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RE: I've heard that he was difficult - is that why he never received a top appointment?

The Bay area does indeed have many gig orchestras - you have left off quite a few from your list, both good and not so good - some more off the top of my head would be the Oakland Symphony, California Symphony, Fremont, Santa Cruz, Napa Valley (which I heard went under), Monterey, and let's not forget the Bay Area Women's Philharmonic, if that still exists. And we are leaving out several others - oh, Lamplighters, the Gilbert and Sullivan group, is world famous. They were fun to work with - I used to free-lance out there after grad school and played in almost all of the the musical groups out there myself, several of them on a regular basis. One of the main reasons I did my masters out there was because of the thriving free-lance scene out there. Boy, was it truly driving for dollars, though. Much longer driving distances than pretty much any other major free-lance scene in the country.

The comparison between Cleve and Nagano is an interesting one. It would be more accurate to say that Nagano hung on to the Berkeley gig long after most conductors would have given it up - he had moved up to several other MUCH bigger and more prestigious positions, but kept doing Berkeley as long as he could, simply because he loved it there, and the musicians loved him. Even though it was actually one of the lower paying orchestras in the whole area, many of the best musicians in the area would still play in it, and turn down higher paying work to do so, because they liked him so much. I was never a member of that particular orchestra, but I did sub there a few times, and really enjoyed every time, in particular a performance of Ein Heldenleben in January of 1995 - this in fact was my last performance in the Bay area before I left it for my current position in a full-time major orchestra.

On the other hand, I knew very few people indeed who enjoyed playing for Cleve, and he was never offered any other jobs that were of more substance than San Jose, at least to my knowledge. So the two conductors are not really comparable, either in the quality of their careers, or in the way the musicians thought of them. Nagano is known world-wide, whereas Cleve is barely known outside the Bay area, though he did get a few good guest conducting gigs from time to time. I think I only worked with Cleve myself one time, and not with San Jose - I was asked to sub there several times, but for one reason or another always had to turn them down. But I have many friends out there that were in that group.


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  • RE: I've heard that he was difficult - is that why he never received a top appointment? - learsfool 19:27:18 08/29/15 (0)

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