OPERA

The last wistful phrases of the prelude of La Traviata waft out of the orchestra pit and wend their way to the far reaches of the MET’s cavernous backstage, where they dance around with the melancholy ‘ghost tones’ of the thousand other Traviatas that have lurked in the floorboards, curtains and crevices since the piece was premiered at the MET in 1883. The plaintive tones gently descend onto the 100 or so performers on the stage and the 15 piece backstage orchestra, all standing around chatting softly about nothing in particular as the stage managers walk through he throng anxiously imploring everyone to be quiet, “you can be heard in the house! shhhh!!”

I am part of the backstage orchestra. This ‘little’ banda (of 15 musicians!) plays a total of perhaps 3 minutes total, only sporadically in the first scene of the opera and their musical contribution is barely audible to the audience (the MET doesn’t believe much in amplification.…if it worked in 1933 why change?) The banda stands just off stage, stage right quite far upstage. We can clearly hear the uproarious singing and drinking party in full swing on the stage but we can only see the very back of the set where a few chorus people and supernumeraries (spear carriers in this case doubling as waiters) intermittently making their way on and off stage. Every night, a ‘stage waiter’ comes back to the banda with a plate of hor d’ouvres (real food!) and shares a few morsels with the musicians. The musicians always look forward to this Traviata ritual, thoroughly enjoying the opulence of the ‘spread’ offered to them as a matter of course, something that happens all the time in the world of theater.

I describe this scene from 15 years ago, my final season with the opera, the end of a 29 year run, my last Traviata. I remember this performance distinctly. I was in awe at being both part of this giant undertaking, a small cog in the giant wheel which is grand opera, and a bystander watching the glorious pageant slowly pass by, soon to be gone from my life forever. My last Traviata was a death of sorts and to paraphrase Samuel Johnson, ‘death tends to focus the mind’.

I looked upon this grand spectacle, 100s of people: singers, dancers, musicians, stage managers, carpenters, electricians, dressers, costumers, children’s choruses, prompters, coaches, who every night work diligently to mount this grand extravaganza and think to myself, “in fifty years, no one will believe that such a giant labor intensive, excessive in every way enterprise in the service of an art form featuring the music of old white guys, music which doesn’t turn a profit, could ever have existed.” The lavishness and expenditure of grand opera would probably strike the citizen of 2068, who is experiencing musical spectacles via holograms and VR platforms, as something akin to the ancient Egyptians building the Pyramids: an amazing achievement for sure but one which begs the question: what would compel people to expend so much effort and treasure to build such magnificent edifices of sound and stone…and not turn a profit?

In the case of the Egyptians, the Pyramids were the enshrinement and glorification of their culture: as a stunning architectural achievement, as a shining beacon (originally the Pyramids were covered in polished white limestone) celebrating their geometric and mathematical knowledge through precisely calculated proportion, as an astronomical observatory, and as a vehicle where the pharaoh and his carefully guarded treasure was transported to the next life, all encased in a structure meant to last forever.

In the case of opera, Verdi, Mozart, Wagner, Puccini are the ‘flying buttresses’ holding aloft the magisterial Church of the Western musical canon. These composers, and of course many others, built the edifice which celebrated the voice and brought it to its pinnacle in timeless tales of love and death. Traviata has been performed in its original form since it was premiered in 1853 at La Scala in Italy. The performance I describe took place in 2003. There would be very little difference in a performance from 1853 and one 150 years later in 2003. Many of the MET orchestra parts, the written music the orchestra musicians play from, are from the 1880s when the opera was premiered at the MET! Only recently did the old crinkly yellow paper on which these notes were printed have to be replaced.

In this quotidian Traviata performance in 2003, ironically, my last and most special one, I felt I was part of a tradition which was carefully nurtured and preserved by the musicians and singers who loved to perform Traviata, by the public who continued to support performances of La Traviata all over the world and by a cultural elite who believed that these works of genius, performed in all their glorious excess were important cultural treasures which needed to be preserved.

But times have changed radically.

“In 1887, when Edward Bellamy wrote his utopian novel Looking Backward, ready access to music played a major role in the author's vision of an ideal future. In the year 2000, Bellamy argued, music would be piped into the house from central concert halls, where a small army of musicians would assure that a steady stream of live performance would be available to everyone for a "small fee." The novel's protagonist, born in the benighted nineteenth century but privy to Bellamy's fantastic future, describes the musical "telephone" this way: "If we could have devised an arrangement for providing everybody with music in their homes, perfect in quality, unlimited in quantity, suited to every mood, and beginning and ceasing at will, we should have considered the limit of human felicity already attained, and ceased to strive for further improvements.”” Phillip Kennicott, from Opera News 2012.

Why leave the house when I can hear and see the opera in the comfort of my own home? And I can even break away from Lucia’s last act meltdown to watch the 9th inning of the Yankee game and then return to the opera to share the pain of murder and Lucia’s suicide after the Yankees blow a 3 run lead.

As I write in 2018, Mr. Bellamy’s musical utopia has been far surpassed. While musicians and singers still love performing La Traviata and other masterpieces from the Western canon, the public has grown less keen to attend opera performances and the so-called ‘cultural elite’, which has essentially ceased to exist, has focused its munificence elsewhere. (TEXACO, an oil company now a subsidiary of CHEVRON, sponsored MET opera broadcasts every Saturday afternoon for 63 years and then abruptly stopped, saying they are moving “in a different direction philosophically. We’re investing in workforce training and job skills development for workers of the future”. ) TEXACO had moved on from supporting the great tradition of Western music to training workers to run machines and move information, goods and service efficiently from one place to another in cyber space.

Technology has begged the question. Now, the white people who used to comprise the ‘cultural elite’, educated people of the world with money, are content to gorge themselves on the same popular entertainments and spectacles as the rest of the world’s ‘unwashed’. Musical content is now limitless. The public desires a more immediate, 1-3 minute emotional charge, not a 3 hour epic tragedy without a single computer generated explosion. The introduction to many arias is longer than 3 minutes! The fervor to protect ‘high cultures’ crown jewels seems rather quaint in 2018. ‘High culture’ and ‘cultural elite’ are terms never used anymore because the use of these monikers is sure to elicit cries of “out of touch globalist” or ‘‘white privilege’’ or ‘‘what about all the overlooked music of women, people of color…”. There is truth to these criticisms but in no way does this in any way diminish the genius of the exquisite works by these old white guys. But history moves on, the trajectory of the timeline shifts and our attention is directed elsewhere. Exclusivity is no longer defined by ‘culture and money’. ‘Culture’ no longer can be defined by any one group anymore. Technology has made ‘culture’ a completely fluid term. It can be rightfully claimed by any group of people anywhere on earth…if it sells. If not… on to the next cultural artifact. It’s only about money now, tradition be damned.

‘White culture’ has become a pejorative term now. The yahoos who now lead the defense of ‘white culture’ define themselves only in terms of not being the ‘other’ — black and brown interlopers. The ‘outrage culture’ of social media has artificially divided us into essentially two camps, the ‘woke’ and the ‘white’. European culture has devolved from celebrating and honoring the profundity of the greatest of Western art and music to preserving statues of Confederate ‘heroes’. As if opera did not have enough existential problems, now opera has to dodge bullets in the crossfire between the ‘woke’ and the ‘white’. Its continued existence is by no means assured.

Opera used to be the biggest spectacle in town.. a hundred years ago. This is no longer true. There are any number of spectacles that surpass and even dwarf grand opera, from block buster movie franchises (Star Wars, Spiderman, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones etc.) to Beyonce half time shows at the super bowl, replete with holograms! The Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence universes about to explode on the consciousness of the entire globe will only make these extravaganzas more extravagant. And shorter in length, the perfect drug for the world’s ever decreasing attention spans.

So I piss into the winds of the hurricane threatening to blow us all into cyberspace and bear witness to what it used to be like in the ancient world of grand spectacle and pay tribute to all those who came before me and those intrepid souls who will come after me. It was the greatest fun to be part of building musical pyramids and majestic temples of sound. I honor an art form that will cease to be in its present iteration. But opera will never die. The music is too great. But it will certainly change its shape.

Conducting

The concert is ready to begin. The lights go down, the audience muffles the last few coughs and the program rustling gradually subsides, then a brief moment of complete silence…., The conductor’s baton raised in preparation. A 100 pairs of eyes watch the maestro intently, their finely tuned instruments at the ready, many of them worth as much as your house, each musician eagerly anticipating the downbeat, that simple gesture indicating it’s time to begin blowing, bowing, plucking and striking their instruments.

The downbeat finally arrives and the sound emanating from this intricate finely tuned musical machine washes over the maestro, his arms open in a gesture of welcome to the instantaneous voluptuous heavenly sonic massage. The first time a conductor experiences this truly wonderful sensation, they are humbled by it. But after a while, all humility is forgotten and the conductor begins to believe that he/she is actually making the sounds coming from this army of musical crusaders. In their mind, it goes something like this: God —> Beethoven —> Conductor —> Orchestra. The maestro receiving musical messages from long dead Beethoven and only one step removed from the almighty.

Historical Performance

Historical performance has constructed its own kind of jail: “This is the way the old guys did it, so this is how we have to do it, too.” It leads us to the inevitable conclusion that old music in the classical tradition must never be touched or modified, unless of course it’s modified by the gurus of historical performance because they have a really good idea of how things sounded 200 years ago. Roger Norrington, one of the early proponents of historical performance said about Beethoven, “his tempi are very specific.” Specific to what? How he heard his music over 200 years ago? Before Beethoven went deaf, he used to give piano recitals. At these recitals, boys were stationed on each side of the keyboard to catch the candelabra which Beethoven would often knock off the piano because he was prone to bouts of swinging his arms wildly when the music arrived at a particularly exciting passage. Beethoven certainly does not fit the profile of a man who was bound to a specific tempo for any of his work. He was too wild and unpredictable. 

Historical performance reminds me of the reenactments of cave men wandering around with dinosaurs (they didn’t), which are so popular on the History Channel. 

Historical performance is profoundly presumptuous because we don’t in fact have a clear idea of how old music sounded. We have no audio reference. Historical performance is, ironically, a completely contemporary interpretation of the classical canon. It’s a new musical genre that has attracted a few generous donors. Historical performance is now a progenitor of “period instrument” orchestras which benefit a growing number of musicians who have become very skillful playing these newly designed “old” instruments. Good news for baroque oboists, viola da gamba players and natural trumpet and horn players!

Recording became widespread in the mid-1920s. Thus, the oldest music for which we have an audio reference is only about a hundred years old. Gershwin’s Concerto in F, premiered in 1925, sheds light on the subject of historical performance. In the original recording, Gershwin was the pianist and it is rumored that the legendary Bix Beiderbecke was the trumpeter for the famous trumpet solo in the second movement. A few things stand out for me. First, the tempi are faster than a modern audience is used to hearing. Second, the time feel, particularly in the second movement, is profoundly different from any modern interpretation. A modern interpretation is more indulgent with the tempi, and the jazz rhythms Gershwin alludes to are not understood in the same way as they were 95 years ago. The time feel and swing are very different. The first time I heard the original recording with Paul Whiteman’s orchestra, with Gershwin at the piano and Bix Beiderbecke playing the trumpet solo, was eye opening. No symphony orchestra in the world today could come close to emulating the swing of the piece as it was played then. So thankfully they don’t even try.

Musicians of other traditions are unconstrained by classical music’s cultural baggage and therefore often have no problem wrangling the canon into new forms. The great jazz pianist Marcus Roberts does a modern jazz version of Gershwin’s concerto, with some added improvisation in a more contemporary vein. It’s quite interesting and it does not resemble or attempt to imitate in any way the original interpretation: Roberts and company essentially blew up Concerto in F. Hooray!

The public is not at all interested in the internecine purity spats raging in the academy. People just want to be entertained. If someone can successfully make a “classical music entertainment” of any kind, it will be copied and quickly spread throughout the world. 

A few other jazz musicians have deconstructed and reimagined works from the classical canon. One who stands out is the wonderful Philadelphia jazz pianist Uri Caine who has recorded some very interesting deconstructions of composers from Bach to Mahler. I think deconstructing and reimagining the work of composers from the golden age of Western music is fertile territory for exploration. Some of Caine’s deconstructions work better than others but all are interesting. Here are a few links: Mahler, and Goldberg Variations.

There were many times sitting in the pit at the Metropolitan Opera when I would fantasize about combining an act from one bel canto Bellini or Donizetti opera with an act or scene from a different Bellini or Donizetti opera. A fresh operatic combination. Call it B&D. With all the suicides, threatened suicides, executions, false flag suicides, madness and despair, I think B&D is a perfectly descriptive title for this mashup. Cut these bel canto tapeworms into digestible bits. Since the plots of these operas are all very much the same—romantic melodramas on steroids—they make the perfect sci-fi mashup replete with divas time traveling into each other’s tragedies. Ninety minutes long. I would go see that for sure. It might be an awful fail or it could turn out to be a brilliant cross-genre conglomeration like HBO’s Westworld. There were often long stretches between entrances at the opera so I had time to think about stuff like this. 

With regard to amplification, the same rigid thinking applies. If Mozart didn’t have amplification, why should we perform Mozart amplified? The answer is simple: because audiences of the world have become accustomed to hearing music through a sound system. As I write this in 2020, the technology to amplify music has reached a point where classical music could benefit tremendously from state of the art sound enhancement (see Appendix B).

In 1999, Nonesuch Records released a recording of composer Steve Reich’s works remixed by DJs from all over the world. Steve Reich approved the project so he was surely intrigued by the idea of remixes (I personally like the remixes better than the urtext originals!). Much other classical music is, due to its seniority, in the public domain and now requires no permission whatsoever to slice and dice any way a DJ or composer or kid with a laptop sees fit. 

Our entire world is being disassembled and reassembled in ways no one can predict or control, and new experiences are coming like VR and AR and multi-sensory shows with scent and sound and video and vibration and a light mist on the audience when you go over the waterfall in the boat on a video. What is the role of pure music in modern media? Techno-heads, samplers, data collectors, assorted geeks and DJs stir the cauldron of music gumbo with a spoon the size of Cleveland. 

Historical performance practice is a big red flag for those who still entertain the idea of saving classical music. When music becomes beholden to a purity test, completely ignoring the 2020 musical zeitgeist, its days of cultural relevance have drawn to a close. 

In the future, the occasional happy combination of ingredients will become a more frequent occurrence as the world becomes more interconnected. The music the world bumps to is a living, fizzy, bubbling, ever-expanding cauldron. This musical universe is something we have never seen before. 

Music in a Post-Pandemic World

When you hear music, after it's over, it's gone in the air. You can never capture it again.

—Eric Dolphy (said to an audience at a concert in Germany in early 1960s)

As we enter the uncharted waters of a post-pandemic world, Eric Dolphy’s words about music performed live and in concert seem part of a distant past. Playing for people in a live performance is the way musicians have always connected to their fellow musicians and their audience. The energy of a live performance creates something magical for the audience, a connection that is fundamentally different from listening to a recording. The special feeling of sitting together in a concert hall sharing an ephemeral communal experience at a concert, dance performance or theater piece with 1,000 other people now feels almost nostalgic. For the musicians, there is an added loss. The immediate feedback from a live audience is how musicians hone their craft, how they get better at what they do. Without an audience, this opportunity for immediate feedback is gone.

The move to more online content was well underway before COVID-19. But now that performing venues are shut down for the foreseeable future, this has become the norm. The transition to musical events which are not live has accelerated so rapidly, that we are struggling to comprehend this sea change as it occurs in real time.

The transformation of the musical landscape will accelerate in ways that are difficult to anticipate. What does this mean for music production, performance and creativity? What does a musical career now mean for the professional musician and aspirants? Finally, what are the implications for the schools that prepare musicians and the venues where they used to perform?

There were growing problems before. In the good old days prior to 2020, which were not good at all, the ‘serious” music world was on one hand stuck in the mud of dull unimaginative programming and on the other the dismally low pay for musicians in the gig economy. A harbinger of bad times to come was the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) announcement that its pension fund was inching ever closer to insolvency. 

I think it is almost inevitable that musicians in 2021 and going forward will have an even harder time finding their way [to making music? Earning a living?] in a world with a diminishing number of performance venues and, in general, options for performing. Musicians will be much more reliant on online platforms to share their art, but the opportunities for earning are greatly diminished. Platforms like Instagram, Spotify, YouTube, Facebook, and Pandora give away musician’s content virtually for free. Large platforms make their money in advertising. Musicians supply the content to these platforms but are not part of their economic model—they have been disenfranchised. 

This is catastrophic.

For now, Covid-19 has inspired musicians to give away their music, their information for free. They are so desperate to perform that they donate the fruits of their labors to help heal the sick, soothe the quarantined, and generally let everyone know, “Look I’m still here!” But this is not sustainable, nor should it be.

Making information free is survivable so long as only limited numbers of people are disenfranchised. As much as it pains me to say so, we can survive if we only destroy the middle classes of musicians, journalists, and photographers. What is not survivable is the additional destruction of the middle classes in transportation, manufacturing, energy, office work, education, and health care. And all that destruction will come surely enough if the dominant idea of an information economy isn’t improved.

—Jaron Lanier

Lanier, pre-plague, has identified the “essential” workers as the people who keep things going. Most are the lowest paid members of the workforce. Musicians, performers, writers, journalists are deemed unnecessary no matter how many poems and heartfelt essays are written that extol the myriad benefits of art and the religious, spiritual essence that music brings to the world. All true, it could be argued, but we just don’t need as many people to tend this flock. A few high priests and priestesses will do just fine. 

Even the “Cadillac” arts institutions are struggling. The largest musical institution in the world, the Metropolitan Opera has released all of its employees. Smaller orchestras, and ballet and theater companies are in tough shape. Post-pandemic, it is not that far-fetched to imagine that orchestras could become the proprietary property of the new “royalty”—Microsoft, Google, Amazon, etc.—if a savvy classical music entrepreneur could convince these mega-rich companies to sponsor their own orchestra.

Unusual musical combinations will abound as creative solutions for remaining relevant and solvent. Grand opera could even morph into animated feature films. Holographic opera will be possible in the not too distant future. 

Established performers and teachers are giving masterclasses and Zoom lessons non-stop to try to eke out a few dollars to keep their heads above water as all concerts and performances are canceled for the foreseeable future. 

Music schools, pre-pandemic, had increasingly come to rely on foreign students for revenue. This is not feasible now, nor a likely option post-pandemic. In the near term, as well, these schools need live rehearsals and performances to justify their existence. Without a live component they are in jeopardy of closing permanently. 

Smaller venues that had offered opportunities for live (paid) musical performances are suffering as well. Restaurants that have hosted live music struggle. Many will cease to exist. 

No one really knows what is coming or what to do about the abrupt termination of the musician’s livelihood. In America, political stalemate makes desperately needed financial help for struggling artists unlikely. They have been deemed non-essential. Sad but true. 

And imagine the explosion of talented musicians hitting the streets post-plague, all trying to reassemble what is left of their careers. For those just starting out on a career in music, perhaps the plague is good in the sense that it somewhat levels the playing field because post-plague everyone is essentially back to square one. The number of musicians who are needed in the music business will have declined precipitously. That doesn’t mean the number of musicians in total will decline, only the ones who can support themselves through performing. 

Some have learned to pivot in this new order. Many musicians are trying to monetize their careers by becoming entrepreneurs. They are establishing their own production companies, often a company of one person—themselves—to produce and disseminate their musical output. In the good old days record companies aggregated, distributed, and promoted musical artists they signed to their label. Those days are almost entirely gone. It is left to the artist, now essentially an army of one, to do what was done for them in the good old days. 

A niche of the recording industry is growing very fast. I know a number of successful studio musicians who are recording in their home. Not one part but all the parts in an arrangement or composition. One trumpet player can record all the section parts, eliminating employment for two thirds of studio musicians. I spoke to one musician who recorded three trumpets and eight horn parts at his home studio. This had been happening prior to the plague, but the plague has accelerated this trend on steroids. 

So we are all left to doing online performances, which by their very nature, accustom people to fragmentary, impersonal communication. When the interaction between performer and live audience is fractured and replaced by edited sterile forms of communicating musical information, we are diminishing music’s essential values of truth and beauty. It makes these virtues an engine of advertising. Advertising has never been about truth and beauty; it’s about deception and manipulation. 

We are looking at a world where some large arts organizations will disappear and some music schools will close. The number of young people interested in pursuing a career in music and the arts will probably not diminish much, but they will not be able to count on large institutions to counsel them and help nurture their careers. I believe that music and art schools must take up the difficult job of training students to deal with the realities of a new musical universe. 

Educational institutions are trying to help students navigate the new musical landscape by offering courses, and even degrees at a few places, in “musical entrepreneurship.” These programs teach students to build a good website, write an attractive CV, and direct their focus a bit toward raising money and attracting their friends and colleagues to produce a musical product and distribution models which could be profitable. In order to survive the new musical landscape, musicians will need to be able to monetize their ideas.

It is not easy for musicians to broaden their focus and adapt to thinking of themselves as businesspeople in addition the very difficult task of becoming great instrumentalists and versatile, well-rounded artists. But hopefully, the young people forging ahead in a life in music will be up to the challenge. 

I humbly offer a few suggestions for those intrepid artists who will always carry on:

• Don’t be safe with your art! Classical arts are far safer than broadcast TV. Be intrepid. Seek musical collaborations which push you out of your comfort zone. There are many like-minded musicians out there. Find them. Think of ways to promote and your creative ideas into money-making work.

• Don’t be afraid to bring irreverence to your music. We are entering an era where different instrumentations, unusual arrangements, playing music at outrageously different tempi could yield very interesting art as long as you are being true to yourself! But remember that gimmickry can be helpful but it will take a musician only so far.

• Make art that exudes agency, that has purpose, that is honest, since it is impossible to compete with the production values of Netflix in your living room. Productions values, while important, are not nearly as important as providing good content.

• Make art that is aware of and responsive to social movements. For example, who gets to become an old person has become a political issue. What is your reaction to this development? Angry, sad, introspective, radicalized? Will your post-pandemic music be a celebration of the passing of this plague, a solemn remembrance of the horrors, anger at the lost time, or just a return to the way music used to be—another Mozart symphony or Beethoven string quartet? No right answer. Everyone will react differently.

• Established musicians and those in a position to do so: Do everything you can to nurture younger artists and get them paid! Do whatever you can to open revenue streams so that all artists can survive.

• Invest in a decent home recording setup if you can afford it. Think of doing so as investing in a new instrument.

• Expand your skills. Learn a new instrument. Become completely conversant with the program “Logic” or a facsimile of “Logic.”

• Get out of the old and into the new. Crisis is where creativity is born.

             When a covid-19 vaccine is widely available and people feel safe congregating in large numbers, concerts will enjoy a glorious renaissance for a time. Musicians will be in demand. Be ready! Keep practicing! 

Classical Music Through the Looking Glass

Six years ago, Lexus produced a TV ad that opened with three classical musicians playing their instruments in the back seat of a new Lexus model. The driver stops suddenly, throws the classical musicians out of the car, and invites a rock band to take their place. The car speeds away, rock band happily jamming in the back seat as the classical musicians look on forlornly from the side of the road.

Without an unflinching reexamination of how it is produced and delivered to the public, classical music, for a long time exalted as one of the crowning achievements of Western civilization, will become a quirky bit player, a sad caricature of itself occasionally making desperate cameo appearances alongside commercial music like in an episode of “When the Jetsons meet the Flintstones.”

The world of classical music is at a crossroads: it must change its purview or continue to recede farther and farther away from cultural relevance. The very definition of what is meant by classical music needs to change. The definition needs to be inclusive of more than the music of dead European white men, played by musicians wearing livery and gowns to an audience of essentially old white people. As concert halls and opera houses remain closed for the foreseeable future, the acceleration of the demise of full-time employment in classical music, especially orchestras, is inevitable. 

As I write these words, in late 2020, in the midst of a horrific pandemic and gut-wrenching social upheaval, the very notion of pleading for classical music to try to save itself sounds off key, tone deaf to the throngs of people, including many artists, demanding a change from the way things had been done in the past—where and how money is spent, who receives support, which music is considered more important than other music. I list some suggestions below about how to promote “serious” music and cultivate new audiences to appreciate it, but we all must accept the fact that the page has been turned, that music from other cultures has ascended to center stage. The world is not interested in bumping to Beethoven anymore, regardless of how great Beethoven’s music is. It is irresponsible to spend a half a billion dollars renovating a concert hall (as David Geffen has done at Lincoln Center) to enhance the sound of the bass section in a symphony orchestra, while large portions of the population have their basic needs ignored and their cultural needs and desires seldom considered as well. I humbly offer a few “band-aids”: 

1. Amplify the music in large concert halls. People are not accustomed to hearing “acoustic” music anymore. Unamplified music sounds pale to 99 percent of the public. 

2. Promote community engagement. Build and actively support as many small multi-use performance spaces as possible. Build spaces that attract many different kinds of groups and projects ready to show their wares to the community. Spend money to manage them. Hire diverse groups of artists to curate the content that is presented in these spaces. 

Don’t waste money on “dinosaurs” by building or renovating enormous concert halls. How many performance spaces could be built in New York City for $500 million? 

3. Invest in state-of-the-art outreach programs. Hire the most creative writers, film composers, and TV/video directors to design and train musicians to present live 30-40-minute shows that are entertaining and offer young people an inspiring introduction to ALL genres of good music, from ALL musical cultures. Spread the good word by hiring musicians to bring this show to as many young people as possible. The “serious” music world needs music evangelists. We need to create new generations of passionate amateurs.

Mel Broiles: Gunga Din

On a Saturday evening in 1995,  I received a call from the orchestra manager telling me that Mel was sick and that I had to come in to play the Saturday night performance. I thought he was kidding. Mel had never called in sick in 37 years!  But the call was not a prank; Mel had suffered a stroke during that afternoon’s performance of Der Rosencavalier. Jim Pandolfi, who played third trumpet that afternoon told me that during the third act, Mel was getting wobbly. He was listing in his chair. By the final trio, Mel was unable to sit upright in his chair and Pete Bond, the second trumpet player, had to hold onto Mel to keep him from falling on the ground. Mel was having a stroke. But like the character,  Gunga Din, from the famous Rudyard Kipling poem of the same name, who after being mortally wounded, still picked up his bugle to warn the British regiment, Mel was unbowed by a little annoyance like a stroke.  Just as the famous presentation of the rose moment came, Mel picked up his trumpet and played this difficult solo, powerfully and clearly up  to the high concert D flat! After that, Mel’s head was nodding onto his chest and he was clearly in serious distress. Pete Bond continued to hold onto Mel.  At the end of the piece, there is a short trumpet fanfare. Mel, still undeterred, tried to play this fanfare! Immediately after the final note of Rosencavalier,  the paramedics came into the pit, strapped Mel to a gurney and took him to the hospital.  “Men die in battle to the sound of the trumpet” Indeed! Two months later, Mel was back at the MET. Though not quite as strong as before, he still managed to keep to his usual very full schedule. 

The audition process in 2011 is unlikely to produce a Mel Broiles. Winning an orchestral job in 2011 is like winning an Olympic gymnastics competition. It requires technical and rhythmic perfection - every note in place, in tune, not too loud, not too soft, not too anything. Homogenized. The down side of this is that the subsequent aesthetic of orchestral music making (post-audition) is also deeply affected by its audition process. Orchestras are almost indistinguishable from one another. Homogenized. Mel Broiles was the opposite of homogenized. Mel was operatic, excessive, intense, dramatic, melodramatic. Mel was exciting. People go to concerts to hear exciting. Orchestras need less perfect, more exciting. I know I sound like an old geezer dreaming nostalgically for the good old days but the older I get the more I am convinced that the orchestra world desperately needs as many Mel Broiles as they can find.  Maybe having Mel Broileses populating the orchestra world this wouldn’t save the orchestras from fading out of the culture from lack of interest, but it wouldn’t hurt.

Mel Broiles: Strauss Operas

Louis Ranger recounts the story of a lesson he had with Mel on some opera excerpts Louis was preparing for an audition.  Mel took Louis into the MET orchestra pit, turned on the stand light, opened the music folder and told Louis, “The chandeliers rise as the lights go down, the performance is about to begin, all the great maestros of the world are in the opera house... to hear you”. Then Mel gestured toward the music indicating Louis should begin playing. 

Mel played 1st trumpet at the MET as if he were starring in his own movie.

Spotlight on Mel.  Everyone was there to hear him. The Strauss operas provided Mel with the perfect vehicle for his star turn.  When the chandeliers rose to the top of the MET and the house lights went down for a performance of Salome, Elektra or Die Frau und Schaten, Mel felt the spotlight come up on him.  All Mel’s characters: warrior, squadron commander, navigator, sentry, lead trumpet player, battlefield poet, were on full display in the Strauss operas, melded together into his signature role.  If ever there was someone born to play first trumpet in a Strauss opera, it was Mel Broiles.

The first Strauss opera I heard Mel play was Der Rosencavalier. This was in the spring of 1974 right after I won the MET audition and before I assumed my duties as co-principal trumpet. Mel was magnificent. I could not imagine the first trumpet part played any better than it was performed that night. He led the brass section through the famous Rosencavalier waltzes effortlessly. The passages requiring power and finesse were executed with just the right character, the lyrical solos were exquisite, smooth as silk with a beautiful burnished tone and the high D flat at the end of the famous trio in Act 3 was beautiful and hair raising. I thought to myself, ‘I won’t be playing any of these pieces any time soon’. In fact, the first Strauss opera I had a chance to play was almost 10 years later in 1983. 

The trumpet parts in Strauss’ operas present difficulties unique to the operas. Playing Salome or Elektra is not like playing tone poems like Don Juan or Ein Heldenleben. While very difficult to play, the tone poems are considerably shorter than the operas. The tone poems have longer, more extended passages for the trumpet, while he operas have shorter bursts of playing and longer rests. The entrances are not as apparent in the operas as they are in the tone poems and the singers are not always reliable. It is very easy to make a wrong entrance in these pieces. Playing the operas is like traversing a mine field: danger lurking everywhere, steep walls to scale,  giant boulders to be moved, moments of tenderly nursing fallen comrades with a snippet of a soft battle hymn or lullaby, then immediately leaping back into the fray, dodging bullets, avoiding obstacles, seen and unseen.  Many of these ‘battlefield’ events are separated by long rests, where the trumpet ‘combatants’ get cold,  become “unwarmed up”, ‘iced’ like a field goal kicker in a football game. It is very easy to lose concentration, lose focus. Not with Mel at the helm. Mel was the perfect battle commander. He relished the challenge, loved the passion and intensity of the battle.  In the Strauss operas, Mel raised his chair higher than usual (all the chairs in the MET pit are adjustable), when he put the trumpet to his lips, it was like he was getting ready to fire a rifle: he would slowly move the mouthpiece down from under his nose until it was in exactly in the right spot and then he would ‘pull the trigger’ and let fly. In soft lyrical passages, Mel would lift the bell over the stand and play with a beautiful silvery toned legato, every pianissimo note clearly heard  everywhere in the 4000 seat opera house.   When he finished a soft passage, he slowly and theatrically lifted his right arm high off the valves in a kind of bow to the beauty of the passage. He looked like a ballerina elegantly coming out of 5th position.  It was a physical gesture that would accompany the sound of a slow exhale on the syllable, ‘AHHH.....’ In the fortissimo passages, Mel took no prisoners. In the ‘recognition scene’ in Elektra, the first trumpet ascends to a fortissisimo high concert D. Mel played this note with such power that he would temporarily black out. This high D would need 3 cutoffs, one for the orchestra and the other two for Mel. He would hold over at least 2 full quarter notes!  The third trumpeter, Harry Peers, would rub Mel’s shoulders to slowly bring him back to consciousness while counting down the rests in Mel’s ear.... “7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, last”, then Mel would miraculously come to, pick up the trumpet and play the next entrance.  Mel was so strong that he once played this high D so loud, with his throttle so wide open that the note came out considerably flat, but amazingly, he was able, even at this incredible volume, to bend the note back up to pitch!

Mel Broiles: I Love This Job

Mel Broiles was opera’s biggest fan. His enthusiasm was remarkable and was expressed in many different ways. Mel was the first person at the opera house in the morning before rehearsal and he was always the last musician to leave the pit after the evening’s opera performance. The MET was Mel’s second home. All the other musicians in the orchestra, are assigned one locker for their instruments and clothing. Mel probably had ten, containing a wide array of trumpets, mouthpieces, clothing, music, music paper of all kinds, calligraphy materials, photographs, drawings, hundreds of magazines,  and probably a bottle or two of schnapps stashed here and there. Most of the musicians in the MET orchestra are in a hurry to leave the pit after the curtain comes down, anxious to get home or to the pub after a three or four hour opera performance. Not Mel. After all the musicians had fled the pit, there stood Mel, all alone, yelling, “Bravo cast” up to the stage to all of the opera singers as they came out for their curtain calls. All the singers knew Mel and loved his enthusiastic outpourings of appreciation. He would continue his “bravos” until the applause finally finished and the house lights came on, usually 5-10 minutes after the end of the performance.

Once on an opera tour of Spain in the early 90s,  ( not a MET tour, but a tour which carried an orchestra with many MET players), Mel became a self-appointed promoter for the tour. A short distance outside Barcelona, in the town of Higueras,  Mel donned  the costume of a Mexican toreador. He then marched to the center of the town square, stood next to the poster advertising that night’s performance and began playing a spirited version of the famous pasodoble, España Cañi. A rather large crowd gathered which was finally dispersed by the puzzled and incredulous local constabulary. 

Mel’s exuberance was not confined to cheering for the singers after the performance. There were times during rehearsals and performances when Mel simply could not contain his enthusiasm. At a rehearsal of Gotterdammurung in the mid 70s, Mel had a memorable exchange with the legendary soprano, Birgit Nilsson, perhaps the most famous Brunhilde of all time. In Act 2, scene 4 of Gotterdammurung, the wedding scene, Brunhilde erupts in a rage because a drugged Siegfried, under the evil spell of the villainous Hagen,  has renounced his love for her, married Gutrune and placed the coveted ring on the finger of his newly betrothed.   At the height of Brunhilde’s rage, the music is  punctuated by trumpet iterations of Siegfried’s horn call,  a raging duet between soprano and 1st trumpet.  Nilsson and Broiles tore into the passage: Nilsson singing at full throttle, unleashing her legendary power as Mel pointed his bell high over the music stand, directly into the opera house and matched Nilsson’s powerful outbursts phrase for phrase. At the end of the passage, Mel, overcome by the excitement of his duet with Nilsson, rose to his feet, craned his head over the lip of the stage and yelled up loudly at her, “You win, baby!”  The conductor, Sixten Ehrling, a dour, serious Swede who wore the furrowed brow and pained expression of a reluctant teetotaler, did not know what to do.   After Mel’s ‘commentary’ on who got the better of this musical exchange, the music nearly came to a halt. The maestro looked over at Mel with a wide-eyed tormented ‘help me’ look on his face, not quite sure if he actually heard what he just heard, and probably wished he never quit drinking. Nilsson laughed and seemed very much to enjoy the moment. The orchestra was a bit surprised but thoroughly amused by the proceedings. They came to expect the unexpected from Mel and looked forward to these little respites from the rehearsal routine.  (Don’t we all)

At a television broadcast of Elektra in 1994, Mel was overcome by his love of the opera. Near the end of the opera, Orestes murders Aegistheus and his retinue of courtiers. The mayhem takes place backstage, behind the set, accompanied by torrents of blood curdling screams from the murdered, (courtesy of the professional screamers hired specifically for the occasion). Apparently inspired by the blood lust of the battle (in the pit and on the stage) Mel yelled out, loudly enough to be heard by members of the bass section clear across the pit, the conductor, James Levine, and probably the opera patrons in the first couple of rows, “GOD, I LOVE THIS JOB!”  Levine’s head snapped around toward Mel, a reflexive reaction to see what the hell was happening.  A split second later, after he concluded that no one’s life was in danger, nor was anyone rushing the podium brandishing a weapon, he exhaled and coolly conducted the piece to its conclusion. 

Mel Broiles: Trumpet Warrior

TRUMPET WARRIOR

Mel Broiles was born 4000 years too late. He was the reincarnation of  Micenus, the mythical trumpeter immortalized in the Iliad, part of the personal retinue of the great Trojan warrior, Hector. After The Trojan War, Micenus challenged Triton, god of the sea, to a trumpet ‘toot off’ to see who could blow a trumpet louder. The result was a predictably unhappy one for Micenus, but his defeat was one worthy of a great warrior. Micenus kept his swagger right until he was literally blown away.

When Mel Broiles was in the West Point Band in the 1950s, he played alongside trumpet greats, Frank Kaderabek, Robert Nagel, Thomas Stevens, and Dave Zauder, who were also in the band. Mel would march around the parade ground for hours on end, while playing his trumpet, in order to build his strength and endurance.  For the first 37 years of his career at the MET, Mel never missed a rehearsal or performance. This is a record at the MET; no one is within 25 years of equalling Mel’s attendance record. It’s a feat more incredible than hall of fame third baseman, Cal Ripken’s consecutive game streak. Ripken only played every game for 16 years compared to Mel’s 37 years.  Once, when Mel was obviously sick with flu and fever at a routine performance (Traviata or Boheme) which could easily have been covered by one of the other 4 players in the section, he turned to second trumpeter, Harry Peers, and through a raspy cough whispered, “Yes, Harry, I’m sick but no one must know!”.  James Levine  (Music director of the MET from 1973-present), who has conducted more opera performances than any person who ever lived, was asked by a television interviewer about his brutal work schedule.  The interviewer was marveling at Levine’s energy and dedication and asked how it was possible to rehearse, perform and practice 16 hours a day, 7 days a week?  Levine smiled and responded by quoting Mel Broiles, “My first trumpet player, Mel Broiles, said something once that I’ve never forgotten and I guess you could say it applies to me,  ‘You’re either alive or you’re dead!’’’.

Mel’s concentration was exceptional. While many other brass players would read books and magazines during long rests, or leave the pit to attend to personal business or get a cup of coffee,  Mel would always stay in the pit, seated attentively in his chair counting bars rest.  He would explain, “Someone’s got to mind the store”. 

In the early 1950s, Mel spent time in Los Angeles playing in dance bands, pursuing his interest in jazz. Hanging in his locker was a picture  from the early 50s of Mel standing next to Charlie Parker in what looks to be a jazz club.  Listening to Mel play 1st trumpet, one could clearly hear the influence of his dance band experience as well as that of the great powerhouse lead trumpet players of his era, Doc Severinson, Conrad Gozzo and Maynard Ferguson.   Mel was a large man, well over 6 feet tall and 200 pounds and he had forged every inch and ounce of his body into a well oiled machine that could unleash a trumpet sound the power of which could only be equaled by Triton or the archangel, Gabriel.  In loud passages, he would sometimes play with such force that his body would shake until every mililiter of breath was out of his body.  During my first week at the MET, I was sitting in the back of the orchestra room observing an orchestra reading of “Pagliacci”. This was a pre-season rehearsal of an often performed repertoire piece, a piece that the orchestra knew very well. The musicians were pretty much taking it easy, just rounding themselves back into shape, playing the rehearsal as a kind of warmup for the long opera season. Not Mel. At the very end of the opera, when the trumpet plays the big tune, “Vesti la Guibba”, Mel let loose. The paint on the walls of the rehearsal room turned from blue to purple and the entire viola section involuntarily doubled over, instinctually ducking their heads to avoid having them severed cleanly from their necks. The conductor, John Nelson, was blown backwards two steps, landing with one foot completely off the podium. When the music stopped, a stunned maestro Nelson cautiously and soothingly addressed Mel, “That’s great Mel, but down here on C level (site of the orchestra rehearsal room), I think we can take it a bit easy. I think mezzo forte should suffice”. To which Mel responded without missing a beat, “John, that was my mezzo forte!”.

Mel Broiles: Opening

Mel Broiles was a great trumpet player. His playing was impeccable: accurate, exciting and dramatic.  He was fearless.  Under pressure, he always rose to the occasion. Mel would play an entire opera season and rarely miss a note. 

Mel was principal trumpet of the Metropolitan Opera from 1958 until he retired in 2003. Prior to that, he served as principal trumpet of the Philadelphia Orchestra for one season in 1957.  In 1961 he performed the U.S. premiere of the Jolivet Concertino for trumpet, piano and strings.  Mel was a composer: 3 books of études and duets, many works for  brass ensemble and a few tour de force solo pieces for trumpet. A master music calligrapher, he hand copied every opera part he ever played. Later in his career when he began using the D trumpet frequently, he recopied many of these same parts for D trumpet. His opera parts must number in the 100s and the music of all kinds that Mel hand copied would fill a small library. His calligraphy was as beautiful as any I’ve ever seen. In his spare time, Mel was an avid aviator. He was a superb pilot; he owned his own airplane. 

It doesn’t matter where I go throughout the world, whether it be at a concert performance, a teaching clinic, or conducting engagement or even when performing with my band, Pink Baby Monster, there is always someone who asks me about Mel Broiles: “Please tell a Mel Broiles story”, or “Did Mel really do..... “,  though in recent years the number of times Mel’s name comes up has become more infrequent. New trumpet heroes have arisen and the feats of the old trumpet legends are often dimmed by the passage of time.  For years, I have been promising to write about Mel and only now- mainly because Michael Sachs asked me to do so- do I offer a few of my favorite ‘Mel’ tales.  These are merely a small sample of hundreds of amazing stories. Everyone who ever worked at the MET has a ‘Mel’ story. He is one of the most fascinating people I have ever been around, a character of operatic proportions.  I hope that the trumpet community, especially the orchestral trumpet community will find these vignettes to be as entertaining and inspiring as I do. There will never be another Mel Broiles. Perhaps a doctoral trumpet student will be inspired embark upon a Mel Broiles project similar to the wonderfully informative project Brian Shook is presenting to brass players around the country about William Vacchiano, Mel’s teacher.  My hope is that many more ‘Mel’ stories will surface and that as a result the legend of Mel Broiles will resound in the trumpet ‘collective unconscious’ for the next 10,000 years.

I joined the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in 1974 as co-principal trumpet. The other co-principal trumpet was Mel Broiles. I was the “new guy”,  the kid fresh out of college who was going to ‘share’ quarterbacking duties with Peyton Manning or ‘share’ third base duties with “ironman”, Cal Ripken. Mel was not pleased that a snot nosed interloper had invaded his kingdom. He was not warm and welcoming to me and he didn’t have much to say to me my first year at the MET. In fact he addressed only one sentence to me my entire first season. At a break of a rehearsal for Verdi’s, “Vespri Siciliani”, while we were standing side by side at the urinals, Mel turned slightly to me and said, “Mark, men die in battle to the sound of the trumpet”. He left me standing there staring straight ahead at the tiles above the urinal holding my shrinking best friend. I was stunned, vaguely insulted and more than a little intimidated.  I remember thinking, “What a great line!” It was a line straight out of a gladiator movie, or “Patton” or “300”. Of course I knew that trumpets and battle are inextricably linked; they have been for thousands of years. But when a trumpet legend like Mel Broiles felt the need to remind me, “the new guy”,  of this relationship, my thinking about the trumpet was forever altered. It was a WTF moment before WTF entered the popular lexicon.