Stand Partners For Life

Shostakovich had never had it worse: his latest opera, Lady Macbeth, had been panned. And not just by an ordinary critic: Joseph Stalin himself had paid a visit to the opera house. The official Soviet opinion of the work? "Muddle instead of music." Shostakovich therefore pulled his Symphony No. 4 out of rehearsals and regrouped. He determined to write "a Soviet artist's response to justified criticism," a work that would become his Symphony No. 5. Join me and Akiko as we talk Shostakovich, Saint-Saens, and Francisco Coll, along with guest artists Gustavo Gimeno, conductor, and Javier Perianes, piano!

Have you ever "discovered" a major piece, live, in the concert hall? Nathan remembers sitting right next to a big star performing Prokofiev's second Piano Concerto, with its massive and breathtaking first-movement cadenza. Then he and Akiko talk about sitting right next to another big star this week for the same piece. They also reminisce about those stacks of records, cassette tapes, and ultimately CDs from which they learned all the repertoire. Finally, they debate the categories for this week's rep: Qigang Chen's l'eloignement, Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2 in g minor, and Smetana's Ma Vlast, with Bezhod Abduraimov as piano soloist and Xian Zhang conducting.

This week's landmark episode marks the return of Akiko, plus a pair of fellow stand partners for life: violists Kate Reddish and Eric Lea! We discuss the slings and arrows of a career in music, what you can and can't get from music school, what it's like to be part of a string-playing pair, and much more. Kate Reddish is a Los Angeles-based freelance violist. She enjoys a busy and varied career subbing with nearly every major orchestra in the Southern California area, performing as a chamber musician, and teaching and coaching individuals and groups. Kate can be heard on hundreds of film scores, albums, and TV shows, and has appeared on television and on film. Kate comes from a “numbers” family: her father was a tax attorney and CPA and her mother a bookkeeper; her sister followed that path to work as a bookkeeper and financial analyst. Meanwhile, Kate, who started playing the viola through the public school system in Riverside, was certain that a life in music was the only life she wanted. Kate ear

I'm joined in the backyard this week by Violympian and VMC participant Travis Maril, as well as his fellow USC alum and my Director of Operations, Kate Reddish. Our wide-ranging conversation includes no small measure of pedagogical geekery, as well as such diverse topics as Tae Kwon Do bribery and Michael Jordan's private Space Jam gym. Violist Travis Maril is String Coordinator and Viola Faculty at San Diego State University (SDSU), where he has taught since 2007. At SDSU he also serves as Co-Director of the Community Music School’s String Academy, a pre-college program for young musicians, which he co-founded in 2012.  As violist with the Hyperion Quartet, Travis was a prizewinner at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. Over the years he has collaborated in chamber music projects with principal players of the LA Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony, San Diego Symphony, and members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Miró Quartet, and Brooklyn Rider, among othe

Nathan, Kerstin and Kate (and Kate's SPFL Eric) in Pasadena Today I'm talking with Kerstin Tenney, VMC violinist par excellence, as well as my Director of Operations, violist (and VMC alumna par equally excellence) Kate Reddish. We talk about Kerstin's musical education, her experience in the Virtuoso Master Course, and the new album she's recorded with Simon Kiln and the English Symphony Orchestra! Violinist Kerstin Tenney finished recording her first solo violin album in England earlier this year, and is now preparing for its release in the early months of 2023. Her 16-track album, Light, features four newly commissioned pieces, and 8 new arrangements written specifically for this project. Following a lifelong desire to learn, Kerstin has worked with Nathan Cole in every iteration of his Virtuoso Master Course. She plays with the Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah, does freelance work, and has a private violin studio, teaching in person and online. In her teaching,

It's tour time! While you're listening, we'll be flying, driving, and playing our way through Boston, New York, Mexico City, and Guanajuato. So to kick off the trip, let's talk tour repertoire and hand out some awards. Tour rep includes Copland's Third Symphony and Mahler 1 as the "big pieces", plus violin concertos from Arturo Marquez and Gabriela Ortiz. Which composers would we love to have dinner with? What are the scariest moments in these concerts? And what was the most memorable on-stage exchange during tour prep?

Akiko and I are back for the 2022-2023 season! In this first episode we share with you a fun new format: awards in all kinds of different categories. Next week we'll focus on the season-opening tour prep weeks at the LA Phil, but for today we're handing out some All-Time awards. Discover which composers we'd love to have dinner with, which excerpts terrify us in auditions, and which conductor gestures stand the test of time. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, just by clicking the link below the podcast player. Welcome back to SPFL!

We took quite a long break from recording the show with everything going on at the moment, but we are so glad to be back. To kick things off again we thought we would use this episode to go through a bit of what we have been up to, staying home with the LA Phil out of action, some of the work and practicing we have been doing and then to field a bunch of listener questions. We look back at the last few days of regular work before quarantine began and then talk a bit about how we adjusted our schedules after things completely stopped. Nathan talks about his Violympics group, Akiko shares some of her dreams of home fitness and we explain the home recording process we have been working on. This unusual period presents a somewhat useful possibility to musicians; we all have areas of our playing that we wish we could improve and spend more time developing — and this could be the time to do it. After the complete rundown of our work-from-home life, we get into answering questions on quieting inner critics

Here at Stand Partner HQ, we get this question a lot! And that should tell you something without even knowing the answer. Nobody asks what a pilot does, or if we really need one for our airplanes. But the conductor's role isn't nearly so obvious, to our audiences and even, at times, to us! Do we really need someone up front "driving the train"? Do a conductor's responsibilities begin and end with a downbeat and a final cutoff? Key points Akiko's forthcoming appearance on the Every Little Thing podcastAudience fixation on the conductor as the focal point of an orchestraThe job of the conductor during rehearsal and performanceGiving instruction vs. providing a "guiding current"Examples of time wasting, directionless rehearsalExamples of showing appreciation for the work of the players; giving credit where it's duePetty retaliation: talking in rehearsals and other signs of discontentSetting aside grudges for the concert and putting the music ahead of everything elseDo musicians always agree who's a grea

Twelve-step programs have helped millions of people, including some of our colleagues. But their constant references to a "higher power" rub some people the wrong way. As orchestral musicians, we only know one "higher power": the conductor, who rules every aspect of our musical lives! Here are some slightly rewritten twelve steps toward embracing musical anonymity in the orchestra of your choice. The Twelve Orchestral Steps Admit you are powerless over your musical decisions and life has become unmanageable.Surrender those decisions to a higher power to reclaim musical sanity.Turn your musical life over to that higher power (the conductor).Make a searching and fearless inventory of your audition self.Admit the nature of your wrongs to yourself and a practice buddy.Be ready to have the conductor remove your defects of character.Actually ask the conductor to humbly remove those defects.Make a list of colleagues you have musically harmed, and seek to make amends.Make direct amends to these colleagues, e

Violinist Johnny Lee is Akiko's mirror image on stage at Disney Hall: he sits fourth chair second violin, while she's fourth chair first violin. But they have something else in common too. Both went to Harvard, where there is no music performance major. Akiko thought she'd be a lawyer, Johnny a doctor (or was he just pretending?), but they both found their way back to the violin by the time they graduated. The Stand Partners have logged thousands of hours of "unofficial" conversation with Johnny, so we're excited to present him on the podcast. Here's Johnny's path to the LA Phil and beyond! Transcript [00:00:00] NC: Hi and welcome back to Stand Partners for Life. I’m Nathan Cole.  [00:00:04] AT: I’m Akiko Tarumoto.  [00:00:18] NC: And we are thrilled to be here with our great friend on we’ve been trying to get on this podcast actually ever since we started this show. Good friend Johnny Lee, violinist with us in the LA Phil. Frequent hanger outer here at the Cole-Tarumoto residence. You’ve go

How many times have you been jealous of the box scores for baseball and basketball, or the advanced statistics for football? Don't you wish that you too could be measured by notes attempted, notes played in tune, entrances successfully counted? If we got our wish, orchestra concerts would have their own advanced metrics! Here are the stats (and penalties) we'd like to see.

This week, we're talking scales and etudes. Are they the foundational blocks on which your entire technique is built? Or more like raw vegetables that you have to choke down if you want to stay healthy? Akiko actually had a scale class as a kid, while I got a crash course in scales from my Curtis teacher Felix Galimir (who had studied with Carl Flesch himself). Etudes were a different story. Both of us went through a progression of Sevcik, Schradieck, Kretuzer, Dont, and all the rest. But back then, we just played without knowing why. These days, we like to know the point of an etude before we dive in: the key that unlocks each etude's benefit. Developing my Virtuoso Master Course has given me a chance to reevaluate my relationship with the classics, but I wanted Akiko's take on the topic as well. Enjoy a roll in the hay of fundamental violin techniques! Key points Akiko recounts her distaste for practicing scales at JuilliardScales: more like meditation or workout?Akiko's time at Juilliard pre

Chicago Symphony cellist Brant Taylor may have been our very first special guest here at the Stand Partners, but so far we've been missing the perspective of his partner Roderick Branch. Roderick is a musician, though his day job (and sometimes into the night job) is as a partner at a giant law firm. Roderick is what you'd call an extremely savvy listener, otherwise known as a superfan. So today Akiko, Brant, and I talk with Roderick, to remember just who it is we're playing for. Roderick elaborates on the dynamics between orchestra and audience in the context of different halls around the world. We speak about the room for error in a magical rendition, the performer as an audience member, and how the level of familiarity with an orchestra affects our experience of it. We also get into the pros and cons of designs, histories, and acoustics of different halls. Next, we share many stories about what made a particular concert life-changing, and then weigh up the various traits of our favorite conductors.

Today we're joined by our good friend and LA Phil principal cello, Robert deMaine. Bob tells us about his childhood, his musical family and an early teacher who gave him a complete musical education, including piano and composition. He also unpacks how he fell out of love with the cello during his teen years and took an extended break from playing. Eventually he found his way back and went on a tear, pursuing a solo career and at the same time winning principal jobs in Hartford, Detroit, and finally Los Angeles. Bob doesn't hold back as he discusses anxiety, negative self-talk, and the long road toward mastery of an instrument. Key Points From This Episode: Different orchestral seating arrangementsBob's upbringing, important places and inspiration from his familyHaving and then losing the best music teacher in the worldThe difference between relative pitch and perfect pitchDisasters in ice cream shops and disasters on stageBob's early jobs in music and testing boundaries with senior musiciansThe D

Today we're talking concertmaster, and what it means to sit in the hot seat. What are the duties and expectations, and what makes "first chair violin" attractive or unattractive to different players? Is playing concertmaster more like being the point guard in basketball, or the quarterback in football? Remember: besides playing all those juicy solos, you have to deal with walk-outs, bowings, section concerns and principal relationships. Just know that even though the concertmaster position puts you in the spotlight, there's a price to pay for all that attention. How happy you are depends not just on the rest of orchestra but your own temperament. As Akiko says, "Let's just say it plainly. I don't like being concertmaster." But should we take her seriously? Key Points From This Episode: The position and duties associated with the title of ConcertmasterWalk-outs, hitting the right piano octave and making sure not to fall overComparing the role of the concertmaster with positions in team sportsHow

Nathan says: "My top three movies of all time would be The Godfather, Rocky, and Amadeus in some order." Akiko's not into those "top whatever" lists. But both of us love Amadeus so much that we would drop whatever we're doing and watch it again right now. Here's why...

It isn't every day that you get to perform for 18,000 screaming fans... especially if you're a violinist. But a handful of times each summer, we get the rock star treatment at the Hollywood Bowl! OK, so those 18,000 folks probably aren't screaming just for the two of us... there might be some famous movie tunes thrown in, or some fireworks, or Katy Perry. But we take it all in stride as we navigate the summer home of the LA Philharmonic. Listen up for the inside scoop on one of the most amazing performing arts venues anywhere in the world!