Malibu morning picture of the day - Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Dear Family, Friends, and Gentle Readers,

Ah, we're back in a pattern of early morning low clouds.

Indistinguishable from yesterday's set. But it'll be all blue by noon, have no fear, which still keeps it indistinguishable from yesterday.


This morning, as I was driving in, I heard the overture to J. Strauss' operetta The Bat (Die Fledermaus).

I remember playing in an orchestra where we were prepping this work for a concert. The director went on and on how tricky it was, spent a lot of time on balance, entrances, making us notate when there were mood and tempo shifts, etc. There're a lot of small solo passages that first-chairs can obsess about too. There was a lot thought and hard work that went into that thing and I'm sure we played it admirably.

It made me remember decades ago when I was playing in a pit orchestra for a production of Fledermaus. Our agreed-upon pay included one evening rehearsal, a dress rehearsal, a staff meal (spaghetti, bread, and wine), and the performance. We didn't get that overture out to look at until the singers took a break, and then we would break. We pretty much nailed it in one take, stopping once maybe. It sounded pretty damn good, and it sounded even better at the dinner-theatre performance the next day.

To the opera conductor, the overture was just something to warm up the orchestra, get us all in tune, introduce the melodies (or give reminders to regular opera goers), all before the REAL show started. (Here's a secret, opera conductors never give downbeats. They just gesture for the singer to start the phrase. If you can't work with that, you never take the opera gigs again. For a trumpet player, playing any kind of a show is an evening full of fits, starts, fanfares, and sitting around counting endless periods of rests.)

Johann Strauss

I've often wondered why the overture when played in the context that it was created (an actually full-night's opera) always comes off as more spirited, more expressive, and just more damn fun than when I've played the exact same works but broken off and set apart into a concert piece. Part of it is when you're a hired contractor with only 2-3 shots at it, your focus is pretty intense.

Another part of it is that if you're a good pit musician, your job is to create the setting or the background for the singers on which to shine. You are a sublimator, you are a collaborator. So, you've probably spent some intense hours following a non-metronomic director who has to follow singers who slow down or speed up according to the dramatic action. If you ever did the drama exercise where you had to be the mirror image of another person, if you're not good at it, forget abotu being a collaborative accompanist of any kind.

But a lot of it is the intellectual distance and level of study you put into something that you dissect and work on trying to find its organizational perfection when it's a concert piece. This is kind of hard to imagine because the more you learn about opera composers like Rossini and Mozart, the more you learn they had to throw together the overture really fast in the hours before downbeat on opening night. So opera overtures are pretty much quick-sketch works.

And that's probably it, overtures need to really dwell in the works they presage. It's the same for all the intermezzi, entractes, marches, and ballets that in-dwell theatrical works too. It's also expressive freedom for the "guys in the band too." We get to  show what we can do when we're untethered from the Prima Donna or the tenor or the chorus.  And when a pit group that has gotten used to each other, and are all "moving as one" it's pretty magical.

So I say, if you REALLY want to hear what "Overture to Barber of Seville" or "Marriage of Figaro" really sounds like, you're going to have to buy an opera ticket. (Unless of course, those guys are 'mailing it in' which is a danger when they're in the latter half of  long run ...).

So much musician blather. If any of you are still reading, I'm shocked. Take care of yourselves, I care.

Love.
Pops