We went to hear the Hartford Symphony Orchestra concert last Sunday. The conductor, Carolyn Kwan, literally jumped up and down on the podium in intimate relationship with the instruments—each and all—as well as with her embodied energy. Kwan always invites the player whose solo work is featured in this concert to join her for the pre-concert talk. She knew the personality of each instrument and likely each player. She jumped quite literally into the music itself.
This latest concert featured a concerto for the tuba. Just the idea of a tuba featured as a soloist made me laugh. It’s such a clumsy instrument, huge, not very portable, and lacking the delicacy of the flute or oboe, or the charm of the cello.
Still, onto the stage at Kwan’s bidding came Jarrod Briley lugging his enormous tuba. When Kwan invited him to say something about his beloved instrument he said; “It’s heavy.” The audience laughed. Briley explained his instrument as “clearly a background instrument.” And here he was bearing his tuba’s bulk and playing it with the utmost grace and affection of a lover. When the other musicians are playing along he takes the time to clean out his tuba with a clothe, as he sings lightly into its horn. When a wild contemporary pieces like Bartok or Gershwin come up, the whole ensemble joins in, and the big old tuba vibes. All of us now are already jazzed up by Marsalis’s second movement called “Boogaloo Americana.”
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Carolyn Kwan is a graduate of Smith College, my alma mater. Going to the Hartford Symphony Orchestra Concerts brings me back to my college music course. I had to select a course in one of the fine arts to fulfill graduation requirements in 1960. I chose Music 101, because my maternal grandfather worked for an NYC company that imported classical music from Europe. Curiously and cautiously, I fell madly in love with classical music —even opera.
I continue to believe in the Fine Arts because they have potential to save the world, to liberate us all from stuffiness of mind, heart and body. Did you know that St. Francis of Assisi as a young and rebellious youth stripped himself of his fine clothes and, in front of his shocked father, ran naked in the town square for all to see. Today we would call it streaking—or maybe future sainthood.
I admire this behavior although I’m hardly a saint, and I promise not to streak. My own aging skin might just flap and fly away! Still, at all ages there is a time to stand up to authority figures and unjust systems wherever we are and however we can, whether it be playing a tuba or crooning an off-key aria anywhere, immodestly.
