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6 The Nashville Musician April-June 2007
Where does the time go? I swear it was
only two weeks ago I was relating everything
we’d been doing since September through the
last three months, and once again it’s time to
tell you what we’ve been doing!
February blew past us with terrific concerts
featuring Dianne Reeves and Ricky
Skaggs. (I must mention that in my second or
third year with the NSO, we did a four-hour
live session at TPAC - in the symphonic world
it is known as a “location” recording. We recorded
nearly 20 hits that came out of Nashville
and it was called “Nashville Platinum.”
During that recording session I was delighted
to discover the amazingly talented musician
Ricky Skaggs, and 20 years later I’m still in
awe.)
Dan Lochrie, Lynn Peithman and I were
able to catch up with our former teacher from
the University of Michigan, Carl St. Clair, who
was in town to conduct our Classical Series
that featured Philip Glass’s oratorio The Passion
of Ramakrishna. Jubilant Sykes is a terrific
talent as is the group Take 6 that hails
from Nashville; both performed on our Pops
concerts.
The March return of David Lockington,
Music Director of the Grand Rapids Symphony,
was delightful. So too was the return
of John McDermott at our Celtic-themed concert
that included the talents of our own Jay
Dawson on bagpipes. We can thank the persistence
of Otto Bash, a huge John McDermott
fan, for bringing him to the Nashville
Symphony’s attention. John is a terrific artist
and gracious as well. For the second time, he
threw a reception (complete with roses and
CDs) for the orchestra and various invited
guests following the final performance. While
I was backstage during the Saturday performance,
I spied AFM Canadian Vice-President
Bobby Herriot who knew John and his music
director, and then found out that he and our
Resident Conductor George Schram worked
together some 35 years ago, proving once
again how small the musical world can be.
Our 2nd violin audition came off without
a hitch (well, for the committee it did. For
Leonard Slatkin, he was stuck in LAX until
the middle of the night!). The staff should be
commended for pulling off a well-run audition
and Maestro Slatkin’s participation was
very helpful and positive. We have offered the
position, beginning next season, to a violinist
currently residing in Atlanta, Ga., named
Louise Higgins. Louise will join us for some
of our concerts this summer, so we’ll have a
great chance to get to know and work with
her.
The week Arild Remmereit returned to
Nashville was also the deadline for briefs to
be submitted to the arbitrator regarding Concertmaster
Mary Kathryn VanOsdale’s case.
We hope to receive the Arbitrator’s decision
within the next few weeks.
This final week (as I write this article),
we are knee-deep in a terrifically difficult program.
Avner Dorman’s Variations Without a
Theme had many of us questioning our skills
prior to this week, but the composer seems
Symphony
Notes
By Laura Ross
Nashville Symphony
Shop Steward
quite happy with our performance. Stravinsky
reworked his Firebird Ballet at least three or
four times and this version we are performing
is unknown to nearly everyone. We are quite
familiar with the Firebird Suite, but this version
has a great deal of new passages and the
orchestration is vastly different from what we
are used to. Van Cliburn Competition winner
Alexander Kobrin and featured soloist this
week is doing a wonderful job performing
Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto #1. (I was
pleased to share my tickets with two new members
of Local 257, who just relocated from the
NJ/NYC area. Peter Gordon and Jan Paulson,
quite accomplished French horn players who
bought a farm in McEwen, Tenn., and raise
Great Danes. Peter’s father was the principal
violist of the Detroit Symphony when I was
growing up. I was happy to introduce them to
Leslie Norton, our horn section and to Gerald
Greer, who can share his own dog breeding
stories!)
In addition to all our other activities these
past two months, the negotiation team has begun
their work. We met in late February to
discuss the financial health of the orchestra.
Most of the meeting was about the financing
of and bond repayment on the hall. We’re
happy to report that the symphony is in good
financial health but have no idea what our final
negotiations will produce.
This past week, we held our “roundtable”
meetings with the orchestra. This is the chance
for our musicians to tell the committee what
their concerns are for the upcoming negotiations.
This conversation is very important because
every AFM member of the bargaining
unit has the right to participate in the negotiation
process. This information is turned into
surveys for the orchestra, which are then translated
into our proposal to management. It’s
important to gather as much information from
our musicians as possible, because once negotiations
begin, little information can be
shared until the process is completed and we
come to our musicians for ratification of the
contract.
There’s a lot of trust that is required here,
but I know Gary Armstrong, Carrie Bailey, Lee
Levine, Brad Mansell and I are dedicated to
obtaining the best possible agreement for our
musicians. We could not do any of this, however,
without the able assistance of our AFM
SSD negotiator Chris Durham and without the
support of Local 257 and President Harold
Bradley. Keep your fingers crossed for us as
we meet the week of May 7-12 to negotiate
our contract.
We look forward to the return of Paul
Tobias to the 1st violin section in mid-April.
Paul has joined the ever growing “fusion club”
in the Nashville Symphony. Paul is the latest
“beneficiary” of the anterior cervical
diskectomy and fusion procedure. Paul’s neurosurgeon
Dr. Ronald Zellem performed my
surgery as well as Carrie Bailey’s, Ali
Gooding’s and Paul’s wife Patricia Tobias’s.
Other fusion club members include Gerald
Greer as well as honorary member Cathy
Umstead, since she’s an NSO alumnus!
April’s schedule includes performances of
Puccini’s Madame Butterfly with the Nashville
Opera, a Hymn Sing featuring various Christian
recording artists, and our own musicians,
principal harp Licia Jaskunas and principal
flute Erik Gratton, will perform Mozart’s Concerto
for Flute, Harp and Orchestra on our
Classical 12 Series concerts. That concert will
also include Mahler’s Symphony #4 and
Stephen Dankner’s The World of Yesterday
(Evenings with My Grandfather). Our dress
rehearsal (minus the concerto) will be presented
as an Open Dress rehearsal for the Tennessee
Music Educators Association (TMEA)
convention on Thursday morning. The month
closes with performances of Swan Lake with
the Nashville Ballet.
May takes us on our annual trek to
Shelbyville, which is followed by the return
of Pink Martini (always an audience favorite)
on our Pops Series, and our final Pied Piper
concert of the season.The next week includes
our annual Mother’s Day performance at
Crockett Park in Brentwood (where we battle
the sound of young children running around
in front of the stage), a Donor’s Appreciation
Concert and a Side-by-Side concert with the
Curb Youth Symphony. I won’t be reporting
on this week, since I’ll be in negotiations with
my colleagues, but I am sorry I will miss a
cultural exchange when we are joined by members
of the UNCUYO Symphony from
Mendoza, Argentina. Four musicians and a
staff member from that orchestra will visit
Nashville for a week to play and work with
members of the orchestra and staff of the Nashville
Symphony. In September, the NSO will
send four musicians and a staff member to
Argentina for a week, as well.
The following week is a Classical Series
featuring Alasdair Neale conducting Bartok’s
Concerto for Orchestra, the Haydn Symphony
Just good ol’ boys, Joe Stampley and Texas newcomer Jeff Griffith team up for a CD
By WALT TROTT
“If It Ain’t One Thing, It’s Another” is
the title of Texan Jeff Griffith’s new Arrowhead
album, and brother, it’s a scorcher.
All you whiners out there who grouse
there’s no great traditional talent coming up
in the ranks, better give a listen to this exciting
discovery.
Areeda Schneider did the honors, delivering
the goods to us shortly after CRS. Come
to find out, this charmer is also the wife of the
album’s producer, Joe Stampley.
Both boys can take a bow. “If It Ain’t
One Thing, It’s Another” is solid country, complete
with fiddle and steel, one that true traditionalists
will want in their collection.
Charlie Patterson, who now manages
Griffith, brought his find and the country legend
together. What they’ve produced is an
amazing mix of old and new, though Joe and
Jeff breathe new life into the former.
Stampley brought in a few of his friends
to back up Griffith, including bassist Mike
Chapman, drummer Steve Turner, lead guitarist
J. T. Corenflos, acoustic picker Mark
Casstevens, steel man Scotty Sanders, fiddler
Hank Singer and keyboardist Dennis Burnside.
Studio singers were Jennifer O’Brien, John
Wesley Ryles and (Moe’s buddy) Joe.
The title tune sure sounds familiar, but as
best we can recall it’s on Randy Travis’ 1996
“Full Circle” CD as an album cut. Obviously,
Griffith is a ballad singer, but does a bang-up
job on the upbeat “Fishin’ Forever,” which
sounds radio-friendly to these ears.
A Santa Fee native, Griffith dusts off the
Gary Stewart Top 10 “Drinkin’ Thing” of three
decades back, adding a definitive Texas twang
to the Wayne Carson creation.
Perhaps this is one singer who’s not a
songwriter, as there’s no JG writing credit on
this release, all of which no doubt makes
tunesmiths like Craig Wiseman and Bobby
Braddock happy campers. (There are just too
many Alan Jacksons and Toby Keiths out there
to suit our Music Row writers.)
“I’m Your Radio” is an intense lover’s refrain
requiring a dynamic that ensures the
listener’s rapt attention throughout, and
Griffith nails it down solid. His smooth praising
about a young somebody in his life in “She
Reminds Me Of You” turns out to be a testament
of love for the gal who got away.
CD REVIEW
The Tony Stampley-Bobby Carmichael
sizzler “Let’s Make Love Tonight, Like
There’s No Tomorrow” gives our hero license
to render a killer rendition, which he does, also
revealing a nice seductive break in his vocals.
Jeff’s presentation proves as powerful on
the old Dean Dillon record “Holed Up in Some
Honky Tonk,” and again in reprising Moe
Bandy’s tables-are-turned tuner “It Was Always
So Easy (To Find an Unhappy Woman).”
He gives a contemporary edge to the gritty
#103 (The Drumroll), and Kevin Puts “…this
noble company” (Processional for Orchestra).
(Representatives from the International Musicians
Union – FIM – will be in town and
may attend this concert.)
Our final Pops Concert with Monica
Mancini, Henry Mancini’s daughter, is called
Remembering Mancini. Our almost annual
concert at Vanderbilt (it was cancelled last
year, due to hall tunings, but faculty were invited
to one of the tuning “concerts”) precedes
the Pops concert, and the regular season ends
May 31 – June 2 with the return of conductor
Giancarlo Guererro and pianist Terrence Wilson.
Daugherty’s Piano Concerto, Respighi’s
Pines of Rome, a Strauss Serenade and
Sibelius’ Symphony #6 are on the slated program.
This date also marks the retirement of
long-time 2nd violinist Joann Cruthirds (see
profile on page 14.)
It’s tough to speak about the June schedule
right now because as I write this, the schedule
is still somewhat in flux. We will perform
our three Festival Series Concerts, though they
are no longer exclusively associated with
Beethoven. Leonard Slatkin will conduct one
of these concerts which will include works
about Abraham Lincoln, many of which will
be recorded for a Naxos disk slated for 2009.
Maestro Slatkin will also lead the orchestra
in our performance at the American Symphony
Orchestra League’s (ASOL) national
convention. ASOL’s convention will be hosted
by the Nashville Symphony. The concert will
be attended by artist managers, orchestra managers
and staff and a few conductors from all
over the U.S. We’re hoping to make a good
impression to show that Nashville is “more
than country music.” You and I know that, but
there are still a lot of people out there who
don’t have a clue! I will be in Las Vegas at the
AFM Convention (as Local 257’s 3rd delegate)
for some of these events, but will be
back in time for the ASOL concert.
I’m also pleased that ICSOM Chairman
Bruce Ridge will have the opportunity to hear
the NSO twice this spring and summer. He will
be in town for a meeting with AFM committee
members in April, to discuss AFM finances
prior to the AFM Convention in June. On the
heels of the AFM Convention, Bruce will return
to address the ASOL during the convention.
He will also present a workshop addressing
positive work-place issues with AFM Symphonic
Services Division Director Laura
Brownell. Bruce Ridge is a member of the bass
section of the North Carolina Symphony and
since becoming Chair of ICSOM, he has traveled
all over the country to visit member orchestras
while delivering a positive message
about the orchestra industry to musicians, locals,
staff and board members. I know he is
looking forward to meeting with our musicians,
even if only to mingle backstage for a
few minutes.
So, as you can see, I’m treading water and
trying to keep my head up. Wish us luck in
negotiations and keep good thoughts for a
spectacular performance at the ASOL convention.
Talk to you again this summer!
honky tonker “Whiskey Talkin’,” a ’76 Joe
Stampley song, and shifts into a romantic
mode for “Tonight Was Made For the Two of
Us.”
This record was engineered by member
Steve Tveit, with an assist from Jason Hall.
We’ll be anxious to hear Jeff’s follow-up
CD; meanwhile, we highly recommend this
collection, which is pure country, plain and
simple.