Rapidan Orchestra Rehearsal Photos

We had a husband and wife team of photographers come to the last rehearsal before our fall concerts to take some informal pictures, without using flashes, as that would probably have been too distracting.

Here's our new conductor Benjamin, who is just terrific. His knowledge of the music is so phenomenal he can sing anyone's part instantly, and his verbal and gestural suggestions convey the gestalt he's after, as well as the details.

Charles W., our concertmaster, like many of our members, plays in a number of other groups, one of which specializes in Russian music.

Michael, besides his musical activities, restores WWII aviation radio equipment for the Smithsonian.

Brian is recently retired from the U.S.Navy.

Carol and her husband Roger (cello) have been with us from the beginning.

Jenny recently retired from teaching and is enjoying spending more time with violin.

Kelly on viola is a Montessori teacher over in Charlottesville and her husband John plays trumpet with us.

Here's Roger (husband of Carol/violin) on cello.

Joe B. grew up over in Barboursville and recently returned when he retired and just joined us this semester.

The other Joe B. on string bass wasn't with us at this rehearsal as he had a performance with another group, so I dug out this pic from several years ago of him with a Dixieland Jazz group - he played great that day, even when given the wrong chart for a piece and just played by ear.

Karen is one of those many M.D.s that somehow finds time to make music - and has college age sons majoring in music.

Don on flute is a retired accountant, professional photographer and holds a music degree in flute performance.

Lynne, when not playing flute, is a veterinarian working on emerging infectious diseases for the CDC.

Charles T. is the volunteer director of the Orange Community Band (and the longest serving one) and an assistant conductor and first oboe in the Charlottesville Municipal Band. His playing of the oboe in orchestra rehearsals and concerts has taught me more about "musicality" in classical music than any other single thing - especially his full, rich tone and his ever alive phrasing. (His wife Theresa wasn't present when these photos were taken - she plays piano/keyboard for us, and percussion in the Orange and C'ville bands.)

Heather, a homeschool mom and former band director, was a founder of the orchestra and does more work than anyone else keeping us going - and has gorgeous tone on the clarinet.

Don plays clarinet in a number of groups, as well as recorders in my Fun Band. His duet with Heather in the Bizet was a highlight of these concerts.

John retired to this area after a star studded pro career in both the classical and jazz genres.

Pete has been a mainstay of the Orange Community Band, and I'll always be grateful to him for being such a gentleman 12 years ago when I sat next to him and was a rank beginner on the horn - he handled the sounds I was making with great aplomb.

Grace is from Charlottesville, a college student, and will be off to New Zealand soon for a year abroad.

Here's me.

Nick is the music director over in Greene County High School and plays trombone, trumpet and horn for us.

Charles H. is a local dairy farmer who finds time to play with us, as well as being in the Orange Community Band and the Charlottesville Municipal Band - his touch in the timpani rolls is wonderful.

And here's Karla, who helped found the Orange Music Society over 25 years ago, organizing house concerts of classical music, and was good enough to join our board when we were getting started. She organizes the ads in the local papers and sends out by mail something like a 100 flyers for our concerts to people she knows, as well as putting them up all around Orange and Madison.

And here's a group shot from the choir loft.

The Eckhart Ensemble

Improvisation and Audience Engagement

This study suggests that a little improvisation in classical music might increase audience engagement.

An area of the brain known to be involved in sustained attention, working memory and the inhibition of responses, known as the Brodmann 9 area was much more active in both musicians and listeners during the improvised performances. This indicates that the audience were much more engaged when listening to classical music containing improvised elements.

This is really easy for me to believe, given my feeling professional musicians tend to make such a fetish out of sight reading they risk ending up sounding more mechanical than human. If you spend a lot of time sight reading, you're training your brain to play the surface of the music rather than feeling it. Of course, really fine players can play with feeling while sight reading, but not everyone is that good. 

The thing about improvisation, for better or worse, is that the player is creating the music in the moment, so is much more personally involved. My sense is that if more classical players improvised at least occasionally they would be reminded there's more to music making than simply playing what they see.

Music & Parkinson's Disease

A while back I mentioned a proposed study on whether listening to a classical music concert would have an effect on the symptoms of Parkinson's disease. Preliminary results are in and are looking positive. The thinking seems to be that the effect is due to music causing a release of dopamine, low levels of which cause the Parkinson's symptoms.

The study involved three concerts, one by a string quartet, one by a wind quintet and one by a brass quintet. I wish more symphonic organizations would put more effort into chamber music and looking for new ways to serve their communities as the Fort Wayne Philharmonic has done in this case. This post by Jeffrey Agrell touches on classical organizations needing to be more versatile.

Opera Chic

I think I found Opera Chic through some list of classical sites I ran across sometime back. I've been clicking ever since, and this post is a great example of why. The blend of refined musical sensitivity, deeply felt knowledge of the subject and such a wonderfully created persona make the blog one of the best out there. I don't particularly like opera, but I love to read Opera Chic talking about opera and the world of classical music.

Audiences

Here's a link to a discussion on Greg Sandow's blog about classical music needing to do a better job of connecting with the audience. I don't often click down into the comments sections of blogs, but did on this post because the need to engage the client for the music therapist is similar to the need of the classical musicians to engage the audience. If that connection is not made, not much else is going to happen.

The difference between the two situations is one of scale. A therapist can relate to clients as individuals. A concert series has an audience. I can craft a session to a particular client's needs and interests once they've been assessed. Any given audience is going to be full of individuals with a wide variety of backgrounds and expectations. 

It is my intuition that most classically trained musicians tend to play for that segment of the audience that shares their deep knowledge and experience of the canon. It's also my intuition that their brains process the music differently than those of other audience members. Add to that the sort of guild-like mentality of many professional musicians that the opinion of "regular" audience members is not as valid as that of fellow professionals and you're getting into a situation where you want people to pay to come hear you, but you don't really care what they think.

Another train of thought has to do with the rarity of people hearing orchestral instruments playing live. One aspect of the learning materials project is to form a group of players that can go out into the local community and play small ensemble pieces at small events. There would be lots of benefits to that, and one would be building an audience for classical music.