They all say the same thing: We want to be more accessible. This music is universal. We listen to hiphop, too! This is your symphony. Then they take the stage and change nothing, bowing to the usual, deadly respectability that plagues classical concert halls.
This is what 2,500 people instinctively know when we take our seats at Benaroya Hall on Saturday night. It’s a sold-out show and we have high hopes; we’re here to witness a new beginning. I want a new beginning that’s old—that goes back to the days when hot dog and beer vendors walked the aisles at orchestra concerts, before Richard Wagner got medieval on everyone in the 19th century and turned off the lights, put the hush on, made people mortally afraid to cough or laugh or show any other signs of life.
Seattle Symphony hasn’t had a new artistic director in almost 30 years, and the last one (Gerard Schwarz) became famous for his complacency. Now comes Ludovic Morlot, a 37-year-old Frenchman with feathered hair and puppy-dog eyes who says he stopped growing in the fifth grade. (Morlot is pronounced “more-low.”) He talks an especially good game—he says come once and we’ll make you want to return. But we’ve all been burned in the past.
I’ve brought with me a musician who has no particular love for symphony orchestras—groups, she describes, “where everybody’s doing what they’re told by the guy in the middle.” She studied classical piano but rejected it; she became an improviser who works in collaborative groups with voice and electronics.
“Where’s my kielbasa?” she whispers halfway through the concert. Polka is happening. The orchestra is playing a cello concerto by Friedrich Gulda, a postmodern composer who sometimes performed in the nude and was nicknamed “the terrorist pianist.”
Eventually, Gulda’s unfamiliar music has careened into some unfortunate territory, from “neutered rock combo,” as my friend describes it, to, now, the polka. There is a man playing a Fender Stratocaster with a whammy bar onstage. The drummer’s head has dropped to the side like he’s dying of boredom; he is, hilariously, hemmed in by Plexiglas walls—such a fastidious classical move. We can’t help laughing, and our seat backs are shaking. The transitions are so absurd, I think the composer must have wanted us to laugh. Morlot’s conducting at such a fever pitch that he jumps, getting actual air time, at one point. I can almost smell the hot dog vendors in the aisles. When Joshua Roman, the cellist, comes back for his encore, Morlot sneaks back onstage and slouches behind the xylophone just to hear it.
He’s started to win us over.
Next is Gershwin’s An American in Paris. Because I got to see the orchestra rehearse a few days before, I already know what Morlot wants. “It has to swing!” he kept saying at the rehearsal—and not in the tragic classical-musician-impersonating-jazz swing, but to really ride its own rhythm. He wanted the piece to show its modern angles, to be fine-grained, not to congeal into a wall of sentimental sound, which too often happens with Gershwin.
On opening night, they nail it. “That was the best Gershwin I’ve ever heard,” my friend announces immediately after the last note. “It was like a time machine, back to when Gershwin was new and fresh.”
The last piece of the night is a risky one. Boléro, a number written by Maurice Ravel in 1928, repeats the same phrase for 15 straight minutes, getting louder and louder—and it’s difficult not to make the audience feel that, well… you’re just waiting for him to finish.
Things begin well. You can see the string players plucking, but you can’t hear a thing—then gradually the sound arises out of nothing. It’s a great trick. Then come repeated reminders that Seattle Symphony’s woodwinds are outstanding. At about the halfway point, Morlot unceremoniously steps off the podium and walks slowly to the middle of the violin section. He sits down, picks up a violin, and joins in. He’s part of them now. There’s nobody leading the orchestra. Nothing in the score calls for this, and I’ve never seen it done before.
Things begin to fall apart a little. Morlot keeps playing anonymously, just one of the bowing, sawing suits. It’s tense. Can the orchestra make it all the way to the crescendo without a conductor? The music balances on a wire. Minutes go by. It’s a trust game. People in the audience lean forward to see what’s going to happen.
Finally, slowly, Morlot puts the violin down, rises, and makes his way back to the podium. He shakes it off. He raises his hands. And the players respond like a lover delayed. They’ll do anything for him now.
It is the best Boléro I’ve ever seen. And it’s a thrilling lesson in leadership.
“Okay,” my friend says, “I’m in love.”
Every night cannot be like the first. But look: It matters, musically, that the Seattle Symphony and Ludovic Morlot are having such a palpable honeymoon. Chemistry is the element of conducting that nobody really understands, not even the players—and without which nothing can get off the ground.
When I meet Morlot in his still-empty office for an earlier interview, it contains just a desk, two chairs (including his), a grand piano, and bookshelves empty except for some speakers still wearing torn-open plastic covers—as if he needed to hear something so badly, he couldn’t be bothered to fully unpack them. How would players who know Morlot describe his working style? I ask.
“Empathic,” he says.
Empathic?
“EMPHATIC!” he says. I have misheard him.
But after the first concert, I wonder whether he’s both. Opening night, he thanked the stage crew—called out all their names individually—something no conductor ever does.
Later, at the free Day of Music event the morning after the opening concert, a little boy tells Morlot he wants to be a drummer, and Morlot immediately responds, without awkwardness, Leonard Bernstein–style: “Give me your address and you will get a little drum at your house next week.”
The whole symphony is being revitalized. The committee that hired Morlot is led by board chair Leslie Chihuly, who sports a calming, youthful elegance. A very pleasant Englishman named Simon Woods became executive director just a few months ago. Auditions for concertmaster (the violinist who sits directly to the conductor’s left) are under way; the orchestra has a new principal flute, Demarre McGill, and a new principal cello, Efe Baltacigil. In addition to holding open rehearsals throughout the season, the symphony announced last week that every paying adult at a concert is entitled to two free companion tickets for kids between the ages of 8 and 18.
That’s not just talk.
Morlot’s initial contract is for six years. (In June, he was also appointed music director of La Monnaie opera house in Brussels; he’ll do both. Doubling up is a logistical nightmare, but common among conductors.) These are his first music directorships, but he’s guest-conducted around the world and worked with mentors like the titan James Levine in Boston.
Morlot grew up in Lyon, the middle of five siblings. His grandfather picked up a violin in a German prison camp and eventually brought the love of it to his grandson, who entered the conservatory at age 8. Now, Morlot has two daughters of his own, Nora and Iman, and his wife, Ghizlane, is a landscape designer. (Ghizlane was the dark-haired beauty in the most daring dress at the gala. It was a studded, shiny, tight, tangerine taffeta confection involving significant cleavage and reportedly was designed by art students. Go.)
Morlot likes to remind people that orchestral musicians are performing artists who start new every time—there’s a little John Cage in him. A sense of spontaneity comes out in his physical gestures. His first appearance onstage opening night was slightly Chaplinesque; he stumbled as if he’d been pushed through the backstage door into the public eye.
On the day of our interview, he’s wearing jeans and a navy blue polo shirt—the same thing he wore onstage at a casual performance during Bumbershoot. That night, Seth Krimsky, the orchestra’s principal bassoonist, plugged into a bunch of pedals and improvised trippily with himself, as though there were a dozen plugged-in bassoonists up there. The man was giddy. Later, onstage, a double-bass player joked and laughed about failure while failing—admittedly—to play a difficult piece perfectly. Classical musicians having fun: Just don’t tell the authorities.
Things overheard in the lobby after the opening:
“He’s a little bit goofy, a little bit sexy” and “I’ve never had so much fun at the symphony.”
I’m not the only one going back. 
This story has been updated since its original publication.
Um, Are you sure it was a telecaster?
Maybe it was a Telecaster with a Bigsby?
That’s what I was told, but let me double-check!
Oh, jeez, don’t bother – it was a silly quibble. . (and yes it could be a telecaster with a Bigsby tailpiece, but it seems unlikely… far more likely to be a stratocaster)
Damn! It was a Stratocaster. Sorry — correction coming. And thank you.
It certainly was a tremendous performance, truly moving and I have seen thousands. The new approach both artistically and in engaging the public is really important. Not lost too is the excellent writing Jen, its like being there for those who weren’t.
Jen, was it really necessary to start your review with such a jaded premise? We have half a millennium of incredible music at our disposal and it is silly to assume that all of it should be played or enjoyed the same way. Certainly there is room in classical performance for laughter and noisy audience involvement. A performer of Barber’s “Green Lowland of Pianos” would be disappointed if the audience failed to laugh. On the other hand, most classical pieces really benefit from a silent audience.
I don’t understand why you think a silently respectful audience, giving rapt attention to the performers, equates to a plague of respectability. I always find it amazing that 2,000 or so human beings can quiet themselves to such a degree. And why are we so quiet? Is it because the Principal is going to put us in detention if we make a sound? I really hope not. It ought to be because we want to be able to hear the music, all of it. Of course we never really can hear every aspect the music, no matter how many times we hear it. But just trying to hear it all can be a marvelous endeavor.
@7 – But Jen says nothing about the audience. When she writes about “usual, deadly respectability ,” she’s referring to the musicians not the audience. You sure wrote a lot for an entirely incorrect premise.
A couple of string players in the Symphony are good friends of mine. They’re very enthusiastic about Morlot.
I’m with #7 – We’ve all heard the beef about classical music being stodgy and uptight, and there is certainly some truth to it. But I believe this has less to do with the music itself or even the convention of listening quietly than it does with the trappings of class privilege that the classical audience generally upholds. So blame it on the social milieu, not the music. The music is there for anyone who wants to hear it, fancy clothes or not.
And is it really so terribly wrong to actually sit quietly and listen attentively? Should all music really aspire to the same kind of response as pop music? And why demand that an audience behave at a concert (of any kind) in a way that would likely never be tolerated in a movie theater? I know a lot of musicians working in many styles (including your friend the pianist, probably) who would much prefer an attentive audience that is really listening to one that is otherwise occupied munching hot dogs. Music has so much more to offer us than simply toe-tapping entertainment and amusement, if only we’d actually listen.
Also: Please note there is nothing especially risky about programming Ravel’s “Bolero” – it’s a confirmed warhorse. Though getting down off the podium to play in the orchestra was a nice bit of showmanship.
I’m so happy Ludovic Morlot and the Seattle Symphony might live up to the Stranger’s craving for a genius in Benaroya. I was at the gala opening night, too, and it was riveting! The musicians, some of them, were moving to the music like I hadn’t seen them do over the last decade. Bolero, which can be boring, was the somehow the opposite of boring–it was fascinating. And the 1980 cello concerto by Gulda with the glassed-in drum set, electric guitar and electric bass, true, didn’t incorporate jazz at a high level, but it incorporated it and a new era for the cello at Benaroya has begun. John Roman’s solo cadenza movement in that concerto was spellbinding.
Wonderful review, Jen, gave me a rush! I wish all symphonic concerts could be as revelatory.
“ARE WE THERE YET, I’M HUNGRY!” (anybody got an extra Kielbasa in their purse?)
You are treading in a world of passionate, whip-smart, informed and very well versed devotees, scholars, and fans who know alot more than you’ll EVER know about this genre. Have some respect! Your common man’s “I don’t know much but I know what I like” mentality here is an embarrassment-much akin to the “bull in a china shop” approach you take to your concocted homemade aesthetics of a local art scene that you reign over-but hon’-this games alot different! Dumbed down and a total joke!
@7, @10, @13:
You all are missing the point. Jen is clearly not arguing for hot dog vendors traipsing up and down the aisles, anymore than she’d propose that people visit museums naked with a 40-ouncer in hand.
But anyone with any kind of intellectual sophistication—and the “whip smart” among your numbers ought to be part of this group— understands that works of art are not separable from their social contexts. With out even getting into the issues of class, it’s safe to say that the social context that currently surrounds symphonic orchestras frames the classical repertoire as a kind of museum of music. This in turn erects a wall of reverence that, while understandable, can rob these works of their vitality and of potential audiences. With orchestras all over being perpetually challenged to stay financially afloat, questions of presentation and audience-ship are very much of the essence.
Part of the exciting promise of Morlot’s leadership is his desire to expand audiences and reach younger people. Everyone 18 and under is free? Awesome. Open rehearsals? Awesome. These are real concrete choices that help to break down that wall.
I was at that opening too. It was phenomenal. Morlot’s artistic choices reflected his awareness of social context. He started the fragile opening of Bolero while there was still murmuring and chattering in the audience…a move of almost Cage-ean disruption of that fourth wall. As Jen mentioned, he abandoned the podium for a good 5 minutes mid-piece. This is an artist who is as concerned with the frame as he is with the painting.
The fact that Jen focused her article on these kinds of concerns is entirely appropriate, given the opportunity for rebirth that this new conductor represents for the Seattle symphony and its relationship with its audience.
Oh, and especially for you, @13: you are treading in a world of multiple perspectives. Jen is writing for a very wide audience, not just you and your cronies. Maybe you ought to go back to the narrowness of your usual milieu.
@7, @10, @13:
You all are missing the point. Jen is clearly not arguing for hot dog vendors traipsing up and down the aisles, anymore than she’d propose that people visit museums naked with a 40-ouncer in hand.
But anyone with any kind of intellectual sophistication—and the “whip smart” among your numbers ought to be part of this group— understands that works of art are not separable from their social contexts. With out even getting into the issues of class, it’s safe to say that the social context that currently surrounds symphonic orchestras frames the classical repertoire as a kind of museum of music. This in turn erects a wall of reverence that, while understandable, can rob these works of their vitality and of potential audiences. With orchestras all over being perpetually challenged to stay financially afloat, questions of presentation and audience-ship are very much of the essence.
Part of the exciting promise of Morlot’s leadership is his desire to expand audiences and reach younger people. Everyone 18 and under is free? Awesome. Open rehearsals? Awesome. These are real concrete choices that help to break down that wall.
I was at that opening too. It was phenomenal. Morlot’s artistic choices reflected his awareness of social context. He started the fragile opening of Bolero while there was still murmuring and chattering in the audience…a move of almost Cage-ean disruption of that fourth wall. As Jen mentioned, he abandoned the podium for a good 5 minutes mid-piece. This is an artist who is as concerned with the frame as he is with the painting.
The fact that Jen focused her article on these kinds of concerns is entirely appropriate, given the opportunity for rebirth that this new conductor represents for the Seattle symphony and its relationship with its audience.
Oh, and especially for you, @13: you are treading in a world of multiple perspectives. Jen is writing for a very wide audience, not just you and your cronies. Maybe you ought to go back to the narrowness of your usual milieu.
@7, @10, @13:
You all are missing the point. Jen is clearly not arguing for hot dog vendors traipsing up and down the aisles, anymore than she’d propose that people visit museums naked with a 40-ouncer in hand.
But anyone with any kind of intellectual sophistication–and the “whip smart” among your numbers ought to be part of this group– understands that works of art are not separable from their social contexts. With out even getting into the issues of class, it’s safe to say that the social context that currently surrounds symphonic orchestras frames the classical repertoire as a kind of museum of music. This in turn erects a wall of reverence that, while understandable, can rob these works of their vitality and of potential audiences. With orchestras all over being perpetually challenged to stay financially afloat, questions of presentation and audience-ship are very much of the essence.
Part of the exciting promise of Morlot’s leadership is his desire to expand audiences and reach younger people. Everyone 18 and under is free? Awesome. Open rehearsals? Awesome. These are real concrete choices that help to break down that wall.
I was at that opening too. It was phenomenal. Morlot’s artistic choices reflected his awareness of social context. He started the fragile opening of Bolero while there was still murmuring and chattering in the audience…a move of almost Cage-ean disruption of that fourth wall. As Jen mentioned, he abandoned the podium for a good 5 minutes mid-piece. This is an artist who is as concerned with the frame as he is with the painting.
The fact that Jen focused her article on these kinds of concerns is entirely appropriate, given the opportunity for rebirth that this new conductor represents for the Seattle symphony and its relationship with its audience.
Oh, and especially for you, @13: you are treading in a world of multiple perspectives. Jen is writing for a very wide audience, not just you and your cronies. Maybe you ought to go back to the narrowness of your usual milieu.
En effet, the article was quite appreciated by the “M” family. But, just one question… in the section, Jen, where you quickly refer to Ghizlane, the parentheses are concluded with “… Go.).” There was question as to the meaning. Could you enlighten?
Just an idea to ponder… the dress that Ghizlane wore, mentioned in the article, was actually part of a design contest at the Art Institute of Seattle. This could potentially be fodder for a tangential, critical, arts (design) article. All the dresses that were designed for the contest were worn by students from the Institute for the opening night of the symphony. The winning dress was worn by Ghizlane! Just another example of how the Morlot family is contributing enourmous creative energy to the Seattle arts scene.
-Une amie de la famille.
The program this season is quite exciting. Four concerts of Dutilleux! Brilliant. It’s acceptable to most, and the concentration will will be appreciated by the large number of musicians who live in town.
Plus the programming feels more careful. The pieces all work together
E.g. This weekends Eroica is classical, but very strange compared to the Mozart/Haydn mold. It’s a good piece to choose with Zappa and Dutilleux’s vn cto.
Plus Capucon owns the Dutilleux, so you’ve got first half that any music geeek would die for, melodic enough to not put the dependsters to sleep, and a Beethoven symphony that most music geeks love. Win win.
Two thumbs up to the season, and the first I’ve bought season tix for in years.
What are the author’s credentials as a MUSIC CRITIC??? I’m so fucking sick of seeing reviews of classical music from clueless NON-MUSICALLY INCLINED people. They have no ear for what really makes something great. Fuck off back to “VISUAL ART” critiques.
What does Jen know about classical music, really? I keep seeing uneducated reviews of classical music and it’s very insulting. Every opinion she states in this piece is SECOND HAND (i.e. stereotypes she has gathered from who knows where). Get a REAL MUSIC CRITIC
Hmmmm, this electric guitar business, the Barnum & Bailey showmanship, all the talk about getting people to lighten up – it has me kind of worried. Sounds an awful lot like “dumbing it down.”
It’s only “dumbing it down,” if you don’t bother to do the slightest research of the composers and the context of the music in it’s time and place.
Gerard Schwartz was not as stodgy as is now fashionable to portray. Although he was certainly getting long in the tooth, and lost that rapport with the orchestra that produced a lot of great performances and recordings in previous years. He knew when to bow out and move on. He certainly knew how to bring out Mozart and Shostakovich symphonies and concertos. His Musically Speaking lectures pre-concert and on their own I attended were always appreciated and interesting. No stodgyness required or exuded.
Classical, espeically Symphonic, is not a DIY, ADD friendly kind of music, and that too often makes some think it’s stodgy. In fact, it really does not take much effort, and making it accessible is part of keeping it vital. You will not relate to it if you don’t understand what it is trying to say or convey.
There is a balance between updating for the 21st century audience, and losing the value of the music by straying too far from the composer’s performance practices. Morlot found that balance on opening night. Enjoy Maestro Morlot’s joie de vivre and that sense of je ne se qua, and you will find yourself getting more interested learning more about the composers and the music in the social and historical contexts of their time, and in ours! He is a good counterpoint to Seattleite’s passive-agressiveness, if they can pay attention long enough.
je ne sais quoi.
To the Editor:
Jen Graves’ review of Ludovic Morlot’s opening night with the Seattle Symphony (“Don’t Tell the Authorities” — Sept 20, 2011) was built on a pretty flimsy premise: “Gerard Schwarz was ‘complacent’ and ‘boring,’ but Ludovic wears Polo shirts and lets the orchestra conduct itself. Neat-o!”
Regarding the first complaint, Gerard Schwarz is well known in this country for championing the work of 20th Century American composers — emphasizing their music when others have been less apt to do so. This certainly does not reflect complacency, nor is it consistent with the lifeless repertoire of European antiquity hinted at in Graves’ review.
As for the latter complaint, I have attended two concerts in the last twelve months: the Saint-Saens “Organ Symphony” and the Mahler “Resurrection Symphony” (which was accompanied by the world premier of Philip Glass’ breathtaking “Harmonium Mountain”). Both performances were, in a word, thrilling — the music-making was inspired, ecstatic even. Although both pieces were written well over 100 years ago, both moved me (as a relatively young person) with their sublime beauty and awesome majesty; the experience defies written description. Yes, I sat quietly in my seat, but every neuron in my brain was alive and humming with heartbreak and with joy.
I’m not a season ticket holder, and certainly, I did not attend every performance last season. I cannot vouch that every night was like the ones I experienced — most likely, in fact, they were not. Furthermore, new leadership can rejuvenate and invigorate any organization, and the relationship between Maestro Schwarz and the players was clearly suboptimal.
For these reasons — and, one hopes, for the quality of his music-making — Maestro Morlot will be a welcome addition to the Seattle Symphony, but it does him no service to trash the real excellence brought to this orchestra by Gerard Schwarz, nor to denigrate the art of orchestral music.
I suspect that a little more effort, a little more appreciation for classical music, and the barest research into Gerard Schwarz’s real accomplishments might have produced a more thoughtful review of opening night, which, after all, should have focused on the night’s performance rather than assaults on the art form itself and dubious distinctions between Morlot and Schwarz.
“Thirty years of Symphony complacency”?
Nonsense: the real complacency, in my view, was organizing a review of one fine musician around a superficial, unfair trashing of another fine musician.
T. Drake (Seattle, WA)
Hey critics and writers, how much of your own money do you fork over to go to the symphony? That, my brave revolutionaries, is the question. Who’s going to pay for those sub-18 year olds to occupy seats that might have generated revenue?
Unfortunately, I didn’t see the performance that was reviewed. I was out of town. So this is a general comment.
The dude with an electric guitar, and the other dude on a drum set in a glass cage? Pardon me for farting at the dinner table, but was this some more of that post-World War II stuff that reminds me of the soundtrack to Mannix?
I am very interested in modern symphonic music, but why does every single one of them sound like it was written by someone with a bad case of hemorrhoids who never had a good day in his life? Yeah, yeah, I know: Melody is for the stupid. But I’m stupid, and like any good American, proud of it.
One more thing. I’m sure the writer of this article thinks herself to be on the cutting edge. After all, I think I recognize her as the same one who wrote something a while back about how we all should think of ourselves as racists. (If that was a different “Jen,” my apologies.)
But actually, the truth is that regardless of who the conductor is, they are all celebrities. That’s really the purpose of being a conductor, because the job itself, well, look, anyone can wave their arms to the beat.
So I’m all in favor of the new guy, but there’s nothing new under the sun. Play me something I want to hear, and do it well, and I’ll keep buying those season tickets. If they tell you that the audience wants new and different, don’t believe them. This is the symphony, and there’s a reason I go there instead of some hip-hop club. Forget that at your peril.
Something else: The symphony musicians like the new conductor for now, but they will hate him soon enough. It’s how symphonies work.