Today we're talking concertmaster, and what it means to sit in the hot seat. What are the duties and expectations, and what makes "first chair violin" attractive or unattractive to different players?
Is playing concertmaster more like being the point guard in basketball, or the quarterback in football? Remember: besides playing all those juicy solos, you have to deal with walk-outs, bowings, section concerns and principal relationships.
Just know that even though the concertmaster position puts you in the spotlight, there's a price to pay for all that attention. How happy you are depends not just on the rest of orchestra but your own temperament.
As Akiko says, "Let's just say it plainly. I don't like being concertmaster." But should we take her seriously?
Key Points From This Episode:
The position and duties associated with the title of Concertmaster
Walk-outs, hitting the right piano octave and making sure not to fall over
Comparing the role of the concertmaster with positions in team sports
How the concertmaster relates to the other members of the orchestra
The issues that arise when a conductor is ahead or behind
Communicating with the conductor; bringing issues up at the right time
The importance of solos in getting hired as concertmaster
Bowing decisions, and shutting out some of the noise and chatter
Leadership principles and focusing on what is most important
Our best and worst experiences as a concertmaster
Quotes
“If you had to pick one leader of the orchestra that isn't the conductor, but a player, it's the concertmaster. They're visible, they're up front.” — Nathan Cole [0:07:29]
“No one even really knows I'm technically a concertmaster, so I have to give myself the title of emergency concertmaster!” — Akiko Tarumoto [0:10:15]
“It's a fun job. It's fraught with danger, but fun and rewarding and you get those juicy solos too.” — Nathan Cole [0:51:48]
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Stand Partners for Life
Carnival of the Animals
Holly Mulcahy: More than wearing pretty shoes
The Suzuki Method
Seinfeld
David Kim
West Side Story
Pines of Rome
The 14 Leadership Principles that Drive Amazon
Jeff Bezos
Transcript
[INTRO]
[0:00:00.6] NC: Hello and welcome back to Stand Partners for Life. I am Nathan.
[0:00:03.5] AT: I’m Akiko.
[EPISODE]
[0:00:17.5] NC: Today, we thought we’d talk about the concertmaster, the duties of a concertmaster and what it’s all about. I mean, should we at least define the concertmaster, the first chair of violinists?
[0:00:28.7] AT: Sure. I assumed people know that, but there are times, a lot of times people don’t necessarily get what that means.
[0:00:36.3] NC: We don’t even say that. We don’t say concert mistress, right?
[0:00:39.4] AT: Not that I know of.
[0:00:40.3] NC: Because I hear people say that sometimes.
[0:00:42.2] AT: Yes. I think some people still say it.
[0:00:44.9] NC: It’s like president, right?
[0:00:46.0] AT: Well, it's like stewardess. We don’t say it anymore.
[0:00:49.3] NC: Right. I'm not sure if people ever did say concert mistress, if that was ever really appropriate.
[0:00:53.4] AT: Sure, they did. I don’t remember.
[0:00:56.6] NC: Yeah. Concertmaster, it's the first chair violinist. Both of us get to do that duty sometimes and we both have concertmaster somewhere in our titles, First Associate Concertmaster and your assistant. That's largely the reason we came out to LA from the Chicago Symphony was the chance to do be concertmaster sometimes.
Why is this a special position and why? What does the concertmaster do?
[0:01:24.8] AT: So are we – start enumerating the duties?
[0:01:27.5] NC: Yes. We're going to tell what the concertmaster does.
[0:01:30.8] AT: Well, so my first disclaimer is that I don't play concertmaster very often, as you know. I'm drawing on a very small amount of experience. I just want to get that out of the way.
[0:01:43.5] NC: I mean, you did it before college. You did it in college and professionally.
[0:01:48.9] AT: Sure. There's probably a lot, or a few people listening who can identify with that. They were –
[0:01:54.6] NC: As we'll get to that, I think sometimes it can be hard. It's a harder job to do, I think if you're not doing it all the time. When you just have to jump in and –
[0:02:02.9] AT: Yeah. That I can attest to. I have a lot to say about that.
[0:02:07.3] NC: Actually, we were talking earlier and you did make me laugh, because you mentioned the first thought you have when you do find out that you're going to play concertmaster.
[0:02:16.9] AT: Of course, one of the things you have to do when you're a concertmaster is walk out on stage, or sometimes I'm concertmaster for just a piece on the program. In that case, you don't have to do the walk out. The walk out is a big deal. I don't think I thought about it too much before I had to do it. Then I was like – I asked you for every step. I was like, “Okay, so are they going to tell me when do I walk out?” You said, “Yes, they’ll tell you.” It’s like, “Then what do I do?” It’s like, “Well, you bow to the audience and then you turn around and you wait for the oboe to give the A.” It was like, “Okay. Okay. Okay. I think I can do that.”
[0:02:51.6] NC: A lot of these so-called smaller duties, the ceremony of the job, those are some of the things that tripped me up at first. Actually, I think that got –
[0:03:01.3] AT: It’s funny you use that phrase, “tripped you up,” because the walkout involves obviously walking out and hopefully not falling. That's a big — not fear of having go that far. I mean, nobody wants to fall on their ham and looks incredibly dumb. As a woman, of course you're wearing heels.
Anyway, it's a whole thing. I got to choose something that looks sturdy. I've got some great shoes. It kills me to come out wearing something sensible. If I'm concertmaster, which again, is thankfully not terribly frequently, but I do have to go with the sturdy block heel, since I don't wear flats because I'm very short. Ladies, if you're listening, you know what a block heel is. It's something that's less likely to cause you to fall on the way out when you're concertmaster.
[0:03:50.2] NC: Yeah. A concertmaster does walk out first. They talk about the concertmaster tuning the orchestra, which really is that phrase doesn't make a lot of sense. The concertmaster calls for the principal oboe to give an A, maybe calls for if there – some orchestras do two A's or three A's, or I think my youth orchestrated did four A’s. You got a call for those different A’s. There's no –
[0:04:18.4] AT: That's the scary thing is that you're not – there's no –
[0:04:21.9] NC: You stress it.
[0:04:23.9] AT: Unspoken. At a certain level, it’s a serve understood. That my first time, I was really nervous that people are going to be staring at me like, “What are you doing? You're waiting for another A? There's no more A’s.” Or, “Oh, there's another A. Why didn't you wait for the other A?” I think the first time I did it here actually was for a kid’s concert, where there was piano. It was also terrifying, because I'm always afraid I'm going to hit a key other than the A on the piano, which everybody's worried about that too, isn’t it?
[0:04:56.6] NC: Yeah, because in that case when there is a keyboard on the stage – well, if the keyboard is somewhere in the orchestra, then you have the keyboard player give the A.
[0:05:05.8] AT: What? Really?
[0:05:06.8] NC: Well, let's say we're playing a baroque piece and there's a harpsichord.
[0:05:10.3] AT: Oh, of course. It's near you. You're not talking about the pianos all the way in the back.
[0:05:15.5] NC: Right. I mean, anything where the orchestra is supposed to have to really be in tune with a keyboard. If that keyboard player, say a harpsichord player is on stage, then they give their A, the oboe takes that A and plays it.
[0:05:30.9] AT: See. This I have not done.
[0:05:31.8] NC: I know. The much more common scenario is there's a piano soloist, they're not on stage yet, but the instrument is and that's what you're talking about where you, the concertmaster have to play that A and try not to hit the wrong key, or the wrong octave.
[0:05:49.2] AT: Yeah. I think I almost did the wrong octave this summer. That was good.
[0:05:54.1] NC: Even that would have been fun. The wrong note is embarrassing. It's like that Internet meme, right? You had one job. In this case, the concertmaster has plenty more jobs.
[0:06:06.3] AT: Well, it depends. I think this summer when I was worried about hitting the right octave, I think it was just – it's for Carnival of the Animals. There were no solos. I loved walking out, not tripping, hitting the right key. That’s the bulk of the work.
[0:06:20.0] NC: That's why you're getting the big bucks for that.
[0:06:21.8] AT: Exactly. Thanks for adding me. Or I added myself.
[0:06:24.8] NC: Let’s talk a little bit more generally maybe. By the way, there's a nice article on this online written by Holly Mulcahy who is concertmaster and I believe both Chattanooga and Wichita. She had some thoughts on what the duties of a concertmaster are and she interviewed a few of her colleagues as well.
She titled that article It's More Than Wearing Pretty Shoes, because apparently an audience member had once noticed her shoes and asked her if as concertmaster, she had to wear shoes like that. Yeah. I mean, you've already talked about the importance of the right shoes, whether they're pretty or not.
[0:07:03.7] AT: Yeah. Like I said, my prettiest ones they have to – they just stay in the closet for a concertmaster.
[0:07:09.4] NC: More generally, I mean, we've mentioned the actual – this great definition of the concertmaster is just first chair, first violin. I mean,...
