Conductor's Workshop - Day 2

Reflections…

Today I feel more strongly than ever that this is an event of unique importance. It started with another beautiful morning, a tasty breakfast, and a pleasant drive to Oxfam headquarters. We were set to spend the morning addressing issues about the percussion: what instruments to use, how many players to have, creating new rhythms, using some established rhythmic patterns, balancing with choirs of various sizes – an incredibly long list, created by the conductors. It looked like it would be an excellent and informative morning.

However the discussion suddenly became more potent and emotional when Falou Wade spoke. He began by apologizing to us for not being able to speak in English. Certainly this was unnecessary, but he then continued (through Myguel’s translation) with kindness and nobility in his voice and demeanor, to compliment the composer, the librettist, the soloists, the percussionist, the other conductors in the room. He spoke of the importance of this project and then said to us, “Everyone in my country is poor.” I cannot adequately express how powerfully that hit me. “Everyone in my country is poor.” I live in arguably the richest country in the world, where if we changed the way we spend and/or use money we could completely eliminate poverty throughout the world. (Simplistic? Perhaps, but often the simplest answer is the right answer, though we are loathe to admit it.) And this kind and gentle man lives in a country where everyone is poor. I cannot, as an American who has barely traveled out of the United States, truly comprehend what that feels like. However, I recognize how terrible it is and how it is absolutely avoidable if we work together. Poverty is not cancer, it is not HIV/AIDS…we have the vaccine, we know the cure – we just don’t want enough…and that is terribly sad.

We went on and our discussions about the percussion were indeed thorough and helpful. In fact, there was so much to talk about that we ended up dedicating the entire day to it, so none of the conductors had to conduct a movement (secretly I think many/all of us were relieved).

We ended the day with a visit from Oxfam Novib’s (Netherlands) general director Sylvia Borren, the librettist for the Requiem. She was articulate and passionate as she described the genesis of the work, what drove her to start the project, the difficulties she encountered as she sought to capture this issue in the poetry. She clarified sections of text in the fourth movement I didn’t understand: the words are happy and seemed out of place to me. She explained that the happiness in the text was hallow – that she has met so many people who adopt a kind of ‘forced happiness’ to keep themselves from feeling the full weight of their losses and struggle to survive. She told us about meeting a mother and asking her how many children she had. The woman answered, ‘fourteen.’ Sylvia then asked how many were alive that day and the mother answered, ‘seven.’ Most if not all of those children probably died from hunger and/or preventable diseases – how can we allow such a thing to continue?

So this work is so important, so incredibly important. We need as many people involved as possible. People must be made more aware of these issues; even more importantly, we must make them feel the horror and sadness of it, so that they will be work to change it. The Poverty Requiem has the power to make us feel that horror and sadness, but it also give us the hope that we can (we must) do better.

Amsterdam - first day of conductor's workshop

Today we rehearsed from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. Peter (the composer) went through each movement, picking apart each section, explaining what has worked best in the many performances he has led. For the first movement he asked us to learn by rote – a very strange feeling for me, being so used to having a score and reading my way through the music. Like being a car mechanic, but being asked to hand in the normal tools to use a strange new set – I can’t say I liked it, but I did get a sense of what it must be like for people in my choirs when I expect them to look at and read music as I do: something to be mindful of…

I have not sung in a choir in so long – singing for all these hours was tiring to say the least. It is an easy piece to get into and as a result I ‘over sang’ a lot, but I quickly realized I had to monitor what I was doing so I didn’t hurt my voice.

Fascinating to watch Peter come at technical and musical issues from a different perspective – wrong rhythms, wrong notes, etc., were repaired in different, less technical ways than I use – hopefully I can recall these new ideas when I come back to teach this – and any other – piece. His enthusiasm and commitment is certainly contagious.

This is an important work – I don’t understand why more people in the states aren’t doing it…but I feel, more strongly than ever, that we need to make this event as big as possible and find ways to get others involved. Reading over the Millennium Development Goals that 189 country leaders agreed to in 2000 (see www.standagainstpoverty.org), it is painfully obvious that we are not close to accomplishing any of the stated goals. That is the primary purpose of this work – to remind us of those commitments and renew our efforts to make them a reality. That is why it is so important to do it throughout America and the world – otherwise these goals will never be reached.

I love hearing about other countries – comparing our differing and similar political and social issues. All of us struggle with things we find unsatisfactory about the country in which we live. It is interesting to hear how America is perceived in the world - it is amazing how much they know about our upcoming (2008!) presidential election – we are not the only ones anxious to say goodbye to Bush.