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In Reply to: RE: Madeline was maid of honor at his wedding posted by Chris from Lafayette on August 28, 2015 at 09:40:07
It is an interesting fact that the Bay Area has quite a few professional and semi-professional organizations - besides the big ones in SF (Symphony, Opera, Ballet, and perhaps Philharmonia Baroque, there is the Symphony Silicon Valley, the San Jose Opera, the Peninsula Symphony, the Saratoga Symphony, the Redwood Symphony, the Berkeley Symphony, the Marin Symphony, and many others. You would think that being the music director of the San Jose Symphony for so many years, and having such a good musical reputation, might have been a stepping stone to a major symphony appointment (as quantified by budget, audience, reputation.) but such was not the case. I can think of only one holder of these lesser orgs who moved up, and that was Kent Nagano, who held the Berkeley Symphony directorship for so long. It is almost like there are two tracks - those destined to be conductors of the smaller orgs, and those who build their careers with the majors.
Sorry in advance if I left your favorite local off this list, or seemingly dissed any organization.
Follow Ups:
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.
Can't Nogotno in his Berkeley days.
His main claim to fame was throwing his hair around and stomping on the podium.
Need a cue? Forget it.
But, at least for now (since one should not speak ill of the dead!), I think it's wise for me to hold off. ;-)
There's Tales From the Locker Room.....Shoot the Conductor....and soon, yours. It will take you some time to write it....and get it published, so you should get going!
:-)
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