One of the projects I most look forward to every season is the Valley of the Sun road tour the Phoenix Symphony embarks upon, bringing the complete Messiah or Highlights to area churches and venues. This December we will perform 10 concerts in 12 days from Litchfield Park in the West to Pinnacle Peak in the Northeast of the valley and everywhere in between.

I wouldn’t consider myself a particularly religious person, but the choral masterworks of composers like Bach, Handel and Mozart, among others, bring something out of me that I always find surprising. 

That composers are able to infuse their music with a degree of religious symbolism and devotion is a breathtaking revelation I am confronted with every time one of these performances begins. I still struggle to put my finger on it, but somehow the music allows me to connect with the painful humanity of Jesus’ experience while finding congregational comfort in his sacrifice. That’s certainly what these geniuses were hoping to allow the listener to experience.

That’s more philosophical on that specific topic than I normally prefer to explore, but it is an interesting personal fuel that burns inside me for the coming couple of weeks.

The Phoenix Symphony’s Baroque Initiative continues to be one of my happiest undertakings here. It is a time in the season where likeminded colleagues have volunteered to participate, and we’ve created a sound and evolving concept that is our own. None of us are academic experts in historical performance per se, but I’ve found plenty of material to shine a light on the wide path one can take. 

More than anything, it expands the musical horizons of those of us that participate and fundamentally changes how any of us approach Baroque and Classical Music. 

As a Music Director, how could I do something that is more artistically significant than lay a foundation that will be serve this repertoire for years to come?

As we closed our four semi-staged performances of Krasa’s Brundibar this past weekend (see photos below), someone asked how I recover from the high of performances.

Interesting question.

The way I look at it is that a Music Director’s brain seems to be constantly chewing on many things at the same time. The performance at hand, what is coming up, what is being planned for future seasons, administrative decisions, how the orchestra is holding up with the week after week progress of programs, etc.  I don’t know if I’m speaking for my fellow Music Directors? If they have as much going on as I do, I imagine it is so.

It has been an amazing opening five weeks of a season. The orchestra goes on its first vacation week next week, and I think they will need it after all the roads we’ve “traveled” in such a short time. They have proven to be an astonishingly resilient group, putting forward tremendous energy for a huge variety of music.

Before we take that first vacation week however, there is a charming and dramatic program yet to be played as well as our Annual Fundraising Gala with Donna Summer.

The Classics program is all about the drama that unfolds in music from the Classical period. Some of it is humorous but, most of all, I think it is remarkable in its honest portrayal of human emotion.

Last night, my Grandfather passed away after a brief illness, and I was reminded again how human beings continue to enjoy life, toil through it and experience the same needs, hopes and desires from generation to generation. So it is with the music we play this week and every week for that matter. Haydn and Mozart were geniuses, but they lived life as we do, playing, laughing, crying and dying. The basic elements of being a human being haven’t changed even though the environment in which we act out the part changes from day to day.

So why play their music as if it must be handled with white gloves and kept dust-free?!

Let’s celebrate the swings of emotion and the fact that they could harness some part of their soul and leave that record for us to perform and marvel at.

My motto as Music Director is “Variety is Key.” We’ve enjoyed costumed characters for The Music Man and Brundibar, visits by some of the most distinguished artists living today and works never heard on this side of the Atlantic. This week’s element of variety is that we return to the core experience of witnessing an orchestra lovingly render some of the most cherished music of all time. Just us onstage - performing for you.

Photo slideshow from Brundibar rehearsal (click images to enlarge):