Conductor Dinner!
After a rollicking performance of Symphonie fantastique and Lélio excerpts, Michael Tilson Thomas and Joshua Robison invited all the conductors in town over for dinner. Seven showed up. It was unusual to have so many conductors under one roof, along with author Amy Tan (who also admitted to waving a chopstick to music when she was young — who knew?). In attendance: MTT, Ragnar Bohlin, James Gaffigan, Peter Grunberg, Alasdair Neale, Benjamin Shwartz, and myself.
There was
food;
some piano four hands ( a really interesting Schubert Rondo/Polonaise, that went in all sorts of harmonic directions, played by MTT and Peter Grunberg);
catching up on the Howard Stern/Z’s conflict (MTT: “Howard’s 50 years late on that one”);
The Cambridge folks reminisced about the Cambridge University Music Society (C.U.M.S. — yes, really, hahaha);
memories of Stockhausen (Beni Shwartz studied with him, and recalled that his 75th birthday was a celebrity gala sponsored by RED BULL, which ultimately horrified the composer — MTT recalled a comment from him after one his works to the effect “That was very lovely, but it really had nothing to do with what I composed …” — MTT recounted another story about a very famous pianist who saw a woman backstage with an enormous Stockhausen score and asked her “what are you doing with that crap?” to which she replied “well, he’s my father!”);
an around the campfire moment where MTT asked the conductors to recount their first conducting experience (Alasdair Neale: “So there I was, conducting for the first time — they asked me to run this woodwind sectional with people much older and more experienced than I was and I had absolutely nothing to say.” MTT: “So did you remain silent, or say something anyway?” ***this is a gold-star moment that every conductor has experienced at one point of another (even ones with a lot to say)***);
Conducting is such a lonely profession in so many ways, after all, it’s just you up there. So it was nice to get together. A very San Francisco thing, really — musicans, writers, artists all get together from time to time and just hang out around here. It’s a small town like that, but without the small-town rivalries.
As fun as the conductor dinner was, it couldn’t compare to the SUPER NERD dinner last year at MTT’s with MTT, Joshua, Christian Tetzlaff, Robin Holloway, and yours truly. The conversation was truly out there. I mean really — outer space. The highlight was to hear Tetzlaff try to convince Robin to listen to Queen, though Robin was too busy singing the praises of Delibes to notice.