Mixed Bag

We are wrapping up the season with some interesting events.  Last night was the last serious concert with our assistant conductor, Danail Rachev.  We’re losing him to Philadelphia Orchestra–our loss is their gain.  He led us in a specatular concert which ended with Shostakovich Symphony #1.  This symphony has a difficult and very exposed solo part for piano. It brings up the subject of attention.  Normally, musicians have 3 areas of attention in symphonic playing:  1) the conductor 2) the music 3) the instrument.  Keyboard players look at their hands once in a while to get their bearings, but it is the least important of the three.  The music, if prepared properly, is just a reminder, so the main focus is on the conductor.  Some may argue with this, but at times, it is the only way to stay with the rest of the orchestra.  My situation in Dallas is complicated by the fact that the piano is located behind the last stand of 1st violins, which actually puts me off stage.  That is why I came up with the wireless microphone solution, since from my off-stage position, what I hear is the sound coming back from the hall, which is slightly delayed.  Usually I can compensate by just being “on top of the beat”, but in the Shostakovich,  the slightest miscalculation can put you out of sync.  In the rehearsal, I tried my microphone setup which seemed to help.  At the performance, the microphone was not working, so I had to rely on my usual combination of looking, listening and adjusting.  By all reports, everything came out well.

The next concert is Blue Planet, the BBC documentary.  We are providing the musical score for the projected images with narration.  My part is entirely on keyboards, and I have been busy finding the right sounds to approximate what was done in the recording.  Fortunately, most of the required sounds are pretty generic, and I think I have everything set up on the two keyboards I am using–the DSO’s Kurzweil K2600 and my personal Korg KARMA.  It all needs the approval of the conductor/composer, and there might be some sound editing before the first rehearsal.  One great help is the use of small post-it notes throughout the score to keep my patches straight.  I am using the small rectangular size, perfect for slipping in between staves.

Lastly, we have our residency at the Festival del Sole in Napa, CA.  The keyboard parts for that trip are relatively small–two Mahler songs, but they involve both piano and celesta.  I will play for about 5 minutes or less, but I still go with the orchestra to the festival.  This is the first time I will work with our new music director, Jaap van Zweden.  As I have said, the life of the orchestral keyboard player is never boring.

It’s Parks Time Again!

Every year about this time the Dallas Symphony does a series of outdoor concerts in various locations around the metroplex.  When we play outdoors, the stage crew sets up a portable bandshell which reminds me of an old amusement ride like the Tilt-a-Whirl.  It is usually at a 5-10 degree angle, and when all the violins are bowing together, the whole thing shakes.  We use the synthesizer for all the keyboard parts.  It is a 76-key non-weighted keyboard, so playing it takes some technical adjustments. I do use the + and – octave keys to get the very low and very high notes.  The piano sounds very much like an amplified piano, and since everything is amplified, it does the job.  The celesta sounds convincing, but I did tweak the envelopes and filters to improve it.  This program has some interesting keyboard stuff–’Hora Staccato’ which has some celesta solo parts, ‘Times Square’ from On The Town and the ubiquitous ‘Raiders March’.  Last night’s performance was cancelled due to severe thunderstorms, but tonight was a warm, humid, and un-rainy night.  We havea few more of these concerts and then the Summer season begins.  Note to myself–bring bug spray. 

A little bit of everything

Last week’s Pops concert was a real smorgasbord.  I had plenty to do in a wide range of styles and some interesting challenges.  The conductor was Jack Everly, and the program featured the Dallas Symphony Chorus.  We did Broadway, Hollywood, Tchaikovsky, Orff, and a few patriotic numbers thrown in for Memorial Day.  One of the most interesting challenges for me was Puccini–the Overture to Act 3 of Madame Butterfly.  The score calls for tuned Japanese tam-tams (or gongs) and the percussion didn’t have them.  Fortunately, we had the Kurzweil set up and I put together a reasonable gong sound from some other sounds.  Maestro Everly said at our rehearsal that I was in the ball park, but it was a pretty big ball park.  So I went home and fired up Kontakt on my MacBook Pro and found just what he was looking for.  Kontakt is a sample player that comes with 4 CDs full of usable sounds.  With a suitable interface (M-Audio Firewire 410 or something similar) hooked up to the keyboard, your computer becomes a sample player of higher-quality sounds than you get in most keyboards. I played M. Everly the sound before the concert, and he liked it, so that is what we used.  

The other synthesized part was for accordion on ‘Sunrise, Sunset’.  The accordion sample I have is rather detuned “French” sounding instrument, which is fine for doing Parisian tunes like ‘Umbrellas of Cherbourg’, but not so good for Fiddler on the Roof.  While trying to edit the sound, I accidently discovered that when the K 2600 is in edit mode and you hit the Program button, it mutes one layer of sound.  I got the perfect accordion sound for the tune, reedy and thin.

Another highlight for me was doing ‘O Fortuna’ from Carmina Burana.  The score calls for 2 pianos, but in the first piece the parts are identical, so we could get away with only one piano.  Anyway, the chorus was the important part.  I usually do my thing on a 7′ Steinway, but for some reason, they gave me the 9′ American Steinway for this concert, and I must say I could tell the difference.

 

 

 

 

 

Surf’s Up

As I was saying, one of the things I love most about playing with the Dallas Symphony is the radical swings in musical styles from week to week.  Last week was Bruckner #7 which doesn’t involve keyboard.  I did catch one of the rehearsals and the orchestra sounded glorious.  FYI Bruckner fans:  they did the version without the cymbal & triangle in the 2nd mvt.  I always thought that would be one of the funniest parts to play–one cymbal crash in the entire 45-minute work.

What could possibly follow such a sublime musical  experience?

The Beach Boys, of course.

Here I had my equivalent of a Bruckner cymbal crash–6 measure of celesta in “Darlin”.  It was fun being on stage with a musical legend.

 

 

 

 

Odds and ends

Well, after Pointers week, we had Verdi Requiem (no keyboard).  However, that same week we also had auditions for associate conductor, with 5 candidates and about 20 minutes each.  On the audition list was Petrouchka.  In case you didn’t know, this is one of the biggest and most challenging piano parts in the orchestral repertoire.  I couldn’t find out which parts to prepare, so I had to prepare the whole piece.  As it happened,  we only played the first part, and not even all of it. Anyway, It was fun to revisit that wonderful music.  The last time I had played it was in a subscription concert under Charles Dutoit.  

The next week was a mixed program–the first half was a new concerto for percussion by John Corigliano (no piano part, just strings & percussion).  The 2nd half began with a terrific piece by Roberto Sierra called Fandangos.  This had a challenging part for piano & celesta (one player) and was fun to play and very well received.  The concert ended with Enigma Variations of Elgar.  There is a keyboard part (organ) that was played by our resident organist, Mary Preston.  She is a real expert at this kind of thing, and sounded great.  I thought I was hearing some strange sounds in one variation, and accused her of making them.  I must check the score, because it might be some unusual percussion effect.  If anybody knows what I am talking about, please let me know.

This week is another Pops week, and I am only playing the 1st half.  Mostly Leroy Anderson in honor of his 100th birth anniversary, but also one special arrangement for Mother’s Day (M-O-T-H-E-R: M is for the many things she gave me….) Not too much to do this week.

As you can see, things vary radically from week to week.  That is one thing I really like about orchestral life.

 

 

I’m So Excited

Last night was a lifetime experience for me, sharing the DSO stage with the Pointer Sisters.  I was sitting on stage next to Jervonny,  their bassist, thinking to myself “How on earth did I get here?”  The simple answer to that is that they have 2 keyboard books, but they only brought 1 keyboard player.  The 2nd keyboard is primarily gospel organ  (Hammond B3), with a few synthesizer parts and some Rhodes electric piano. Again, Technology to the rescue, in my wonderful Yamaha P120 keyboard, which has very useable sounds to cover the parts, and the symphony’s Kurzweil K2600, which was mentioned in a previous post.  The Pointers are fantastic–what a great sound they have, and such positive energy. They had the usually sedate Pops audience up on their feet, dancing, clapping, WHOOOOOOOEEE!

The first half of the program featured a brand new rag by Roger Fratena, a DSO bassist.  The Retro Rag had a few nice piano moments, and is very evocative of earlier times.  Also on the 1st half was the movie music from “The Ten Commandments”, by Elmer Bernstein.  Fun big-screen spectacle music.

The best part is that I get to do it again tonight and tomorrow.  This is the most fun I have had in a long time.

 

 

 

Back from hiatus

If anyone noticed, I haven’t posted for quite a while.  I guess it’s fair to say I am not a dedicated blogger, and I have found that when I am not busy, I don’t have much to say, and when I am busy, I don’t have time to sit down and write.  Hopefully, I can catch up by sharing some interesting experiences from previous months.  I intend to fill in the gaps over the next few months, and give you a better picture of my job in the Dallas Symphony.  

OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD

This week was an interesting week–we played the original score for the Wizard of Oz along with the movie, just like they did before talking pictures.  The only difference was that they somehow kept the original dialogue when they removed the orchestral track.  It turns out that the Wizard of Oz has a spectacular Hollywood style orchestral score.  Unless you are a true film music aficionado, you probably never heard of Herbert Stothard (I hadn’t).  He is the composer of this wonderful music, that is, everything but the incredible songs of Harold Arlen.  Stothard took Arlen’s themes, composed his own original themes for different characters, borrowed some classical themes and rolled everything into this big, lush film score which stands up very well on its own.  In terms of the scoring, there are echos of Stravinsky, Resphigi and Richard Strauss.  Structurally, he follows Wagnerian leitmotiv techniques. There are some breathtakingly beautiful moments along the way.  At the point where Dorothy opens the door to Munchkinland, the music says “Exquisite Lento”  and that is exactly what you hear.  There is a lot of keyboard in the score, and the celesta writing is simply scrumptious.  On the original soundtrack, it sounds as though they had a separate mike on the celesta, because sometimes that is about all you can hear.  

TECHNOLOGY TO THE RESCUE

I should explain the unusual setup at our hall, the Meyerson Symphony Center.  Due to the stage configuration, most of the time the piano is placed stage right, behind the 1st violins.  This puts me actually off stage, so I am not seen by most of the audience.  The fun part is that from that extreme position, I can’t hear the rest of the orchestra very well.  Gerenally speaking, if I can hear another instrument when I am playing, we are not together, because if we are together, all I hear is myself. Most of the time, I trust being with the conductor, who lets me know if I am with the rest of the orchestra or not.  Where it gets trickier is when I have to play exactly together with particular instruments.  However, I have found a solution that works beautifully.  In this music, there is a part for drum set.  The drummer, Dan Florio, is up on the back riser in the middle of the stage.  If I try to hear him, we will never be together, because there is a slight delay before the sound gets to me.   Further complications arise in this particular situation, since following an existing soundtrack involves lots of tempo adjustments on the fly.  My solution was to use a wireless microphone and a small powered speaker right on the piano.  It acts as a click track whenever the drums are playing.  It is amazing, but I can actually hear two drummers, one slightly behind the other. The earlier one is coming from the speaker, and that is the one I follow.  I like it because it makes my job much easier, and I don’t have to ask anybody to set up a monitor for me.  Another little twist was that the celesta was placed on stage between the piano and the last stand of 1st violins.  I had to run back and forth between piano and celesta, sometimes in just a few bars, play a chord and run back to the piano again.  We tried having the celesta in back of the piano, but in our first rehearsal, our conductor, Richard Kaufman, said he couldn’t hear it at all.  As I said, the celesta has a significant role in the score, and is used for many supernatural effects, such as when Glinda the Good Witch appears and disappears.  

SO, HOW WAS IT?

We did it 3 times and every time was different.  We have tried movie scores before (Potemkin), but I think this was the most successful multi-media event we have ever done.  It is a powerful movie, and the music is amazing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Things are slow this season

Since the Adams, I haven’t had much to do this season, so I am not posting very often. We did do a Halloween concert last week, which was a fun concert in which orchestra members are invited to come in costume. I found a hilarious old band uniform with one of those tall hats in our neighborhood costume shop, and stuck on a false mustache to evoke the image of John Philip Sousa. In previous years I have gone as Homer Simpson, Gomez Addams, Elvis, Elton John to name a few.

The piece requiring my services was a suite from Harry Potter. Keyboard players should know that Mvt. 1 is one of the most challenging things ever written for celesta. We have done it a few times, and the first time was scary. Each time it gets easier, but it still requires major reviewing to get it back in the fingers. Since I am not playing regularly, I had to make a special trip into Dallas to get my part. (84 miles round trip). I had other things to take care of, so it was a good thing to do. Now I want to talk about fingering. The 1st movement consists of running 32nd notes in a fast 3/8. Dividing between hands is necessary, and I worked out my choreography very carefully the first time I played it. Fortunately, I used the same part this time, so a lot of work was already done. However, I found some better solutions to some of the technical problems, and decided to change fingerings in a few spots. What amazed me was that I tended to revert to the old fingerings, even though it has been a few years since I played it. The moral of the story is be sure you have tried all possible fingerings before you settle on one, because you might be stuck with it for a long time. I was able to reprogram myself for this concert, and it all went very well, but it took me more time to get it because I had to remember to use the new fingerings. The best fingerings in the world are useless if you don’t use them.

The Life of an Orchestral Keyboard Player is Never Boring

Hello Everyone.

This is Steve Harlos, the Staff Keyboardist for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. I have another blog on wordpress for my other existence–(see Collaborator’s Corner). I thought it might also be of interest to some readers out there what a staff keyboard position in a major orchestra is like, so here I will post some of my more interesting experiences from time to time.
This is my 11th season with the DSO, and I can’t begin to describe all of the wild roller-coaster rides since my first concert in 1996. Suffice it to say that the orchestra is not a place for the faint of heart.
This week is our first subscription concert after our summer vacation. We are performing John Adam’s Violin Concerto with Leila Josefowicz, an incredible violinist. She plays this unbelievably complex concerto from memory and nails it every time. It is a very cool piece. There are actually 2 keyboard parts specifically written for the Kurzweil 2000 series synthesizer. Part of my position at the DSO is to be a technical resource for synthesizer stuff. It comes up more and more, and you really need to know something about electronic keyboards these days. Fortunately, I have been messing around with synthesizers since 1969(!), so I know more than the average piano player about electronic keyboards. Recently I had to invent some sounds, such as a fake theremin for a John Corigliano piece we did last season. That piece (”Mannheim Rocket”) also had a sound effect of glass breaking that I put together with one of my students, Nick Groesch.
So, today was our 1st of 2 rehearsals on the Adams, and I got there pretty early to get everything set up. We had rented 2 Kurzweils, which we had used successfully on previous occasions. However, on this occasion, one of them decided to be uncooperative, meaning it would not read the disc provided with the rental parts. I discovered this 1 hour before the rehearsal was to start. My bad–I should have tested the keyboards yesterday in case something wasn’t working. Well, what to do? 1st–call the rental service. They had no backup keyboards. Now it’s 1:00 and the rehearsal starts at 2:00. The keyboard has a PANIC button, but it didn’t solve the problem. Well, to make a long story shorter, I had to run out to a nearby music store and buy another Kurzweil, which by a stroke of pure luck they happened to have on display (used). I figured it could replace my trusty old PC-88. I don’t know what would have happened if they hadn’t had that keyboard…..So at 1:35 I am leaving the music store with a new (used) K2600 and heading for the rehearsal. Of course, there was construction on Central Expressway, but I made it just in time to switch out the keyboards and get everything ready for the 2:00 downbeat. I breathed a big sigh of relief and the rehearsal went smoothly from that point on. Our conductor, Andrew Litton, had no idea what it took me to get to that downbeat.
We had a similar panic situation the last time we did the Adams in Vail. Same keyboards, but one of the disks was damaged and we had to do some last minute problem solving to get it to work.
That is the problem with technology–Murphy’s Law is in full force.
Well, all I can do now is hope that everything will keep working for the next 4 days. Wish us luck!! Maybe I should sacrifice a goat before the concert.