The first few weeks of the new season at the Jacksonville Symphony have been very exciting. We welcomed a group of nine new musicians – an unusually large number all at once. Including exactly half the wind section, it’s been fascinating to hear the sound of the orchestra change with the addition of new voices. My job is to work with the musicians by describing what I hear in rehearsals so that we can arrive at a sound that works for our size of ensemble in our wonderful concert hall. It might seem like a very abstract task, but it’s one we are all enjoying enormously.
During the next few weeks we welcome back former music director Fabio Mechetti for Fauré’s sublime “Requiem,” and you can hear the orchestra playing at the Art Walk downtown, in Fernandina Beach and at the SeaWalk Pavillion in Jacksonville Beach.
I’m leaving town to work in New York City for a few weeks. I will be preparing the Juilliard Orchestra for a concert conducted by Thomas Adès, featuring his “Three Pieces from Couperin” that you might remember we played a few seasons ago. Adès will also be conducting the American premiere of his unsettling and masterful opera, “The Exterminating Angel,” at the Metropolitan Opera.
“The Exterminating Angel” is based on the 1962 film by surrealist Mexican director Luis Buñuel. A group of aristocrats are eating dinner at a grand house, having been to the opera. When it comes time to go home, they discover that for no apparent reason they are unable to leave the dining room. Weeks pass and the situation grows from absurd to appalling: the men drill into a water pipe, a couple crawls into a closet to kill themselves, a nobleman has a nervous breakdown, all while no one talks about why they can’t leave the room. It’s a fascinating study of inertia, clothed in music that turns the screws tighter as the opera progresses, creating an even closer sense of claustrophobia and panic.
I spent last summer assisting Adès for the world premiere of the same work at the Salzburg Festival, but haven’t heard it since. It’s very strange to get to know a piece inside out, work on it for months, and then simply not hear it again for over a year. I’m curious to see how the same cast of singers has adapted to the opera’s unusual demands. You can catch the opera at a number of Jacksonville cinemas via the Met HD broadcast on Nov. 18. I recommend it; it isn’t often we have the chance to witness the birth of a major modern masterpiece.
People who love classical music – both performers and audience members – sometimes have a hard time remembering that all the music we know best was once new. It’s very difficult to imagine experiencing Beethoven’s symphonies as thorny modern music, yet that’s exactly the reaction some 19th-century listeners had. Over the past few seasons we’ve introduced a great deal of new composers to Jacksonville audiences, and I’m really excited about our EarShot concert on April 20 when we will welcome young composers from all over the country to Jacksonville. The group will work with mentor composers and symphony musicians, improving their compositions before performing them all for you in concert. It’s an honor to partner with the American Composers Orchestra to bring the music of tomorrow alive today. Why not take a listen to “The Exterminating Angel” at a cinema near you next month? You’ll be surprised by how thrilling the music of today really is.
Courtney Lewis is music director of the Jacksonville Symphony.
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