Roger Kalia makes his debut as music director of the Evansville Philharmonic at the Victory Theatre, before a small audience restricted by COVID regulations. Daniel Knight / Studio B Photography Podium Launches The pandemic has put significant speed bumps into launching a new music director, but orchestras are rising to the challenge. Despite constantly changing health protocols and travel restrictions, orchestras—and their incoming music directors—are staying connected by adopting new technology, experimenting with repertoire, and finding ways to make music while keeping everyone safe. by Nancy Malitz

n early March 2020, just six months ate conductor, in an all-Mozart concert The Savannah Philharmonic suddenly before assuming his music directorship that had no in-person audience but was faced its own version of the question fac- Iof the Savannah Philharmonic, conduc- streamed. Their flight back to the United ing a broad assortment of American or- tor Keitaro Harada, who was born in Japan States was supposed to happen the next chestras this season: How do you launch a and has homes in Savannah and Tokyo, un- day. But, says, Harada, “It was the week music director during a pandemic? dertook a quick trip with his wife to Japan that Trump announced he was going Logistical hurdles also confronted the for a concert engagement. The COVID-19 to shut down air travel. Everybody who Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic, pandemic in Asia had already started. The needed to travel went immediately to the which named Mélisse Brunet as its music moment they landed, they learned that airport—tons of people. We decided not director in February 2020 after the orches- America’s outbreak was also underway. to fly. It was just too crowded. And then tra emerged from a budget-driven hiatus, Soon after arriving, Harada conducted we couldn’t fly for six months, because the and the Evansville Philharmonic in Indi- the Tokyo Symphony, where he is associ- U.S. wasn’t open.” ana, where conductor Roger Kalia became

72 symphony WINTER 2021 music director just as the virus began to ongoing: As this article was going to the mounting excitement, he realized he had rage. In Texas and California, the Dallas printer, Fabio Luisi, the music director of gained “an audience of people who had Symphony Orchestra and San Francisco the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, tested never heard of me.” Symphony officially welcomed Fabio Luisi positive for COVID-19 while in Europe Overnight, Harada became a do-it- and Esa-Pekka Salonen as their respective and was quarantining there. Luisi had yourselfer in the how-to of online video music directors with the start of the fall conducted several critically praised con- production: “I decided we are all hit by the 2020 season—with newly redefined roles. certs with the Dallas Symphony earlier same wind, but we’re not in the same boat. In a typical in the fall, but—poignantly—would not It was up to me to do something for my- season, mu- return to the U.S. for a while. self.” After three days of work he put up sic directors his first livestream video of plucky insider are among the Tokyo to Savannah chat on his own YouTube channel. That most jet-set- While stuck in Tokyo, Harada felt himself was “Music Today, Op. 1,” on May 25, and ting of all pro- unlucky at first. April and May engage- he kept up the project almost daily. By the fessional mu- ments on both sides of the Pacific were time he reached “Op. 100” on September sicians, many lost: “Everything was Cancel, Cancel, 15, Harada was engaging composers, solo- bouncing from Cancel. Not just me, but the entire world,” ists, and pop musicians in jargon-free con- state to state he recalls. But then he conducted one of versations as viewers joined in with ques- and country to the first “no-audience” Tokyo Symphony tions. He welcomed the curious. Harada Savannah Philharmonic country to con- himself had started late in music, first tak- Music Director Keitaro A broad assortment of Harada embraced online duct multiple ing up the saxophone and then discovering media to connect with orchestras. This American orchestras are conducting as a teen at Michigan’s Interlo- audiences in the U.S. year, of course, chen Center for the Arts. facing the same challenge this and abroad during the all travel has During those six months, Japan was pandemic. been cut way season: How do you launch rigorous about getting the virus under back. Like Ha- a music director during a control, and Tokyo’s many professional rada, several conductors found themselves orchestras were given the green light to pandemic? stranded in a different country from one begin performing for audiences again in or more of their orchestras, temporar- September. But there was a new problem: ily unable to get back to the U.S. James concerts and became excited as he watched “None of the foreign conductors were Lowe got in half a season at the podium the streaming video. To his amazement, being allowed to come in,” says Harada, of the Spokane Symphony, where he be- hundreds of people seemed to be watch- who had remained in Japan all that time. came music director in fall 2019, before ing—and chatting with each other—in “I was the closest thing to a foreign con- the pandemic hit; he has been stationed real time online. ductor around, because I’m Japanese by at his home in Scotland, and with Wash- Harada decided to type a casual “The nationality, but mentally I’m not very ington State hard-hit, the orchestra has conductor’s here, too!” into the chat and Japanese at all. My upbringing was in- postponed its mainstage 2020-21 season to 2021-22. In April 2020, the League of American Orchestras’ long-running Bruno Walter National Conductor Preview was postponed. The Preview’s emerging con- ductors, as well as orchestra executives and artist representatives, travel from around the country for two days of rehearsals, cul- minating in a free public concert by the the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra at the Orpheum Theater. But despite postponements and can- cellations, orchestras and their newly launched music directors are adapting and staying connected by learning new Keitaro Harada participates in the Savannah Philharmonic’s online trivia night, one of the ways he and the orchestra have stayed connected with audiences during the pandemic. technology, changing repertoire, and finding a way to make music while ob- serving stringent safety protocols. They began interacting while he monitored ternational and I had made my career are doing this while reconfiguring their his own performance. By the end of the abroad.” By September, when halls were seasons and coping with the financial concert, he was stunned to see streams of allowed 50 percent capacity, Harada, who realities of significantly curtailed income 8888888888888888s flowing across the is in his mid-30s, found himself in rapid due to loss of ticket sales. Adaptability is screen—video lingo for applause. With ascent. He was booked nearly every week americanorchestras.org 73 to Savannah from Santa Zurich to Dallas Barbara’s Camerata Pacifi- On September 10, the Dallas Symphony ca in the fall, observed con- Orchestra officially launched Fabio Luisi nections with many new as music director, with an all-Beethoven audience members that concert streamed as a free video. It was could be credited to the performed with no intermission and a re- ensemble’s increased digi- duced orchestra of socially distanced musi- tal activities: “The orchestra cians, for an in-house audience of only 75 normally reaches 30,000 at Meyerson Symphony Center. Musicians members of the Savannah have taken COVID tests on a regular basis. community each season,” Shuttling Luisi back and forth to Dallas she said in November. “But wasn’t going to be easy. He lives in Zurich, with the current season where he is general director of the Zurich barely underway we are Opera. “Because of COVID we had to ap- already at 82 percent of ply for a special international waiver to get Keitaro Harada was in Japan when the pandemic lockdowns began. During a stream of a pre-recorded Tokyo Symphony that.” The orchestra tried him into the country, among the kinds of concert, he typed in “The conductor’s here, too!” into the chat charging $10 to watch on- complications you never dream of,” says and began interacting with viewers. He was stunned to see line productions at first, but President and CEO Kim Noltemy. Her streams of 8888888888888888s flowing across the screen— determined they gained far professional experience prior to her ar- video lingo for applause. better exposure by making rival in Dallas included several years at them free. the Boston Symphony Orchestra, where by a top-flight orchestra through the end of the year—Tokyo Symphony, Yo- The Dallas miuri Nippon, Kyushu Symphony, Japan Symphony Century Orchestra, Japan Philharmonic, Orchestra Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa, NHK and Music Symphony, New Japan Philharmonic, and Director Fabio Luisi perform Executive Director Amy at Meyerson Symphony Williams says the Savannah Center for a small Philharmonic has connected audience—and cameras—in fall with new audiences via 2020. increased digital activities, including interactive video chats, quizzes, and other online segments by Keitaro Harada, who became music

director in fall 2020. Sylvia Elzafon

Nagoya Philharmonic—conducting ev- The Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Music erything from Ennio Morricone hits and Director Fabio Luisi New Year’s concerts to heavy-duty block- performed a scaled-back busters. Harada’s first time to lead the 80-minute Verdi concert orchestra in person in that capacity will at Meyerson Symphony be in February, for an hour-long concert Center in October 2020. Also performing were of Elgar and Dvořák string serenades, in soprano Angela Meade the flexible 360-degree seating space of (standing with back to a restored historic landmark—the Kehoe camera), mezzo-soprano Iron Works at Trustees’ Garden. Jamie Barton (to her right), Meanwhile, Harada has been interact- and tenor Bryan Hymel (not shown). ing digitally and crafting online segments for the Savannah Philharmonic’s YouTube channel. Savannah Philharmonic Executi- ve Director Amy Williams, who had gone Sylvia Elzafon

74 symphony WINTER 2021 she launched media projects including a sic director,” Luisi says. “We tried to keep limit. So Kalia digital download service, internet TV pod- what we could, including all our soloists, went for three casts, and modernized Boston Symphony and we have also tried to keep the line— performances websites. That experience came in handy. the logic—originally intended.” Luisi in- in the big hall At press time, the Dallas Symphony has sists, “It is possible to do certain high level with smaller been performing continuously throughout works for reduced orchestra while retain- audiences, a the 2020-21 season with streamed con- ing their character. For example, in Octo- serendipitous certs played, for the most part, before lim- ber we did Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde triple-dip for ited in-person audiences. in Schoenberg’s arrangement for chamber the musicians,

Reached by phone in Zurich while on orchestra.” Later in the winter season, Lu- Dana Ross who were his way to a rehearsal of Simon Boccanegra, isi plans to do Klaus Simon’s chamber re- thrilled. Ka- Evansville Philharmonic Luisi explained that the Zurich Opera had duction of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. As Music Director Roger Kalia lia’s inaugural managed to keep for the empty concert-hall acoustic, Luisi concert, which going despite says he was encouraged. “I was a little bit included music COVID, and he by J.S. Bach, George Walker, and Mo- thought Dallas Roger Kalia’s inaugural zart, also featured the world premiere of a should also: “I concert as music director of fanfare by Paul Dooley called River City, fought a lot to to celebrate the city of Evansville. “We keep performing the Evansville Philharmonic adapted it for COVID and put four brass (in both places),” included the world premiere musicians in the theater balcony,” Kalia Luisi says. “The of a fanfare by Paul Dooley says. “It was antiphonal, beautiful, almost

Sylvia Elzafon general tendency Gabrieli-like.” is to cancel ev- called River City. “We adapted The orchestra played to an audience Dallas Symphony erything. My it for COVID and put four capacity of 250 for several months after Orchestra Music Director Fabio Luisi idea is not only brass musicians in the theater the season opener, but this, too, was fur- to keep going, ther reduced as COVID cases rose this fall but to send a balcony,” Kalia says. “It was around the nation. Kalia did manage per- signal that culture and music are still very antiphonal, beautiful, almost formances of Milhaud’s ballet suite La Cré- important and that we should try not to Gabrieli-like.” ation du monde in November, with strings stop, rather to do everything we can.” arrayed behind him and winds in front. Meyerson Symphony Center was built As COVID restrictions tightened, Kalia for the Dallas Symphony in 1989, but even afraid because of the distancing that there such a relatively new hall was behind the should be a difference in the color or with technological curve when it came to creat- the musicians being able to hear properly, ing a pandemic tech strategy. “Before the but everything worked just fine.” season opened, we added robotic cameras in the control room and fiber-optic cabling Indiana Bound so that we would be able to record and International travel is one complica- broadcast concerts without a TV truck,” tion that Indian American conductor Noltemy says. “At the time the COVID Roger Kalia doesn’t have to deal with as crisis hit, we had begun planning for a he launches his music directorship of the website redesign. But we sped up every- 87-year-old Evansville Philharmonic in thing as a result of this crisis.” Major web- Indiana this season. He maintains a home site redesign was needed to better manage base in Bloomington, home of Indiana now-critical multimedia content in a more University, where his wife is based, an easy elegant manner, says Noltemy, describ- driving distance. And no visa is required ing a widespread industry challenge. “We for Kalia to commute to his music direc- had been retrofitting the old site, and that torships at the Symphony NH in Nashua, meant the videos weren’t that easy to find. New Hampshire and the Lake George We just weren’t set up for much of that.” Music Festival in upstate New York. Luisi’s programming was drastically modi- Kalia had planned a single performance fied to allow for fewer performers. “Verdi’s of Mahler’s monumental Symphony No. 1 Otello became the ‘Best of Verdi’ excerpts,” for his inaugural concert in September in Noltemy says. “The Verdi Requiem instead Evansville’s Victory Theatre, which seats Poster for a September 2020 concert by the Evansville Philharmonic featuring big-band became opera excerpts with three singers. 1,800. The musicians awaited it keenly, as music, patriotic tunes, and other music from Beautiful, but not what we had planned.” did Kalia. But COVID-dictated capacity the World War II era. “Programming is my core activity as mu- restrictions drastically reduced the seating americanorchestras.org 75 drawn to Mélisse—she is so remarkable on the podium,” Sanderson says. “She was creating quite a buzz, and the musicians in the orchestra were giving us incredible feedback. When we started to talk in ear- nest about a conductor search, two things kept surfacing. One, we didn’t want to see Mélisse leave us, and two, we would never know as much about another conductor as we do about her. So we surveyed the musicians and patrons and they decided she was the one. It has been a great deci- sion.” Brunet, a protégée of the late Pierre Boulez, was announced in February 2020 as the orchestra’s new music director, just Roger Kalia announces the Evansville Philharmonic’s 2020-21 season during a live Zoom event. a month before the U.S. shut down during the pandemic. Luckily, Brunet’s second love is orches- connected with the community through former music director, Lawrence Loh, was tration. She dove into new digital tech- online chats in which the musicians shared moving on to another post, Brunet as- niques aggressively as the orchestra put live stories about their upbringing. In so doing, sumed responsibilities as interim music concerts on hold for the rest of the season he learned about the area’s strong march- director beginning in 2018-19, while the while holding out hope for resumption in ing-band tradition, and Evansville’s his- tory as a center of tank manufacturing in the Second World War. The regional his- tory became Kalia’s inspiration for places and pieces to perform. “We did an entire concert based around World War II, the big bands, patriotic tunes, soldiers’ let- ters, and music of the era,” he says. “I think the orchestra has connected so well to the community because of the collab- orative element. At this point everybody in Evansville is trying to discover new places for performances. Bosse Field, where they filmed A League of Their Own, is a great place for a future concert and there are beautiful parks and gardens.”

Paris to Pennsylvania Darren Elias Darren Toko Shiiki Santos Toko French-born Northeastern Pennsylvania Mélisse Brunet Mélisse Brunet speaks to the audience at a Northeastern Pennsylvania concert in a photo taken before the pandemic. She served as the orchestra’s assistant conductor and then as interim music Philharmonic Music was an assistant Director Mélisse Brunet director prior to becoming music director in 2020. conductor of the Northeast- ern Pennsylvania Philharmonic, based in orchestra recalibrated its financial picture July. Brunet polished her skills with the Wilkes-Barre, when Executive Director and planned for a new music director. Her widely used Sibelius music-notation soft- Nancy Sanderson announced in August appointment as interim music director be- ware to create instrumental parts for four 2017 that a gap in finances meant that came part of the orchestra’s relaunch of its excerpts from The Nutcracker, which were the orchestra needed to reorganize. “We mainstage concerts in 2018, following a choreographed for a local school’s young needed to pay down our debt and do the scaled-back 2017-18 season. ballet dancers and filmed onstage at a responsible thing,” Sanderson says. As the “Our audiences and patrons were really drive-in theater, then recombined digitally

76 symphony WINTER 2021 with it. There is that level of intellectuality and musicality and flexibility among them.”

San Francisco Boost Following a November 2020 conference call with leaders of 25 of America’s larg- est orchestras who were all coping with COVID-related issues, San Francisco Symphony Chief Executive Officer Mark C. Hanson says he found himself “focused on the gnarly challenge of how you cre- ate something for people that will have a strong impact without reminding them once again just how miserable it is to be missing live concerts.” The orchestra’s new music director, Esa- The Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic worked with a local ballet school on a video of selections from The Nutcracker. A screengrab from the production shows the young dancers, who Pekka Salonen, told Hanson he had been were filmed separately, surrounded by Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic musicians. Music thinking from the get-go about home Director Mélisse Brunet created instrumental parts for the musical excerpts. audiences and the possibilities for digi- tal distribution. The last thing in post-production. The videos were re- 8,000 per video,” says Sanderson. either of them leased over the holidays. Among the other Brunet, an advocate of contemporary wanted, Han- digital techniques she has learned during music and a native of Paris, holds degrees son says, was “a the pandemic are Adobe Premiere Pro, from the University of the Sorbonne and streamed version Zoom, GarageBand, and TikTok. Brunet the Paris Conservatoire. She says that the of anything one also led the charge in the orchestra’s social- experience of learning new technology typically had the media and tech activities, producing Zoom while creating fresh approaches to rep- opportunity to

happy hours with patrons and live video ertoire “made me think of Boulez, who experience live Eccles Andrew demonstrations for elementary school stu- even in his eighties was still learning. I try and in person, dents so that individual musicians could to anticipate what the future will be like but which one Esa-Pekka Salonen, the San Francisco Symphony’s talk about their instruments, play a little, after COVID passes, as we are experienc- is now being new music director. and answer questions. Sanderson sees two- ing deep changes in the society that will forced to settle fold benefits: “It’s really great to be able change the way we approach things forev- for in some ex- er. The orchestra needs perience at home.” Salonen wanted the to keep its social pres- San Francisco Symphony to produce what ence and its techno- Hanson describes as “unique to this mo- logical presence, which ment in time, and unique to the digital during the COVID platform, in which there might be a kernel crisis improved very of an idea for a digital strategy they might quickly because we even want to stick with even after normal were forced to make it concerts resume.” so. I truly believe we A key part of Salonen’s vision for the San cannot go back.” Francisco Symphony is a group of eight The Northeasternartistic partners, a new artistic leadership Pennsylvania Philhar- model announced when the conductor be- monic draws its free- came music director. Salonen put together In the San Francisco Symphony’s new artistic leadership model, lance musicians from a group of eight pathbreakers he admired, Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen works with eight artistic partners both Manhattan and all relatively young, several of them com- (clockwise from left): Julia Bullock, Claire Chase, Nicholas Brittell, Philadelphia.“These poser-performers as the orchestra’s col- Salonen, Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly, Carol Reiley, Pekka Kuusisto, are high-level musi- laborative partners. The first composition, and Esperanza Spalding. cians,” says Brunet. “I which opened the 2020-21 season, was have an approach for called Throughline, conceived and composed pay our musicians for these services, and Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony which is by Nico Muhly to be streamed on the San we have definitely increased our presence not in the mainstream. My stylistic models Francisco Symphony’s website. Filmed all in the community. The Google analytics for that are more like Boulez and Abbado, over the planet and assembled with multi- have been just amazing. We’re averaging and the musicians were really willing to go layered balletic grace, Throughline features americanorchestras.org 77 San Francisco Symphony CEO Mark C. Hanson says he and Esa-Pekka Salonen, the orchestra’s new music director, are focusing on “the gnarly challenge of how you create something for people that will have a strong impact” when in-person concerts are sidelined.

in Cologne or Berlin, and Nick in LA, Claire in New York, and Carol on the in- ternet. They did an unbelievable job. In so many ways it could have been quite clunky. It worked.” Throughline is only the beginning of San Francisco Symphony projects for Sa- lonen’s brain trust. His collaborators seem entirely open to the idea of exploring with him what a professional symphony orches- tra can be in a community, drawing freely from dance, jazz, and film, along with ar- tificial intelligence and improvisation. Yet the orchestra’s COVID-era achievements were shadowed by the painful financial cost of not being able to do much business at all. The orchestra developed a shared sacrifice plan, with temporary reductions in pay that were extended into fall, ulti- mately affecting everyone. Hanson hopes to restore pre-pandemic compensation and revenue numbers by 2021-22. “If we have to deal with a pandemic, then Kristen Loken we are fortunate we have found someone Top: Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts San Francisco Symphony musicians in John Adams’s Shaker [in Salonen] who is deeply collaborative,” Loops as part of the orchestra’s streamed concert, November 2020. The program included Ellen Hanson says. “He thinks about what the Reid’s Fear / Release, Kev Choice’s Movements, and the “Allegro con brio” movement from future should look like, and what it could Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 11, and Nico Muhly (above) conducted the world premiere of his own Throughline. look like, and how to reach audiences, and how to combine this centuries’ old art form with cutting-edge technology. Hopefully various San Francisco orchestra members gust 2020 to kick around the notion of this is a strategy we will stick with, even and all the collaborative partners: composer, his writing a group of 30-second minia- after normal concerts resume. If successful, pianist and film producer Nicholas Brittell; tures for himself and the others, to be in- we will attract many new audience mem- vocalist and program curator Julia Bullock; troduced between various elements of the bers. And if we can figure out how to sus- flutist and experimental music advocate orchestra’s gala. “I didn’t want to do that,” tain it and grow, we will emerge from the Claire Chase; composer and guitarist Bryce Muhly says. “It felt so cosmetic. So I coun- pandemic period different, and strong.” Dessner; violinist Pekka Kuusisto; artificial ter-proposed a single piece that would in- intelligence entrepreneur and roboticist corporate all of the different collaborative NANCY MALITZ is the founding music critic Carol Reiley; and jazz bassist and vocalist partners.” Muhly says he “set out to make of USA Today, an editor at ClassicalVoiceAmerica. Esperanza Spalding. this really ambitious thing, to spotlight all org and publisher of ChicagoOntheAisle.com. She As Muhly remembers it, the idea for the soloists with the exception of me, and has written about the arts and technology for the Throughline came together when the San to do it in different locations, Esa-Pekka New York Times and Opera News, among other Francisco Symphony called him in Au- in Helsinki or wherever he was, and Julia publications.

78 symphony WINTER 2021 Ford Musician Awards

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