MEETING MINUTES Wednesday, May 11th, 2016 St. Bernadette’s Catholic School
PROGRAM SUMMARY “Fox Valley Symphony, 50 Years”
The president called the meeting to order and thanked all in attendance and also thanked the April meeting speaker Rob Nurre for his portrayal of Theodore Conkey as the Surly Surveyor. Mention was made of Jim Krueger’s efforts on behalf of St. Joseph’s Parish and its 150th anniversary celebrations. The usual announcements regarding membership and books for sale and upcoming events were made. There were 57 in attendance at the meeting.
The evening’s speakers were then introduced as they spoke of the 50th anniversary season for the Fox Valley Symphony starting in September. They were accompanied by a display featuring the history of the symphony.
Tom Sutter:
We are the Appleton Historical Society and we seek to help preserve and share Appleton’s history. Tonight we celebrate 50 years of one of its cultural icons—The Fox Valley Symphony. Some of the details of how a group of interested persons came together to start the symphony are set forth in the display here tonight. Some of those folks, founding board members, musicians and donors are no longer with us but would be proud that the symphony has weathered the ups and downs of its first 50 years and is positioned well for the start of its next 50 years.
What we would like to do this evening is to give you some insight into the symphony from three viewpoints—the musician, the staff and a member of the audience. We hope you leave tonight with a greater appreciation of what it takes to have a symphony in our town and why its 50 year history is an important part of Appleton’s varied history.
[Janet Sutter spoke first from the perspective of the musician with the orchestra and also her role as music librarian. She also wowed the audience with the playing of her violin! Janet plays in the first violin section of the orchestra and was its lead violinist or concertmaster from 1991-2009.]
JANET:
>MEMBER: since 1991...some 25 years, 18 as Concertmaster
audition requiring solo material and excerpts from orchestral literature
duties as member: >preparation of music and familiarity with works
>purpose of rehearsal is to put everything together and not to learn one’s own part >punctuality for rehearsals and performances
>as Concertmaster:
>leader of the 1st violin section
>performs any solo indicated in music
>make any needed suggestions to string players
>liaison with conductor for string players
>responsible for deciding on bowings (along with
other string principals)
>SYMPHONIC MUSIC: what and why?
>Combination of various groups of tone colors/sounds/timbres... >woodwinds: families of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons
may be covered by brass, but have distinctive colors
>brass: French horns, trumpets, trombones, tubas
>percussion: anything that you can hit or shake harp=stringed instrument but not played with a bow piano=percussion/string
>bowed strings: family of violins, violas, cellos, double-basses numerous for sake of balance
homogeneous in sound similar to brass
>saxophone family: invention came late, so not typically orchestral; looks like a brass instrument, but uses a single reed; used by several composers – Pictures, Bolero, West Side Story; common in jazz
>Each section has its own leader or principal >Popularity dates from middle 1700’s:
>Court orchestras replaced by concerts in larger venues for the general public for the price of a subscription
>Rise of Mannheim, Germany under direction of Johann Stamitz NOTE: Mannheim Steamroller 1742-78
>Extremes of volume and possibilities of endless sound combinations appealing to writers of music
NOTE: 1st use of trombones in final movement of
Beethoven’s 5th Symphony 1808
>Variety of formats around the country:
>Full-time employment: i.e. Chicago, New York, Milwaukee, Dallas
>Pick-up employment: special events >Part-time employment: in Wisconsin i.e. Fox Valley Symphony – Appleton
Central Wisconsin – Stevens Point
La Crosse
Chippewa Valley – Eau Claire
Kettle Moraine – West Bend
Madison
Manitowoc
Racine
Sheboygan
L. Geneva
Peninsula Music Festival – Door County Oshkosh
Waukesha
Most are members of AWSO (Association of Wisconsin Symphony Orchestras)
“...resource for growth and appreciation of orchestral music in the State of Wisconsin....Promotes and facilitates the exchange of ideas among the various state orchestras and their affiliated organizations by holding periodic conferences and providing a structured network...”
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>LIBRARIAN: Since 2005-06 season
>Duties: >getting the sheet music to the musicians enough in advance
to be able to prepare their parts
>works with: Music Director/Conductor – repertoire Executive Director – cost
Personnel Manager – roster and contact info
>researches instrumentation, timing, sources, cost >acquisition, distribution, collection and returns post-concert
[Jamie Lafreniere spoke from the perspective of the staff that is responsible for organizing and managing the symphony and its many related activities. Jamie is the executive director of the FVSO. Just as the music director coordinates the musicians of the orchestra, so does Jamie coordinate all of the numerous parts that together result in concerts for all to enjoy.]
JAMIE LAFRENIERE
What is OUR orchestra:
Even before the performance we have a list of things to accomplish:
o Sponsors, donors, staff, season planning, budgets, artistic director, board participation
FVSO Overview:
o Adult Orchestra
o Youth Orchestras
o Education and Outreach
[Jamie also presented power point slides to accompany her talk.]
TOM SUTTER:
Often folks who know about Janet’s profession will ask me “What do you play?” My answer is “I play the audience.”
I have heard some say they prefer CDs of musical pieces because they are “perfect” but they miss the point. A concert is more than the music—it is a social event where we collectively share the music and share in each other’s company and in the visual kaleidoscope that is the symphony concert. This is illustrated by a recent article about three women in Baltimore who have attended 50 years of concerts together and speak of the music and the companionship enjoyed over all that time.
We have all heard or read articles about the importance of music to our lives, our hearts, minds and our souls. I would like to read some excerpts from a speech given by Karl Paulnack to the parents of incoming students at the Boston Conservatory.
“The first people to understand how music really works were the ancient Greeks. The Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us.
[Some examples include the musicians who made music even in the Nazi concentration camps during World War II and the fact that following the attacks of September 11, 2001, the first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert.]
From these experiences, I have come to understand that music is not part of “arts and entertainment,” as the newspaper section would have us believe. It’s not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or pass-time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can’t with our minds.
Some of you may know Samuel Barber’s heart-wrenchingly beautiful piece, Adagio for Strings. It you know that piece of music you know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn’t know you had. Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what’s really going on inside us the way a good therapist does.
I bet you have never been to a wedding where there was absolutely no music. There might have been only a little music, there might have been some really bad music, but I bet you there was some music. And something very predictable happens at weddings—people get all pent up with all kinds of emotions, and then there’s some musical moment where the action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn’t good, predictable 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding, cry a couple of moments after the music starts.
Why?
The Greeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we feel even when we can’t talk about it. Can you imagine watching Indiana Jones or Superman or Star Wars with the dialogue but no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the right moment in ET so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly the same moment? I guarantee you, if you showed the movie with the music stripped out, it wouldn’t happen that way. The Greeks: Music is the understanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects.
What follows is part of the talk I give to incoming freshman a the conservatory:
If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you’d take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at 2:00 a.m. someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you’re going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8:00 p.m. someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.
You’re not here to be an entertainer, and you don’t have to sell yourself. The truth is you don’t have anything to sell; being a musician isn’t about dispensing a product, like selling used Chevies. I’m not an entertainer; I’m a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You’re here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.”
Congratulations to the Fox Valley Symphony on achieving its 50th anniversary season. We invite you to celebrate this part of Appleton’s history and invite you to continue to support and enjoy this important cultural asset of ours.
With that the meeting was adjourned.