Backstage at the Carnival Center-a View from the Pit
The Carnival Center for the Performing Arts opens in Miami this weekend, an event decades in the making. From October 3 through October 7, South Florida Musicians Association Secretary-Treasurer and Florida Classical Orchestra oboist Jeffrey Apana writes about what it is like to be backstage during this history-making week.October 6
Tonight's rehearsal went until 11:15 PM, so I didn't get home until after midnight. So far we haven't had any serious parking or traffic problems (and the New World Symphony was performing next door tonight).
I had a conversation with a colleague tonight that reminded me of how small a world it is for musicians, and how many "Six Degrees of Separation" moments we have. Musicians often travel all over the country looking for work. Two of my colleagues in the orchestra, concertmaster Scott Flavin and violist Chris Petruzzi, were also classmates of mine at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. Principal trombonist Tim Conner and cellist Phil Lakofsky are also Eastman graduates. In fact, the entire oboe section went to Eastman. Principal oboist Bob Weiner returned to south Florida after playing in Oklahoma City and in Mexico, Erika Yamada joined us after playing over 15 years in the Florida Philharmonic, and I originally moved down here to play for the Palm Beach Opera. I grew up in Cleveland, but it was a fellow classmate of mine who for the last two years has played oboe in the Cleveland Orchestra (which will be paying us an extended visit in January), and the other oboist in my graduating class recently played an American Sinfonietta European tour with a friend of mine from the Florida Phil. Orchestra auditions often become reunions as well.
Yesterday I wrote about performers interacting with each other. I should add that for classical music, we do that subtly within a structured framework. I was thinking of this tonight as we rehearsed La Boheme. Of all the classical music forms (as opposed to, say, jazz), opera is the most organic and spontaneous, and of all opera composers, Puccini is probably the one that most exemplifies that. If you listen to a piece of popular music, you can probably tap your foot to the beat at the same speed from the beginning to the end of the song. Not so with Puccini. The music constantly flows from one speed to another, sometimes with gradual changes, and sometimes with almost instantaneous changes. It takes a lot of concentration and skill for an orchestra, all 67 members of it, to make those changes together. There's a lot more involved than just watching the conductor's baton. We have to know how the person next to us is going to react. There's a difference between a rookie and a seasoned player; the rookie may be just as good as the experienced player, but if they don't know where the paper is stored and how the boss likes his coffee, it's going to take a while to get into the groove. Some of the newer orchestras have been criticized for their inability to play perfectly together, but if you only get together a couple of times a year, it's hard to know how you're supposed to act (or is it react?). That's one of the reasons the Florida Phil was better than the other groups in town...they worked together every day, all year.
So if you come Saturday night to hear act 2 of La Boheme, or to hear Manon Lescaut or perhaps La Sonnambula later this season, listen and see how well we do acting like one person with a hundred arms.
- 1. Backstage at the Carnival Center-a View from the Pit
- 2. October 4
- 3. October 5
- 4. October 6
- 5. October 7
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