembles who can become leaders at their local schools also.

We are doing a lot of building at the local level. We are using our ensembles to reach out to schools. For example, we went to the César Chávez School. I talked to the kids there in Spanish. Everything went very well. We have a new program called Beginning Strings for students who attend underserved elementary schools. So we cover music from a very wide range of abilities.

How many kids are involved in all of the MYS programs?

Lopera: I think that we had 480 students last year, and it will probably be about the same this year. Around 85 are in the symphony orchestra.

Do you have to motivate the students?

Lopera: No, that’s because the kids are already very motivated. They are willing to give up time watching TV or on the computer to learn how to master an instrument and make beautiful music. It really helps to develop their brain, and it will help them later in life when they are in college. They are very motivated to take three hours out of their Saturdays to come and work at rehearsals. It’s great to see that they want to do well. My job is to keep them challenged, treat them as individuals and young professionals, but be demanding. I love their energy and sometimes they come up with funny things. Last year, they gave me a gigantic basket filled with college food: instant soups, cookies, and cans of tuna. I had told them that I wasn’t a good cook, and they said, ‘don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.’ It was really cute.

Your orchestra has already played at the Waterfront Concert at the end of last month. Tell us about the concerts you’ve planned for this season.

Lopera: The Waterfront concert was a first for us, and it went really well. For our December concert, we will play Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4. That’s a big challenge for the kids. We’ll also play Glinka’s “Ruslan and Ludmila Overture.” The concert will feature some of the other MYS ensembles like the Concert Orchestra and the Interlude Orchestra.

For our spring concert, we will again collaborate with some choirs. This year we will do opera choruses. We will have a lot of singers in the loft. The concert will have some surprises, too. This concert will be a wonderful opportunity for the symphony orchestra to work with singers. It will be really wonderful.

Our last concert will have music by Brahms. We will play his “Hungarian Dances” and the Symphony No. 4. We will also have a piece that will feature the winner of our concerto competition.

Have your parents been able to come to Portland to see you conduct?

Lopera: Not yet. Portland is a long ways from Columbia. I send them a DVD of my concerts here with the MYS. I’m the weird kid in the family. I’m the youngest of seven, and the only one to live outside of the country. But they have seen me conduct orchestras in Columbia. In March, I conducted my university orchestra and a professional orchestra. My parents and all of my siblings were there. It was a beautiful experience.

45th Parallel Quartet to open its sixth season with Leclair: A Tale of Two Countries

Greg Ewer and Adam LaMotte

From the press release:

45^th Parallel presents the opening concert of  its 6^th season Wednesday, October 8^th at 7:30 pm at The Historic Old Church in downtown Portland. The concert is entitled Leclair: A Tale of Two Countries. Performers are Greg Ewer and Adam LaMotte, violins; Nathan Whittaker, cello; Susan Jensen, harpsichord. The Old Church is located at 1422 SW 11^th Avenue, Portland, OR, 97201.

The program will feature works by Jean-Marie Leclair, Arcangelo Corelli (Italy) and Jean-Baptiste Lully (France). Leclair is credited with establishing an important link between Italian and French musical styles of the 18^th century. Ewer and LaMotte will perform selections from the recording, and discuss Leclair’s blending of influences from the two countries.

In March, 2014 Ewer and LaMotte released a landmark recording of all 12 Sonatas for Two Violins by Jean-Marie Leclair. It is the first time this music has been available as a complete set and in high definition. It has received critical acclaim from over a dozen national and international publications.

New York Times - “an elegant recording…sparkling with French refinement and spirit”

The Strad Magazine - a “landmark recording of Leclair’s twelve violin duo sonatas”

Early Music America - “Ewer and LaMotte…show an uncanny ability to match gesture, timing, quality of sound, phrasing and ornamentation”

Fanfare Magazine – “Urgently recommended.”

Tickets, $25 for general admission and $20 for student/seniors, are available at http://leclair.brownpapertickets.com/ and http://www.45thparallelpdx.org.  45^th Parallel, founded in 2009, is a nonprofit celebrating musicians of the Pacific Northwest. With emphasis on small ensembles and creative programming, 45^th Parallel seeks to bring Portland’s rich chamber music culture out of the living room and onto the stage.

Contact: Gregory Ewer, Artistic Director, 503-341-0606, info@45thparallelpdx.org

Supové concert offers new take on piano performance

The piano did not explode, but Kathleen Supové did create some new sonic textures at her concert last Saturday (September 6) at the Brunish Theatre. Her unusual piano recital, entitled “The Exploding Piano,” was a showcase for new music, primarily from the “Downtown School” of composers who live in New York City, and, for her concert, that meant that most of the pieces were for piano and soundtrack. The combination of electronic media and piano was fun to hear, and did expand my experience of what a piano concert could be like, but it didn’t bowl me over. I felt that the soundtrack sometimes dominated the performance and that the music, though serious at times, just wasn't transcendent.

Supové kicked off her program with “The Body of Your Dreams” by Jacob TV (Ter Veldhuis), a Dutch composer who likes to infuse some of his pieces with an aspect of popular American culture. “The Body of Your Dreams” featured snippets from commercials that sell a muscle toning belt called an Abtronic. The loud and punchy part for the piano perfectly complimented the wildly enthusiastic selections from the Abtronic commercial, which alternated between a man and a woman talking about how easy the product was to use and how it got rid of flabbiness. As the piece went on, I found myself listening more and more to the woman’s voice, especially when she exclaimed “Wow! It’s so easy!” That really made me laugh, but I forgot to listen to the piano part, which was equally vigorous.

Missy Mazzoli’s “Isabelle Eberhardt Dreams of Pianos” created a swampy, surreal sound as if the music were being played under water. The soundtrack had a vague tone that would become more penetrating and then fade away. Supové overlaid a spectrum of full chords that crashed about and complimented the soundtrack with a buildup of overtones. She seemed to be using the sustain pedal almost all of the time except when she played a fragment from Schubert’s Sonata in A major. The piece ended in a somber and understated way that was poignant, especially in regards to Eberhardt’s death at the age of 27 during a flood in the wilderness of North Africa.

The two piano miniatures by Mohammed Fairouz showed off the piano without an accompanying soundtrack. Both “Lullaby for a Chelsea Boy” and “For Syria” had a wistful quality, although the latter was more solemn. Neither piece struck me as virtuosic in any way, but more like Mozart, in which a simple melody has to sound natural and free. Supové conveyed that feeling very well.

Just before intermission, Supové played Randall Woolf’s “What Remains of a Rembrandt,” which came across as an intellectual and abstract piece. Its soundtrack began with a vague and drifting tone that gave the sense of something falling apart. Sporadic thuds and sparse sounds from the piano accented the wash of the soundtrack before things shifted to a rhythmic section with a rolling piano part and blipping sounds from the soundtrack. This transitioned into a shimmery keyboard segment with lots of overtones then a helter skelter break that dissolved into abruptness and jamming, slamming chords. The final section of this piece returned to something like the drifting soundtrack that was at the beginning of the piece and an equally drifting passage for the piano, creating a sense of slow motion.

After intermission came parts 3 and 4 from Annie Gosfield’s “Shattered Apparitions of the Western Wind.” This soundtrack contained a recording of Hurricane Sandy as well as sounds that had had an eerie hollowness and some that were very piercing. The piano part, based on Debussy’s prelude “What the West Wind Saw,” accompanied the wind-blown background extremely well.

Supové played with like precision during “Ever Just As Sure” from “Disney Remixes” by Matt Marks. The piece, inspired by Bach as well as some famous Disney tunes, started out simply and became very complex at the end. I didn’t catch the movie themes, but the piece had an appealing, carefree attitude.

It was difficult to tell which tones came from the piano and which came from the soundtrack in Carolyn Yarnell’s “The Same Sky,” but the music generated several exciting moments when it became nervous and faster. Some segments gave the impression of many tiny bells echoing about. Intriguing also were the changes in volume and harmonics. There was a lot going on in the sky of this music.

As an encore, Supové teamed up with violinist Kenji Bunch to play the first set of Randall Woolf’s Anti-Fragile Études.” This piece had an improvisation aspect that both performers played with verve. Together they knotted together several dystopian riffs that included half-tone glissandos, pizzicato strumming, and something like ricochets by Bunch. The piece brought down the house.

This concert was Supové’s professional debut in Portland. She was born and raised here before studying music in California and later in New York City where she built her career. There were around a hundred people in attendance but very few college students. Perhaps this was because Portland State has not opened yet. It would have been interesting to get their take on the concert, and if they saw piano music moving in this direction.

“The Canticle of the Black Madonna” – a fine effort by a new opera to tackle serious subjects

Serious topics deserve serious music, but a little levity might have helped “The Canticle of the Black Madonna,” a new opera that received its world premiere at the Newmark Theatre on Friday evening (Sept. 5). Composer Ethan Gans-Morse and librettist Tiziana DellaRovere and Anima Mundi Productions deserve kudos for tackling post-traumatic-stress-disorder (PTSD) and an environmental disaster, but a bit of humor would have helped the audience to digest the double whammy of a heavy story that fortunately achieved some uplift at the end through kindness of a friend and the miraculous intervention of the Black Madonna.

“The Canticle of the Black Madonna” tells the story of Adam, an Afghanistan war veteran, who struggles with his emotions after returning home to Louisiana from duty in Iraq. His wife, Mara, bears the brunt of his violent feelings, and she is at her wits end in trying to help him return to the man he was before he left for the war. In the meantime, an oil spill off the coast causes them to lose the family’s oyster business. Somehow, in a divine way, the couple is healed through the help of the Black Madonna, a Marian-like deity and a friend, Paul, who opens his house and farmland near the Mississippi River to them.

The opera’s title is inspired by the statues or paintings that depict the Virgin Mary with dark skin. Most of these artworks date back to the 12th to 15th centuries and can be found in Catholic countries. In this opera, the Black Madonna is not an icon or relic, but becomes an active character in the story and represents universal love rather than the Virgin Mary per se. At one point, Adam sees the Black Madonna, even though is not explained how he would have even heard of such a visage. The audience is expected to accept this matter and not question it. If Adam and/or Mara had said that he/she had visited a Black Madonna shrine in Italy or Mexico, it would have made a stronger link between them, but, overall, the link between them was not convincing.

With a whiskey bottle at the ready, baritone Michael Mayes made a formidable impression as the volatile, stressed-out war veteran. Soprano Lindsey Cafferky was equally convincing as the loving spouse who doesn’t give up on her damaged husband. Both singers displayed powerful voices that explored the raw emotions of their respective characters. Less effective was contralto Gwendolyn Brown as the Black Madonna, because her vocal power and quality was very uneven, especially in the upper range.

Bass André Flynn created a deceptively wise and compassionate Paul. Rachael Marsh and Timothy Galloway blended well in their roles as angels.

The chorus, consisting mostly of Portland State Chamber Choir members, did as fine of a job as possible from the upper balcony. There was quite a distance between them a conductor Ryan Heller, and it was very difficult for them to increase the volume. The sound seemed to go straight up into the high dome over the audience.

Heller did a terrific job cuing the singers and leading the orchestra, which was a chamber ensemble of 23 professionals. He seems to have a real affinity for opera, and hopefully will get more opportunities to conduct from the pit.

The style of music for the Black Madonna , angels, and the chorus seemed inspired by the music of the Renaissance and Baroque with the Black Madonna getting several ornamented phrases. The passages for Adam, Mara, and Paul had a contemporary and slightly dissonant feel that conveyed the many turbulent parts of the story very well. The most moving segment came when Adam revealed what had happened to him and his contingent in Afghanistan.

Larry Larsen’s stage design put a modest living room on one side of the stage and an outdoor work area on the other. Towards the back and in the middle was a short set of stairs. Under the effective direction of Kristine McIntyre, the stairs were the realm of the Black Madonna while everyone else moved about the other parts of the set.

If there could be a way to give Paul’s character a little bit of quirkiness or some humor, then I think that it would have helped to break up the constant stream of seriousness that pervades the opera. Or perhaps there's a way to reduce some of the text of the chorus or the Black Madonna. It can be argued that other operas have little or no humor (for example, “Wozzeck”), but then the music has to carry more of the weight.

Kathleen Supové talks about her upcoming Exploding Piano concert

Photo credit: Robin Holland

Pianist Kathleen Supové, one of the nation's leading proponents of contemporary piano music, will be giving a performance of new music at the Brunish Theatre this Saturday, September 6th, at 8 pm. The concert, which is presented by the fEARnoMUSIC ensemble, will reflect New York City’s “Downtown School” of music with works by Missy Mazzoli, Randall Woolf (Supové’s husband), Matt Marks, Annie Gosfield, Mohammed Fairouz and Carolyn Yarnell. Some pieces are for the piano only while others will feature piano with soundtrack. By pushing the boundaries, Supové's recitals have inspired many concertgoers, including critic Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times, who wrote “What Ms. Supové is really exploding is the piano recital as we have known it, a mission more radical and arguably more needed.”

Besides the unusual music, this concert is of special note because Supové is a native of Portland. She earned her bachelor’s in music from California’s Pomona College and a master’s from The Juilliard School, Supové went on to win the top prize in the Gaudeamus International Competition for Interpretation of Contemporary Music and began her career as a guest artist at the prestigious Darmstadt Festival in Germany. She has championed works by so many contemporary composers (Frederic Rzewski, Louis Andriessen, Terry Riley, Chinary Ung, Giacinto Scelsi, Iannis Xenakis, Aaron Jay Kernis, Michael Daugherty, and John Adams are just a few to mention) that her name is synonymous with new music.

I talked with Supové over the phone about her upcoming concert. Here is part of our conversion:

What part of Portland was your neighborhood?

Supové: I was born at Emanuel Hospital and grew up around Northeast 70th between Halsey and Glisan and went to Madison High School. I went away to college but usually returned over the summer.

Who was your most influential piano teacher when you were growing up?

Supové: It was Elesa Scott Kenney. She was from a well-heeled historical family in Portland. Her grandfather was Harvey Scott, who was editor-in-chief of “The Oregonian” and has a grade school and a mountain named after him. She was kind of the renegade of the family, which had a Scottish heritage and was fairly regal in style. It was horror of horrors that she became a pianist. She did a lot of radio recording and hung out at the symphony when she was a kid. She knew the orchestra’s director Willem van Hoogstraten and got to meet Rachmaninoff when he came to Portland for a concert. Elesa’s teacher was composer and pianist Dent Mowrey. She was very big on teaching his music; so I grew up with it. That helped to develop my taste for contemporary music, and she instilled in me a love for the piano – enough to become a professional pianist.

To become a professional pianist with an emphasis on new music, you’ve taken a unique journey.

Supové: Sometimes I think that it would be great to be in such-and-such chamber ensemble or group, because you can draw on the group’s identity. But my career has allowed me to focus on new solo piano works, and I’ve been able to play them multiple times. It’s not like a person who tours with Beethoven, but it’s close! This has been terrific especially for the pieces that I’ve commissioned. They have their own identity, and I see my identity through them. It’s been real lucky, and I’ve been able to survive financially.

An article about you in the Wall Street Journal article stated that you’ve commissioned over 75 new piano pieces, but that was a few years ago. How many pieces have you commissioned now?

Supové: I think that it’s around 95 to 100.

Wow!

Supové: Sometimes there is no money for these commissions, and when that happens, I try to make sure that the piece is performed a lot. So the piece gets some mileage, and the composer can at least get royalties from people who heard the piece and want to play it.

The husband and wife team of Kenji Bunch and Monica Ohuchi are the new artistic and executive directors of Portland’s fEARnoMUSIC ensemble, and they are taking the lead in presenting you in this concert. I assume that you met them in New York City? Did you meet Kenji first or Monica?

Supové: I met Kenji first. I think that it was here when he was playing with a quartet. I remember really liking his music and probably just introduced myself or met him through mutual friends. It was great to get to know him and his music. Later I curated a concert series at a theater in TriBeCa called the Flea Theater. I presented Monica, who played his piano etudes. That’s how I got to know her. Before they moved to Portland, they lived fairly near to where I live now.

So this is your professional debut in here?

Supové: Yes. I had tried to make it happen but there was always scheduling conflicts. So for this concert, Kenji wanted me to play a few things that are representative of life here: New York composers and pieces that I consider signature pieces of mine.

It would be great if you could talk about the pieces on the program.

Supové: The pieces on the program are very narrative. They tell stories about contemporary life. It’s related to today. Rather than feeling like it is music in a salon, a lot of the pieces have soundtracks with it. So the piano might be, for example, in the middle of a storm. One of the pieces has sound samples from Hurricane Sandy, which happened just a couple of years ago.

The first piece on the program is “The Body of Your Dreams” by Jacob ter Veldhuis. He is a Dutch composer and is also an honorary American because he has spent a lot of time here. Some of his music is based on American pop culture. This piece has sound samples from an infomercial for an Abtronic, which is an electrified belt that you wear around your stomach. It is supposed to crunch your abs when you are not even trying. Of course, it’s completely fraudulent. I actually own one, but I’m too scared to use it. The piece is sort of like Steve Reich with a speech sample and the rhythm of the music matching the speech. It’s a really hysterical piece, and I thought it would be a good way to start off the program, because it not only connects to contemporary life, but it has a humorous and hyperness that appeals to me. It has an autobiographical, confessional component for me, because my weight has always been topic on my mind. I was overweight as a kid. Weight is something I’m always fighting, a never ending struggle.

The next piece is by Missy Mazzoli, who is one of the rising stars in the composing world in New York. She writes very beautiful, melodic music that has a special appeal to young people – much in the same way of indie songwriters. She has a band called Victoire, and they really get around. “Isabelle Eberhardt Dreams of Pianos” is a piece that she wrote for me back in 2007, and it became the basis for an opera that she wrote about Isabelle Eberhardt. Eberhardt was an explorer and writer who, at the beginning of the 20th century, abandoned a comfortable aristocratic life for a nomadic existence in North Africa. Mazzoli’s music is kind of looking back on her life, when she played piano. There’s a quote from Schubert in the piece. There’s also a soundtrack. We recorded some piano sounds in a gloomy practice room, and Mazzoli processed them. The soundtrack plays along with me and at some point sweeps over what I’m playing. It’s a beautiful piece.

I'll play two pieces from a collection of piano miniatures by Mohammed Fairouz, a young – still in his 20s – New York composer. They are acoustic pieces. I’ll play “Lullaby for a Chelsea Boy,” which was written for me. I’m the Chelsea Boy (laughs). It’s a very simple lullaby, a sweet folk song that has a shimmering right hand. The shimmering represents the memory of what happened the night before – the gay scene, staying out at night, going to a rave. “For Syria” is a more political piece. It is dedicated to innocent victims of the crisis there. A lot of Mohammed’s work is very political, and some of it is very crazy. Some of the miniatures are of The Rouges Gallery – the superhero cartoon characters. So it goes from the sublime to the ridiculous. There are 17 in all, and I've just recorded them. That recording should be released later this year.

“What Remains of a Rembrandt” is a piece for piano and soundtrack by Randall Woolf, who is my husband. He will be here for the performance. He’s a mid-stage New York composer, older than the other composers on the program. This piece is inspired by a short, essay by Jean Genet. It talks about what remains of a Rembrandt after all of the trappings are taken away and you are left with the raw emotion. This is a piece for my Digital Debussy project. What would happen if you took away all of the Romantic trappings of Debussy and were left with just the emotion. He took some material from “Pelléas and Mélisande” and processed it beyond recognition. He also has some Vietnamese gongs in there, and a kind of drumbeat that is actually the loading of a rife. And he has a cadenza that is layers of fragments from my favorite Debussy piano piece, which is “Hommage à Rameau.”

Annie Gosfield is, like Randy, a mid-career composer from New York. Her “Apparitions of the Western Wind,” which is for my Digital Debussy project, is based on the Debussy prelude “What the West Wind Saw.” The piece has samples of different kinds of keyboards and sample of Hurricane Sandy. It’s a very wild, Romantic piece in the middle of a hurricane. There’s a kind of sadness about it, too.

“Disney Remixes” is by Matt Marks. Marks is doing a lot of weird, wild operas, but before that he did these remixes of Disney things like “The Little Mermaid” and “Aladdin.” This remix, “Ever Just as Sure,” is based on “Beauty and the Beast.” It adds a little bit of levity to the program, which is otherwise quite heavy. It’s a clever work. It’s as if Bach were on speed and living in the 21st Century and wrote a two-part invention. The title “Ever Just as Sure” is supposed to be as vacuous as it sounds. He told me that it is meaningless.

Carolyn Yarnell is a Los Angeles-based composer, and I’ve known her for quite a while. I commission her piece “The Same Sky,” and it is really wild. She is a free-spirited composer, and you could never imagine that she would write such heavy-emotional music. When she first presented me with this piece, I said that it would need about ten pianists to play it. It was so incredibly difficult. I told her that one person could not play it. She said okay and came back to me later with a version that one person could play. It’s still pretty impossible, but one person could attempt it (laughs). It’s a little like Ravel, but very much in the 21st Century. It comes with a soundtrack in which she over-dubbed all the other piano parts for it on a Yamaha synthesizer. It’s an orgy of piano sounds – a tremendously virtuosic vehicle for the piano. It also has a video that comes with it. The way that she conceived it is that the video is shown on the inside of the piano lid. It’s shows clouds passing by in the sky. As the music gets more furious, the clouds get redder. That’s just an example. What I like about the piece is that the video accompanies the piano. But the piece can stand on its own without the video.

There will be a special surprise at the end of the program, but I won’t say anything more about it.

Your father, Lawrence Supové, was an interesting fellow. He lost Portland’s mayoral primary to Terry Schrunk in 1964.

Supové: Yes and a little known thing about him was that he was obsessed with celebrities. When they came to Portland, he got their pictures: Elvis Presley , the Beatles, Jimmy Durante. He had a fake press pass and security was light in those days. Sometimes he posed me with them.

Would you mind if I posted a couple of them?

Supové: Sure, that would be just fine.

 

Jimmy Durante and Kathleen Supové

Kathleen Supové and Claude Frank

Lawrence Supové and Johnny Carson

Final concert of the William Byrd Festival lifts spirits

Mark Williams

Guest review by Phillip Ayers

Until now, I have not been honored to review a concert by Cantores in Ecclesia, although I have attended many of their liturgies and concerts in years past. 2014 marks the 17th annual William Byrd Festival, founded by Cantores' Director Emeritus, Dean Applegate. It is one of the summer's annual events to which I, along with many others, look forward to. It is always an experience to be relished to hear this choir sing, especially in a liturgical setting, providing choral music for many Masses and other services in various venues around the city. Their activities, and especially the Byrd Festival that focuses upon the music of this great composer of the English 16th-17th centuries, are not an exercise in arcane or nostalgic (e.g. Latin Masses) museum-pieces but are vital, dynamic forces in musical expression and choral art.

Sunday night's final concert (August 24), one of the few in the Festival that carry a charge for a ticket, at St Stephen's Roman Catholic Parish in Southeast Portland, drew a full audience of listeners on a warm but pleasant evening. I attended the pre-concert talk by Dr. William Mahrt of Stanford University who lectured on "The Craft of Composition: Byrd versus Tallis." Unfortunately, the amplification was inadequate and extraneous noise from the narthex and other "clunkings" hampered my listening, and I found his talk more frustrating than instructive. However, I caught a few things that enlightened my interest and made the following concert all the more delicious.

Three pieces by Byrd - Emendemus in melius, Laudate Dominum, and Peccantem me quotidie, two from Byrd's Cantiones Sacrae 1575 - opened the evening's performance. Emendemus is Lenten in its mood but the mood changed drastically with a joyous Laudate, which is the brief Psalm 117 (116 in the Vulgate).

Interspersed with the choral works were two organ works, played by Mark Williams the conductor, Voluntary for My Lady Nevell, BK 61 and Fantasia, BK 61. The instrument used was a positiv or portativ organ made by local builder Richard Bond and associates, a small, compact one-manual organ with just the right colors for these works. The Fantasia contained many passages of 32nd notes, executed beautifully and swiftly by Williams. Listening to this kind of music is definitely an "acquired taste" to many, I suppose, although this reviewer thought it a good way to allow the choir to rest and to provide other than choral works. Without being too far-fetched, one could say it was like sherbet, or other palate-clearer, served between courses of a fabulous gourmet banquet!

Thomas Tallis' famous O nata lux ("O light born of light") and Suscipe quaeso, both from Cantiones Sacrae 1575, with the English O Lord, give thy Holy Spirit introduced the audience to "Master Tallis." After all, he was the teacher of William Byrd and it was only appropriate to have the mentor represented.

It might be well at this point to say something about what Cantiones Sacrae was. Copious notes by Kerry McCarthy in the beautifully wrought program fully explained this. The production had much to do with music publishing, royal monopolies and control of all sorts of desirable goods in the late 16th century. Even subterfuge – tampering with details of music to make figures come out even and a Huguenot French printer escaping persecution – played a role. Each composer - Tallis and Byrd - contributed 17 pieces each to the collection of "sacred songs." Unfortunately the book did not sell very well but was simply ahead of its time in some ways. "It captured a unique moment, two adventurous English composers taking the great polyphony of the European Renaissance and making it their own" according to McCarthy's notes.

After intermission, Tallis' works continued to be represented: In jejunio et fletu ("With fasting and weeping") and two settings of Salvator mundi ("Savior of the world"). The former is edgily chromatic and Dr. Mahrt called it "experimental" for its day.

The program concluded with Byrd's English Arise, O Lord, based on Psalm 44:23ff and an extended meditation on Psalm 51 (Miserere), Infelix ego ("Unhappy am I"). Some of this was in eight parts; the portrayal of Solus igitur Deus refugium meum ("Therefore God alone is my refuge") was particularly stunning. The final declamation of Miserere mei Deus ("Have mercy on me, O God") was triumphant. If I heard correctly Mahrt said this was in "old style" from Queen Mary's Roman Catholic reign and the piety in the text certainly does reflect that.

Overall the ensemble of the choir was quite good, save for a bit of over-singing in the tenor section. The soft passages were especially good and each work tapered off to perfection. Some in the choir often were not making good eye-contact with the conductor. As a singer myself, doing this difficult music, I probably would have had my eyes too much in the music as well. Any quirks, though, were more than offset by the obvious joy of this group as they sang together and provided this tremendous gift to the community. The joy was palpable and our long applause thanked the musicians profusely, along with the bouquet of flowers that Director Emeritus Dean Applegate presented.

Williams' versatility is amazing: widely-traveled, academically astute, a performer on organ and harpsichord, as well as an excellent conductor - all at the age of 35! It was fun to see that he was consultant for the music of the crime drama Endeavour on BBC. He augmented the choir with its own conductor, Blake Applegate, who was duly acknowledged at the conclusion of the concert, and with Dr. McCarthy, David Trendell, and Dr. Marht, all scholar/lecturers at the festival. The evening was truly a collaborative effort that provided the audience with much joy in hearing this great music done so very well. The memories of Richard Marlow, co-founder of the festival, Dr. Joseph Kerman, the father of modern Byrd scholarship, Richard Cuddihy, and the Rev. Dr. John Hughes were truly kept alive last Sunday evening!
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Phillip Ayers sings with the Portland Bach Cantata Choir and for ten years sang with the Portland Symphonic Choir. From 2001-2007 he produced and hosted "Choral Classics" on All Classical radio. A retired Episcopal priest, he and his spouse are former church organists and choir directors and now enjoy "sitting in the pew" at church and concerts.

Oregon Symphony and other ensembles to give free performances at Waterfront Concert on Thursday

From the Oregon Symphony press release:

Oregon Symphony Music Director Carlos Kalmar and President/CEO Scott Showalter this week revealed details about the upcoming August 28 Waterfront Concert that highlight the event’s spectacular return. Those details paint a vastly expanded Waterfront Concert that includes a new start time of 2:30 pm rather than the traditional 5:00 pm along with an entertainment lineup that spotlights many of the City’s other musical organizations.

 

“It’s going to be something very special,” Kalmar said. “We have so many great musical groups here in Portland, including some who are doing the important work of training our next generation of musicians. It will be a pleasure to share the stage with them for the Waterfront audience.”

Featured groups include Portland Opera, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Portland Youth Philharmonic, Metropolitan Youth Symphony, 234th Army Band of the Oregon National Guard, Hillsboro School District Mariachi Una Voz, BRAVO Youth Orchestras, and Portland Taiko.

 

Showalter acknowledged the special partnership that the arts enjoy with the city of Portland. “Mayor Charlie Hales and all of the City Commissioners have our great thanks for funding the return of the Waterfront Concert—one of the state’s largest community concerts. With these resources, we were able to turn the 18^th Waterfront Concert into a truly city-wide celebration with many other arts organizations.”

 

“Nancy and I are fans,” Mayor Hales said. “This is one of those great events that make Portland so cool.”

 

Special thanks also go to the Waterfront Concert’s other generous sponsors:  NW Natural, Boeing, KINK FM and KATU-TV.

 

Waterfront Concert

Thursday, August 28, 2014

(rain date if necessary: Friday, August 29)
Tom McCall Waterfront Park

1020 Naito Pkwy

Free to the public!

 

2:30 – 3:00 pm               234th Army Band of the Oregon National Guard

3:30 – 4:00 pm               Metropolitan Youth Symphony

4:00 – 4:30 pm               Hillsboro School District Mariachi Una Voz with Edna
Vazquez

4:30 – 4:50 pm               BRAVO Youth Orchestras

5:15 – 6:00 pm               Portland Youth Philharmonic

6:00 – 6:30 pm               Portland Taiko

7:00 pm                            Oregon Symphony

                                            (with selections from Oregon Ballet Theatre and Portland Opera)

Nightfall                          Fireworks

 

The Oregon Symphony’s program includes an Oregon Ballet Theatre performance of the Grand Pas De Deux from George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker featuring principal dancers Haiyan Wu and Chauncey Parsons as well as a selection from Bizet’s Carmen with baritone Alexander Elliott to highlight Portland Opera’s upcoming 50^th anniversary season.

 

The festivities conclude with the traditional grand finale—Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture complete with military cannons from the Oregon Army National Guard 218th Field Artillery.  Immediately following the 1812 Overture the skies will light up with an elaborate fireworks display, a signal to everyone in Portland that the musical season has begun.

 

With an expected audience of around 15,000 in Tom McCall Waterfront Park, patrons who bring lawn chairs are asked to bring only chairs that sit low to the ground in order to preserve sightlines for patrons behind them.

Complete program details as well as information on all the participating organizations will be available on the Symphony’s website:  www.OrSymphony.org/waterfront. 

Issachah Savage sweeps up awards at SeattleOpera’s International Wagner Competition

Speight Jenkins, Issachah Savage, Marcy Stonikas | Photo by (c) Rozarii Lynch

Get the Viking helmet and sword ready for Issachah Savage! The Philadelphia-based tenor more-or-less made a clean sweep at the International Wagner Competition at McCaw Hall on Thursday evening (August 7). He won the $5,000 audience award, the $5,000 orchestra award, one of two top prizes worth $25,000 from a panel of judges, plus a featured slot in the Speight Celebration Concert on Saturday (August 9). The only prize that Savage didn’t win was the other top prize for $25,000 that he judges gave to Danish tenor David Danholt, who was a late addition to the competition, which seeks to find the next crop of Wagner singers.

Speight Jenkins and David Danholt | Photo by (c) Rozarii Lynch

Savage and Danholt came out on top against a formidable field of seven other finalists. They were sopranos Helena Dix, Tamara Mancini, and Marcy Stonikas, mezzo-soprano Suzanne Hendrix, tenors Rick Furman and Kevin Ray, and bass Roman Ialcic. Each singer performed one aria in the first half of the program and another in the second. They sang on a well-designed set by Robert Dahlstrom and were accompanied by the Seattle Opera orchestra under the direction of Sebastian Lang-Lessing, who made his Seattle Opera debut in this performance.

Top l to r: Kevin Ray, Issachah Savage, David Danholt, Ric Furman, Roman Ialcic; Bottom l to r: Suzanne Hendrix, Tamara Mancini, Helena Dix, Marcy Stonikas | Photo by (c) Rozarii Lynch

Stonikas kicked things off with “Dich, teure halle” from “Tannhäuser” and followed it with a Senta’s Ballad from “Der fliegende Holländer.” I thought that her vibrato was a bit too much in the first piece, but her Ballad was quite thrilling. Ray sang “Winterstürme” and “Siegmund heiss’ ich” from “Die Walküre.” His tone was just a bit too restrained in “Winterstürme” and he seemed to rush the second selection. Mancini struck a very engaging presence in her delivery of Isolde’s Marratove amd Curse from “Tristan und Isolde” and “Gerechter Gott” from “Rienzi, but she had problems taming a fairly wild vibrato. Furman sang extremely well in “Ein Schwert verhiess mir der Vater” from “Die Walküre” and “In fernem Land” from “Lohengrin,” but he didn’t get into the emotion of the piece. Helena Dix’s interpretation of “Der Männer Sippe” from “Die Walküre” and “Liebestod” from “Tristan und Isolde” needed more power and emotion as did Ialcic’s rendition of “Abendlich strahlt der Sonne Auge” from “Das Rheingold” and Hagen’s Watch from “Götterdämmerung.”

Hendrix showed plenty of volume in her singing of “Geliebter, komm” from “Tannhäuser” and “Weiche, Wotan” from “Das Rheingold,” and her stellar performance of these pieces caused me to cast my vote for her. But I was very impressed with the beauty of Danholt’s voice as he sang “Nur eine Waffe taugt” from “Parsifal” and the Prize Song from “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.” Savage wonderfully captured the emotional content of “Amfortas! Die Wunde” from “Parsifal” and “Mein lieber Schwan” from “Lohengrin.” He also had power to spare and could express a restful quality that none of the other singers had. An independent testament to his ability came from orchestra, which could not see him, yet voted him as the best.

Lang-Lessing led the orchestra expertly. He seemed to be in complete sync with the singers. Overall, that made the quality of each aria very high. The judges were soprano Stephanie Blythe, stage director and former singer Peter Kazaras, incoming Seattle Opera general director Aidan Lang, record producer Evans Mirageas, and stage director Stephen Wadsworth.

Before the competition started, Jenkins introduced the audience to four new Wagner tubas which were made for Seattle Opera by Andreas Jungwirth, a brass instrument craftsman based in Vienna, Austria. Four members of the opera orchestra performed a motif from “Das Rheingold” and this was followed by a surprise gift, a newly-written leitmotif by Daron Hagen, whose opera “Amelia” was premiered by Seattle Opera in 2010. The Jenkins leitmotif started in the lower register in unison and gradually worked its way to a higher and fairly glorious chord at the end. The sound was very Wagnerian and could probably fit in somewhere in one of the “Ring” operas. After the applause died down, Jenkins announced that Seattle Opera is releasing a live recording of its 2013 “Ring.” The recording should be a bright feather in the cap of Jenkins, who is retiring after leading the company for the past 31 years. I sure that he will be following what happens to Savage, Danholt, and the other young Wagnerian singers as their careers progress.

Speight Jenkins talks about career highlights, the International Wagner Competition, and the horizon

© Rozarii Lynch

Speight Jenkins has had a remarkable run as general director of Seattle Opera, leading the company for the past 31 years with 1,200 performances and garnering praise from all corners of the opera world for his work. He will be retiring after this month, at age 77, and handing the reigns to Aidan Lang, former director of New Zealand Opera. There’s an excellent article by Melinda Bargreen in the Seattle Times that summaries much of his legacy in Seattle. But before he leaves, Jenkins will present the International Wagner Competition tomorrow night (Thursday, August 7th at 7 pm at McCaw Hall) will be honored at the Speight Celebration Concert on Saturday (August 9th at 6 pm at McCaw Hall) so it was high time for me to give him a call before he goes into legendary status. Here is part of our conversation.

What are some of the highlights of your time at Seattle Opera?

Jenkins: The highlights are the two “Ring Cycles” that we did. The “Ring” is the most difficult thing that you can do in opera, and we succeeded with both them. Overall, the operas that that have done since we opened McCaw Hall in 2003 are a high point. I wanted to do a higher level of performance because of the contribution of the public. Other highlights were Prokofiev’s “War and Peace” in 1990 and Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” in 1998. People came from all over the world to see “Tristan und Isolde,” and they loved it. But since 2003, we have been able to maintain a consistency in quality in so many ways that were difficult to maintain before.

The acoustic of McCaw is pretty darn good.

Jenkins: Yes. That turned out much better than I had expected.

How did you come up with the International Wagner Competition?

Jenkins: It was a funny thing. At the time, one of our the people in development, Rebecca Chawgo – she is now the director of development at Bellevue College – said to me “I’m so disappointed that we can’t do Wagner this summer. It’s unfortunately for our fundraising efforts.” We went back and forth with some ideas and one of us – I don’t remember which one exactly – came up with the idea of the competition. I like to give Rebecca the credit, but if she didn’t say it, our conversation made me think of it.

Then I did some research and found out that nowhere else in the world held such a competition. That made the idea more attractive to us. Ours is the only one, and it has remained that way. We did it in 2006 and 2008, and then the recession hit. So we haven’t done it again until this year. But no one else has done it. There are a lot of competitions for opera singers, but none of them are for Wagner competitions.

How does a singer get to participate in this competition?

Jenkins: Back in January of 2012, we sent out a notice to all of the opera companies that might possibly have done Wagner plus all of the major companies in Germany, North America, and England. We told them that we will be doing this competition, and it is open to anybody between the ages of 25 and 40, who has sung some dramatic repertoire but not a major Wagner role. So these are singers with a dramatic possibility but they haven’t gotten a big role. The Valkyries, for example, are not big roles. So, prospective singers send us a CD by June 30th. This year we received 65 of them. Then our director of artistic administration, Aren Der Hacopian, and I listened to all of those CDs.

Wow! That’s a lot!

Jenkins: It’s not all that much. Sometimes I listen to 30 auditions in a day. So we narrowed the 65 possible participants down to 26. Then we resolved to hear these 26 personally. We heard some of them here in Seattle, some in New York, and some in Munich and London. Then we narrowed that down to eight finalists and two alternates. In 2008, the finalists were mostly Europeans. This time, they are mostly from the United States. But we don’t care where they come from. We are just trying to get the best singers.

It’s sort of mind-boggling to think of how many individual voices you’ve heard over the years.

Jenkins: For years, I’ve done auditions in New York City, typically three or four days in a week and usually 30 people a day. Of course, I hear auditions here in Seattle, and I go to Europe twice a year. I hear a lot of auditions every year. But that’s just part of my job.

You were a music critic before you became the General Director of Seattle Opera. Can that type of thing happen today? Don’t general directors have to take specialized classes in how to administer an artistic organization?

Jenkins: There are very few general directors who have taken administration classes. So, what I did in ’83 would be as unusual now as it was then. There are no other music critics in the US who have become general directors, but there’s no reason that this couldn’t happen again. I don’t think that there are any classes for general directors. That’s a pity. I’d love to teach one!

The whole process of musical education is very poor in America. For years, my good friend Martin Bernheimer, who is a very knowledgeable person, taught a class in criticism at UCLA. That was really great, but then they dropped it. There’s no course that a person can take to be a music critic much less a general director.

The truth of the matter is that general directors everywhere do the same things with some variations. I have had a good situation in Seattle with what the board expects of me and what I do.

It seems that Regietheater, which is done quite a lot in Europe, is done only a bit here in the US.

Jenkins: Everything in opera starts in Europe and comes here slowly. People have seen some of this in New York and via HD broadcasts. I don’t think that HD is opera, but it is a good movie of opera. That’s an important decision to make. Opera has to be experienced in the theater where the energy passes between the stage and the audience and the audience and the stage.

On the other hand, I am very grateful for HD because it reaches places that do not offer live opera. There are places in Washington and Oregon where it is hard to get to Seattle or Portland to hear a live performance. So HD transmissions are wonderful. But it is important to realize what HD is.

I agree. The singers, for these performances, are wearing body microphones and there are area mics that pick up their voices for the broadcast.

Jenkins: Opera is one of the last places in the world where you can hear true, unamplified human voices. When I was a little boy, and my parents took me to New York, musicals were not wearing microphones. The miking started with musicals. I tend to think of it as ‘the snake appeared.” The first miking was done in 1954 with Julie Andrews in “The Boy Friend” off Broadway. It didn’t affect anything until 1955 or 1956 when “My Fair Lady” was done. They had to mike Rex Harrison, because he didn’t have a voice to sing with. Within four years, every Broadway musical was miked. Now it’s everywhere and totally ridiculous. I can’t go to musicals. It just drives me crazy. It’s so big, and it’s so ugly. Singers don’t really have to sing. I don’t want to be an old man just complaining about things. But when you go back to Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, they were great singers, who truly sang beautifully, and knew how to sing. Just from a medical point of view. People today wonder why Rock singers sing a short time and get nodes and have operations. It’s all because they don’t know how to sing. They are literally singing on the vocal chords, which is absolutely terrible. They are singing with their bodies. The may move around a lot and jump around, but they aren't really projecting. They don’t have to. They have a microphone right there.

Musicals are just terrible because there just a harshness in the voices. It might seem that I’m just an old man who is complaining about what has happened, but I can’t help that. I think that this is a great loss.

Returning back to the International Wagner Competition, how does the judging work?

Jenkins: We will have five judges: two general directors (not me), a stage director who used to be a singer, another stage director who is a teacher, and a singer. So it’s a good mix. The singers will perform an aria in the first half of the program and another aria in the second half of the program. The judges will write down their opinions. Then the judges meet and decide who is the two winners are, because there are two $25,000 prizes. We will also have a $5,000 prize that will be determined by the orchestra. The orchestra can’t see the singers as they perform, but they heard them. So that’s always interesting to find out who they voted for. The audience will also participate by voting and that will determine another $5,000 prizes that will be awarded. Audience members will go out in the lobby to cast their votes.

What is on your horizon?

Jenkins: I’ll be teaching a course on opera history at Stanford during the winter semester – as a lecturer in the Advanced Studies program there. Otherwise, I will be writing, and working on a lot of different things. I have a blog now. It’s on artsjournal.com, and it’s called Opera Sleuth. I would like to keep lecturing, because I enjoy it so much.