[A post from guest blogger Cindy Ellis, Pacific Symphony flutist]

Dear PSO Blog Followers,

We are deep into the lazy season of summer….musicians playing music in lovely outdoor venues…patrons bringing picnic baskets of food to enjoy along with the music…and let’s not forget those bottles of wine you bring in those aforementioned baskets….

Ever wonder what other kinds of adventures your Pacific Symphony Musicians get themselves into during the summer months?

WELL….have I got an event planners dream event! Next week I will be culminating an 18-month volunteer position as Program Chair for the National Flute Association’s Annual Convention: It will take place at the Anaheim Marriott Hotel, 700 Convention Way, Anaheim, CA (right next to the Anaheim Convention Center). August 12-15, 2010. Hours vary from day to day: see nfaonline.org/convention for details. Tickets available on line and at the door for four-day passes, day passes and by the concert.

Every detail, from putting together the theme, Illuminating Tradition, to the logo design, to the program book, to managing the budget, ALL of that has fallen on this flutist’s shoulders.

I have had the task of putting together four jam-packed days filled with concerts, recitals, workshops, lectures, panels, reading sessions…and there is also a huge exhibit hall selling everything flute-related from music to instruments to ornamental doo-dads and flute-related clothing. Whew!

The Gala Concerto Night Concert on Saturday at 8 p.m. features a full orchestra with many of your Pacific Symphony musicians playing for TWO world premieres, ONE United States premiere and one beloved staple of the concerto repertory. Late night jazz cabaret concerts, from 10 p.m.-midnight take place Friday and Saturday evenings.
There is a session on FLOGA, yoga for the flutist, business planning in the Career and Artistic Development seminars, a special Kids Kamp on Saturday for flutists 9-13 (details on the NFA website for Kids Kamp) and much, much more!

If you love the sound of the flute, this is the place! Come join me and about 3,000 other flute players from all over the world to come together for a truly extraordinary conference.

Oh yes…those lazy days of summer? Not so much for me this year….I’m looking forward to kicking back NEXT summer!

[A note from Guest Blogger Nancy Eldridge]:

Dear Pacific Symphony blog readers,

Nancy Eldridge from the violin section here. I wanted to share with you about the Musical Marathon Blood Drive that the Pacific Symphony Musicians organized just over two months ago in May. In a way it seems to me very late to be blogging about it. It’s over. It’s a done deal. To have time to think and write, I needed my schedule to slow down a bit. Pacific Symphony’s schedule ramps up in intensity towards mid-June, with back-to-back Classics sets, a Classical Connections concert, our Youth Concerts for the Class Act schools that we serve, and this year there was an extra concert for a group called the Magical Strings of Youth. After all that music within a two and a half week period, many of the Musicians scatter to the ends of the earth for a few weeks to take advantage of the down time before our summer season gets started with our July 4th concert at Verizon.

So, let me get back to the reason why I’m writing. The Musicians in the Symphony have been brainstorming recently about what we can do to get out into the community more often and possibly without our instruments in hand. This season, the Pacific Symphony Players’ Association (the formal name for us Pacific Symphony Musicians!) inaugurated Connecting Chords, a community outreach program to complement our Symphony’s ongoing outreach activities. We started with volunteering at Someone Cares Soup Kitchen in Costa Mesa, played holiday music for the residents of the Village of Hope, had a Toys for Tots drive, and then on May 7th, held an event we called the Musical Marathon Blood and Marrow Drive. The long name indicates how we wanted to combine live music played by Pacific Symphony Musicians while people donated blood to the American Red Cross and/or signed up for the Be the Match bone marrow registry. If people just wanted to hear the music and couldn’t give blood or sign up for Be the Match, they were welcome to just come and listen.

The event could not have been more unusual in that people donating blood had a terrific view of the musicians serenading them. Believe me, it was surreal from my point of view, playing a concert for people lying on beds with the hubbub of the nurses doing their work drawing blood. The day was also festive. Many people signed up to donate blood at the same time as their spouse or their friends from the Symphony or from the Newport Center United Methodist Church, where the event was held. The event became a social time on top of the primary reason people were there; to help save lives. I believe it was the live music though that created a surprise element of fun to the day and prompted the smiles on peoples’ faces. We created a unique memory in everyone’s mind that won’t be easy to forget. The Red Cross and Be the Match had a successful day, too, collecting 42 pints of blood and signing up 13 people for the Bone Marrow Registry.

If you missed this year’s event, don’t worry. There will be a 2nd annual Musical Marathon Blood Drive sometime next year!

Don’t know if you saw the 1996 movie “Shine,” which featured the pre-Barbosa Geoffrey Rush in a pitch-perfect performance as the tormented pianist David Helfgott.

Helfgott, an Australian, suffers from schizoaffective disorder. The film depicts his voyage from child prodigy to institutionalized mental patient, and how he managed to find his way back to public performance after years in the psychological wilderness. Rachmaninoff’s 3rd piano concerto is the thread that ties his life together; the piece he was rehearsing when he had his breakdown, and the piece he plays as evidence of his (limited) recovery.

In hindsight, I’m glad the movie was made, but still distressed about Helfgott’s subsequent tour. He played the Hollywood Bowl at the height of the hype, and while it would have been inspiring if he had played the Rach 3 with even remote competence, it was one of the two worst public performances I’ve ever heard. It was like listening to someone recite Shakespeare who had no idea what the words meant.

TO be or not TO be…
To BE OR not to BE…
To be or NOT to be…

Rachmaninoff’s 3rd piano concerto is a roller coaster, filled with peaks and valleys, storms and breezes. Helfgott grasped none of it. It was flattened out, emotionally empty. Weirdly unmusical.

So why, 14 years later, does the ‘Shine’ phenomenon still stick in my craw? Because I love the Rachmaninoff 3rd so much.

I’ve lost count how many times I’ve heard it in concert. And it seems to me that the piece has taken on a reputation disproportionate to its brilliance. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think there’s a perception that it’s this gargantuan monster that crushes the frail psyches of pianists unequipped for its emotional challenges.

It’s just a really fun thrill ride. Can’t wait to hear it again on August 7.

Through my mid-20s, my taste in music was fairly middle-of-the-road. Showpieces from the standard repertoire (Brandenburgs, Mozart sonatas), Big Band music, Classic Rock. Eclectic, but not adventurous.

One night, I was listening to the late, lamented KFAC, and the host said something along the lines of, “Now, here’s a contemporary piece…” and I was about half-way across the room to change the channel. For some reason, I decided to give it a listen.

It was John Adams’ “Shaker Loops.” It starts with these rapid string figures, which gradually go out of sync with each other. A tape loop slightly offset.

Immediately afterwards, I jumped into my car, drove to the record store–yes, this was back in the day of actual vinyl–and begged the clerk to find a recording for me. I still have it, and haven’t lost my fondness for it a bit.

And it led to more John Adams, and Steve Reich, and Philip Glass, and other composers working in the American avant-garde.

What I love about new music is that it reminds me that composing is a living tradition. And that there is an inexhaustible creativity to it. I love hearing something I’ve never heard before. And if I don’t like a piece, well, it reminds me how much I like Mozart and why.

Adams’ violin concerto (1993) arrives in just a couple weeks (June 3-5) with the amazing Leila Josefowicz as soloist. It’s a speciality of hers, and an opportunity to hear the work of a great American composer. That, plus Stravinsky’s “Firebird”? Electric. Can’t wait.

Throughout the mid-20th century, very few American composers were able to sustain themselves by composition alone. Virgil Thomson turned to writing music criticism (how the mighty had fallen), others turned to teaching or Hollywood.

One of the lucky few was Samuel Barber, who enjoyed—at least until his later years—an impressive string of commissions, awards, and critical plaudits. He wrote Adagio for Strings, certainly his best-known work, when he was 28, and he continues to be one of the most frequently performed and recorded American composers. The American Orchestra League publishes an annual list of the most performed national composers, and the most recent list ranks Barber third, behind Leonard Bernstein and in front of George Gershwin. (The most popular living American composer, as of the 2008-09 list? Guess. AND NO FAIR GOOGLING!!!!)

Medea’s Dance of Vengeance comes from 1946, right in the middle of Barber’s most productive period. May 13-15, you can hear this work performed by the Symphony under the direction of Michael Stern.

For those of you very few readers not completely up-to-date on the plots of Greek tragedies, it might help your enjoyment (?) of the piece to remember the Medea story: Jason (of “Jason and the Argonauts” fame) has married Medea, fathered her two children, and then left her to marry Glauce, the daughter of King Creon. Medea kills Glauce with a poisoned robe, Creon dies trying to save Glauce, and then Medea kills her own children to torment Jason.

The end.

Well, there’s a little more than that. I’ll leave it to Zoe Caldwell to give a real flavor to the text. You could to worse than to imagine her seething fury as you listen to Barber’s mournful and menacing music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zInoTXKyOvI

Too intense? Here’s the Meditation in its infamous arrangement for….Marching Band:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiRyznF7JTw

Because whenever I think of Samuel Barber, I think of drill teams and screaming crowds. At least now I do.