011: Orchestra tours – the good, the bad, and the ugly

In this day and age, when an orchestra can broadcast its performances worldwide (as the Berlin Philharmonic does with its Digital Concert Hall), why would a group like the LA Phil pack up and lumber around the world? That question was on our minds since we just returned from a two-week international tour.

Remember, when an orchestra travels, it’s not just the 100-odd musicians and perhaps their spouses (and even children)! It’s all their instruments as well, the music, luggage, and all kinds of other orchestral detritus. Then you’ve got the librarians, administrative staff, stage crew, and everyone else who makes the tour go ’round.

So in this episode, we talk about the whys, and then the hows. How do you get ready for tour, how do you deal with the strange meal times, how do you adjust for the different halls? We also discuss how tour performances are different from “home base” shows, and what touring does for the orchestra musically.

Don’t forget, if you haven’t yet picked up our free guide to evaluating violin sound, make sure you click here to get it!

Transcript

Nathan Cole: Hello, and welcome back to Stand Partners for Life. I am Nathan Cole.

Akiko Tarumoto: I’m Akiko Tarumoto.

Nathan Cole: And good to have you back. Back in the home studio here in Pasadena. We are recovering from tour.

Akiko Tarumoto: Yeah, that’s me being jet lagged. Sorry.

Nathan Cole: You mean the long pause?

Akiko Tarumoto: The long pause and glazed silence.

Nathan Cole: Yeah, that’s going to be the topic of this episode, all about touring. Just before we dive into it, I did want to remind all of our listeners that if you haven’t got our free guide to choosing instruments or upgrading instruments, do make sure you pick that up. That’s at standpartnersforlife.com/guide. I’m actually helping someone right now find a new instrument, and it’s taken a lot of years and a lot of searches to come up with just how to listen to new instrument sound, unfamiliar instrument sound. You had a hand in putting that together, you’ve done your own searches.

Akiko Tarumoto: Yeah, a few. For the most part I-

Nathan Cole: We’re not dealers. We’re not buying and selling these things all the time.

Akiko Tarumoto: Yeah, we don’t have the disposable income to be high-end instrument shopping on a regular basis.

Nathan Cole: But it was a really fun guide to put together and it’ll give you a system, our system, for listening and evaluating. Whether you’re looking for an instrument right now or not, it’s just great to have a way to organize your thoughts on that. Go ahead and pick that up. Standpartnersforlife.com/guide. It’s free and tons of fun, if I do say so myself. We’re going to talk about tour today. Just to maybe color our conversation a little bit, I wanted to read a little something that someone wrote to us on iTunes, a review, which I’d love to read. This listener shares a lot of good thoughts. All this is in a constructive vain, but they do mention, “My only comment.” Well, this comes halfway through the comments, so it’s not really their only comment.

Nathan Cole: But, I think they mean the only criticism would be, “That sometimes the problems you describe regarding your playing and work-life can be seen as a little as ‘first world problems.’ I believe that if you’ve made it to LA Phil and have this amazing job, which is rare in our profession, I would think that anyone would feel accomplished. I feel a lot of negativity coming from the outcome, almost as though all this practice brought you to a place where all the insecurities and frustrations are still the same. I’m sure that you both love what you do. Don’t want to come off as though you’re better than anyone else, but I hear a lot of complaining.” I think that’s fair enough. I think, for me, the phrase in there that sticks out is, “Almost as though all this practice brought you to a place where all the insecurities and frustrations are still the same.” In a way, I think that’s true.