Michael Tilson Thomas

As the orchestra played, musical notes literally streamed from the walls and moved along the cavernous ceiling. Some of the projections seemed to hang vertically as they emanated from the stage and over the audience. It was as if the producers were saying: “Classical music is fun, too, and it’s going to capture you.”

And yes, there was also the music Wednesday night. Lots of it. And lots of variety - from Baroque to techno.

Part publicity stunt by its producers, part vanity trip by its participants, part opportunity to attract a younger crowd to classical music, the YouTube Symphony Orchestra gathered 93 musicians from more than 30 countries.

Ranging in age from 15 to 55, the players included a surgeon-violinist and a professional poker player-cellist. The roster was selected by voters from among the 15 million viewers of http://www.YouTube.com/symphony since the project was announced four months ago.

The interest has left the classical establishment in awe.

“It’s turned classical music into something everybody’s talking about. Huge numbers are engaging, thinking about and also understanding it could be something for them,” Carnegie Hall Executive Director Clive Gillinson said in an interview.

Even before the ensemble played its first note, the prestigious British magazine Gramophone placed the group among the world’s most inspiring orchestras, praising it “for democratising classical music on a global scale, making it truly all-inclusive.”

But could the group play together in a live performance, with only a few days of rehearsals, and at one of the world’s leading music auditoriums?

“Playing at Carnegie Hall is such a thrill to me,” 36-year-old flutist Nina Perlove of Cincinnati said before the performance. “I actually didn’t think I’d be so moved because I’m a professional musician and I’ve played in nice concert halls before. But when we walked out on stage for the first time and I looked out, I got kind of watery. I was thinking about my grandfather who loved New York and was a musician and how he would be so moved.”

From the joyous third movement of Brahms’ Fourth Symphony, which opened the concert to the fiery crashes of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony at the end, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas led the musicians in a remarkable performance.

In between these immortal pillars, the orchestra played a wide assortment of works, including a brass ensemble standing at opposite ends of the balcony playing a 16th-century work and vanguard pieces by Lou Harrison and John Cage.

Despite the short preparation time, they played like a finely tuned instrument. For example, the string players’ bows moved in sync and flew through the air at rousing conclusions.

The musicians arrived in New York on Sunday. During rehearsals, they were coached by leading orchestral musicians, including Roberto Diaz, president of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and former principal violist with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

“It was a very talented group of individuals,” Diaz said in an interview. “Every rehearsal, it’s just gotten better and better, and they’ve gotten this sense of group rhythm, which is a fundamental part of it all. … To do that in 48 hours is amazing.”

The Internet generation of performers attracted a youthful crowd that had no reason to feel shy. The staid decorum was suspended for the three-hour concert, which featured 15 short pieces. Thomas sat on the podium at one point, watching pianist Yuja Wang fly through the “Flight of the Bumble Bee.” In another departure from tradition, the audience was encouraged to bring video cameras.

One of the many high points was the world premiere of Tan Dun’s 4 1/2 minute “Internet Symphony No. 1, Eroica.” The Oscar-winning composer conducted the high-octane piece that’s packed with hammer whacks on hanging tire hubs, a cinematic melody and references to Beethoven’s “Eroica.”

Other outstanding performances were given by soloists Joshua Roman on cello, violinist and guest star Gil Shaham, soprano Measha Brueggergosman (singing the gibberish lyrics in Cage’s bizarre “Aria With Renga”) and Mason Bates playing the Apple computer synthesizer in his thumping electronic “Warehouse Medicine From B-Sides.”

The show was nearly stolen by three youngsters mentored by pianist Lang Lang - 8-year-old Charlie Liu of Plainsboro Township, N.J.; Anna Larsen, also 8; and fellow Boston resident Derek Wang, 10. They plopped down on a bench and played a six-hand waltz by Rachmaninoff without a hitch, then took their bows to the audience’s delight.

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Musicians From Thirty Countries and Territories To Comprise YouTube Symphony Orchestra

March 3rd, 2009

YouTube Symphony Orchestra Will Meet in New York and Perform in Carnegie Hall with Michael Tilson Thomas on April 15, 2009

2 March 2009, San Bruno CA - YouTube™ announced today the members of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, the world’s first orchestra selected entirely through auditions on-line. The musicians will travel from thirty countries and territories around the world to New York City to participate in a classical music summit on April 12-15, concluding with a concert at Carnegie Hall under the direction of the San Francisco Symphony Music Director, New World Symphony Founder and Artistic Director, and London Symphony Orchestra Principal Guest Conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas.

The global YouTube community and Michael Tilson Thomas have selected more than ninety musicians playing 26 different instruments from a group of two hundred finalists. The musicians will travel to New York from thirty different countries and territories: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bermuda, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and the United States.

Since the launch of this initiative in December 2008, the YouTube Symphony Orchestra’s channel (www.YouTube.com/Symphony) has received more than 13 million views worldwide with visitors from more than two hundred countries and territories. More than three thousand videos were submitted to YouTube by musicians from Azerbaijan to Venezuela. These participants, consisting of professional and amateur musicians of all ages and on all instruments, represented more than seventy countries and territories on six continents.

After a preliminary screening by musicians from the London Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, among others, the videos of two hundred finalists were collected and posted on the YouTube Symphony Orchestra channel on February 14, 2009. These finalists ranged in age from 15 to 55. The YouTube community voted for their favorites and, as the project’s Artistic Advisor and Conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas reviewed the finalists to create the orchestra that will perform the program at Carnegie Hall on April 15, 2009.

“It has been a remarkably exciting process reviewing the many contributions from around the world. It’s been a real window on the lives of music lovers everywhere who have auditioned in their dorms, practice rooms, on stages of neo-classical theaters, apartment house lobbies, on gorgeous Italian fiddles and old upright pianos,” said Mr. Tilson Thomas. “All of them have played with great heart and devotion. I want to thank the participating orchestras and the whole YouTube community for all their help selecting the finalists. I am so looking forward to meeting everyone in person in New York in April.”

“From the undiscovered cellist to the professionally-trained bassoonist, the YouTube Symphony Orchestra is a real-life example of how people can use online video to share their talents with the world. Performers captured the attention of both renowned classical musicians and the YouTube community,” said Ed Sanders, YouTube Product Marketing Manager. “We can’t wait to see what happens when these musicians come together for the first time at Carnegie Hall.”

“It’s been a privilege to help so many talented people from such diverse backgrounds come together. The enthusiasm and commitment with which they have engaged with the project and each other is astonishing,” said Chaz Jenkins, Head of LSO Live, London Symphony Orchestra. “Performing and connecting with an audience is the ultimate goal for any musician and those who have taken part will have benefited from that experience in a way and on a scale that would have been unimaginable to musicians just a few years ago.”

Musicians such as Chinese pianist Lang Lang, the first YouTube Symphony Orchestra Global Ambassador, and founding composer Tan Dun, creator of Internet Symphony No. 1, Eroica, a piece specially arranged for this occasion, have endorsed the project and encouraged participation.

The talented musicians will participate in Master Classes with world-class musicians, rehearse together, and share in each other’s diverse experiences and backgrounds.

“The strings on my violin were 15 years old when I first learned of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra and that’s when I realized it was time to get my violin out of the closet,” said California surgeon Calvin Lee. “Since then I’ve been practicing, playing and thoroughly enjoying meeting other passionate musicians from across the globe through the YouTube Symphony Orchestra.”

The YouTube Symphony Orchestra marks the first program on YouTube to welcome submissions from nearly every country in the world, and the channel is available in 16 different languages. YouTube has partnered with more than forty major classical music organizations and institutions to bring this initiative to musicians around the world.

Program details and guest soloists will be announced shortly. Tickets are on-sale now through Carnegie Charge at (212) 247-7800 at www.carnegiehall.org.

View the winners’ videos at www.YouTube.com/Symphony.

United States:
California: Cupertino, Fremont, Modesto, San Francisco
Illinois: Chicago, Evanston
Indiana: Bloomington
Massachusetts: Allston, Boston, West Brookfield
Maryland: Baltimore
Michigan: Saline
Nevada: Reno
New York: Islip, New York, Niskayuna
Ohio: Cincinnati, Cleveland,
Pennsylvania: Harrisburg, Wayne
South Carolina: Clover
Texas: El Paso, Keller, Pearland, Waco
Virginia: Charlottesville
Washington: Spokane

Canada:
Kitchener, Ontario
Saguenay, Quebec
Calgary, Alberta
Toronto, Ontario
Montreal, Quebec

Tags: YouTube Symphony Orchestra
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CHARLES IVES, PIONEER MODERNIST

February 11th, 2009

January, 2009

MIAMI BEACH – The New World Symphony, America’s Orchestral Academy, will present an intensive four-day In-Context™ Festival focusing on the life and music of American composer Charles Ives, titled “Charles Ives, Pioneer Modernist,” Thursday, February 19 – Sunday, February 22, hosted by Michael Tilson Thomas at the Lincoln Theatre (541 Lincoln Road).

A unique aspect of the festival will involve a weeklong conducting symposium on the music of Ives, under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas and James Sinclair, Executive Editor for the Charles Ives Society. The symposium will focus on the unique challenges of conducting Ives’ music, due to frequent changes in meter and complex layering. Also unique to the festival, Friday’s program will feature a different conductor leading each work, and Saturday’s program will feature a different conductor in each movement of Ives’ Holidays Symphony. Participating in the symposium will be Kazem Abdullah, Assistant and Cover Conductor for the Metropolitan Opera; Steven Jarvi, Assistant Conductor of the Kansas City Symphony and former New World Symphony Conducting Fellow; and Edward Abrams, New World Symphony Conducting Fellow.

The festival will launch Thursday, February 19 with a panel discussion featuring James Sinclair; J. Peter Burkholder, Distinguished Professor of Musicology at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music and author of numerous books on Ives; Wayne D. Shirley, former Senior Music Specialist at the Library of Congress; Jan Swafford, composer, author and professor at the Boston Conservatory; and Michael Tilson Thomas. Burkholder and Swafford will serve as panelists from Indiana and Massachusetts via Internet2, a high-speed, high-bandwidth internet reserved for educational research and collaboration, employed by NWS for interactive musical collaborations, coaching and teaching. Following the panel discussion will be a screening of the Ives documentary film “A Good Dissonance Like a Man,” by T.W. Timreck. This event is free and open to the public.

On Friday, February 20, NWS will perform a variety of Ives’ music, putting on display his experiments and masterpieces alike: The Unanswered Question; Central Park in the Dark; Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano; From the Steeples and the Mountains; Scherzo: Over the Pavements; and Three Places in New England (Orchestral Set No. 1, Version 2). The program will feature Michael Tilson Thomas and James Sinclair as conductors and hosts, pianist Jeremy Denk, and conductors Abdullah, Jarvi and Abrams. James Sinclair will host a pre-concert Curtain Talk at 6:30 P.M.

The first half of the performance on Saturday, February 21 will highlight a number of the more than 100 hymns, popular songs, college songs and war songs quoted in Ives’ Holidays Symphony, featuring the University of Miami Frost Chorale, directed by Joshua Habermann. The second half will feature the performance of Ives’ Holidays Symphony, the first movement led by Michael Tilson Thomas with each of the three consecutive movements to be conducted by Abdullah, Jarvi and Abrams, respectively. The performance will be preceded by a Curtain Talk with Wayne D. Shirley.

The festival finale on Sunday, February 22 will include Sonata No. 2 for Piano, “Concord, Mass., 1840-60;” featuring Jeremy Denk, and Henry Brant’s own transcription, A Concord Symphony, will be performed on the second half. A Curtain Talk by Jan Swafford, via Internet2, will precede the performance.

NWS’ annual In-Context™ Festivals take various musical, historical and social themes as their focus. Designed as multi-disciplinary experiences, these events incorporate art exhibits, films, lectures, commissioned essays, folk music and theatrical elements to explore the broader meaning of the orchestral and chamber repertoire being performed. Past In-Context™ Festivals have been dedicated to subjects as diverse as the Gypsy tradition of Central Europe, composers oppressed by the Third Reich, Viennese and French musical traditions, the history of film music, and the influences of jazz, tango and flamenco on classical music.

Tickets for the Friday performance ($20), Saturday performance ($35 - $59) and Sunday performance ($15) may be obtained by calling the New World Symphony box office at 305-673-3331 or online at www.nws.edu. Additional information about the New World Symphony may be obtained at www.nws.edu.
Festival Schedule:

Thursday, February 19, 7:30 P.M.
Panel Discussion and Film Screening
Michael Tilson Thomas
James Sinclair
Peter Burkholder (via Internet2)
Wayne Shirley
Jan Swafford (via Internet2)
Tickets: Free

Friday, February 20, 7:30 P.M. (Curtain Talk by James Sinclair at 6:30 P.M.)
Michael Tilson Thomas and James Sinclair, conductors and hosts
Jeremy Denk, piano
Kazem Abdullah, Edward Abrams, Steven Jarvi, conductors
The Unanswered Question
Central Park in the Dark
Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano
Moderato
TSIAJ
Moderato con moto
From the Steeples and the Mountains
Scherzo: Over the Pavements
Three Places in New England (Orchestral Set No. 1, Version 2)
“The ‘St. Gaudens’ in Boston Common”
Putnam’s Comp, Redding, Connecticut
“The Housatonic at Stockbridge”
All Tickets: $20

Saturday, February 21, 7:30 P.M. (Curtain Talk by Wayne D. Shirley via Internet2 at
6:30 P.M.)
Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor and host
James Sinclair, co-host
Kazem Abullah, conductor
Steven Jarvi, conductor
Edward Abrams, conductor
University of Miami Frost Chorale
Joshua Habermann, director
Unversity of Miami Collegium Musicum
Hymns, popular songs, college songs and war songs quoted in Ives’ Holidays Symphony
Holidays Symphony
Washington’s Birthday
Decoration Day
The Fourth of July
Thanksgiving and Forefather’s Day
Tickets: $35, $48, $59

Sunday, February 22, 7:30 P.M. (Curtain Talk by Jan Swafford via Internet2 at 6:30)
Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor and host
Jeremy Denk, piano
Sonata No. 2 for Piano, “Concord, Mass., 1840-60”
Emerson
Hawthorne
The Alcotts
Thoreau
A Concord Symphony
Emerson
Hawthorne
The Alcotts
Thoreau
All Tickets: $15

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A Yiddish tribute. What’s not to like?

December 19th, 2008

To say that Michael Tilson Thomas, the celebrated conductor and music director of the San Francisco Symphony, comes from a Yiddish theater family is like saying Caroline Kennedy has a background in politics. That’s not the half of it.

Though you wouldn’t guess it from his patrician-sounding name, which obscures it as deftly as Joseph Conrad hid Józef Korzeniowski, Tilson Thomas is the grandson of Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, the patriarch and matriarch of American Yiddish theater, figures of towering talent and ambition with ego and temperament to match.

On Thursday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Tilson Thomas paid a warm and nostalgic tribute to his grandparents with “The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater.” In a three-hour show (to be repeated Saturday at 8), he turned the Disney stage into an intimate cabaret, complete with a small Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra and random tables and chairs, to tell the story of “two kids from Nowhere in the Ukraine” who ended up as celebrities beyond their wildest dreams.

After all, the young Boris, who began as a cantorial boy soprano in the Ukraine, couldn’t have foreseen a career that turned him into America’s first Yiddish theater matinee idol, a man who boasted not only his own theater, his own newspaper and his own publishing house, but also his own army. When he did “A Yiddish Hamlet,” the credits read, “translated and improved by Boris Thomashefsky,” and when he died in 1939, 30,000 mourners filled the streets of New York.

Boris’ wife, Bessie, especially after she left her womanizing husband, was no slouch herself. She not only became a major star in shows written especially for her, such as 1912’s “Chantshe in America,” she also became a trendsetter and role model for generations of female Jewish performers. Often she would look at her disbelieving grandson and proclaim sadly, “You don’t know who I am.”

That grandson takes enthusiastically to the role of storyteller and celebrator. With a polished manner that reflects the evening’s previous incarnations across the country, Tilson Thomas performs a number of functions, mixing theatrical and family history and even singing a rousing version of a 1910 tribute to his grandfather, “Who Do You Suppose Married My Sister? Thomashefsky,” written by the same pair who penned “Shine On, Harvest Moon.”

Tilson Thomas also serves as a kind of master of ceremonies for the evening, introducing the numerous songs from his grandparents’ repertory as well as the singers who perform them. Perhaps because the Thomashefskys were such larger-than-life individuals, it takes two energetic actors and singers apiece (Judy Blazer and Tamara Wapinsky for Bessie, Neal Benari and Eugene Brancoveanu for Boris) to do their work justice.

The cultural archaeology Tilson Thomas has done to prepare for this show is its most impressive accomplishment. He has dug up and orchestrated songs and overtures that haven’t had a forum like this for decades, things such as a love duet from 1892’s “Alexander, Crown Prince of Jerusalem” and the always popular “March of the Jewish Suffragettes” from 1915’s “Chantshe,” and brought them alive onstage.

These songs come complete with subtitles projected on a large screen and with context provided by Tilson Thomas; his explanation of the tricky title of his grandparents’ biggest hit, “Dos Pintele Yid,” is especially good. And the actual performances of his grandparents — he has discovered a recording of Bessie doing her celebrated “Minka on the Telephone” routine and Boris luminous in a brief clip from the 1935 film “Bar Mitzvah” — are priceless.

The most charming parts of the evening are Tilson Thomas’ personal memories of Bessie (Boris died before he was born), complete with family snapshots. With a grandmother famous for her trouser roles, it was perhaps fated that the first black tie and tails Tilson Thomas ever wore were hers. More unexpected were her last words to her grandson: “Never, never sign a release.”

Tilson Thomas encouraged audience participation Thursday, particularly rhythmic clapping, and the opening-night audience (which included cabaret veteran Joel Grey) ate it up, kvelling at his opening “Nu, vos macht a Yid?” (How is a Jew doing?) and other uses of Yiddish. The crowd was clearly up for a shared experience, and that is what it got.

If there is anything to kvetch about in “The Thomashefskys” (and what would the Yiddish theater be without people complaining?), it’s that although the excellent notes in the Disney Hall program are quite serious, the evening goes heavier than it needs to on schmaltz and Eastern European accents that risk trivializing the material for comic effect. A middle ground would have been nice.

But as Bette Davis, definitely not a Yiddish theater veteran, said in “Now, Voyager,” “Don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars.” And how.

“The Thomashefskys,” Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., L.A. 8 p.m. Saturday. $42-$147. (323) 850-2000 or www.laphil.com

– Kenneth Turan

Photo: Michael Tilson Thomas accompanies Judy Blazer as Bessie Thomashefsky at Disney Hall. Credit: Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times

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YouTube announces “YouTube symphony orchestra” program with London symphony orchestra, Michael Tilson Thomas, Tan Dun, Carnegie Hall, and many other leading institutions and stars of the classical music world

December 2nd, 2008

World’s first collaborative online orchestra will connect aspiring musicians with leaders and stars in the classical world

YouTube Symphony Orchestra Summit and Carnegie Hall performance to take place in April 2009

San Bruno, CA – YouTube, the leading online video community that allows people to discover, watch and share original videos, today announced a collaboration with the London Symphony Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, Grammy Award-winning conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, Academy Award-winning and Olympics composer Tan Dun, world-renowned pianist Lang Lang, the first YouTube Symphony Orchestra Global Ambassador, and many other classical music stars and leading institutions, to launch the “YouTube Symphony Orchestra” (www.youtube.com/symphony), the world’s first collaborative online orchestra and summit.

From December 1, 2008 through January 28, 2009, musicians from around the world are invited to submit videos showcasing their personal style as they perform two different videos – their interpretation of an original Tan Dun composition, written specifically for this program, and a talent video designed to demonstrate their musical and technical abilities. A panel of musical experts from the London Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic and other leading orchestras around the world will narrow the field of entries down to the semifinalists. The YouTube community will be invited to vote on the semifinalists from February 14, 2009 through February 22, 2009. Musicians who are selected will be announced on YouTube on March 2, 2009. For official rules of entry and FAQ, consult YouTube Symphony Orchestra Channel (www.youtube.com/symphony).

In April 2009, selected musicians will be flown to New York City to participate in a three-day classical music summit with Michael Tilson Thomas and leading performers in the field, culminating in a Carnegie Hall performance on April 15, 2009. In addition, selected video entries of the musical piece will be mashed together to create a living YouTube symphony — a single video of memorable entrants combined into one ensemble piece — and even more entries will be displayed on YouTube homepages around the world.

As the first YouTube-sponsored program to welcome submissions from every country around the world, YouTube Symphony Orchestra will transform individual performances into a global collaborative symphony, explore new possibilities for orchestral collaboration, and springboard talented classical musicians into the global YouTube spotlight.

“The internet is an invisible Silk Road, joining people from across the world. East or West, North or South, anyone can download a score of my “Internet Symphony No. 1 ‘Eroica’, pick any part and play it with any instrument or object, in any style,” said Grammy and Academy Award-winning composer Tan Dun. “YouTube is the biggest stage on earth, and I want to see what the world’s undiscovered musical geniuses will create on it.”

“Classical music is a thousand-year old tradition that witnesses the human spirit. It has preserved the songs and dances of our ancestors and made them into a language that is equal parts thought and feeling. This language has been passed on from teacher to student and parent to child from generation to generation. Now through the YouTube Symphony Orchestra project, we will explore new ways for music lovers of all levels to use technology to discover how vast our tradition is, to create new work and learn from one another,” said Michael Tilson Thomas, Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony; Artistic Director of the New World Symphony; and Artistic Advisor for the YouTube Symphony Orchestra program. “Music brings people together as no other art. Deepening that process by making the creative/communicative possibilities of video and the internet more available to musicians everywhere is one of our highest goals.”

“The LSO is delighted to be a part of this groundbreaking initiative with YouTube — to unite people from all over the globe and delight in the joys and experiences of playing in an orchestra. It is very much in keeping with our ethos of using technology to link people, share ideas, and be inspired and creative,” said Kathryn McDowell, Managing Director, London Symphony Orchestra.

“YouTube is a unique platform for musical artists to broadcast their work. Through the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, aspiring musicians can share their passion with institutions like Carnegie Hall and the London Symphony Orchestra, visionaries like Lang Lang, and the world” said Ed Sanders, Product Marketing Manager, YouTube. “We are honored to partner with these venerable organizations and individuals to reach the next milestone for ensemble music and global collaboration.”

“For musicians of all ages, nationalities, and instruments, the YouTube Symphony Orchestra provides a unique opportunity not only to perform on the world’s most famous stage – Carnegie Hall – but also on its largest stage — YouTube,” said Clive Gillinson, Executive and Artistic Director of Carnegie Hall. “As an institution that is passionately committed to making great music available to as many people as possible and whose remarkable history chronicles the defining moments of so many of the world’s most admired and beloved artists, Carnegie Hall believes the creation of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra will be a one-of-a-kind moment in classical music, bringing musicians together in a totally new, modern and compelling way.”

Selected list of program partners (As of December 1, 2008)
Amsterdam Music School, Arnhem Music School, ArtEZ School of Music, AVRO, Bamberger Symphoniker, Bangalore Music Association, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, Conservatorio Real, Conservatorium van Amsterdam, Conservatorium Maastricht, Credia, Valery Gergiev, The Hague Music School, Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, Imma Shara, Lang Lang, First YouTube Symphony Orchestra Global Ambassador, Liceu Barcelona, London Symphony Orchestra, Moscow Conservatory, National Music Conservatory, New World Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Orchesta de Galicia, Orchestra Filarmonica, Orchestre de Paris, Orquesta Nacional, Petersburg Conservatory, Prague Philharmonica, Radio France, Rotterdam Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, G. Schirmer, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Taipei Philharmonic Orchestra, Tan Dun, The Rotterdam Conservatoire, The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, The Royal Conservatoire, Michael Tilson Thomas, William Joseph International Academy,Yale School of Music

Posted in YouTube announces “YouTube symphony orchestra” | 1,015 Comments »

Symphony masters Mahler’s Eighth

November 21st, 2008

Joshua Kosman, Chronicle Music Critic

Mahler’s Eighth Symphony has been a source of difficulty for Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony for years now, the one work in the composer’s canon that seemed determined to elude their grasp. As one work after another emerged in glory from the orchestra’s long-term recording project, this one drew postponements and not-quite-ready concert performances.

Well, that’s all over now.

On Wednesday night in Davies Symphony Hall, with the microphones on and the tape rolling, Thomas led a huge army of instrumentalists, vocal soloists and choristers both young and old - the Eighth’s sobriquet “Symphony of a Thousand” is an exaggeration, but not by much - in a breathtakingly great performance of this fiendishly difficult score.

It was a high point of this concert season, and the most assured and exciting live Mahler the orchestra has offered in years. If even some of the grandeur, clarity and specificity of Wednesday’s concert can be captured on disc, this promises to be a triumphant capstone to the entire cycle.

A success this comprehensive is impossible without contributions from all concerned. The orchestra produced its most robust and evocative playing in months, and the Symphony Chorus - attaining new heights under the leadership of Ragnar Bohlin - sang with unparalleled vigor. This performance also boasts the first truly flawless lineup of vocal soloists the Eighth has yet had in San Francisco.

But the most definitive credit for this coup goes to Thomas, who presided over his forces with a combination of firm mastery and responsive sensitivity. More than in any recent performance, Thomas seemed to have taken the full 90-minute measure of this piece and plotted it out with unerring care.

And if ever a piece needed wrangling, it is Mahler’s Eighth, a behemoth that constantly threatens to slip its bonds. Each of the two panels in this diptych presents its own set of challenges, and fitting them together coherently is the third piece of the puzzle.

The opening movement, a setting of the medieval Latin hymn “Veni, creator spiritus,” is a maximally dense exercise in virtuoso counterpoint, with many strands operating at once in close proximity. That is followed by a long, varied and theatrical setting of the final scene from Goethe’s “Faust.”

The problems for a conductor are obvious. They involve keeping the first movement from collapsing into itself like some musical black hole, and connecting the potentially episodic structure of the second movement.

That Thomas was more than equal to the challenge was clear from the symphony’s opening minutes. The first measures, an explosive fireball of sound that imparts formative energy to everything that comes afterward, were thrilling, but that wasn’t the hard part.

Rather, it was the clarity and vividness of the ensuing 30 minutes that stood out. With the orchestra, and especially the first and second violins, spread out across vast distances on the Davies stage, Mahler’s intricate counterpart - like Bach on steroids - emerged with unprecedented transparency.

You could hear the almost physical impact of Mahler’s writing in the most close-knit passages. But through it all there was also a vein of seductive lyricism that rarely makes it past those big sonorities.

After disentangling the sonic snarls of the first movement, Thomas went on to stitch together the potentially disparate strands of the second. Even for devotees of Goethe’s fragrant eschatology, this succession of one vocal solo and choral section after another can often seem to meander; but Thomas kept the rhythmic and dramatic momentum running steadily throughout the movement.

Perhaps most impressively, Thomas made his audience hear the coiled power of the first movement as the source of that energy. Even with a longish gap between the two movements, there was a link between them - of sensibility, of emotional impact, of kinetic charge - that I’ve never heard expressed so palpably.

None of that would have been possible without the efforts of the Symphony Chorus, whose singing - mighty and volcanic in the first movement, celestially radiant in the second - was a constant source of wonder. The Pacific Boychoir, led by Kevin Fox, and the San Francisco Girls Chorus, led by Susan McMane, made luminous contributions as well.

And the lineup of vocal soloists was nothing short of magnificent. Sopranos Erin Wall and Elza van den Heever led the contingent with bright, piercing tones and uncannily precise intonation.

Mezzo-sopranos Katarina Karnéus and Yvonne Naef - their singing earthily provocative and darkly elegant, respectively - handled the lower reaches. The male contingent, all of them superb, included tenor Anthony Dean Griffey, baritone Quinn Kelsey and bass James Morris. And near the end, soprano Laura Claycomb appeared in the balcony to sing the few lines of the Mater Gloriosa with seraphic intensity.

Mahler’s Eighth is a weighty and often exhausting undertaking, but a performance this fine is an exhilarating thing. When it was over, I, for one, was ready for an encore.

Posted in Symphony masters Mahler's Eighth - Friday, November 21, 2008 | 1,193 Comments »

America’s Best Leaders: Michael Tilson Thomas, San Francisco Symphony

November 19th, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO—Michael Tilson Thomas will do whatever it takes to bring people into the music. The silver-maned music director of the San Francisco Symphony has invited the Grateful Dead and Metallica to perform with his orchestra. He has posed in leather garb by the Golden Gate Bridge. In a rehearsal this fall, with sweat trickling down his face, he stood up and pantomimed an ice skater gliding across the ice. “I’d like it to settle down into a sleigh-ride rhythm,” he told his musicians later as they fine-tuned a Prokofiev piece. “Like ice skating over a sleigh ride—it needs to be smoother and lighter.” He paused for a moment, letting the idea sink in. “Try it, try it,” he said. “Maybe it’s terrible. We’ll find out.”

There is more to conducting than just waving a baton. But many old-school maestros have famously struggled with the subtler requirements of the job, whether it is putting their musical vision into words, haggling with the board over the budget, or, well, making their music appeal to more than traditionalist snobs. Not Thomas, who is known in classical music circles for his charming, boyish willingness to use any metaphor—and try just about anything—in his efforts to exuberantly reinterpret classical music. “Most conductors have modeled themselves on traditional authority figures—the major general, the high priest, the chairman of the board,” says Thomas, who is often referred to by his initials, MTT. “I think my persona is a little unusual.”

No one doubts that. Heralded at age 24 as the next Leonard Bernstein, Thomas has embraced his reputation as a musical maverick. After struggling, at first, with the wunderkind label—as a young conductor, he sometimes squabbled with older musicians over his musical vision—he was passed over by symphonies in Boston and Los Angeles. He spent his formative conducting years in Buffalo and London. When he finally took over his first elite American orchestra in San Francisco in 1995, at age 50, he seemed to relish shaking it out of its conservative ways. He charmed audiences by filling programs not just with Mozart and Beethoven but with contemporary American composers like Bernstein and Aaron Copland, favorites of a younger, hipper crowd. “There is a little element of rock star in him,” says Scott Pingel, the orchestra’s principal bassist. Bill Bennett, the principal oboist, adds: “To blend this staid tradition we’re in and this kind of ‘over the footlights’ mass entertainment is a tough thing to do. But somehow he always manages to do it.”

Bucking a trend. Thomas’s unflinchingly unconventional approach has won over not just his musicians but a widely expanding audience as well. “I knew he was a great conductor,” says Nancy Bechtle, the symphony’s former president. “I just had no idea how San Franciscans would just adore him.” Ticket sales have climbed steadily since he arrived, while the average age of concert-goers, bucking a national trend, has dropped from 57 in 1992 to 55 today. “What’s unique about what Michael is doing [is] it’s done with ego checked at the door,” says Yo-Yo Ma, a frequent soloist with the symphony. “The priorities are absolutely in the right order. It’s about the music.”

Thomas’s mission, as he sees it, is simple. He wants to broaden his art form’s appeal, and he is advancing on all fronts. After a series of successful recordings, the San Francisco Symphony now has its own record label. The Miami-based New World Symphony, a training orchestra for young musicians Thomas founded in the 1980s, has grown into an elite farm team, of sorts, for the classical world. Thomas has also led the innovative multimedia effort “Keeping Score,” which has expanded his visibility through behind-the-music websites, TV, and radio programs featuring Thomas doing what he does best—cheerfully articulating his ideas about classical music.

Sitting in his office backstage after rehearsal, Thomas waves away the notion that making classical music more accessible necessarily requires leaving its traditions behind. “I’m trying to mix it up,” he says. “If it were always the same, it wouldn’t be interesting.” If that means using sleigh-ride metaphors to draw out his musicians, so be it. If it means interviewing James Brown or comparing Brian Wilson to Stravinsky, as he has done in recent radio programs, more’s the better. “If I had to say, ‘Who am I going to impress from here onward? Am I going to be playing for the experts or the guys at the gym?’ I’ll pick the guys at the gym,” Thomas says. “I want them to feel there is something in this music for them. You don’t have to know anything special to love classical music. If you are alive and in tune with your own feelings and the way in which those feelings are changing all the time, then classical music is for you.”

Call it enlightened self-interest. Call it love of the music. Michael Tilson Thomas is doing all he can to keep his classical art form alive and well.

Posted in America's Best Leaders: Michael Tilson Thomas - November 19, 2008 | 553 Comments »

Thomas got game

November 12th, 2008

by Joshua Kosman

Never mind aspiring to join the pantheon of notable conductors. Michael Tilson Thomas is about to be ushered into the even more hallowed ranks of the top hat, the thimble and the Scottish terrier.

A new edition of Miami Monopoly, scheduled for release today, includes a 1 1/4-inch-high pewter figure of Thomas - who conducts the New World Symphony in Miami Beach - as one of the game tokens. Evidently the original design gave him a baton, but that part kept breaking off during the race toward Boardwalk - or, as it’s called in this edition, Ocean Drive.

Posted in Thomas got game - November 11, 2008 | 824 Comments »

Get rich quick in Miami’s own Monopoly

November 12th, 2008

Monopoly fans can pass Ocean Drive and collect $200 — the greater Miami area has its own version of the famous real-estate game.

BY TANIA VALDEMORO

Never mind the $150 million that the New World Symphony is hoping to raise to build their new home. Artistic Director Michael Tilson Thomas has found a perfect spot — for just $320.

”The symphony is in a great part of town, right next to Vizcaya and halfway between going to jail or collecting $200,” Thomas said. Welcome to Monopoly: Miami and the Beaches Edition — which joins previous editions celebrating Las Vegas, New York and Boston — where houses and hotels become green bungalows and hot-pink condos, and Lincoln Road and Ocean Drive get the coveted spots typically reserved for Park Place and Boardwalk.

The game makes its debut Wednesday at the Bass Museum of Art, which is also a spot on the board.

Thomas himself is immortalized as a pewter token, his miniature figure waving a baton as if conducting a concert.

He joins a flamingo, an alligator, an airboat, a lifeguard stand and an Art Deco hotel — which replace the traditional playing pieces.

”It’s a bit daunting knowing that, at any time, I may have to outmaneuver an airboat or hurdle an alligator or race past a flamingo in the quest to buy up the city,” Thomas said.

Posted in Get rich quick in Miami's own Monopoly - Wednesday, November 12, 2008 | 475 Comments »

Further global coverage of the YTSO

15M hits later, YouTube Symphony makes live debut