A Night In Chicago

Thanks to my students last year, Kaia and I received tickets to five Chicago Symphony concerts for the 2010-11 season. Our tickets include performances of Beethoven, Mahler, and Bruckner, plus we get to see some awesome conductors: Haitink, Muti, Boulez. Saturday was the first installment of the series. Unfortunately Maestro Muti has withdrawn from the remaining performances for the month of October due to illness, which we found this out in an email earlier this week (as the matter of fact he's currently back in Italy seeking diagnosis and treatment from his own doctors).

With this news we packed ourselves in the car and made the two hour trip yesterday afternoon. We managed to hit Chicago right at the same time as the US vs. Poland soccer match and the preparations for the Chicago Marathon (10/10/10). Needless to say traffic was terrible. We ended up in a traffic jam heading on to Lakeshore Drive that lasted for about a half hour (in which we managed to go half a mile). With my cheer ebbing to a perilous low we finally made it to the Millennium Park Garage on the north end of Grant Park ($27 for the evening) and managed to find our way to dinner.


Our dinner destination was the Chicago Curry House, a little restaurant tucked away from the hustle and bustle of Michigan Avenue. They have great food and it is also a restaurant where you might run into musicians from the orchestra before the concert as it turns out. We were seated at a table right next to some musicians and we overheard one say to the group they were with "it's too bad they didn't have more notice for this week so they could have gotten someone better" obviously referring to the conductor who was filling in at the last minute. This piqued my interest so I tuned a cautious ear to the conversation to see if I could learn something. Here are a few things I picked up (I've turned them into helpful hints for my own conducting):

1. Don't lecture the orchestra (according to my teacher musicians want to know 6 things: louder or softer, faster or slower, shorter or longer)
2. Don't flail (conduct the music and don't be distracting)
3. Don't ask the orchestra to do something when they are already doing it
4. Conduct high enough so that the members of the orchestra can see what you are doing (don't conduct below your belt)

after watching the concert I might also add:

5. The podium is your space (as a conductor) - don't lean into the string sections
6. Don't hit your baton on the concertmaster's stand (or any of the principal player's stands for that matter)
7. Don't flail
8. Don't dance around on the podium all of the time
9. Be clear
10. Don't flail

The concert was very good however. The orchestra played very well in spite of the flailing and I look forward to seeing the next concert in November. In the meantime I will be heading back to Chicago on Tuesday night to see the Marinsky Orchestra with Valery Gergiev play Shostakovich 15. That will be very exciting. And Gergiev doesn't flail, he shakes.

Fall Has Arrived

It's been a couple of weeks since I last wrote a blog post. My lack of posting has been mostly due to the fact that I've been spending most of my time working: much studying, attending rehearsals, researching in the library and preparing to conduct for seminar. We have managed to sneak in some fun in the last couple of weeks and we've even managed to do some free things.


Last weekend Kaia and I went to Allerton Park. It's a large piece of land owned by the University of Illinois, donated by wealthy Chicagoan Robert Allerton, about 20 miles west of Champaign. He gave his estate to the University in 1946 when he decided to move to Hawaii. It's a beautiful place to visit. There are acres and acres of gardens; miles of hiking trails through woods, pastures, and along the Sangamon River; and some historic buildings. You can even get married there if you want - and if you have lots of money. Our visit was a tad on the cool side - temperatures were in the 50s and it was overcast and windy. That still didn't stop us from having a picnic after our hike though. Best of all it was free!


This weekend we went to the Curtis Orchard in southwest Champaign. Since fall is in the air we're beginning to get the craving for apples. This is typically the time of year when Kaia makes and cans several gallons of applesauce for us to enjoy throughout the winter. We also usually make pies, crisps, and apple rings as well. Since we are broke, and also since we gave up all of our storage space and our kitchen, we are operating on a much more limited basis. With this in mind we visited the orchard, with pastoral thoughts in our minds about the countryside, the quiet, the crisp air, and the solitude of strolling up and down rows and rows of apple tress in the filtered light of autumn. We were in for a slightly rude awakening when we arrived to find heavy traffic in the parking lot, crowded conditions in the store, crabby parents yelling at tired children, and no solitude whatsoever. It's okay we still managed to score some Cortland apples. Plus we got a free cider slush when we showed them our I-Cards. Being a student may mean crushing debt and putting your life on hold for a few years, but there are some benefits!

Tonight's game plan is to make apple pie, applesauce, and dehydrate some apple rings. Tomorrow I'm going to get serious about a paper that I'm researching and try to tackle Charles Ives. I know I will study better if I have plenty of apple-based products to eat.