Inside the Orchestra
Leader of the Pack
Oregon Symphony Concertmaster Jun Iwasaki, still in the earliest stages of a promising career, is already capturing the attention of the violin world. In the September issue of the London-based magazine TheStrad – the bible of string players – Iwasaki is front and center in an article that explores one of the more vexing questions from the mysterious world of orchestra musicians: What, exactly, does a concertmaster do?
The magazine focused on Iwasaki as one of only two musicians thus far to have completed the Cleveland Institute of Music’s one-of-a-kind Concertmaster Academy, where he studied with William Preucil, concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra.
So what does a concertmaster do? It may help to think of Iwasaki as the liaison between the conductor and the orchestra.
“The conductor is in charge of 80 people,” he told the magazine, “and they can’t give everyone equal attention. There are certain sections of the orchestra … who will look at the concertmaster just as much as they do at the conductor. You have to build their trust so they know they can look to you for help if they need it.”
Playing All the Angles
Hope you managed to catch the Third Angle New Music Ensemble performing outdoors at a succession of four downtown fountains last month in what will surely go down as one of the year’s most imaginative musical experiences.
That performance, part of the Time-Based Art Festival, saw Third Angle (including Third Angle Artistic Director Ron Blessinger, along with his Oregon Symphony colleagues Greg Ewer, Justin Kagan, Todd Kuhns, Brian Quincy and Tim Scott) collaborating with some of Portland’s most accomplished choreographers in “Frozen Music II: The City Dance of Lawrence & Anna Halprin.”
The program was an homage to the daring experiments in movement, sound and space conducted in the 1970s by landscape architect Lawrence Halprin; his wife, the legendary choreographer Anna Halprin; and radical musical composers such as Terry Riley, Pauline Oliveros, Lamont Young and Morton Subotnick. And it was, like so much of what Third Angle does, electrifying.
Next up for Third Angle is “Postcards: Around the World in 80 Minutes,” Nov. 7 at the Old Church in downtown Portland. That one is described as a whirlwind tour of the world featuring new works by Thomas Adès (Britain), Elena Katz Chernin (Australia), Gabriela Lena Frank (Peru), Kimmo Hakkola (Finland), and Chen Yi (China), as well as the premiere of a new string quartet by Portland-based composer Tomas Svoboda. Details:thirdangle.org.
Where in the World
Think you’ve got the stamina for the jet-set life of a modern orchestra conductor? You be the judge. Here’s how the last days of summer looked on the datebook of Resident Conductor Gregory Vajda …
It all started well in late August when Vajda got the call to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic in a Saturday night performance of the opera Bluebeard’s Castle and other Bela Bartok works at Austria’s prestigious Salzburg Festival. So far, so good.
“The performance ended at 10 p.m., and I had to immediately hop into my car and drive back home to Budapest.” Vajda tells us. “I got there at 5:30 a.m., just in time to catch a 7 a.m. flight to Amsterdam and Portland.”
He arrived at PDX Sunday afternoon, was at the Schnitz first thing Monday morning for the first rehearsals of the Oregon Symphony’s waterfront park concert, conducted part of that concert on Thursday, then hopped back on a plane for New York to work with popsters Antony and the Johnsons – at Antony’s West Village loft, no less – preparing for their Oregon Symphony TBA Festival concert.
Vajda isn’t due back at the Schnitz until just before the holidays. But it sure isn’t because he’s taking it easy. On his fall calendar: a performance of György Kurtág’s Grabstein für Stephan to open a new performing arts center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. Then he’ll be in the pit to conduct the Atlanta Opera’s production of La Centerentola.
