BSO Fellow - Tami Lee Hughes

It was a beautiful sunny morning in Baton Rouge.  

After a quick breakfast, I grabbed the few remaining items in my room and put them on the back seat of my car- my laptop, a few toiletries, and, of course, my violin.  When I finished loading, I shared hugs and “goodbyes” with my family before getting in the car and turning the key in the ignition.   I took a deep breath and said a prayer as I pulled out of the driveway.  This was a big day for me.  I was beginning a twenty-hour drive across the country to embark on the opportunity of a lifetime: to play with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra as its first Fellow.

Tami Lee Hughes - BSO Fellow

A little over one month later, I took a deep breath as I pulled out of my driveway in Owings Mills.  I was heading to my first rehearsal with the Baltimore Symphony. 

A million thoughts raced through my mind.  

Would I remember everything I practiced?  Would I be able to follow the conductor?  Would my sound blend with the orchestra?  When I walked onto the Meyerhoff stage thirty minutes later, I was overcome with emotion.  The hall is even more breathtaking from the stage than it is from the audience . . . the tiers of balcony cascading from the ceiling, the plush red velvet seats, and the beautiful wooden paneling onstage.  I paused for a moment to enjoy everything my eyes could see.

After tuning, we began rehearsing “The Golden Age of Black and White,” a program that featured classic tunes from the 1940’s and 1950’s with BSO SuperPops Conductor Jack Everly and vocalists Karen Murphy, Kristen Scott, and Chapter Six.  When Maestro Everly began the rehearsal, I knew I would love performing this concert.  His baton seemingly became a magic wand, transporting all of us to an age of black and white television, girl singers, doo-wop groups, swing and jazz tunes, and even early rock and roll.  I was captured by the music- the nostalgia, passion, energy, and warmth infused in rich luxurious melodies.  It reminded me of the music my grandmother played on the radio when I was young. 

On the night of our debut performance, I arrived at the hall a few hours early.  There was a buzz backstage as orchestra musicians, singers, stage technicians, and other staff members prepared for the performance.  Although I didn’t feel nervous, I was very excited.  I felt a swift rush of energy as Maestro Everly gave the opening downbeat.  With the audience lights dimmed, the stage came to life.  Lights, costumes, singers, and instrumentalists filled the stage with Maestro Everly  at the center of it all waving his magic wand.  By the time we played my favorite tune of the night, Mambo Italiano, we were in full swing!  The energy was so contagious I wanted to get out of my seat and dance.  For a brief moment I imagined I was in a fiery red dress doing the mambo in the streets of Sorrento.  A quick glance at the audience assured me that I was not the only one dreaming of dancing in Italy!

During my drive home after the concert, I reflected on the evening.  I thought about the sheer wonderment and joy of experiencing live music with everyone- musicians and audience members alike- and of indulging in an era in which I didn’t live but one that held special memories for so many concert goers.  I also thought about how much my life had changed so much since I’d left Baton Rouge. . . there are new faces, new places and new friends.  I sang bits and pieces of the music we’d performed as I got out of the car and opened the door to my home.   

So far, I’m having the time of my life and I love every minute of being part of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra!

2012 BSO Academy in the New York Times

Every Chair in This Temporary Orchestra Holds a Story

By DANIEL J. WAKIN

Published: July 13, 2012

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(This is a re-posting of an article written by New York Times reporter Daniel J. Wakin, who took part in our 2o12 BSO Academy program as a clarinetist. The views expressed by Wakin are not necessarily the same as those held by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. To view the article on the New York Times website, please visit: NYTimes.com. Enjoy!)

BALTIMORE — The judge’s assistant who practices her viola in a courthouse jury room. The retired neurosurgeon who once flew surveillance flights for the United States Navy and who took up the clarinet at 63. The accountant who began oboe lessons to connect with her severely disabled daughter.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra brought together these musicians and others — a total of 104 amateurs of startling variety — last month for a weeklong fantasy camp of lessons, rehearsals, master classes and, finally, a concert at Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall.

It was a musically enthusiastic, even obsessive, bunch. Most spend countless hours a week practicing and playing in wind bands or community orchestras or chamber groups, in many cases more than one. It’s an older group. Many returned to music with fervor in retirement or in homes recently emptied of growing children. For some, music-making is the backbone of their social ties or an escape from the pressures of work.

Credit: Matt Roth for The New York Times

“It’s these kinds of people who guarantee the interest in classical music,” said Andrew Balio, the orchestra’s principal trumpeter. “They do everything in life well,” he said. It’s also these kinds of people, the Baltimore Symphony hopes, who will buy more tickets and make more donations.

Among the participants in what the symphony calls the BSO Academy were Deborah Edge of Washington, a double-bassist and retired internist who works part time for an organization that helps the homeless. She stopped playing in college, then resumed in 1986, after a 20-year lapse.

Jane Hughes, an oboist who works for General Dynamics, and her husband, William Jokela, a bassoonist and former United States Army chaplain, of Annandale, Va., met in a community band, play in a trio and came to the academy for the first time last year to celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary. “This is our social life,” Mr. Jokela said.

William G. Young, an actuary from Norwalk, Conn., who practices clarinet an hour every evening, arranged to be in a chamber group with his brother-in-law, Harry Kaplan, a bassoonist and internist from Towson, Md. A half-dozen enthusiastic members of their family descended on Baltimore to hear them perform.

Matthew DeBeal of Laurel, Md., 25, one of the youngest players, spent his Saturdays as a youth studying violin at the preparatory division of the Peabody Institute, Baltimore’s conservatory, and now teaches string playing to middle schoolers in Howard County, Md. Mr. DeBeal, one of the more accomplished musicians among the participants, played solos in the academy’s final concert, on June 30.

Credit: Matt Roth for The New York Times

Ann Marie Cordial took up the viola just three and a half years ago. A judge’s assistant at the Baltimore County Circuit Court, she practices in a jury room across a corridor from a cell.

“That’s part of your sentence,” she said. “You have to listen to me practice.” Her playing, she said, once helped bring a halt to a brawl that involved sheriff’s deputies and a defendant just sentenced to life in prison.

The retired neurosurgeon and cold-war-era Navy pilot, Edward Layne, 78, of Cockeysville, Md., took up the clarinet 15 years ago. He called his first moments on the stage at last year’s academy “one of the signal minutes” of his life.

“I looked around, and I couldn’t believe I was sitting there,” he said.

Barbara Bowen, an accountant from Reisterstown, Md., plays oboe in three community orchestras. She started the instrument at 10, played through college, then took a 22-year break.

“The reason I went back into music was the connection it gave with my daughter,” who has multiple disabilities, Ms. Bowen said. “If I could change my career tomorrow, I would be a music therapist.”

For many of the first-time participants, the unusually demanding repertory, the high skill level of some fellow campers and the unforgiving standards of a professional orchestra came as a bit of a shock. Gradually, over the course of the week, confidence grew. Technique sharpened. Coherent musical lines emerged.

The reality of it struck on Monday, June 25, when the campers gathered by instrument in rooms at the Baltimore School for the Arts for the first rehearsal before the Saturday concert, which featured works by Tchaikovsky, Elgar and Falla.

“I couldn’t get a proper note,” said Dianne Cooperman, 65, of Rockville, Md., an information technology consultant for federal agencies and a self-taught French horn player. “Everything sounded generally out of tune. I was a mess. I didn’t want to play anymore.”

Ms. Cooperman faced the extra challenge of a tremor from Parkinson’s disease, which causes her knee to shake. Horn players generally rest the instrument on the right thigh. Because of the tremor, Ms. Cooperman had to use an extra chair to support the instrument.

The next day’s master class, in which the members of the section were to play for the orchestra’s principal horn player, Philip Munds, did not go much better for her.

Credit: Matt Roth for The New York Times

“It sounded like somebody was dying,” she said. “The more it came out bad, the more nervous I got.” Mr. Munds set her mind at ease and imparted a tip about hand position that brought immediate improvement.

As the week went on, Ms. Cooperman’s confidence improved. She timed her medicines better, so they took maximum effect at rehearsals. Her performance went up a notch. On Saturday afternoon she took a long nap before the concert, then went over her parts mentally without playing them on her horn.

Days later, she wrote about the experience in an e-mail: “I told myself: ‘I am incredibly lucky! Who else gets to attend five first-rate concerts in a row while sitting in the midst of the orchestra?’ All tremors, jitters and self-doubt were banished with that one realization.”

“And the good news is,” she added, “I definitely played all three pieces, especially the Falla, the best I had played them by far! I left no footprints as I walked off the stage that night. I was floating three feet off the floor.”

Dear blog readers,

I do know that it's been a while. So long a while, as a matter of fact, that you might have (gasp!) moved on to some more frequently updated blogging sites. But despair not, I'm back, after some busy times, and I won't leave you wondering alone for this long again (famous last words). As a matter of fact, it's been so long, that I started the blog below in the throws of our non-winter, just after the holiday season. This is what I wrote:

I do like the holiday season. Not everything about it, mind you, but many things. First, as an avid skier, I love the weather this time of the year—snow is my friend, and I don't mind the cold either (and no, I am not happy that we've not had much of either). Second, I love (most of) the decked-out houses in Baltimore neighborhoods. They range from tasteful white lights in trees to a myriad of biblical characters in various types of plastic, lit up in various colors, from Disney characters of the same make-up, to, of course, the pink flamingoes (that odd, almost quaint Baltimore tradition), all sitting peacefully one next to the other, on people's lawns.

I even like the music this time of the year. Being from Europe, a New Year doesn't start for me until I've watched the broadcast of Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concert, featuring many of the eternally elegant waltzes, coupled with the Lipizzaner horses, originally from the Slovenian Republic of my old country of Yugoslavia, dancing in sync with the music. Even the carols don't phase me, at least not in the first week or two of the season (though that period seems to come earlier every year, doesn't it, therefore lasting longer yet?).

This holiday season, I had an opportunity to hear an orchestra concert made up of talented students of A. Mario Loiederman Middle School in Montgomery County, that featured some of that holiday music. This is because I was given an opportunity to help them prepare (in a role of a conductor), during three visits, for a performance of Leroy Anderson's Sleigh Ride, that culminated in that concert.

Most of these kids are learning their instruments without the benefit of private lessons. A lot of them haven't even had a chance to learn how to properly hold their instrument or decipher some of the very basic note reading, let alone learn ways to mold a phrase or deliver dynamics the composer is requiring. But they make up for it in enthusiasm and youthful energy.

This is where their music teachers, in this case Ian Stuart and Liz Jankowski-Carson, enter into the equation. I have always considered the grossly underpaid music teachers in elementary and middle schools in this country to be the real heroes of our music industry. Day in and day out, they deal with kids who are playing on instruments that are sometimes missing proper reeds, strings, or are impossible to tune, kids that are sometimes lacking the capacity to be quiet, listen and concentrate at the high level that is required for any progress to occur in an ensemble rehearsal. Sometimes they have to politely ask and plead, other times turn into task masters the likes of boot camp officers, in order to get anything done. To say that rehearsing a 3 minute arrangement of the Sleigh Ride with these kids for a couple of hours is a challenge is a gross understatement.

Yet they (the teachers) perform small miracles every day. It was intriguing to see Mr. Stewart get them pepped up, yet keep them disciplined and quiet as they were preparing for their performance.

I listened to several jazz, pop and rock music-influenced holiday tunes backstage while waiting to conduct them in the Anderson, and observed the same types of communication that are necessary to pull off a performance anywhere, on any stage. Smiles and stern looks rained on them from their conductors'/teachers' faces, other sections were listened to for cues, eyes darted alternately from the music to conductor's baton, it all was there. Not all the notes were there, of course, and not every nuance came through, but it was all done with a great amount of energy and pride.

The same was true with the Sleigh Ride. I saw the whites of their eyes in crucial spots in the percussion, smiles from cellos in their fun counter-melodies, heard strong rhythm from brass and woodwinds and great dynamics from the violins and violas. The crowd, made up of very enthusiastic parents, teachers, and fellow students, exploded in appreciative applause. A great reward for the many hours of work the kids and their teachers put into the challenging program.

So, even though it may seem like a distant memory now, I remember with fondness the good time we all had in the last holiday season, and look forward to returning to the Loiederman School for more coachings and rehearsals in the spring, when this winter also becomes a just a distant memory.

-Ivan Stefanovic

"Lessons"

(This is the first response to the BOLT donation challenge I wrote about below.)

Lesson:

–an amount of teaching given at one time

–a period of learning or teaching

–a passage from the Bible read aloud during a church service

–to learn one's lesson

–to teach someone a lesson

So many meanings, yet they all really mean one thing. I especially like the last one. Even with its oh-so-obvious meaning in the music world, it still carries that admonishing connotation that I never want to convey when I am, indeed, “teaching someone a lesson.”

So, the word itself essentially means that there is some kind of learning process happening during a usually pre-assigned period of time (hey, maybe I should send that meaning to Webster's, I think it's pretty good?). If one looks at it that way, the implication is that there's a teacher (coach, trainer, etc.) doing the teaching, and a student (apprentice, sports player, etc.) doing the learning. However, anyone that's devoted any time to teaching (in my case, over 20 years) knows that it is much more of a two-way street.

In music, this couldn't be more accentuated (excuse the pun). A musician (student) spends countless hours being instructed (taught) on so many different levels: holding the instrument properly, having the correct body posture, specific (and countless) technical exercises; but all that work ties into the “product” they are creating: the glorious music that's supposed to come out of their instrument. And therein lies the catch.

It's hard enough for a teacher to put into words what he/she knows at that point in their career (hopefully) so well, especially with regards to purely technical aspects of playing: the tricks to playing with a straight bow, control of a good spiccato (a bouncing stroke), the various widths and speeds of an expressive vibrato. Even those concepts require a lot of “translating” from what comes so naturally and what our teachers so capably put into words for us so many years ago. The real challenge comes when a teacher is confronted, whether with a new student or for the first time altogether, with having to convey a meaning of a musical phrase, a direction of a certain musical idea, or a style of music from many centuries ago. That's the real challenge in teaching.

Even after so many years in the profession, I still find it stimulating to exchange ideas with my students about what all those symbols on the page are trying to convey, to get them to discover for themselves how to use all those techniques we worked so hard on in order to make sounds that move and, yes, entertain, the listener. And that's a lesson that teaches both the student and the teacher.

-Ivan Stefanovic

Kids : Our Future

A couple of Saturdays ago I had an unusual break in my usual day-long teaching schedule at the Peabody Preparatory, where I teach violin and coach chamber music and the strings of the Peabody Youth Orchestra. My youngest son, who takes cello lessons and group cello class there, also had a break in his schedule, and, since he has been talking about his desire to repeat our summer trip on Baltimore's free downtown bus, the Circulator, I decided it was time for a fun ride. We walked a few blocks south on St. Paul, toward the Inner Harbor, turned east on Baltimore Street, then sat on a bench on Charles to wait for the Purple Bus to take us back to Mt. Vernon Square. He kept updating me on the bus stop display, alternately looking in the other direction to check on the street how accurate the sign is ("2 minutes away, 1 minute away, arriving"). It finally arrived (I had gotten a bit tired of the updates), and we boarded it. Even though he has been in many different modes of public transportation in his short life, including his favorite electric tramways in my native Belgrade, he still gets pretty excited when he gets the chance to use one. He looked around, wide-eyed, at his fellow passengers and the streets-cape that was passing us by, then, with great aplomb, pressed the "stop requested" button as we started climbing the small hill by Peabody. A half hour later he was all concentration, tongue slightly sticking out of a corner of his mouth, busily trying to match the speed of his teacher's bow in the group class, playing several pieces by memory, even advising his fellow students on proper technique.

Kids his age, some younger and some older, were also on the Meyerhoff stage on Thursday night and Sunday afternoon, playing their debut with the BSO in front of adoring Moms, Dads and siblings, as well as out regular audience. They come from areas of the city where even the free Circulator bus is not an option for a bit of fun because, simply, there may not be anyone available to take them downtown, as both parents might be working most of the day (and some at night). But that didn't stop them from attending the classes of the Bucket Brigade, a beginner percussion program, or later switching to cello, violin or flute, after their regular Elementary school classes, as part of BSO OrchKids program. For those of you that don't know, it's based on an extremely successful program in Venezuela, called El Sistema, which has by now created thousands of kids that play in hundreds of youth orchestras across that underdeveloped country. There are only a couple more such programs in the United States so far. And I say so far, in spite of the recent calls for cutting of public funding for arts in schools, non-profit organizations, and such. The fact is that arts bring millions of dollars to our cities' economies, and without them they could not survive. But, even if not a single of the OrchKids children ends up in the music field as part of their lives, or takes up an instrument to play it again, or even becomes one of our patrons, they will have developed life-long skills of team play, discipline, long-term work that pays off in small increments, patience, and too many more to mention here that they can't get any other way. Their brains will also develop in such way that will increase their success in other fields (and we don't need studies to prove that, OrchKids have the stats if you want to see them).


So let's stop and think where our efforts and money should go. More arenas and stadiums, so that we can subsidize multi-million dollar contracts that our sports teams demand, or concert halls and opera houses where orchestras are falling one by one with minimal support from our government.

Thank you all who have contributed to the BSO over the last almost 100 years of its existence, and let's help it reach its centennial with the musicians and staff on solid financial ground, so we can continue to entertain, and, yes, educate our children.

They are truly our future.

-Ivan Stefanovic