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Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School

2010 Musical Culture in in the 1960S: Interviews with Clarinetists Who Auditioned for and the American Julie L. Schumacher Detweiler

Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF MUSIC

MUSICAL CULTURE IN NEW YORK IN THE 1960s:

INTERVIEWS WITH CLARINETISTS WHO AUDITIONED

FOR LEOPOLD STOKOWSKI

AND THE AMERICAN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

By

JULIE LYNN SCHUMACHER DETWEILER

A Treatise submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Music

Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2010

The members of the committee approve the Treatise of Julie Lynn Schumacher Detweiler defended on October 26, 2010.

______Frank Kowalsky Professor Directing Treatise

______Alice-Ann Darrow University Representative

______Deborah Bish Committee Member

______Jeffrey Keesecker Committee Member

Approved:

______John Drew, Chair, Brass and Woodwind Department

______Don Gibson, Jr., Dean, College of Music

The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members. ii

This treatise is dedicated to my parents, Ginny and Dale Schumacher, and to my husband, David.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank several people who contributed to the completion of this treatise. Thank you to my major professor, Dr. Frank Kowalsky, for his guidance and patience throughout this process. He has generously shared his time and experiences with me, both for this project and for the past three years. Thank you to Dr. Deborah Bish and Dr. Alice-Ann Darrow both of whom gave me tremendous encouragement and guidance as I brainstormed and researched this project. Thank you also to Jeffrey Keesecker who graciously agreed to be a part of my committee and my treatise as it was already underway. Thank you also to Dr. Denise Von Glahn, who met with me to discuss interviews and historical research, and to Lauren Smith who honestly and accurately answered every question I have had about my degree for the past three years. Thank you to the other clarinetists who gave their time and memories for this treatise: Virgil Blackwell, Dr. Janita Byars, James Corwin, Dave Hopkins, , David Singer and Richard Stoltzman. They all exhibited such openness and willingness to share their lives with me. This work would not have been possible without them. Thank you to the staff at the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Special Collections, who helped me find everything for which I was looking and who shared with me their expertise. Thank you to my parents, Ginny and Dale Schumacher, who have always believed in me, and thank you to my siblings, Joel Schumacher, Jill Borrero and Jodie Schumacher who supported me through email and phone calls. Finally, thank you to my husband, David, who provided me with an endless supply of encouragement, patience, and support during this project. Thank you for believing in my success.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract ...... vi 1. CHAPTER ONE: THE AMERICAN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ...... 1 1.1 Birth of an Orchestra...... 1 1.1.1 Leopold Stokowski ...... 2 1.1.2 The Mission of the Orchestra ...... 4 1.1.3 After Stokowski ...... 7 2. CHAPTER TWO: THE AUDITION PROCESS: ITS HISTORY IN AMERICA ...... 9 3. CHAPTER THREE: AMERICAN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA AUDITIONS ...... 15 4. CHAPTER FOUR: TRANSCRIBED INTERVIEWS ...... 17 4.1 Interview with Virgil Blackwell ...... 17 4.2 Interview with Janita Byars ...... 24 4.3 Interview with James Corwin ...... 30 4.4 Interview with Dave Hopkins ...... 40 4.5 Interview with Frank Kowalsky ...... 42 4.6 Interview with David Shifrin...... 45 4.7 Interview with David Singer ...... 50 4.8 Interview with Richard Stoltzman ...... 53 4.9 Conclusion ...... 56 4.9.1 Further research ...... 56 5. APPENDIX A: ETHICAL PRACTICES FOR NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL AUDITIONS CODE ...... 57 6. APPENDIX B: LIST FROM STOKOWSKI‟S AMERICAN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA NOTEBOOK ...... 59 6.1 Index ...... 59 6.2 Comments ...... 63 6.3 Professional and Retired Clarinetists, Possibly for “Master” Positions ...... 66 7. APPENDIX C: LEOPOLD STOKOWSKI PAPERS: COPYRIGHT PERMISSION ...... 67 8. APPENDIX D: HUMAN SUBJECTS ...... 68 9. REFERENCES ...... 69 10. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH...... 71

v

ABSTRACT

This treatise is an exploration of the distinctiveness of the American Symphony Orchestra. The American Symphony Orchestra was a unique organization that combined contemporary music and young musicians of diverse backgrounds with a famous conductor. Although Leopold Stokowski used a rather archaic method of auditioning, his inclusion of women and minorities in the orchestra was progressive and his championing of young musicians was legendary. The orchestra resided in New York, a city that already had a rich, albeit very different, symphonic tradition in 1962 when the American Symphony was founded. There were no women and only one African-American musician in the at that time, and most in the country were not yet using screens to audition potential candidates for open positions. This distinct set of circumstances can be seen as a cultural microcosm for the creation and development of the symphony orchestra, including the transformation of the audition process and the introduction of women and minorities to the symphony orchestra. At the heart of this microcosm are Leopold Stokowski and the musicians who dreamed to be a part of his orchestra. Two of the interviews for this treatise were convenience samples due to proximity, and the other six interviews were randomly selected from the list that Stokowski kept on every musician who auditioned for him. Interviews were conducted either in person or by phone, recorded and later transcribed. This treatise begins with a history of the development of the American Symphony and is followed by the history of the audition process in the . A brief overview of Stokowski‟s audition process for the American Symphony provides some insight and context for the interviews that follow.

vi

CHAPTER ONE

THE AMERICAN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

The Birth of an Orchestra In 1961 at the age of seventy-nine, Leopold Stokowski enjoyed international fame and engagements with orchestras all over the world, though he was tired of endless traveling and wanted to settle in . After meeting with friends, advisors and his manager, Siegfried Hearst, Stokowski decided to create a new orchestra. This new symphonic venture would incorporate young musicians and champion contemporary music. The first season was planned to include a total of six concerts all performed at . Hearst introduced Stokowski to a man that he hoped would help fund the new symphonic venture, Gregory Roberts. Roberts purportedly was a wealthy patron of the arts with connections to different concert agencies in several Central and South American cities. Stokowski was delighted to have the financial support and held a press conference on 26 April 1962 announcing the new orchestra. Initially, Roberts was to serve as the executive director and the primary financial backer, but his ulterior motives soon surfaced. During the summer before the first season while Stokowski was in , Roberts spent a majority of the funds that were set aside for the American Symphony Orchestra on restaurant and hotel bills and had other funds transferred into his private accounts in the name of the American Symphony Orchestra. Then Roberts disappeared.1 Upon hearing the news about Roberts, Stokowski returned to New York and decided to pay the deficit of approximately fifty thousand dollars himself in order to forge ahead with the debut season of the orchestra. Stewart Warkow was named the new manager of the orchestra.2 Stokowski managed to obtain new sponsors, including Samuel Rubin, president of Fabergé, who created a small symphonic organization that would support Stokowski‟s five-year plan for the orchestra as well as work with the New York Board of Education to further the musical education of young people. Rubin contributed one hundred thousand dollars every year to his foundation for the American Symphony, and his wife Cyma campaigned actively for the

1. , Stokowski: A Counterpoint of View, (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1982), 779- 84. 2. Ibid, 784-5. 1 orchestra by holding events and benefit parties.3 The first concert on 15 October 1962 included Stokowski‟s arrangement of the national anthem as well as the Concerto No. 1 by with Susan Starr playing piano; an arrangement of Sonata Pian’ e Forte by Giovanni Gabrieli; Toccata and Fugue in D minor by , also arranged by Stokowski and Symphony No. 6 by Shostakovich. The first concert received positive reviews. James Felton of the Evening Bulletin called the concert “a landmark in the history of music in America,”4 and Howard Klein of described the sound of the group as “full and lush, with well-balanced sections.”5 The second concert included works by , , Peter Tchaikovsky and , and it received better reviews than the first concert. Miles Kastendieck wrote, “These American Symphony Orchestra concerts may steal the whole musical show this season if the remainder can match the vibrant quality of this second event.”6 After the third concert, the American Symphony Orchestra made headlines in Time magazine and the newspapers. As the first season progressed, Stokowski soon received more donations, including a 1.5 million dollar donation from the Ford Foundation. Even with such sizable donations, Stokowski himself contributed annually to help reduce the orchestra‟s deficits, and he conducted without a fee for his entire tenure as music director.7 At the end of the first season, both President John F. Kennedy and New York City mayor Robert F. Wagner II sent their congratulations, and Stokowski was presented with the Handel Medal by New York City‟s cultural officer, Robert Dowling.8 Leopold Stokowski Leopold Anthony Stokowski was born on 18 April 1882 to Kopernik and Annie Stokowski in London, England. By all accounts he was attracted to music at a very young age, although Stokowski himself often elaborated stories of his prodigious beginnings. He would often tell of learning to play the violin around age five, or seven or eight depending on the interview, and of learning to play the piano. Stokowski was admitted to the at age thirteen where he studied piano and organ with Stevenson Hoyte, composition with Charles Stanford and counterpoint with . He became a member of the Royal

3. Daniel, 790. 4. Ibid, 785. 5. Howard Klein, “New Orchestra Welcomed Here: Stokowski Leads American Symphony in Carnegie,” New York Times, October 16, 1962. 6. Daniel, 786. 7. , Leopold Stokowski: A Profile, (New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1979), 234-5. 8. Daniel, 789. 2

College of at age sixteen and by 1900 was a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists and directed the at St. Mary‟s Church. Two years later Stokowski became the and choir director at St. James Church in , and in 1903 he passed examinations at the Queen‟s College at Oxford to be awarded his Bachelor of Music degree.9 In the summer of 1905 Stokowski came to the United States as the new organist at St. Bartholomew‟s Church in New York City. After four years in America, Stokowski applied for and became the conductor of the Symphony Orchestra. While in Cincinnati, Stokowski married pianist in a quiet ceremony. After only three years as music director of the Cincinnati Symphony, Stokowski resigned from the orchestra and accepted the position of music director with the for the 1912-13 season. It was in Philadelphia that Stokowski cultivated his distinctive orchestral sound. After the first season, he fired over thirty musicians. Some of the notable musicians who he hired to fill the vacancies were William Kincaid, principal flautist, , principal oboist, Daniel Bonade, principal clarinetist, , clarinet, Saul Caston, and Anton Torello, bass. Stokowski also experimented with positioning the orchestra in different ways acoustically to achieve a rich, sonorous orchestral sound. Stokowski remained the music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra until 1940, sharing the duties of director with co-conductor during his final four years with the orchestra. Stokowski‟s personal life in Philadelphia was less than stable. He and Olga had one daughter, Sonya, and divorced in 1923. In 1926 he married Evangeline Johnson, with whom he had two daughters, Lyuba and Sadja. In 1937 Stokowski met screen actress , whom he admired, and the two began an affair that ultimately destroyed his second marriage. Following his association with the Philadelphia Orchestra and shortly after his second divorce, Stokowski collaborated on an animated project with , , which opened with a live-action shot of Stokowski and included excerpts from several famous orchestral pieces. In 1941 he created the All-American Youth Orchestra, which was an orchestra for young people, and wrote his book Music for All of Us. He conducted the New York City Symphony Orchestra in 1944 and one year later he led the Symphony Orchestra.10 Stokowski also met heiress and fashion designer during this time

9. Oliver Daniel, Stokowski: A Counterpoint of View, (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1982), 4-5. 10. Preben Opperby, Leopold Stokowski, (New York: Hippocrene Books, Inc., 1982), 85-6. 3 and married her one year later. They had two sons, Stan and Chris. They ended their marriage amicably in 1955. In 1947 Stokowski became the principal guest conductor of the New York Philharmonic for two years and then co-conductor for two more years with Dmitri Mitropoulos. Stokowski moved to , Texas in 1955 after his divorce where he conducted the Orchestra for five years before returning to New York to establish the American Symphony Orchestra in 1962. He resigned as music director of the American Symphony Orchestra in 1972 and returned to England to focus on recording with the London Symphony. Leopold Stokowski died in 1977 at the age of ninety-five.11 The Mission of the Orchestra Stokowski had long been recognized for his passion for encouraging young musicians. He had created the All-American Youth Orchestra to provide a training orchestra for young artists, and the American Symphony Orchestra provided another opportunity for young musicians. On the occasion of the first concert, 15 October 1962, Stokowski described the American Symphony Orchestra as an orchestra designed “to afford opportunity to musicians of great gifts, irrespective of age, sex, or colour (sic), and also to give concerts of great music in the range of possibility for everybody.”12 The first concerts were affordably priced at only four dollars, and in the second season of the orchestra, Cyma Rubin successfully helped to implement a series of concerts that were free for schoolchildren.13 Stokowski embraced diversity in the orchestra and wanted to use the orchestra as a vehicle to encourage international goodwill; therefore, he opened the first concert of every season with a dedication to the United Nations.14 In 1962 there were no women in the New York Philharmonic and the first African-American musician, a male violinist, had just been hired.15 In contrast, the first American Symphony Orchestra roster contained forty-two women and representatives of many minority groups, including African-American and Asian.16 As the American Symphony Orchestra developed, Stokowski continued to place women and minorities in leadership positions, such as conductors and concertmasters. Stokowski also felt confident that great conductors could be trained in the United States rather in Europe, as had been the longstanding tradition. He wanted to use the

11. Bowen. 12. Opperby, 111-2. 13. Daniel, 790. 14. Chasins, 234. 15. Donal Henahan, “Philharmonic, City in Antibias Pact,” New York Times, May 30, 1972. 16. Chasins, 235-6. 4

American Symphony to provide a training ground for young conductors, where they could observe rehearsals, ask questions and have the opportunity to conduct an orchestra.17 Leopold Stokowski was also a lifelong champion of contemporary music, and although not officially a mission of the orchestra, the American Symphony provided a venue for him to showcase this passion. Stokowski felt that concert programs should be balanced, one contemporary work for every two traditional works.18 Over the course of his career, Stokowski conducted approximately two-thousand world or national premiers, and with the American Symphony Stokowski focused on both contemporary and unknown music.19 By 1965 Stokowski had created four different kinds of programs with the American Symphony: adult concert programs, youth concerts for teens, youth concerts for preteens and finally concerts for children seven years old and younger. Stokowski also fulfilled a personal dream in 1965 when he conducted the premiere of Symphony No. 4 by at Carnegie Hall with the American Symphony Orchestra.20 Stokowski had originally hoped to premiere the work with the Houston Symphony Orchestra when he served as their music director in the 1950s, but was unable to obtain the complete score. Symphony No. 4 is considered one of Ives‟s finest works and arguably one of his most challenging. The score calls for full orchestra and chorus plus additional instruments including three saxophones, solo piano, piano four-hands and organ.21 To further complicate matters, Ives indicated that the orchestra should be sectioned into smaller chamber groups at varying distances from the audience. The complexity of the score also requires more than one conductor simply to help navigate the rhythmic and tonal overlaps. With the American Symphony Orchestra, Stokowski finally had the musicians and conductors to perform the work. He was able to obtain special funding through the Rockefeller Foundation in order to rehearse the work for two months which was the longest amount of time ever spent by a conductor on a score written by an American composer.22 His two assistant conductors for the premiere were David Katz, who was responsible for conducting the Schola Cantorum choir at stage rear and José Serebrier, who

17. Alan Rich, “Room for Growth: Stokowski is Training Musicians for the Future,” New York Times, October 14, 1962. 18. Ibid. 19. William A. Smith, The Mystery of Leopold Stokowski, (Cranberry, NJ: Associated University Presses, Inc.,1990),138-9. 20. Chasins, 236. 21. Kurt Stone, “Ives‟ Fourth Symphony: A Review,” The Musical Quarterly, 52, no. 1 (January 1966), 2. 22. Smith, 140-1. 5 helped to conduct through some of the more rhythmically complex moments of the second and fourth movements. By all accounts the premiere was a success.23 Some people surmise that Stokowski‟s affinity for young musicians had to do with the combination of his open-minded personality and the openness of youth. William Smith writes, “Their [young musicians] prejudices were less strong, cynicism had not yet set in, and their openness to the joy of music and to its feeling element made them ideal partners in the creation of that personal and spontaneous kind of music making so dear to the maestro.”24 The American Symphony Orchestra became one of the best training orchestras in the nation during the 1960s. In fact, it was such an important learning environment for both musicians and conductors that the American Symphony Orchestra had a large yearly turnover as the musicians moved on to bigger orchestra jobs. Stokowski conducted all auditions for young artists through a private audition process, hearing at least twenty-five young people every week at his Fifth Avenue apartment in New York. He was amazed at the large number of talented young musicians, and especially amazed at the number of women who auditioned.25 Leopold Stokowski required at least four rehearsals before every American Symphony concert, and he scheduled approximately twenty-five concerts a year. Rehearsals were held at Carnegie Hall from ten in the morning until twelve-thirty in the afternoon, and Stokowski expected the musicians to arrive early to rehearsals to warm-up and practice the music. Stokowski would always arrive at least one hour early, sit on stage and study his scores. He would sometimes stop to greet a musician or answer a question; sometimes, as he heard the musicians warming up, he would call someone over, show the musician a certain place in the score and give some advice. Five minutes before the downbeat at ten, Stokowski would greet the orchestra and wait for them to settle down. He would then ask the oboist for a tuning note and announce the first piece to be rehearsed.26 Stokowski rarely stopped to fix small mistakes. He would make eye contact with the musician to acknowledge the mistake, and the musician would generally have the material corrected by the next rehearsal. When working on the music,

23. Chasins, 237. 24. Smith, 84. 25. Chasins, 139. 26. Ibid, 237-8. 6 however, Stokowski could be quite sarcastic, often referring to the first violins as “the virtuosi of the orchestra” and threatening to fire musicians if they could not play their parts adequately.27 At a rehearsal attended by biographer Abram Chasins, Stokowski told the orchestra a story that perhaps best articulates his feelings regarding the American Symphony Orchestra:

“On my recent trip, I noticed some prejudices that interested me. The Europeans think that the age of an orchestra is the significant thing and that a five-year-old orchestra like ours needs many more years to develop. Well, I know orchestras that are a hundred years old, and ever since I‟ve been hearing them they play worse every year.” When the laughter subsided, he added, “They also think that a youthful orchestra can‟t play with enough passion and expression. I told them that I think the young people of today are not only emotionally vital but mature more fully and quickly than their elders did.” An appreciative murmur went up. He went on, “They also think, as Voltaire did, that women are only good in the kitchen, the salon, and in one other room I shall not mention. I told them that they‟re dead wrong and I feel sorry for them that they didn‟t realize what wonderful musicians, what wonderful instrumentalists women have become in our century.”28

After Stokowski Leopold Stokowski continued to conduct the American Symphony Orchestra until 1972 when he chose to move to England and take European engagements primarily to have greater recording opportunities. After Stokowski left, the musicians of the American Symphony Orchestra decided to become a self-governing organization, electing Kazuyoshi Akiyama as music director.29 The American Symphony Orchestra musicians met with musicians of other self-governing orchestras, most notably the London Symphony and the Philharmonic, to learn how to develop and sustain their organization. The American Symphony received help from the New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment of the Arts and the Music Performance Trust Fund, established by the American Federation of Musicians, and Carnegie Hall allowed the orchestra to book its concerts there on credit.30 Akiyama remained with the organization until 1978 and was succeeded by . Moshe Atzmon and Guiseppe Patanè took over the helm as co-directors in 1982 for two seasons followed by in 1985 and Catherine Comet in 1990. Leon Botstein became music director in 1992

27. Chasins, 140-1. 28. Chasins, 239. 29. Opperby, 115-6. 30. Donal Henahan, “An Orchestra Tries Self-Government,” New York Times, July 11, 1973. 7 and continues to conduct the orchestra today. Under Botstein the American Symphony Orchestra has focused on themed programs which connect several issues such as politics and visual arts. Botstein has also maintained Stokowski‟s ideal of music for everyone by keeping the concerts affordable.31

31. Lincoln Center, “Lincoln Center Presents: 2009/2010 Great Performers Season,” Lincoln Center, http://www.lincolncenter.org/programnotes/GP-ASO-111509.pdf (accessed August 28, 2010). 8

CHAPTER TWO

THE AUDITION PROCESS: ITS HISTORY IN AMERICA

Although the American Federation of Musicians has existed, albeit under several different titles, as a labor union for musicians since 1868, it wasn‟t until the labor movement of the 1960s and 1970s that hiring practices were revised and conductors were no longer able to fire orchestra musicians at will. The first symphony orchestra in the United States was the New York Philharmonic, then called the Philharmonic Society of New York, founded in 1842 and led by .32 This first orchestra was created by a group of like-minded musicians, but later orchestras held auditions to hire musicians, and it became tradition to hear musicians based on private recommendation. When Leopold Stokowski was the music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1913 to 1934 for example, he fired thirty-six players in one season33 and replaced them with musicians that were either recommended or whom he personally admired.34 While some of these players were to become legendary in creating the “Stokowski sound,” as well as their own schools of playing, firing and hiring players based on a conductor‟s personal bias is not allowed in orchestras today. During the first half of the twentieth century, audition policies and procedures were individual to specific orchestras. Sometimes the only approval necessary to ensure orchestral employment came from the concertmaster or conductor. Although a recommendation was sometimes followed by a private audition for the music director, often certain teachers and music directors would foster relationships so that the students of that teacher were only subjected to auditions for the sake of formality. Often auditions were held at the orchestra‟s hall but sometimes simply in a hotel room. By the 1960s auditions were given in front of the music director and at least one other person, often the leader of the section that the auditionee wished to join. Until the mid-sixties auditions were often not announced or posted; the person or persons who the conductor wished to hear were contacted directly.35 With the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which called for equality in the hiring of minorities and women, came a demand for increased

32. New York Philharmonic, “History: Overview,” New York Philharmonic, http://nyphil.org/about/overview.cfm (accessed August 28, 2010). 33. Paul Robinson, Stokowski, (Canada: Vanguard Press, Inc., 1977), 21. 34. Daniel, 125. 35. Donal Henahan, “Orchestra Auditions: The Old Systems Are Changing,” New York Times, October 15, 1974. 9 wages and working conditions, and in the musical world, a call for auditions to be open to anyone who wished to apply. Auditions became more open, but were often still unscreened so that the music director and other orchestral players could see the individual who was auditioning. Unscreened auditions opened the door to discrimination, if not on the basis of race or gender, then on the basis of the candidate‟s teacher or training. In fact, none of the “Big Five” orchestras in the United States, the Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the and the Philadelphia Orchestra, had more than twelve percent women in their orchestras until approximately 1980,36 and the number of minority musicians was even lower. Some orchestras experimented with using a screen for auditions. The Boston Symphony used a screen for preliminary audition rounds as early as 1952,37 and while the New York Philharmonic experimented with the concept in the late fifties, it was not favored by and other members of the orchestra and discontinued. In 1969, two African-American musicians, Earl Madison and J. Arthur Davis, filed charges against the New York Philharmonic based on the orchestra‟s audition procedures. Both musicians had been rejected by the Philharmonic after several auditions, and the men asserted in the charges filed that it was due to racial discrimination and not artistic merit.38 The city‟s Commission on Human Rights investigated the charges. In 1970 after several hearings, the New York Philharmonic was cleared of the charges of discrimination in hiring practices for permanent employment with the orchestra, but found guilty of discrimination in hiring substitutes and extras.39 The assertion for many years that a player was able to hide weaknesses behind a screen was echoed by the managing director of the New York Philharmonic Carlos Moseley when he testified at one of the hearings, “I personally think it is a disadvantage not to let the people who are judging see how the auditioning player plays.”40 On the West Coast, Seiji Ozawa resigned his position as music director of the in 1974 after fighting with members of the orchestra over hiring power regarding two of his choices for the ensemble, Elayne Jones, an African-American timpanist who

36. Claudia Goldin and Cecilia Rouse, “Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of „Blind‟ Auditions on Female Musicians,” The American Economic Review, 90, no. 4 (September, 2000), 717. 37. Ibid, 716. 38. Donal Henahan, “Hiring and Salary Policy of Philharmonic Listed,” New York Times, August 2, 1969. 39. “Rights Unit Clears Philharmonic But Finds Bias in Some Hiring,” New York Times, November 17, 1970. 40. Donal Henahan, “Hiring and Salary Policy.” 10 had performed for years under Leopold Stokowski in the American Symphony Orchestra and Ryohei Nakagawa, a Japanese bassoonist. After the 1974 season, their contracts were not renewed and they were denied tenure. In San Francisco at that time, the musicians of the orchestra had full power to award or deny tenure to musicians of the orchestra, and Ozawa apparently had threatened that power by appointing these musicians without consulting the orchestra. The orchestra, in an attempt to retain power, ousted the minority musicians. Elayne Jones filed a discrimination suit against the orchestra for 1.5 million dollars in 1976, but lost and was forced to relinquish her job with the ensemble.41 Audition policies and hiring practices changed in orchestras around the country after the case against the New York Philharmonic. Many orchestras began using a screen at least for preliminary rounds in auditions.42 In 1972 the New York Philharmonic, in part due to an agreement with the New York City Commission on Human Rights, instituted a week-long program for fifty-three young African-American and Dominican musicians from twelve different states. During the program young musicians sat beside Philharmonic players to receive coaching and encouragement. Ten of these musicians were chosen to receive scholarships and advanced training.43 Although the number of permanent African-American musicians in the New York Philharmonic in 1972 remained at one, the orchestra had increased the number of minorities in its administration and on its substitute list since 1969. The Philharmonic had also increased the number of women as permanent members, from two in 1969 to six in 1972.44 In 1974 the Orchestra held auditions with a screen and encouraged committee members to sit at a distance from each other and to refrain from discussing the candidates. Candidates were also asked not to speak or warm up behind the screen in an effort to ensure fairness. 45 Only one of the major symphony orchestras in the United States still does not have blind auditions for any round, and that orchestra is the Cleveland Orchestra. Today the majority of orchestras screen the preliminary and semifinal rounds of auditions, if they have a semifinal round, and then conduct the final round without a screen. Some orchestras provide a carpet leading up to the audition chair to ensure that committee members cannot hear if the candidate is wearing high

41. “Black Tympanist Sues on Coast Job,” New York Times, August 17, 1976. 42. Goldin and Rouse, 716. 43. Donal Henahan, “An About Face on Black Musicians at the Philharmonic,” New York Times, June 11, 1972. 44. Donal Henahan, “Philharmonic, City in Antibias Pact,” New York Times, May 30, 1972. 45. Donal Henahan, “Orchestra Audtions.” 11 heels. Typically candidates are issued numbers and only the orchestra personnel manager has the information that matches the candidate‟s name to his number.46 In recent years, orchestras have predominantly adopted the screened approach. Some orchestras have been experimenting with removing the screen for part or all of the audition process. The International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians, formed in 1962 “to promote a better and more rewarding livelihood for the skilled orchestral performer and to enrich the cultural life of our society,”47 unanimously voted for a new code of ethics regarding hiring practices for musicians, called the Ethical Practices for National and International Auditions (Appendix A), in August 1984. The code contains a list of recommendations and suggestions that orchestras follow when conducting auditions. It is not a law or policy, but simply a list of guidelines suggesting an ethical standard. It is tacitly understood that orchestras that adopt and adhere to this code approve its parameters and endorse it. The code outlines its purpose and offers ideas for preparation and conduct of auditions. Under the section regarding the preparation for auditions, the code suggests that orchestras clearly advertise auditions in appropriate places, such as union journals and audition offices, and that they only advertise legitimate vacancies. The code also suggests that orchestras contact applicants in writing specifying audition repertoire as well as logistical information and suggests that the orchestra give applicants enough time to prepare for the audition. Applicants are also encouraged to give orchestras adequate notice if their intention to audition changes. Under the section regarding the conduct of auditions, the code recommends that permanent orchestra musicians be involved with at least initial stages of the audition process, although it concedes that these determinations are ultimately decided locally. It also recommends that auditionees be given adequate time and space in which to practice and warm up and that the repertoire provided be in good and legible quality. Perhaps one of the more important parts under the section regarding conduct of auditions is the section on discrimination. The code clearly states that accommodations should be made for any auditionee with a disability and that “there should be no discrimination on the

46. Goldin and Rouse, 716-22. 47. International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians, “Code of Ethical Audition Practices,” International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians, http://www.icsom.org/handbook/handbook13d.html (accessed August 25, 2010). 12 basis of race, sex, age, creed, national origin, religion, or sexual preference; steps ensuring this should exist in all phases of the audition process.”48 In September 2000 Claudia Goldin and Cecilia Rouse published an article entitled “Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of „Blind‟ Auditions on Female Musicians.” In their experiment, Goldin and Rouse collected data from orchestra rosters and from audition records. The information gathered from orchestra rosters indicated how many women were permanent members of the ensemble, including the instrument and position, between 1970 and 1996. The audition records provided detailed data on who auditioned, both female and male, if the audition was screened or “blind” for any or all of the rounds, and who advanced and was hired. Goldin and Rouse used the audition records from eight major symphony orchestras, maintaining the confidentiality of those records by only using the first name of the individual to determine the gender of the auditionee, going as far as using a book of baby names when names were difficult or androgynous. They excluded auditions for which no women auditioned and they excluded harp auditions because performers of the instrument are already in a female-dominated field. Considering each round separately, they calculated the total number of auditions, musicians, and female musicians for distinct periods: pre-1970, 1970-1979, 1980-1989 and post-1990. They found that eighty-four percent of the auditions they examined were screened and that of those auditions, women consisted of approximately thirty-seven percent of the preliminary candidates and forty-three percent of the finalists. By separating each round and analyzing the data, Goldin and Rouse were able to see that in blind preliminary rounds, women advanced almost twenty- nine percent of the time compared to just over nineteen percent of the time in non-blind preliminaries.49 They also found that when a screen was used in the final round, which was only seventeen percent of the time, women‟s success rate jumped almost fifteen percent. When Goldin and Rouse examined data from the orchestra rosters over time, they found that there were twenty-five percent more women in eight of the major orchestras in the United States after orchestras began employing the screened audition procedure. Goldin and Rouse found that conducting blind auditions, particularly for preliminary and final rounds, increased the likelihood that a woman would advance and be hired for the job. The conclusion of their research strongly

48. International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians, “Code of Ethical Audition Practices,” International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians, http://www.icsom.org/handbook/handbook13d.html (accessed August 25, 2010). 49. Goldin and Rouse, 727. 13 suggests that female musicians fought discrimination in hiring practices before the use of screened auditions.50

50. Goldin and Rouse, 737. 14

CHAPTER THREE

AMERICAN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA AUDITIONS

Screened auditions for symphony orchestras were not the norm in the United States in 1962. Nor was it fashionable to have women or minorities in a symphony orchestra, but Leopold Stokowski was able to put together a very diverse group of young musicians at this time to create the American Symphony Orchestra. What is particularly remarkable is that he did this through traditional, almost antiquated, means. Most of the musicians interested in the American Symphony Orchestra had simply called Stokowski‟s assistant to arrange the audition date and time, and the auditions were one-on-one with the Maestro. Stokowski held open, unscreened auditions for positions with the American Symphony at his Fifth Avenue apartment in New York City, auditioning approximately twenty-five young musicians every day. Auditionees would arrive at Stokowski‟s apartment building and take the elevator to his apartment. The elevator doors opened into the apartment and Stokowski‟s assistant would escort the auditionee to a warm-up room, which was often the living room or dining room of the apartment. After warming up, the auditionee would be invited into the Maestro‟s study, which was packed with music scores and books and had large windows overlooking Central Park. Stokowski sometimes asked the auditionee to perform a prepared work and sometimes went straight into sight-reading. He kept a book of several sight-reading examples for every instrument, many of the examples in his own hand, having copied the part with the revisions that he preferred. He often conducted the musician through the passages, stopping to ask for specific details in the music. When the audition was over Stokowski would often ask the musician questions or give the musician some advice. The assistant then later contacted the musicians directly to contract American Symphony Orchestra concerts. Stokowski kept detailed records of these auditions, primarily for the purpose of hiring or replacing musicians. Most of the records were typed and included the name, age and address of the musician as well as the maestro‟s personal ratings and comments. His notes seem to indicate that he rated the auditionees on tone, technique, phrasing and reading on a Likert-type scale from one to ten and then gave each musician an overall rating from one to five. He kept all of the audition records in a notebook that was organized in score order by instrument and included an index at the beginning of each section, alphabetized by last name, to indicate on which page the

15 comments for each musician could be located. At the end of each section was also a list of professional and retired musicians who he was perhaps considering as experienced counterparts to his young artists. Even after the initial group was chosen, Stokowski continued to audition musicians for substitute opportunities throughout his tenure as music director of the American Symphony Orchestra. Stokowski listened to any musician who had either studied seriously or who had some orchestral experience.51 Besides listening for musicianship, Stokowski also listened for sound, thinking of how certain timbres and instruments would blend in the orchestra. Elizabeth Neuberg, a violinist with the American Symphony from 1962 until 1964, recalled that Stokowski was just as impressed with her violin at her audition as he was with her playing, telling her that her Guadagnini had a “peculiar beauty of tone.”52 He hired her and placed her in the orchestra with another violinist who also had a Guadagnini violin. Neuberg recalled, “That‟s the way Stokowski was. He had a gift for linking instrumentalists and the sounds of their instruments to their physical placement in the orchestra. He did it to create beautiful sound combinations and it worked.”53

51. Chasins, 235. 52. Smith, 59. 53. Chasins, 59. 16

CHAPTER FOUR

TRANSCRIBED INTERVIEWS

Interview with Virgil Blackwell Virgil Blackwell is a New York-based clarinetist and bass clarinetist. He has performed with the American Symphony, the , the New York City Ballet, the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra, among others, and has recorded on the Naxos label. He has also performed at the Tanglewood Festival, the Aspen Music Festival and the Santa Fe Festival. An advocate for contemporary music, he was a founding member of the new music ensemble and was a member of the Steve Reich Ensemble. Mr. Blackwell has also served as Executive Producer on compact discs of music by and Elliot Carter. He currently resides in New York City.54 JD: Thanks so much for agreeing to talk to me. VB: So, what do you want to know? JD: I want to know about the audition process for the American Symphony. VB: I came to New York in, well, I left Texas, Houston, in June of sixty-three, and I went to Tanglewood. I was a student there. And then I came to New York; I was a student for one year. And I can‟t remember if I auditioned for Stoki that fall, the fall of sixty-three or if I waited. I think I might have waited a little bit later. Until maybe sixty-four. I can‟t remember if I auditioned in the fall of sixty-three, but the process was, I‟m trying to think of it. I can‟t remember the contractor‟s name; he was a percussionist. I think the process was… or Stoki had a secretary, I can‟t remember which. But everybody knew. I mean, you know, it was easy to find out because the American Symphony had a lot of concerts and with Stoki. When I was a student in Houston, he was still there. He was the music director before Barbirolli came in. And because I was a student, we went to all the concerts. I grew up outside of Houston, very small town. I went to the University of Houston for two years. Anyway, so we went to all the concerts, but I had no idea at the time when I was in Houston that I was going to come to New York. So I auditioned. I called up and made an appointment to audition for Stoki. I had no idea. So we went to, at that time, I can‟t

54. Naxos, “Virgil Blackwell,” Naxos, http://www.naxos.com/person/Virgil_Blackwell/10952.htm#disco (accessed October 28, 2010). 17 remember his exact address on Fifth Avenue, but he had a, must have been a floor, a penthouse apartment. It was a huge apartment. So I brought something prepared to play, I can‟t remember what it was, and then he had me read a variety of excerpts and a couple of Bach transcriptions, the Bach transcriptions he‟d done. But it was on . I didn‟t audition on regular clarinet. JD: All on bass? VB: Yeah, because, I forget who was doing the bass work at that time with the American Symphony, but I thought I had a better shot. A kid from Curtis named John… I can‟t remember who was playing second. Charlie Kuskin was playing , principal oboe, he was in the Dorian Woodwind Quintet at the time. Sophie Sollberger, Harvey Sollberger, the flutist‟s wife was playing , principal flute. Oh, Paul Dunkel was playing piccolo. I didn‟t know any of these people at the time, you know, then of course, after playing that long, working in the business, I know them all, very well. And so I played the excerpts, you know, whatever he wanted me to play. I was very nervous. Because I was twenty, twenty-one, no, twenty years old. And I never really took very good auditions. He was very kind to me. He took a great deal of interest. I was very impressed with that, impressed after the fact. After the audition, I asked if I could smoke. And we sat down. We went out of this room where there was a chair. And there was a canister, there was a crystal decanter of wine on the table. And it was overlooking the duck pond in Central Park. And he said how much do you smoke, and I told him. He wasn‟t lecturing, but he said, you know, “Moderation in all things. I drink a little bit.” He pointed to the wine. “I smoke a little bit.” And of course he was eighty-something years old at the time. And he said, “Moderation in all things.” Yeah, ok. I think I told him, I said a pack a day, that was too much. And then I got a call, you know, I didn‟t think I played very well. It wasn‟t perfect, you know, but I got a call fairly soon and then I worked with him for like two or three years. And, it was an amazing experience. An amazing experience for me. Well, for everybody, and then of course later in life I started working for a composer named Oliver Knussen. We‟re very close friends. I spent ten years with Steve Reich‟s group, and I played with Luciano Berio. And I just left that group and Oliver said to me, well I don‟t have anybody doing my work for me, negotiating my concerts in the United States or commissions, why don‟t you do it. His father was Stuart Knussen, who was a player in the London Symphony Orchestra. Stuart Knussen and Barry Tuckwell are the two main people who took the London Symphony and

18 made it the first self-governed orchestra. Stuart Knussen was very close friends with Stoki. And when Oliver was growing up, Stoki would come over to the house all the time, so there was that connection. When Stoki left the American Symphony, he went back and lived in England. And it was a great experience. We did a run-out concert to with the American Symphony. I think we played in a high school auditorium or something. And I can‟t remember the piece, it had many movements, I don‟t remember if it was Mahler or something. And I remember, you know, we‟re out in the boondocks. And Stoki finished the first movement and all this applause happens. Well, that‟s a no-no. And so Stoki stopped, turned around, very, very kind, it wasn‟t like, “Be quiet.” He turned around to the audience and said, “That‟s just fine. Applaud whenever you want to.” Whenever you feel like, between movements or whatever, “It‟s ok.” And he turned around and we went to the next movement. But it was a very kind manner. I remember one rehearsal. I think, well, I know what it was, it was Scheherazade, Rimsky-Korsakov. And I remember on all the cadenzas, clarinet or whatever, I‟m trying to think of her name, the clarinet player at that time. Good player, married to an oboe player who was the principal oboe at that time in the New York City Ballet. Anyway, she played the cadenza the way it was written. And he stopped and said, “No, it‟s a cadenza. Don‟t play exactly what‟s written. Improvise.” And so she, you know, obviously took it as it was written, and she embellished upon it. But I mean the basic notes were there, and he said, “Oh, yes.” And so it was like the cadenza was merely an indication of what you should do. It was very interesting. Never heard anybody do that. JD: I was going to say, usually conductors like to control what you do. VB: No, no…no. I mean, like I said she did, she improvised within that cadenza, you know, slurred it and extended it and whatever. It was all right what she did, I mean, I guess if he wouldn‟t have liked it, he would‟ve said something, but he didn‟t. And of course everything that we played… I mean the Brahms were all double winds because there were certain passages where he wanted to hear more playing. JD: To get a sense of the color? VB: No, I guess he thought it balanced better with the strings, they were loud. You always came in when the fortissimo or the molto forte passages would come in, then you would get out of the way. You know obviously mezzo forte down you would… it would only be

19 singles. You know, I don‟t know how much of that was Lucien Cailliet, you know. I assume Lucien Cailliet did a lot of that, but I don‟t know. Ghosted a lot of that, but I‟m not sure that he had anything to do with that kind of added doubling. Every set of parts was his set of parts, you know. Nothing was the way you‟d imagine it would be. It was always something different. And it usually worked, I mean, you know, interesting to see what he wanted. So is there something else I can answer? JD: Were the musicians able to interact with Stokowski personally? VB: That was a very tricky thing. This is something that I didn‟t know, I showed up to the first rehearsal ten minutes before it, or fifteen. Let me just say, I would never show up now or in the past twenty years; I show up forty-five minutes ahead of time, before the downbeat. Rehearsal, whatever, no squeaking in. But with Stoki, you know, I didn‟t know. Fifteen minutes. Stoki was there at least, if you were there thirty minutes before a downbeat, you were late! Because he was there an hour before. He would go around, people had the music out, you know, they weren‟t playing whatever they wanted to play, they were going over the music and he would go over to them and say, “Play that.” JD: Oh really? VB: Oh, yes, he went through everybody! David Katz was the contractor when I was working with them. He was conductor of the Queens Symphony and a percussionist, but he was the contractor. And everybody was very respectful to Stoki. You didn‟t mess with him. You said, “Yes, ok.” You know it was a typical thing that happened with the Cleveland Orchestra and . Everybody showed up early and he would walk around and listen. And Stoki would, you know, say, “Play it this way,” or “Try it this way.” And of course the old line, in rehearsal, we constantly heard, “Do better.” You know it was that, “Do better.” VB: And then he would try to get people, you know, to really play very vitally. It was very important, nothing was mundane, that wasn‟t acceptable. The urgency, the vitality… You could even do things that, you know, you had a certain amount of liberty, I suppose, to try things, you know, I guess. I mean I was very careful but I guess that you could try certain things. There was the free bowing thing too, that was in place in the strings. You were urged to be individuals, but not so much that you took away from the ensemble. It was a very, very fine line, I suppose. JD: Did that create freedom in the rehearsal or did it create…

20

VB: A certain amount of freedom. If he didn‟t like what you did, he would tell you, he would say something, you know, in a very nice way. Very gentle. And he always wore the same suit. He had a blue suit that had very, very subtle red stripes. Always wore the same suit. And he invariably wore…it was funny he would wear brown suede shoes. Made by Church. Whereas Barbirolli wore slippers, ballet slippers, little slippers. But anyway, everybody treated him very carefully. And he knew everybody, I mean, he got to know everybody. He got to know his players. It was a remarkable experience. You couldn‟t have it now because things are not done that way. JD: Well, when you took the audition for him, was that a typical audition in the sixties? I know it‟s not typical today. VB: It was typical for him! No. There were some people in the orchestra who were older players but he was really interested in young players, in giving you a chance. There‟s always been that guy who says, “Well, Stoki always stops in the same place, no matter what it sounds like, he‟s always going to stop there and say that because he‟s got to mark the score.” I don‟t know if that‟s true or not because I didn‟t play enough things over and over again to know that he would stop and say exactly the same thing. I don‟t know if that‟s true. As I remember, I think there was a problem. I don‟t know what happened at all, but all those parts and scores, certainly the parts I think were stored in, I have the feeling were stored in the bottom of Carnegie Hall or somewhere and got water damage or Skitch Henderson got them and then Skitch Henderson had water damage [in his house]…I don‟t know, I could call Oliver and ask him; I‟m sure Oliver knows. But I don‟t know where all those parts went. His scores, I don‟t know what happened to them. I don‟t know if the Philly Orchestra kept some of them or if Houston kept some of them, but I think he took everything with him. When he left, I don‟t know what happened. JD: Well, I know that…some of the Bach transcriptions especially are at the University of Pennsylvania…that‟s where I found this information. VB: So they got it. They got it. I always had a feeling, I thought, I was sure, I used to work with Skitch a lot with the New York Pops, and I thought Skitch had got it and then something happened to them, and you know Skitch is dead. I don‟t know what happened to them. Because it was more than just Bach transcriptions, it was everything. JD: Right, so even Brahms scores and Mahler scores?

21

VB: Everything, everything. JD: Did he write them out? VB: No he didn‟t write „em out, he didn‟t write „em out, but there‟d be paste overs. He didn‟t re-write the piece, but he did change the balance. You know, four clarinets here. The second clarinet part you‟d see a circle, there‟d be a circle or a parenthesis or something you know if there were two people playing. He didn‟t you know, rewrite the music that I know of. I remember going to the opening concert, I forget what season in Houston. And it was at the music hall, which is where the Houston Symphony played for a long time, it was a great hall. And I remember the opening concert started with the “Star Spangled Banner.” And we‟re out in the audience; I think, I had tickets for the fourth row. It was great. I was there with my roommate, a horn player, and he takes his bow. Takes his bow, opening concert of the season. Then he, without turning around completely, he goes like that. (Makes a cueing/downbeat gesture) Without looking back, he gives a cue to the snare drummer, a guy named Jimmy Simon, a New Yorker, he was from New York. Really good percussionist and you heard this barrrrrrrr (rolls his tongue loudly), it was like, he knew he had to play, but he wasn‟t ready and so he threw the sticks down. It wasn‟t like a snare drum roll before the “Star Spangled Banner” when they start it very barrrrr (soft and even tongue roll noise). It was like bittle, bittle, bittle, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah until he finally got it going, but it scared him to death, I‟m sure, because obviously he‟d never done that that way. Now these days and times, people criticize people like that he rehearses in one tempo, rehearses the piece in one tempo and then he changes everything without giving any indication at the performance. Stoki did that. A little unpredictable, reacting to the moment, being alive. JD: It must have been such a different orchestra in New York at that time. I mean, they had only had the Philharmonic up until then, right? VB: I guess there were visiting orchestras, I can‟t remember, at Carnegie Hall, but I don‟t think there were that many visiting. It certainly wasn‟t like it is now. The concerts were fairly well attended in the sixties because his reputation was very established. The guy had, you know, premiered some very important pieces of music in New York City. A lot of Schoenberg, Prokofiev, you know a lot of… all that Ives stuff. So ask me a question. I‟m running out of things to tell you.

22

JD: (laugh) Well, when you took the audition for ASO, were there other people auditioning with you, or were there other people in the house? VB: When you arrived at the apartment, it was like, you know, it wasn‟t like an elevator went up and there was a hallway or anything. It opened up right in the apartment. And somebody came out, you know, an assistant or a valet, somebody I didn‟t know, and took me to a room and sat down, and I sat down. And finally he came in. There was nobody else there. I didn‟t see anybody else. JD: So were you able to warm up and then he joined you? VB: Yeah, yeah. JD: Did he have any comments for you at the time? VB: Oh yeah, he listened to the way I played, “Play this.” He made me play a couple things twice. Because I was really reading. I didn‟t know many excerpts. I mean, he listened and I think he gave me tempo indications, he would give me that. He wouldn‟t conduct me exactly, but kind of a little conducting. He didn‟t say, make a crescendo here or a diminuendo there, he didn‟t do that, or any kind of stuff, like, and this is where somebody gets killed. JD: (laugh) I didn‟t know Simon Rattle did that! VB: Simon didn‟t used to do that. I got called up ten years ago or eight years ago, Philadelphia Orchestra was in town and Simon was guest conducting. And Ronnie Rueben, the bass clarinet player, had gall stones, very bad attack of gall stones, and they called me up. Pop Sirinek called me at four o‟clock in the afternoon to be at Carnegie at eight o‟clock with a lot of horns. The part called for E-flat clarinet, B-flat clarinet, A clarinet, bass clarinet. So I went there. I had never worked with Simon before but I knew him, you know. And I was struck by the fact that every phrase had a different look on his face, he was like visually choreographing the piece. This is sad, I‟m gonna look sad. This is angry, I‟m gonna look angry. It was very peculiar. Kind of “show-busy,” you got a feeling, you know? All you got from Stoki was basically the familiar guy. It was a great experience.

23

Interview with Janita Byars Dr. Janita Byars is a clarinetist and educator. She holds degrees from Pace University, Indiana University and the School of Music. She served as principal clarinet in the American Symphony Orchestra for five years and also performed with the New York City Ballet Orchestra before focusing on her career in education. Dr. Byars has taught in the South Bronx, has been a high school administrator in both Carthage and Rochester, New York and has served as Director of the Arts for the Rochester City School District. She was an associate professor at the University of North Carolina Pembroke, where she developed curriculum for the graduate department in music education. Dr. Byars continues to perform recital and chamber works. She currently resides in Jamestown, New York.55 JD: I‟m doing doctoral work at Florida State University right now and started researching Leopold Stokowski and the American Symphony. There‟s actually a list that exists that has the names of everyone who auditioned for him, and I saw your name on the list. I had also heard from some other people that you played in the orchestra with him. JB: Yes, I played five years. JD: What years were you there? JB: 1963 to 1968. JD: When you went to audition for the orchestra, what was that experience like? JB: Well, I actually have a list of the music I played…Are you ready? Ok, these were excerpts. He didn‟t have me play extensive parts of these, I mean this is a long list, but just sections of these. Beethoven Symphony Six, Rimsky-Korsakov Scheherazade, Schubert Unfinished, Tchaikovsky Symphony Number Four, Beethoven Number Three and Four, Debussy Afternoon of a Faun, Rimsky-Korsakov Introduction to Coq D’Or, Shostakovich Symphony Number One. That‟s what I played. JD: So, what was the process like? Did you have to apply or call for an audition time? JB: Well, yeah. I contacted him through the orchestra. My teacher was Robert McGinnis, who played under him in Philadelphia. I graduated from Indiana University. I got my Bachelor degree in woodwinds, and I was selected to compete for a Performer‟s Certificate,

55. Erin Berry, “Professional Profiles Magazine,” University of North Carolina Pembroke, http://www.uncp.edu/home/acurtis/Courses/ProfessionalProfiles/Magazines/ProfProf20032004.pdf (accessed October 28, 2010).

24 which I also got. So, I had gotten married and moved to New York, and McGinnis suggested that I contact Stokowski because this was just in the summer between year one and two of the American Symphony. So, I was twenty when I auditioned; I graduated from college when I was twenty. I went to his penthouse on Fifth Avenue, I think around 88th Street or so. And he showed me to his son‟s room to warm up. You know it was one of the two boys by Gloria Vanderbilt. And in his bedroom he had an extensive collection of little tin soldiers, just a little bit of trivia. So, anyway, I started the audition. He conducted me. Things like attacks, dynamics, changes in tempi, to see how responsive I was. Then I got a letter saying the orchestra was full. Then I got a phone call asking me to come and play. JD: Were they back to back or was there some time…? JB: I would say two or three weeks in between. So, I started the season. Bernard Portnoy was first clarinet. JD: Oh, how was that, playing with Bernard Portnoy? JB: Well, you know, he and McGinnis were old rivals, so you know I was the student of a rival. Plus, Stokowski had this thing with taking initiative on behalf of women. There were very few women clarinetists in major symphonies in 1963. JD: You know, I wondered about that and wanted to ask you about that, if the American Symphony was different regarding race and gender in the sixties. JB: Well, that was a stated objective that gave him license with the unions. He set up the orchestra allegedly as a training orchestra. For example, in my section, Portnoy was supposed to be the “master,” I was supposed to be kind of the “apprentice.” The next year, well he let Portnoy go…Bill, what was his name? Bill, he died a couple of years after that, but the year started with Bill, he graduated from Juilliard. He played a couple of concerts, and then he was fired. I moved over to first clarinet in November of 1964. And I played clarinet supposedly as the “master” with apprentices who came and went. I actually lost count of the number of clarinetists that filled that second chair. It had to be close to twenty over the five years. Yeah, they would come in, and I don‟t know what kind of list you have, but it must be pretty long for clarinetists. He had this little black book, maybe that‟s what you‟ve got.

25

JD: That might be it! I found the notebook in the archives at the University of Pennsylvania, and it had a list of every instrumentalist, it was sectioned off by instrument, with people listed for substitutes and everyone, basically. JB: Well, he would come around and bring this book to me, and he would say, “Do better. Do better.” As in, here are these people waiting to take your seat. It was great training, frankly. In the rest of my life, I don‟t know if you know anything about what I‟ve done, but I‟ve been in educational administration and you know nothing fazed me because I was trained by the best. Yeah, he was brutal. But you know like I say, he had gone to the union and gotten these special dispensations because he put it to them from the standpoint that he was furthering the education and development of young musicians and women and minorities. I mean I‟m sure you‟ve heard about Elayne, I can‟t remember, Elayne, the African-American timpani player? JD: Jones, right? JB: Oh, Jones, right. I mean that was really such a visible persona and to have an African-American woman doing the job. So, you know, he got dispensations from the union. We would play in D.C. and have to come back the same night because he told them he couldn‟t stay away from his home. So, he didn‟t have to pay for the orchestra to stay over. A lot of things he talked the union into treating us as an aberration. It was really quite an experience. As I said there was this revolving chair. Worse in the clarinets than any other section. , they‟re a dime a dozen, but the flute section was more stable than clarinet. And these clarinetists would come in very anxious to please him. He came early. One of my hallmarks was arriving an hour or more before the beginning of the rehearsal. I grew up in Texas, in a small town in the panhandle, and I didn‟t really grow up listening to orchestras. So, I would go into the symphony office as soon as the music would come in for the next concert, and I would practice my brains out! Anyway, I would come to rehearsal early and at some point the second clarinetist would come in, and they would want to go and greet him. And I would tell them, don‟t do that. And they would. And many times, they wouldn‟t be back because he really valued that time prior to rehearsal. He studied his score and wrote notes in the music that frankly, I don‟t think he wanted people to see. And they would go up and introduce themselves and you know, he would just simply be adrift. But, we were doing a recording…If you‟ve heard that recording and listen to the clarinet part carefully, you would probably know

26 that the first half is one clarinetist and the second half is a different one on first clarinet because the tone and interpretation are very different. I arrived early at that rehearsal, got the first clarinet part and started working on it. [The second clarinet player] came in and took it away from me. He sat down and he just slid the music, the first clarinet music, over onto his stand and started playing it. Stokowski looked up and kind of raised his eyebrow. And I went up at some point and asked what his wishes were. And [the second clarinet player] was kind of there, over my shoulder, so Stokowski said, well you, Janita, play the first half, and you do the second half. But then [the second clarinet player] was fired, never came back. You know these clarinetists waited to come and when they got the call to come they just didn‟t understand. [That second clarinet player] had played a concert or two before the recording. See what Stokowski did, you generally have the standard concert repertoire for the orchestra. You would have an overture, a classical symphony or something, then intermission and a major work or two or whatever. And so the “apprentice,” so to speak, at least in the clarinet section, the never switched, flutes did some, and did, but the other person would play the overture and like the concerto. I would play second on that and then I would play first on the major works. And so that‟s what [that particular second player] had done and then he came to the recording session and decided to go for it. It only worked temporarily, but if you ever hear that recording, surely you would know. That there‟s a major difference between the clarinet for the first four movements and the clarinet at the end. But I played first on the Ives Fourth recording. JD: I‟ve read that that was such a tremendous concert and a tremendous recording session. JB: Oh yeah, well we had ten rehearsals and three conductors. It was wonderful, really quite an experience hearing that emerge from the shadows as a valid member of the repertoire. JD: That‟s so exciting. I wanted to ask you too, just going back to the women in the orchestra and other minorities in the orchestra, if there were other orchestras in New York that were doing similar things at the time…? JB: No. No way. It took many, many, many years. I had some really terrible experiences. My husband at the time was first oboe with the Goldman Band in the summers and I of course needed work in the summer and I went to Goldman and asked him if I could audition. And I was playing first clarinet; it wasn‟t like I wasn‟t a proven entity. And he said no, that he‟d

27 never had any women in the band and that the band shell only had one bathroom. And I was on unemployment during that summer. So, I complained, but you know this was before the equal rights amendment, so there was nothing I could do about it. There was no legal recourse. JD: I was reading about the New York Philharmonic at that time also. When they first started hiring women, they had no women‟s locker room or women‟s bathroom at the hall. But that‟s really unique about the American Symphony. Do you think it helped to promote women and more minorities? JB: Oh, surely it did! Stokowski was such a visible icon. So, yes, that was a tremendous contribution. David Weber was the first clarinetist of the New York City Ballet Orchestra and he always broadcast to everybody that, “No woman will ever play in my section.” David had a heart attack and they moved over the E-flat clarinetist to first clarinet and I played E-flat, and at that time the repertoire featured E-flat. A lot of arrangements by Hershy Kay, who loved E-flat clarinet. So when he came back, because the ballet orchestra was entering contracts with fewer services required per week so they were starting to hire subs. So the time came when they hired me as a sub to play E-flat, Stars and Stripes and Union Jack and some other things. And David turned his back to me and played that night with his back to me. Things got a little better gradually, but he was very angry. Yeah, it‟s very different looking at where things are now. That would just be totally ridiculous. People kind of understood that that was hard for David, so they didn‟t come down so hard on him. But like I say, it did improve. We actually talked. JD: (laugh) How was it working with Stokowski for five years? JB: Wonderful. Wonderful and challenging. I went back to get my doctorate and I gave a Carnegie Hall recital. I had really hoped he would come, to my doctoral recital. He sent a note. I might have that note buried somewhere. I do have a couple of letters from him. He would write from time to time. At the end of the season he would write a letter to certain people just saying thank you for your excellent work, whatever. JD: I just wanted to ask you a few more questions about the audition that you went through. When you were there, was it a typical audition? Were there other musicians auditioning? JB: No. JD: So, it was just one-on-one with Stokowski then? JB: Yes.

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JD: Again that seems like such an unusual process compared to today where we have screened auditions. JB: Yes, it was his orchestra. Period. JD: It‟s so exciting, especially some of the works that he premiered with American Symphony, especially like you said the Ives. It just sounds like it was an incredible experience for a lot of people. JB: There was a sense of excitement. They had musicologists there, listening. And of course so many hymns were imbedded in the music. I was talking to one of the musicologists in an intermission and I remember showing him my music, because I grew up in Protestant-ville, the panhandle of Texas and I was showing him how this particular line was “Washed in the Blood of the Lamb,” other quotes here and there. And just the spirit of discovery was exciting. Yeah, it certainly started my whole professional life. You know they say everything is timing, and my goodness, it is. I‟ve always been very grateful to have had that experience.

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Interview with James Corwin James Corwin is a freelance clarinetist. He has performed as E-flat and bass clarinet with the American Symphony Orchestra, as principal clarinet with the Harkness Ballet Orchestra, and as a member of the Staten Island Symphony Orchestra, the Goldman Memorial Band, the Garden State Symphonic Band, the Seuffert Band and the Staten Island Chamber Music Players. Mr. Corwin has also participated in the Marlboro Music Festival and has performed and recorded with such artists as Harold Wright and Jaime Laredo. He holds degrees from Mannes College of Music and City College of New York, and his teachers include Alexander Williams, Harold Wright and Kalmen Opperman. After having studied conducting with Leopold Stokowski, he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study conducting with Franco Ferrara at the Academia St. Cecilia in Rome, Italy. Mr. Corwin currently resides with his wife in New York City.56 JD: Well, thanks so much for agreeing to talk to me; I really appreciate it. JC: Yeah, no problem. JD: I was just wondering, I have here that you had auditioned for Stokowski, and I was just wondering if you could describe the experience. JC: Well, I was fortunate enough to play with the American Symphony as basically bass clarinet and E-flat clarinet for approximately 1964 through 1969. And the whole thing was a really great experience for me as a young player. Now is there any particular description you‟re interested in here? Any part of it that you‟re most interested in? JD: Well, I‟m particularly interested in the audition process, but also how it was to work with Stokowski in the orchestra as well. JC: Oh, ok, well, so I‟ll go over my experience. It was wonderful, actually, very, very unique. Basically what Stokowski was doing in those days, I don‟t know, you may be familiar with this already, rather than having an audition when there was a vacancy in the orchestra, which had just been recently formed a couple years before, I don‟t know exactly, in fact you probably do, but I don‟t. He would hold auditions all the time and make a waiting list of people that he thought would be qualified even if he didn‟t have a place for them to be now, you know, to be at the moment. And that‟s what happened in my case, and you know in many people‟s case, I think. I had heard that he was auditioning and I called him up.

55. Garden State Symphonic Band, “Personnel, James Corwin,” Garden State Symphonic Band, http://home.comcast.net/~gssband/Personnel/JamesCorwin.html (accessed October 28, 2010). 30

JD: That‟s great, you called him directly? JC: Yeah, I may have spoken to a secretary, I don‟t really remember, but I had the number for him, I called him up. And this by the way is a similar experience to what a couple of other people have told me. This is the way he was doing things, which was quite different from the way orchestras operate today. So I set up this appointment and I went up there. By the way, are you a clarinetist? JD: Yes, I am. JC: So, you‟re doing this from the stand point of clarinetists? JD: Yes, absolutely. JC: Ok, anyway, I‟m just asking so I know how much to explain or not. Anyway, so of course Stokowski was a big celebrity, more than almost any conductor, except for maybe Toscanini. And so this was, you know, quite a unique thing, and I remember going to his apartment on Fifth Avenue and taking the elevator up and you know when you got off the elevator, the elevator opened up into the apartment because his apartment was the whole floor. Which was amazing and I had never had that experience before, of being in that type of environment. In fact, I‟ve only been to one other place like that since, really. So, you know, a beautiful apartment, overlooking the Central Park reservoir, I think it was on the eighth floor, or something like that. And I can‟t remember whether he greeted me at the elevator, or I think that he may have had a secretary or some type of assistant do that. But anyway, I remember going into his apartment. When I auditioned for him, it was very personal because it was just myself and Stokowski, there was nobody else there. If there was an assistant, the assistant had either left the room or was sitting in a corner, I don‟t remember, but basically, he conducted the audition by himself. And when I say conducted, he actually did conduct you in the audition for part of it anyway. I‟m sure he had me play a piece, I don‟t remember what I played, but I do remember that he put some orchestral excerpts on the music stand, I think one was Tchaikovsky Fourth. And he conducted and wanted me to follow him. That was something that he was very interested in; to make sure I could follow the conductor. Which is incidentally something he always used to talk about all the time in rehearsals, he always used to say, “Follow conductor.” He had a funny way of talking. Yeah, he was very clear in his beat, and he wanted to make sure you were looking and you followed him. Nobody could argue with that because as I say, he was very easy to follow. But

31 anyway, he conducted me. And then the funny part of the story which has more to do with me than him in a way, was that he, after I finished playing on the B-flat and A clarinet, he said, “Very good, very good. Do you play bass clarinet?” Now I was a very cocky kid at the time. I was twenty-one or something like that. And I said sure, but the truth was I had never played the bass clarinet in my life. So, he said, “Very good, very good. Well, we don‟t have any openings right now, but when we do, our contractor, Mr. Katz, will call you.” The contractor then was David Katz, who was also the conductor of the Queens Symphony. Anyway, so, I forgot all about it and about a year later I got this phone call from David Katz. And actually a friend of mine who was a violinist happened to be visiting at the time and he said, “That‟s Stoki‟s personnel manager, you know.” So he, David Katz, says, “Well, maestro tells me you play bass clarinet.” And I said, “Yes, I do.” This was at the beginning of the week. So, he says, “Well, Friday morning we‟re having a children‟s concert at Carnegie Hall. We‟re going to do a rehearsal on Thursday,” I think maybe it was Thursday, “and rehearse and do the performance on Friday, can you do that?” So I said, “Sure!” So, I went down to one of the music stores that existed in New York in those days that rented instruments to professionals, and I rented myself a bass clarinet. And I brought it to my lesson and I started practicing scales and what not. And you know, it was such an old bass clarinet. I think it had a rubber band on it, you know, and it had a double octave key. Really antique. I had never seen a bass clarinet with a double octave key! I didn‟t know what it was. I brought it to my lesson, actually Alex Williams was my teacher, he had been solo clarinet in the NBC with Toscanini for the last five years of the NBC. So, he explained to me how the double octave key worked, and so forth and so on, and so I practiced, you know, I was woodshedding away. And I went down to the rehearsal, and you know, everything went very smoothly because all of the bass clarinet parts in the music were you know background parts, like low register, whole notes, quarter notes, type of thing. One of them I remember was the Berlioz Rakoczy March, I think, if I‟m pronouncing it right, you know which is just bass clarinet playing around the lowest octave of the instrument the whole time, if you‟re familiar with the piece. So, I thought, this is great, this is no problem, piece of cake. So then we had the performances, we had two performances the next day. And this was with Stokowski conducting, you know, he

32 really liked to conduct the children‟s concerts. He loved doing things with children. And incidentally, he had a very interesting seating set up, are you familiar with the seating set up? JD: I‟m somewhat familiar. I‟ve read that he liked to use a lot of different ways of seating? JC: Well, the way he did it the whole time I was there, and the guest conductors didn‟t necessarily do this, when we had the guests. When he was there, or I guess his assistant conductors thought they had to do it too, he had the woodwinds where the cellos normally sit, in other words on the conductor‟s right, on the outside of the stage. Yeah…he really wanted the woodwinds to be clearly heard and the different colors and that meant that the bass clarinet was actually sitting on the edge of the stage. That‟s the way it was set up. You had the oboe, the first row of woodwinds with the oboes on the outside so the English horn would be on the end by the audience, then the flutes were next to them and the second row was the clarinets with the principals in the middle so the bass clarinet was on the very end by the audience. And then you had the bassoons and the contrabassoons. Anyway, we‟re all set up like that and I‟m ready. Carnegie Hall was full with kids. And you know I‟m sitting there very complacently, because you know as I said, the music was quite easy. And all of a sudden in the middle of the concert, Stoki said, “Now boys and girls, I‟d like to show you a flute.” So, the flute player played a little excerpt. And I‟m sitting there, still pretty complacent, you know. And then he says, “And the flute has a little brother.” The piccolo player plays something. By this time, I‟m starting to pay attention a little more. And then he says, “Now we‟re going to hear the oboe.” And the oboe player plays something. And then he says, “The oboe has a big brother.” And I think, “Oh here we go, I‟m really in for it now.” And I think what I‟m going to play because I don‟t know any bass clarinet excerpts or anything like that. And, so sure enough, he did the clarinet and then he did the clarinet‟s big brother. And so I didn‟t know what to do, so actually what I did was, I just improvised something in a classical style, sort of sounded like a Rose study or something. So, he gave me this very funny look, like a raised eyebrow, as if to say, “What was that?” you know. But I guess he liked it because he kept calling me. And you know by the second concert, I certainly had some excerpts memorized. But, you know, I still remember, the whole bass clarinet was covered with perspiration when I was done. So that was my introduction to Stokowski and actually my introduction to the bass clarinet as well. And my own personal history with it; then I really

33 started practicing it and I became you know somebody who I believed could actually play the bass clarinet like a real instrument, and not just somebody who picks it up, you know. So, the orchestra basically had two regular clarinets at the time and he would add bass or E-flat, which usually was me. And then if there were four clarinets, I‟d usually play E-flat; he‟d bring in someone else to play bass. You know I remember we also did Rite of Spring, and I played second bass clarinet. I mean, one of the things I can tell you about the orchestra was that it was a really, really great chance to play with some of the top professionals. When I first got in the orchestra the principal clarinet was Bernard Portnoy. So you know, he had been solo clarinet in Philadelphia, he was a professor at Juilliard at the time when we did Rite of Spring, I remember playing second bass clarinet to, he brought in Paul Howland, who was like the top freelance bass clarinet in New York in those days. And you know there were a lot of people in the orchestra like that. Ted Weis was the first trumpet. Davis Shuman, who was professor at Juilliard, was first for a while. So forth and so on. So it was a really great chance to play with these, this caliber of players, see what they did and how they did it, you know. It was a wonderful experience. As I said I was there for four or five years. Playing with him was great and also he got wonderful guest conductors, like Ernest Ansermet. We did Daphnis and Chloe number two with Ernest Ansermet, which was, (laughs) that was unbelievable. I mean, I could go on and on, describing in detail. These guys, these conductors, Karl Böhm, Paul Kletzki, some of the really top-notch people came in and guest-conducted. Jussi Jalas, who was Sibelius‟s son-in-law, did an all-Sibelius program. We had, uh, did a program. He conducted. I remember he did a Schumann symphony, I think he did the Spring Symphony. He also played and conducted the Bruch G minor Concerto. I can‟t remember what the overture was, you know. It was an amazing experience to play with these kind of legendary people who really were quite wonderful. JD: So, most of the orchestra was a combined orchestra of professionals and young musicians? JC: Well, it was young musicians of a professional level. I mean, it wasn‟t kids. Actually, my wife and I were the youngest people in the orchestra. We were just recent graduates. My wife was playing violin at the time. She‟s now a violist with the New Jersey Symphony, but she was playing violin in those days. He used to get a big kick out of that, you know that there was a couple of married couples in the audience, I think he liked to think that

34 we, I mean in the orchestra, I think he liked to think that we met there even though we really didn‟t. You know he had that kind of a thing. In fact, you know, it was very diverse in terms of age, in terms of gender, because you know in those days you didn‟t see that many women, but he had lots of women in the orchestra, including the timpani player, Elayne Jones, who‟s out working in California now, Los Angeles, I think. I don‟t know exactly what, but she‟s still actively playing. It was racially diverse which was you know also not so common in those days, but we had people of different colors, all that sort of thing. And I think that he really wanted to give people opportunities, and so for those of us who were on the younger end this was just great. We had at one point, I‟m trying to think, was our first horn player before he went to Chicago. He was like the young up and coming horn player in New York in those days. Everybody said this guy‟s going to have a very great future and then he became principal in Chicago…So there were pretty fine people. Another just human interest point, another married couple in the orchestra was Michael Gilbert and Yoko Gilbert. They went on to the Philharmonic, and so forth and so on and their son [is , current music director of the New York Philharmonic]… But it was really a great experience and he was a wonderful conductor, I thought. I think most people thought so. I mean, he could be pretty tough. That thing about watching the conductor, he was very strict about that. You know, and he wasn‟t adverse to singling somebody out. I remember one time he really embarrassed some poor cello player looking somewhere else. He stopped the orchestra and said, “You sir,” you know that‟s the way he talked to people, “You sir,” and he started pointing his finger at the person, you know, except he was pretty old, so his finger was pointed kind of crookedly. “You sir, why didn‟t you watch conductor?” That‟s the way he talked, very funny. “Why didn‟t you watch conductor? Why did you look over there? Watch conductor!” The poor guy‟s squirming like a jellyfish, you know, because this was all so, a freelance orchestra and nobody had a contract, except maybe the concertmaster. So you could be, I guess technically not even fired, it‟s just they didn‟t have to call you back. So you could be there and then not be there the next time, you know? He didn‟t hesitate to remind people, “We have a long waiting list.” He also did that with, in terms of rehearsals because rehearsals used to start at ten o‟clock and he liked everybody to be there at nine-thirty, looking over the music…he was very explicit about it. He would say, because he was there early too. He‟d be sitting up there on his

35 conductor‟s stool and looking at the music and looking at his watch and looking around the room to see what everybody was doing, mostly that was what he was doing, looking at the people. He sometimes would say at the beginning of rehearsal, “Our rehearsals start at ten o‟clock. You don‟t have to come here any earlier than ten o‟clock, but some of us like to get here a half-hour early and look over the music. And that‟s your decision, but we also make decisions. And we have a long waiting list.” He would mention that waiting list. Like I say, he could be pretty tough, although I have to say that my relationship with him was, you know, I mean, I didn‟t go out of my way to talk to him a lot, or anything, you know, but if I had some music to show him or a question about the music I would bring it up to his stand you know before the rehearsal or something like that. He was always very, I thought, very respectful and nice and when I needed a reference at one point, I was applying for a Fulbright grant, he wrote me a very nice letter. And I also went to one, he had these conducting seminars in his apartment, I went to one of those which were very nice. It wasn‟t very difficult to get in to, at least if you were in the orchestra. JD: Was that just on how to conduct? JC: Yeah, it was an aspiring conductor‟s seminar; I was interested in conducting in those days, so I went. But, you know, I always found him very pleasant to work with; he had a great ear. Sometimes the bottom of the orchestra wouldn‟t be together with the top and you can hear that on some of the recordings, too, I don‟t know why. You don‟t hear it all the time, just once in a while you would hear that thing, the difference between the bottom and the top. But he had a very, very clear beat. In fact he was famous for having these very graceful hands and stuff which might suggest that he might be very vain or something like that, poetic or something. But he had a click on every beat. I could imitate it for you. I guess that‟s the disadvantage to having the interview on the phone! He had a very precise, even though his beat was very flowing, it was very precise, and I always felt that that was the reason that the orchestra played with such a beautiful sound because you were very comfortable with him, you always knew where you were and what to play. He was very, very good that way. You could relax and especially with the strings if the conductor is very precise without being tense, you could get this very lush string sound that he was famous for that no one else could equal. You know, and I heard a story that his kids were in private school, you know one of the fancy schools in New York City, and they had like the middle school concerts and their orchestra

36 concerts, something like that, so he went to it and they asked him to conduct so he conducted a movement and even though it was a middle school orchestra and it didn‟t play any better than any other middle school orchestra, but, you know you could still hear that sound. He still had some way of transmitting that sound, even if it was filtered through the skills of middle school kids. Yeah, he really had something very special. You know he‟s one of those few who really had that special thing, that special gift that way. Yeah, and very sensitive to timbre. I remember one time he told the clarinet, this was when Bill Lewis was playing first clarinet, and you know I think Bill transposed something on to B-flat clarinet and he said, “No, no, play it on the A clarinet. It‟s better on the A clarinet.” JD: He could just tell the timbre…? JC: He could hear stuff like that, yeah, very sensitive to timbre, you know. What you can tell if you listen to his old recordings because that‟s one of the characteristics. So, I guess that‟s what comes to mind. I don‟t know if you have any specific other specific questions I could try to answer. JD: You know, I think that really covers it. I‟m just mostly interested in knowing about the audition experience and for those people who had played under him, what that experience was like. It just sounds like it was a wonderful thing. JC: Yeah, it was great. It was very unique, you know, especially for somebody who you know, you usually don‟t find something like that where something like this is being done by somebody who‟s at the top of the profession. JD: Right, and it seems like it was a unique orchestra in New York at that time as well. JC: Right, right, absolutely, you know. The concerts were very, very good I think, you know. He had a tremendous gift for Wagner, I remember we did excerpts from some of the operas. I had the chance to do the bass clarinet part to Tristan. You know it‟s wonderful to get a chance to play, he had a gift, you know a real gift, it was really a drama, even though you were playing the excerpt without a singer, it was very you know he really brought out the drama in the music. It was quite outstanding. Yeah, yeah I feel very fortunate, you know, when I think about it and how few people get this kind of experience. And the guest artists, Ernest Ansermet comes to mind. Wonderful in his way, different from Stoki. I can tell you a little story about him if you‟re interested.

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JD: Absolutely. JC: Well, just, one thing about Ansermet, you sound like a young person, you never saw him conduct, right? JD: I‟ve never seen him. JC: But you probably know who he is? JD: Yes. JC: Some people don‟t. I mean, some people today haven‟t heard of Frank Sinatra, so…at any rate. We were doing Daphnis with Ansermet and of course he had, well he was a very un-flamboyant conductor. I had already seen him when I was in Boston and I had seen him guest conduct the Boston. And in spite of his brilliant history and all that, with all the great music of the twentieth century, it was a simple beat, nothing dramatic to watch at all. It was a very clear, simple beat, no moving around or anything like that, you know. Very business-like. So, when we did the Daphnis number two, again here‟s a piece that he had conducted for fifty years. I had a recording of his at home that was, my teacher had given me which was by no means a new recording. It was probably one of the first recordings made of the piece. Well, it was the complete ballet on the recording but we just did the second suite as I mentioned. And, you know, so here he is up there, just giving this kind of beat, he‟s looking at the score, I‟m sure he could have written out the score from memory, you know, he was a mathematics professor in addition to being a conductor, so I‟m sure he could have written the score from memory. But he‟s looking at the score, not looking too much at the orchestra, you know we‟re doing the opening you know where it‟s supposed to be before the sun comes up. You know and all that fast clarinet stuff is going on and (sings main theme) coming up in the basses and cellos and all that. Then you get to the part where the sun comes up. So here he is giving this simple beat, like he was chewing gum or something, I don‟t know. Anyway, just like totally flat, when we got to that part where the come in and the sun comes up, he raised his arm up above his head, that‟s all he did. The whole orchestra, I even can‟t describe… It was like the sun coming up. I‟m still thinking about it. It was like the whole orchestra exploded with this one gesture, you know. It was like, ahh, that‟s real conducting, wow. You know, coming out of that? And he also had tremendous ears. He heard everything and if you weren‟t playing it cleanly, he let you know. If you were, he was very appreciative. And you know it was a wonderful experience

38 because I had heard of him and had records of his, you know. And of course if Stokowski hadn‟t formed the orchestra, none of us would have had those experiences.

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Interview with Dave Hopkins Dave Hopkins is a classical and jazz clarinetist. After finishing his Master of Music degree at Indiana University, he won a position with the Vancouver Symphony. Eventually making his way to New York City, Mr. Hopkins freelanced with various orchestras, including the American Symphony, the New York City Opera and the Metropolitan Opera, and he was a founding member of the St. Luke‟s Chamber Ensemble. He began to take an avid interest in jazz and performed with singers Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Cleo Laine and Lena Horne. Mr. Hopkins also performed on Broadway in such shows as Candide, Jesus Christ Superstar, Barnum and On the Twentieth Century. He continues to perform at jazz festivals around the world and his jazz trio can be heard at Smith’s in Midtown Manhattan. Mr. Hopkins resides in New York with his wife.57 DH: So anyway coincidentally last night I went to a photo exhibit and there was a picture of Leopold Stokowski playing the piano! But he had an apartment on Fifth Avenue, and I was there. It was a huge apartment, and we were off at one end. And there were three women running around, some were filing stuff, some were cleaning, and I don‟t know what the other one was doing. They were all taking care of him in one way or another, you know. And he was very courteous and nice and what have you, and I played the standard audition, some excerpts, what have you, it lasted about an hour. And that was that. I had no idea he was keeping notes about anything! JD: (laugh) Well, did he ask for certain excerpts or you just came and played…? DH: Yeah, yeah. He asked for things and you know I came with music and he‟d say, “Play this for me.” I didn‟t get the job, needless to say, or I did, I subbed several times with the American Symphony while I was here in NY and then I was a founder of St. Luke‟s Orchestra. JD: Well, if I can ask you just another question about the American Symphony audition that you took: when you were taking it, you said that there were some women running around. Were there other musicians there who were also auditioning or was it just an individual thing? DH: No, I think I was the only one that was there; I was the only one that was there. They were taking care of business for him, I think one was working at his desk, trying to get some papers straightened around, I think maybe one was a cleaning woman and the other two

54. Dave Hopkins, “Bio,” Dave Hopkins-Jazz Clarinet, http://davehopkinsjazz.com/bio.php (accessed October 28, 2010). 40 were secretaries, or something, trying to keep his schedule together and his scores in the right place and everything. JD: So was that a typical audition in the sixties that you would go to someone‟s house to audition for them? DH: Well, he had it in his apartment, yeah, it was in a Fifth Avenue apartment. But I don‟t know if that was a typical audition. I wouldn‟t say it was a typical audition. Not everybody could afford an apartment like he had to start off with, you know…But he was very cordial, and I don‟t know what he wrote about me… JD: Oh, yeah, let me show you! He had very nice things to say, actually. These are actually from the archives down at the University of Pennsylvania, and he had this whole index at the beginning. So, you know it would say what page you were on. He typed up all of his notes. And there you go (pointing to his entry). He gave you all good marks. DH: Studied with McGinnis. Oh, Richard Stoltzman. I know Richard, too. He was with Opperman. I took a few lessons with Opperman too… Wow, he auditioned everybody. JD: It seems that he gave people scores from one to five. DH: I had a 4. “Possible, definite. Good type.”

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Interview with Frank Kowalsky Dr. Frank Kowalsky is the Joseph A. White Professor of Clarinet at the Florida State University. He holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music, the Manhattan School of Music and the Catholic University of America. He has performed as principal clarinet with orchestras around the country, including the Northwood Orchestra, the Naples Philharmonic and the Tallahassee Symphony and has been a member of the United States Marine Band, the Rochester Philharmonic, the Colorado Philharmonic and Music at Gretna. Dr. Kowalsky has also toured Europe as a member of the chamber group with the Trio Con Brio and as guest soloist with the Florida State Winds. He regularly appears with the Seattle Chamber Music Festival.58 JD: So, I have the list that Stokowski kept saying that you auditioned for him for the American Symphony, and I was wondering if you could just describe that experience. FK: Well, you know thinking back on it, I don‟t recall that it was for the American Symphony. Yeah, it wasn‟t like I was auditioning for the orchestra. My teacher said just play for him. It was like a lesson. That‟s all I thought it was. So, I went up there, and I played for him and afterwards he says, “Well, if we have an opening, we‟ll call you.” And that was a surprise because the point wasn‟t to get into the orchestra. The point was to play for him. So, let‟s see. It was in his apartment on Central Park, no on Fifth Avenue, overlooking Central Park. Some place up, he had the entire floor. It was one of those rather small buildings, rather small footprint, so I guess square building, but it was pretty big, still as an apartment, by New York standards, it was room after room after room. So in other words, I took the elevator up and I got out of the elevator and there‟s one door. JD: You‟re just there, right? FK: You‟re just there, right. So I knocked on the door. And his secretary showed me into a room, so I didn‟t get to see the apartment. I was funneled into a room that was near the front door. And you know I unpacked and I started warming up. And a few minutes later he walked in. And he introduced himself, and we shook hands and I started to play. What I had for him was A Set for Clarinet, by Martino. And I intended to play the first movement for him. So I got through the first page; I nailed it. It was just easy for me, not a problem. And he loved it!

55. Florida State University, “Faculty and Staff, Frank Kowalsky,” Florida State University, http://www.music.fsu.edu/Faculty-and-Staff/Faculty/Frank-Kowalsky (accessed October 28, 2010). 42

And I was just about to turn the page when it was clear that he says, “Ok great, terrific, let‟s do something else.” You know, so I never got to play past the first page. And then he took out… I can‟t remember if he had the parts or if I had excerpt books and he was leafing through it. But I think he probably had his own parts. I can‟t remember what I played. The only thing I do remember is Tchaikovsky Fifth, the solo in the second movement. And he worked with me a little bit, and wanted this great exaggerated rubato. And that was fine. JD: Did he just tell you what he wanted? FK: Yeah. Yeah, he conducted and sang it to me. And then, I didn‟t tell you this? And then he said, “Who do you study with?” And I said… I was so proud; I studied with Leon Russianoff, and I was about to say, “I study with..” No I said, “I study with Leon Russianoff.” Beaming, you know, “ I got the best teacher.” And he just dismissed him. He just said, “Bah.” Yeah. Right…I thought oh my god, what is he going to say that I should study with Joe Allard? Am I supposed to study with Kal Opperman? What? (laughing) Stanley Drucker? I couldn‟t imagine what was coming next, so he looked at me and he said, “I think you should study with,” and paused. “Kowalsky.” (made a noise as if a gong had gone off; eureka) He said, “It‟s time for you to think for yourself and for you to make your own decisions and for you to figure it out.” He said, “Sit down at the piano and play Mozart piano sonatas.” And I said, “But I don‟t play the piano.” He said, “It doesn‟t matter. Play them as slowly… just pick it out, one note at a time. Just figure it out. Just do it.” This was his advice to me. It was a very good lesson. And then he said, “Well very good. When we have an opening in the American Symphony Orchestra, we will call you.” I never heard from him again. JD: (laugh) And that was that. FK: That was that. But it was a wonderful experience. It was very eye-opening. Unforgettable, actually. JD: Were there any other people auditioning for him? FK: I didn‟t see anyone else that day, though they probably were. I don‟t recall seeing anyone else, like waiting some place. I think he had them come in so they could go right to that room and not stand around in the hallway or something. So he may have scheduled them once an hour, maybe he had two a day, I‟m just guessing, but I didn‟t encounter anybody else. JD: How did your experience playing for him compare to other auditions you had taken, you know around that same time?

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FK: Well, up to that time I hadn‟t taken symphony auditions. Yes, I did. Yeah. I took Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. It was just starting out. Ansel Brusilov had a chamber orchestra in Philly for not very long, just a few years. And when it was first starting up, I went and played an audition for them. I think that‟s really the only one. I did bass clarinet for Minnesota Orchestra in a hotel room in Syracuse. But there was no such thing as “behind a screen” then, if that‟s where you‟re headed. It was all, you know, who are you, play for me. JD: Right. And so in other auditions was it one-on-one with the conductor as well? FK: No. There was a committee. There were a few people there for the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. And Minnesota was like the guys in the clarinet section. Yeah, in fact I think I woke them up out of bed! I mean, there was no way. There was no way. Bass clarinet in the Minnesota Orchestra, it was the Minneapolis Symphony then. So I spent like one whole day at Eastman practicing the bass clarinet. I still remember the burning sensation in the back of my neck after playing bass clarinet for eight hours, cramming! And so I took a bus over, it took an hour or two and went up to the hotel room. They were on tour to play a concert. I didn‟t go to the concert; I didn‟t meet the conductor. I played for these guys, and they said, “Thanks, kid.” That‟s the last I ever heard of that. Clueless. So this for Stokowski was the only audition that was one-on-one, but then I didn‟t know it was an audition. I just thought it was, you know, I was just playing for him. JD: So, did your teacher set up the audition? FK: He just said call his secretary. I set it up, but I hadn‟t heard about it. He said why don‟t you just do that because it‟s a good thing to do. JD: So then were you playing in New York at that time? FK: No, I was getting my Master‟s degree. At Manhattan. JD: It sounds like the audition with Stokowski was a very unique experience.

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Interview with David Shifrin David Shifrin is an international clarinet soloist and professor at Yale University. He has served as principal clarinetist with the American Symphony Orchestra, the Honolulu Symphony, the Dallas Symphony, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the New York Chamber Symphony and the Cleveland Orchestra. Winner of the Avery Fisher Prize, Mr. Shifrin has given solo performances with orchestras around the United States, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony, the Denver Symphony and the Houston Symphony, among others, and around the world, including orchestras in Taiwan, Italy, Germany and Korea. He has also worked extensively with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York City, serving as its artistic director between 1992 and 2004. Mr. Shifrin‟s recordings have also received critical acclaim and he has been nominated for three Grammy awards. He is currently on the faculty at Yale University and resides in Connecticut.59 JD: I‟ve been doing this research on Leopold Stokowski and the American Symphony, and he kept this detailed list of everyone who auditioned for him and played for him. So, I found your name on the list, and I was wondering if you could describe the experience of playing for him. DS: Sure, the thing about his auditions that I found out very early on was that you didn‟t wait for there to be an opening in the orchestra; that he was always hearing and you could get an appointment. And, I knew the personnel manager, contractor, who had been a theory teacher at the high school I went to for a year. His name was Arthur Aaron, who also taught theory at the School of Performing Arts in New York, where I went to school for my first year of high school. So, I got his number from somebody and asked if I could get an appointment for an audition. Months went by, then I got a call saying you can go play for Mr. Stokowski on such-and-such a date. Yeah, I just went to his apartment, his home. I think I remember it was in the eighties on Fifth Avenue. He had this big apartment and you go to this library room with his piano there and it was just you and Stokowski, nobody else. JD: I was just going to ask if this was a typical kind of audition for that time period? DS: It was not at all typical. It was the only situation I‟ve ever heard of like that. There wasn‟t actually an opening. I experienced other auditions where you basically just went and

54. CM Artists New York, “David Shifrin,” CM Artists New York, http://www.cmartists.com/artists/david- shifrin.htm (accessed October 28, 2010). 45 played for the conductor. But it was when they had a specific opening. It‟s become much more standardized now, with going through the union and having specific audition procedures, first rounds behind the screen, special criteria for some people to be invited to the finals. But this is the only situation I knew of like this, where you played for this world-renowned conductor, just one-on-one in his study, in his home. And he sat there and wrote in that little notebook. That notebook was famous. That was the same notebook where he just listed the people who were coming to audition, but he took a lot of notes when you played for him and then once I was in the orchestra, whenever there was a guest conductor, you would see him up in the box taking notes. He would listen to what was going on in the orchestra and write things down. You know it was notorious, that book. JD: It‟s in the archives down at the University of Pennsylvania now. DS: Is that where you saw the list of people who auditioned for him? JD: Yeah, yeah, I found the list for the entire orchestra, every instrument. DS: Were there notes from rehearsals about this player or that in the orchestra playing well or not playing well? JD: You know, most of the notes from that particular notebook were from the auditions themselves, but I didn‟t get to all the material, so there could‟ve been another notebook strictly from rehearsals. DS: Did he make notes about how the auditions went? JD: He did. DS: What did he say about me?! JD: He had great things to say about you! He actually rated everyone in terms of tone, phrasing, technique and sight-reading, and you got tens in every category on a scale of one to ten and an eleven in technique. And he wrote down that you were a true artist. DS: You know this is something I never knew. I never, never heard anything about it, except that I got called up to play. I figured it must have gone ok. That‟s really nice to hear. I never did the research, so thank you so much for sharing that with me. JD: Now, when you went in to play for him, was there any set repertoire, like we have today?

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DS: No, no. He just said what would you like to play, and I think I probably played some of the Mozart Concerto and a cadenza or two from the Nielsen Concerto because I was doing that a lot around those days. JD: Right. DS: I had just played the Nielsen a lot that year and found it to be a fairly effective audition piece. And then I honestly don‟t remember all the things he asked. Then he just put a lot of excerpts on the stand. Then he‟d just talk. He‟d have a conversation and he asked if I played piano, and I said very poorly and he said well you should and gave this speech. I still remember this, because if you play the piano then you can just close the door and be in a room with Mozart whenever you play his sonatas, and encouraging orchestral instrumental player to not just play the one instrument, but to play the piano. Which I was never very diligent about, but… And then it was over and I forgot all about it. I don‟t remember what time of the year it was, but it was months and months later that there was an audition for principal clarinet in the Baltimore Symphony and uh, Frank Cohen got the job. I think I was runner-up. I was in the finals. That was another audition where you just played for the conductor, I think. I remember playing alone in a room with Comissiona, who was music director of Baltimore then. But Frank got the job and he had been co-principal in the American Symphony with Stokowski, so they had an opening because Frank was gone, and then I got the call, but it was months and months later after the audition. You never knew if anything was going to come of the audition and then all of a sudden I get a phone call asking me to start in September and it must have been in May or June to start in the fall. JD: And then how long did you play with the American Symphony? DS: I only played one season. You know Stokowski was eighty-nine then I believe. And everybody sensed that the orchestra would last as long as he did. And I received an offer to play principal in the Honolulu Symphony, couldn‟t get further away. I had planned to go to Juilliard for a Master‟s degree and I was going to study with Stanley Drucker and keep playing in the American Symphony. So, I called Stanley and asked for his advice, and he said take the job in Honolulu. There‟ll be a weekly check and you play every week instead of you know once or twice a month. The American Symphony was not a full time orchestra. And so I took his advice and it worked out fine, but I didn‟t get to play the last couple of seasons of Stokowski‟s

47 life span. He only stayed for a year or two and then moved back to London after I had left the orchestra. The American Symphony has reconstituted itself as a whole new entity now with Leon Botstein, but… JD: Right, I know that they‟re up at Bard during the summers, and they have a regular concert season, right? DS: Yeah, they do a number of interesting things, but at the time everybody had the sense that this existed as long as Stokowski was able to do it, so when I got an offer to something on a contract as a young man, very young man, getting the chance to go live in Honolulu, I thought, well this should be an interesting experience. But I always had mixed feelings about leaving. You know it was a great experience. JD: And I understand that the American Symphony, the way Stokowski really envisioned it, was that he included a lot more women and minorities in the ensemble? I don‟t know if you experienced that? DS: Yeah, women, and young people. You didn‟t have to have a lot of experience if he thought that you had something to offer. I was fortunate that, I think I had just had my twentieth birthday when I auditioned for him. And he didn‟t hold that against me. That was my first professional orchestra and I think that was the case for a lot of people. The first trumpet player was Gerry Schwarz, who then became principal of the Philharmonic and then conductor. Harold Jones was the co-principal flutist, so you had an African-American principal flutist, which was unusual forty years ago. And a lot of women. One of the women in the orchestra who was playing violin was the composer, Ellen Zwilich, who was a violinist back then, . JD: I‟ve heard that actually. And she does some work down here at Florida State. DS: She sure does. That‟s her home state. She‟d be a great one to talk with. You know, it was a very diverse group of people in that orchestra. JD: And how was Stokowski to work with in the orchestra for rehearsals and such? DS: Very inspiring at times. A little bit terrifying some times. You know, he knew what he was doing, I believe, but we didn‟t always! He had a rehearsal technique that I thought was very effective for such a diverse group of players with different levels of experience and different types of experience. We had four rehearsals for every program, and he went through the entire program, beginning to end for each rehearsal. I have to say, there wasn‟t a lot of

48 detail, but there was a lot of listening, and getting a sense of what he wanted just from doing it. And he would always rely on his assistant conductors going out into the auditorium and making notes that he would give to us in the next rehearsal. But you know if it was a two-hour program or eighty or ninety minutes worth of music, and a two and a half hour rehearsal, you would be sure that you, pretty much, and I‟m sure there were exceptions, and he wouldn‟t always do the concerto with the soloist at every rehearsal, but pretty much you played through everything at every rehearsal, so by the time you got to the concert, you had a lot of actual playing experience. I thought for that situation that was a good plan. A lot of conductors have a lot to say and then you realize at the end of the rehearsal that you haven‟t really played the piece, which is fine for an orchestra that may have played the standard repertoire many, many, many times. But with different levels of experience, I know for me at my first job, it was great to just be able to play things a lot. And he would come early and kind of snoop around back stage. And make note of who came early and who came late. And I was very, very startled one day. It was a chance for me, if I got there early, they‟d open up the hall and you could get on stage an hour before the rehearsal. So I liked to go, I took advantage of the chance to practice on the Carnegie Hall stage, you know, before the rehearsal when it was empty and quiet. And one day I was there and I was playing and I just was tremendously startled and realized Stokowski had sat down quietly next to me. He was just sitting there and looking over my shoulder. It just scared the daylights out of me. He did say something very nice, somewhat enigmatic, but nice, I remember this one thing that he said, he said, “You know many people will try to change the way you play, but don‟t let them.” I said, “Ok.” JD: (laugh) That‟s a good thing, I think. DS: I think so, yeah. JD: That‟s wonderful. It just sounds like it was a wonderful experience. DS: Yeah, it‟s nice to talk about it again. It was really quite, almost like a dream, to be a kid and get an opportunity like that. JD: Oh, of course. Thank you so much.

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Interview with David Singer David Singer is Professor of Clarinet and Coordinator of Chamber Music and Woodwinds at the John J. Cali School of Music at Montclair State University in New Jersey. He is a member of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and has been featured on several recordings by the ensemble. Mr. Singer has performed with Yehudi Menuhin at Carnegie Hall and has performed and recorded with Rudolf Serkin at the Marlboro Festival. He has given the world premiere performances of Four Settings by Melinda Wagner and Fortune by Charles Wuorinen. As a member of the Aulos when the ensemble won the Walter W. Naumberg Chamber Music Competition, he was instrumental in commissioning and recording Wind Quintet by John Harbison. Mr. Singer is also active in the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, often judging competitions for the group. He and his wife live in the New York City area.60 JD: Well, thanks again, I really do appreciate it. Right now I‟ve been researching the American Symphony and Leopold Stokowski, and most importantly, I guess, the whole audition process that he went through with that. And I actually have the list that Stokowski kept on all the musicians that played for him, and your name was on the list. So, I was just wondering if you could describe your audition experience with him. DS: You know, I mean, I do remember playing for him. I think it was around, I‟m just guessing, sixty-nine or seventy or something like that. I was at Curtis from sixty-seven to seventy-one. And then I went to Europe for a couple of years and then I came back, but I don‟t think that it, it was definitely early on, so I think it was during 1969 and I think… I mean what I remember is that I played for him because I heard that he was listening to people and he liked, he was interested in hearing young, talented people and I was definitely interested in playing for him because I had certainly heard about him going to Curtis and you know hearing the Philadelphia Orchestra. Every Saturday night we used to go. We were at the Academy of Music and we‟d walk down the street and hear the concerts and… I didn‟t see him conduct of course, but I‟d heard about him and so I wanted to play for him. I remember it was in Carnegie Hall. It wasn‟t in the hall, but it was in a room. I seem to remember playing for him and I remember there was a piano and there he was and I walked in and he was really very cordial, just couldn‟t have been nicer. And he heard you play a little bit. Then he wanted you to play some excerpts

58. Naxos, “David Singer,” Naxos, http://www.naxos.com/person/David_Singer/68870.htm (accessed October 28, 2010). 50 and he conducted. He would conduct me. I remember playing Tchaikovsky, it was Tchaikovsky Fifth, and I remember it was very romantic, putting fermatas over different notes and things I‟d never even thought about doing before. Certainly not the way it‟s written in the part. And he was rather animated. That white hair, I remember. Not particularly combed. He was a real artist. And it just seemed kind of surreal to walk into a room and there he was, you know. JD: Were there any other people auditioning for him at that time? DS: I think we all kind of… I think Dave Shifrin played for him, but I don‟t know of anyone else. Dave and I were classmates at Curtis together. But I don‟t know of anybody else. I probably would know the names of the people you know, but as far as I know, I think only Dave played for him. JD: How did you go about setting up the audition? DS: That‟s a good question. You know it makes sense if there was a part of an audition for the American Symphony, but I don‟t remember it being specifically for the American Symphony. For me, it was just something that I wanted to do. Maybe it was arranged through the American Symphony. Maybe he was hearing people just to have on a list through the American Symphony, so I wrote to them and perhaps they wrote me back saying, telling me when to show up, that‟s probably the most logical. I don‟t remember exactly how it was all set up. JD: Was this a typical audition for that time period? I mean, it‟s obviously not typical today… DS: No, I‟ve heard in the old days it used to be like that, even older than I am, but a typical audition would have been to play behind a screen, you know. Very impersonal, there‟s a hundred other people that day, you know. This was really very almost intimate. You‟re shaking his hand, he‟s in the same room as you, and you‟re playing for him. Very much atypical, which was what was interesting to me. I had the opportunity to play for Stokowski, I mean wow. So, I grabbed it. JD: Were you able to play whatever music you wanted? There wasn‟t a set repertoire for the audition? DS: I don‟t remember there being. He wanted to hear the Mozart Clarinet Concerto and I think I played a few movements. And then he wanted to hear Tchaikovsky‟s Fourth and Tchaikovsky‟s Fifth, and I think he wanted to hear me play Brahms Third and Capriccio

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Espagnol, you know sort of old standards. And Daphnis and that was what he wanted to hear. Let‟s see, what else did he want to hear? I don‟t remember, that was probably it. I remember it was very standard, but what I remember that was kind of unusual was that he, you know I‟m playing: (sings part of Tchaikovsky‟s Fourth Symphony and holds a certain note longer than usual). Strange. He liked, he wanted me to do different things like that. JD: Do you suppose that was to see if you were following him? DS: I‟m not sure! You know he was known for introducing all kinds of different things into the orchestra, you know, where the second cellos would sit, and bowings and all that kind of stuff. He was a revolutionary. And so, I don‟t know. I never played the piece with him in performance or anything like that. I don‟t know if it was a matter of his taste or to see if I would follow, I‟m not sure. JD: Did you end up playing with the American Symphony at all? DS: No, I never played with the American Symphony. Never did, to this day, I‟ve never played with them. JD: A lot of people that I‟ve spoken to have said the same thing, that it was just this audition, and that he had a list of people that he could call. DS: Yeah, I mean that‟s pretty much the way it‟s done anyway, but generally people will play for the contractor or they‟ll play for the principal of the section, that kind of thing, so that they have a list. In Orpheus we do the same thing. But this was playing for the guy himself, I mean that was what was so amazing, you‟re playing for the conductor, so that was great. JD: What an opportunity.

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Interview with Richard Stoltzman Richard Stoltzman is a clarinet soloist who was the first wind player to ever be awarded the Avery Fisher Prize. He holds degrees from the Ohio State University and Yale University, and his teachers include Keith Wilson and Kalmen Opperman. He has been a featured soloist with over one hundred orchestras internationally. Equally comfortable in both the classical and jazz genres, Mr. Stoltzman has performed and recorded with such varied artists as Emmanuel Ax, Yo Yo Ma, Chick Corea, Wayne Shorter, and Mel Tormé. He has received two Grammy awards for his recordings. Mr. Stoltzman currently resides in .61 JD: I was wondering if you could describe your experience? RS: Well, I just went up to his Fifth Avenue apartment, very huge place. It was like I‟d never been in an apartment like that. In all, probably six windows just facing Central Park. And lots of tapestry kind of things and a piano with some kind of brocade on it. It was kind of old, like going into some other century. I can‟t remember the circumstances. I was very new in New York and they said you should go and play for him, so I did play for him. But I didn‟t know orchestral repertoire or anything. And I wasn‟t planning on being in an orchestra. So he just let me play, so I played some, I don‟t remember what they were, I don‟t think they were excerpts, I just played something, maybe Brahms or something on the clarinet, Mozart or something. JD: So there wasn‟t a set repertoire? RS: Well, there probably was! But I wasn‟t prepared to do it. But he wasn‟t so keen on that. It wasn‟t like, ok can you play Midsummer Night’s Dream? He really didn‟t care. He was sort of just, he liked how I sounded I guess. They already had their people chosen and somebody had twisted his arm or said you should hear this guy anyhow. So he said well you know, I‟d love to have you in the orchestra, but we‟ve got the people, and maybe if you wanted to do bass clarinet or something. And I said I don‟t know. I never did because my life took another direction, but he was extremely gracious and mostly he just looked like, you know, like Fantasia. Very calm, like he looks. So it was sort of hard to believe that he didn‟t have middle people sort of you know doing things, it was just him. JD: Were auditions like that in that time period?

59. Richard Stoltzman, “Biography,” Richard Stoltzman, http://www.richardstoltzman.com/Biography.aspx (accessed October 28, 2010). 53

RS: No! No. What he was doing that I understood with this orchestra was trying to set a different tone for the orchestra. He didn‟t want to just have another orchestra in New York. I think he especially was interested in young people and he was interested in new music and he was also kind of wanting to shake things up a little bit, you know. Which is good. I mean he was that kind of character anyway, but I only met him once, so I don‟t know too much about him. I don‟t remember what happened with the orchestra. I think either he wanted to do something else or the orchestra didn‟t have enough funding. JD: Well, I know Leon Botstein is up there conducting them at Bard. RS: Oh yes, yes. It kind of got reincarnated and everything. But yeah, his venue was Carnegie Hall right? Whew! I would have loved to have played, but you know I had done a couple of auditions, but they were in hotel rooms. You just went to a hotel room and somebody, the orchestra manager plus maybe the conductor and somebody else would sit there and they would play, or you would play the prescribed audition things, you know. It was more like somebody told him to listen to me, so he said ok and he just listened to me. It‟s funny because I was kind of nonchalant about it. And he was extremely…what‟s the word? He was not full of himself or anything. Although he did have this accent, which later on people said he cultivated that accent. You know, people have all kinds of things that they want to believe or not believe about somebody who‟s whatever, a star or you know a big person. I don‟t know. But that was the comment that somebody made. I told them about the audition and that he sounded like he was from Europe or something. They said…he was born in Brooklyn or something! I doubt it! But at any rate, my main image was that this was not the typical audition because it was in his home. And it was relaxed and it was you know, elegant is the word. He looked elegant, and I felt elegant being there. JD: Were there other people auditioning at the same time? RS: No, no, no. It wasn‟t an audition for anything. That‟s what I‟m saying. They had their people. Somebody had asked him or had some influence over things and said you should hear this guy play the clarinet. And so he listened and you know he was favorably disposed, but he said we‟ve already got our people. And then he talked to, I think it was probably the guy who runs the orchestra, not that runs it, but does the hiring and said maybe we can hire him in bass clarinet for something that we‟re doing. But I wasn‟t thinking along that I would play bass clarinet. That just wasn‟t where I was. I wasn‟t anywhere. I was just in New York you know

54 and it was just a great opportunity to play for him. He made it a very high level of feeling. How do I say it? You didn‟t feel like you were just some kind of nothing playing for a great person. He listened quite attentively. I felt like a real musician, not some number. JD: That says something to his character. RS: I guess it did. I didn‟t think about it at the time. I never said this stuff. No one ever asked me about it. JD: Well, I appreciate you taking the time. And I thought I‟d just show you, he gave you wonderful marks! RS: This is…? (as he looks at the audition comments) JD: This is actually from the archives. RS: Oh my god. Isn‟t that interesting? JD: I mean he obviously thought very highly of you. RS: Wow, I‟m surprised that they kept these kind of records. JD: Yeah, they have all of his notebooks at the University of Pennsylvania in Philly. RS: Hmm, wow, I can‟t believe he said reading ten! This was my clarinet teacher. (pointing to Kalmen Opperman‟s name) He still has that phone number. He‟s almost ninety years old now. Ninety. Ninety is old. I have no idea how old Stokowski was. I have no idea. When you‟re kind of on the young side, everybody seems old! JD: (laugh) Well, thanks again. RS: Yeah, good luck with your paper.

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Conclusion The American Symphony Orchestra holds a unique place in music history, representing a bridge between the use of older audition practices for membership in a symphony orchestra which resulted in a very homogeneous orchestra and the development of screened auditions which led to more inclusive and progressive ensembles, both in terms of personnel and musical programming. Leopold Stokowski managed to create a diverse ensemble for young people that became one of the best training orchestras in the United States in the 1960s. The list that Stokowski kept on every musician to audition for him detailed the manner in which he chose artists for his orchestra. The interviews with some of the clarinetists who auditioned for the American Symphony Orchestra offer more insight regarding Stokowski and his audition process, as well as the diversity of orchestras in the 1960s. Perhaps most importantly, this research provides a glimpse into the musical culture in New York in the sixties, when the traditional definitions of what an orchestra looked and sounded like were stretched. Further research This treatise only touches the surface of the history of the American Symphony Orchestra and its players. Further study could be conducted to interview all of the clarinetists, all of the women or all of the minorities who performed in the American Symphony Orchestra. Unfortunately, roster lists from the Stokowski years burned in a fire in the early 1980s, so it would be difficult, if not impossible, to determine an exact list of women and minorities who performed with the American Symphony Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski. More research could also be carried out to better understand Stokowski‟s lists and what made him choose certain individuals over others. Additional studies may also include how the American Symphony Orchestra affected the national view of orchestras and orchestral musicians, and how it may or may not have contributed to the development of hiring practices in the musical world.

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APPENDIX A

ETHICAL PRACTICES FOR NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL AUDITIONS CODE

Preparation for Auditions

1. Notices of auditions should be given only for genuine vacancies, including newly created positions, which the management intends to fill as a result of those auditions, with no predeterminations having been made as to who will be hired. Musicians taking such auditions should only do so with the intention of accepting the position if it is offered. 2. Auditions should be advertised in appropriate places, including the International Musician and the central auditions office. Notices should be clear and complete, specifying the position intended to be filled by the auditions, the person to contact in response to the notice, and the dates that applications are due and that auditions will be held. Notices should appear far enough in advance of auditions for interested musicians to apply and to adequately prepare. 3. All applicants should be sent written responses to their applications. Invited applicants should be sent clear instructions setting forth the date, time and place of the audition, the complete audition repertoire (excluding sight-reading repertoire), and parts for announced excerpts not generally available. All parts supplied by the orchestra should be legible and identical for all candidates. 4. Applicants should be given notice that if they choose not to attend the audition they should promptly notify the personnel manager or other designated person.

Conduct of Auditions

1. In preparing for and conducting auditions, all participants should be aware of policies and procedures governing those auditions, including this code. 2. Although the existence and composition of an audition committee and the nature and extent of its participation in auditioning and hiring is determined locally, musicians' involvement should at least include the initial screening of applicants.

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3. Applicants should not be disqualified from auditioning on the basis of information about them obtained from current or previous employers or from other institutions to which they have applied. 4. Auditionees should be given sufficient time and, to the extent possible, adequate private facilities in which to warm up and practice. 5. Parts supplied by the orchestra for auditions should be in good condition, legible, and clearly marked as intended to be played at the audition. 6. There should be no discrimination on the basis of race, sex, age, creed, national origin, religion, or sexual preference; steps ensuring this should exist in all phases of the audition process. 7. There should be reasonable accommodation for the handicapped. 8. Auditionees should be given opportunity and encouragement to comment, anonymously if desired, to the audition committee and management about the audition process. 9. Auditionees should be notified of their status in the audition process immediately upon such determination. Candidates under active consideration after auditions are completed should be so notified and given an estimated time of final decision. 10. Auditionees should be informed prior to auditions of the orchestra's policy regarding reimbursement of auditionees' expenses for additional stay or travel incurred at the request of management.62

62 International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians, “Code of Ethical Audition Practices,” International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians, http://www.icsom.org/handbook/handbook13d.html (accessed August 25, 2010). 58

APPENDIX B

CLARINET LIST FROM STOKOWSKI’S AMERICAN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA NOTEBOOK: LEOPOLD STOKOWSKI PAPERS, RARE BOOK & MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA Index

59

60

61

62

Comments

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Professional and Retired Clarinetists, Possibly for “Master” Positions

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APPENDIX C

LEOPOLD STOKOWSKI PAPERS: COPYRIGHT PERMISSION

Sat, October 30, 2010 12:00:08 PM Re: Stokowski collection From: Nancy Shawcross

On behalf of the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, I am writing to grant you permission to publish selections from a notebook in the Leopold Stokowski Papers. Please cite as follows:

Leopold Stokowski Papers Rare Book & Manuscript Library University of Pennsylvania

Sincerely,

Nancy M. Shawcross Curator of Manuscripts Rare Book & Manuscript Library University of Pennsylvania

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APPENDIX D HUMAN SUBJECTS

Thu, March 4, 2010 10:34:16 AM Human Subjects Staff Review From: Human Subjects Add to Contacts

Human Subjects Application - For Full IRB and Expedited Exempt Review

PI Name: Julie Lynn Schumacher Detweiler Project Title: The Audition Process for the American Symphony: Interviews with Clarinetists Who Auditioned for Leopold Stokowski

HSC Number: 2010.3951

Your application has been received by our office. Upon review, it has been determined that your protocol is an oral history, which in general, does not fit the definition of "research" pursuant to the federal regulations governing the protection of research subjects. Please be mindful that there may be other requirements such as releases, copyright issues, etc. that may impact your oral history endeavor, but are beyond the purview of this office.

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REFERENCES

Berry, Erin. “Professional Profiles Magazine.” University of North Carolina Pembroke. http://www.uncp.edu/home/acurtis/Courses/ProfessionalProfiles/Magazines/ProfProf200 32004.pdf (accessed October 28, 2010).

Chasins, Abram. Leopold Stokowski: A Profile. New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1979.

CM Artists New York. “David Shifrin.” CM Artists New York. http://www.cmartists.com/artists/david-shifrin.htm (accessed October 28, 2010).

Daniel, Oliver. Stokowski: A Counterpoint of View. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1982.

Dave Hopkins. “Bio.” Dave Hopkins-Jazz Clarinet. http://davehopkinsjazz.com/bio.php (accessed October 28, 2010).

Florida State University. “Faculty and Staff, Frank Kowalsky.” Florida State University. http://www.music.fsu.edu/Faculty-and-Staff/Faculty/Frank-Kowalsky (accessed October 28, 2010).

Garden State Symphonic Band. “Personnel, James Corwin.” Garden State Symphonic Band. http://home.comcast.net/~gssband/Personnel/JamesCorwin.html (accessed October 28, 2010).

Goldin, Claudia, and Cecilia Rouse. “Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of “Blind” Auditions on Female Musicians.” The American Economic Review, 90, no. 4 (September, 2000).

Handy, D. Antoinette, and Lucille Dixon. “Manager of a Symphony Orchestra.” The Black Perspective in Music, 3, no. 3 (Autumn, 1975).

International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians. “Code of Ethical Audition Practices.” International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians. http://www.icsom.org/handbook/handbook13d.html (accessed August 25, 2010).

Naxos. “David Singer.” Naxos. http://www.naxos.com/person/David_Singer/68870.htm (accessed October 28, 2010).

Naxos. “Virgil Blackwell.” Naxos. http://www.naxos.com/person/Virgil_Blackwell/10952.htm#disco (accessed October 28, 2010).

New York Philharmonic. “History: Overview.” New York Philharmonic. http://nyphil.org/about/overview.cfm (accessed August 28, 2010).

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Opperby, Preben. Leopold Stokowski. New York: Hippocrene Books, Inc., 1982.

Penn Library Stokowski Collection. “Audition Records, ca. 1966.” University of Pennsylvania. www.library. upenn.edu/exhibits/rbm/music/leopold.html (accessed August 22, 2009).

Richard Stoltzman. “Biography.” Richard Stoltzman. http://www.richardstoltzman.com/Biography.aspx (accessed October 28, 2010).

Robinson, Paul. Stokowski. Canada: The Vanguard Press, Inc., 1977.

Rose, Bernard. “Leopold Stokowski.” The Musical Times 98, no. 1375 (September, 1957).

Russell, Thomas. “The Perfect Orchestra.” The Musical Times, 79, no. 1149 (November, 1938).

Schonberg, Harold C. The Great Conductors. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967.

Smith, William A. “ Leopold Stokowski: A Re-Evaluation.” American Music, 1, no. 3, (Autumn, 1983).

Smith, William A. The Mystery of Leopold Stokowski. Cranberry, NJ: Associated University Presses, Inc., 1990.

Stone, Kurt. “Ives‟ Fourth Symphony: A Review.” The Musical Quarterly, 52, no. 1 (January 1966).

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Originally from upstate New York, Julie Schumacher Detweiler received her Bachelor of Music degree in clarinet performance with a minor in English writing from the State University of New York at Potsdam in 1995. In 1996 she completed her Master of Music degree in clarinet performance at Northwestern University and obtained her Doctor of Music degree at Florida State University in 2010. Her major teachers include Dr. Alan Woy, Russell Dagon, Theodore Oien, Mark Nuccio and Dr. Frank Kowalsky. Julie has performed with orchestras around the country, including the Orlando Philharmonic, the Tallahassee Symphony, the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra, the Illinois Symphony Orchestra and most recently with the Harlem Chamber Players, among others. She has also participated in the Aspen Music School and Festival, the Rome Festival Orchestra and Conductor‟s Institute, the latter as a member of the orchestra. Julie was a graduate teaching assistant at Florida State University from 2007 until 2010. She has also served as a New York Philharmonic Teaching Artist and has taught in the pre-college programs at both the Manhattan School of Music and The . In addition, she has maintained an active private-teaching studio for thirteen years. Her awards include concerto soloist with the Crane Symphony Orchestra, recipient of a Presidential Scholarship to attend the State University of New York at Potsdam, winner of the Alice Walker scholarship and recipient of a full tuition scholarship at Florida State University. She is a member of Pi Kappa Lambda. Julie and her husband, David Detweiler, currently reside in Astoria, New York.

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