Join us as I sit down with Scott Speck, our wonderful Music Director, and ask him about his role as a conductor and about the Joffrey pemiere of The Merry Widow, opening this Wednesday.
Q: Tell me about your earliest interest in ballet music.
A: I guess you could say that my earliest musical memories are of ballet music. The first record I ever had as a kid was the New York Philharmonic playing The Nutcracker, with Leonard Bernstein conducting. It kindled my imagination of what classical music could be. And when I first dreamed of being a conductor, at age 10 or so, the piece I imagined conducting was The Nutcracker as well. So ballet music has been there from the beginning!
Q: How do you see your role as The Joffrey Ballet's Music Director?
A: My primary role is to support the creative vision of Ashley Wheater and the company. Ashley is extremely musical, more so than just about any other Artistic Director I have ever met in the world of ballet. Having grown up revering the great classical music tradition, I am gratified to be working with a leader who values the music so highly, and having concentrated my conducting career on the great symphonic masterworks, I truly have a foot in each world — I feel that I can offer our company an enhanced perspective on the music that accompanies ballet. Ideally, the music is a full partner to the dance. In so many companies the music falls by the wayside. Here, I am doing everything I can to ensure that we eventually have live music for every performance. What a pleasure it is to know that this is Ashley's vision as well.
Q: Do you have any favorite ballets to conduct?
A: As you might expect, my favorite ballets to conduct are the ones with the best music. Almost all of them are Russian. I especially love the three Tchaikovsky masterpieces (Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker), the great ballets of Prokofiev (including Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella), and the works by such choreographers as Balanchine that re-imagine classical masterworks by Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky and others for modern times.
Of all modern ballets, the one I enjoy conducting the most is Othello — and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to do that with the Joffrey in 2009. The action onstage is such a direct and compelling dramatic arc from beginning to end, and so is Elliot Goldenthal's music. As was said about Verdi's operatic version Otello, the ballet actually tells the story more clearly than Shakespeare does. That score also makes use of just about every instrument known to man, including the kitchen sink — or something that sounds a lot like a kitchen sink.
The best reaction to ballet music I've ever had was Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. Every time I conduct that piece, all who hear it, from the audience to the dancers to the stage crew to the wigmakers, come up to say, "Oh my God, this music is so incredibly gorgeous!"
And I guess I should mention that the music of Philip Glass, as wonderfully mesmerizing as it is to hear, is somewhat less fun to play or conduct.
Q: How do you, as a conductor, connect the music to the dancing? Explain the balance that you find between the music and the choreography.
A: It's a fine balance, and it works best when the musicians and I truly appreciate the intricacies of the dance, and the dancers appreciate the intricacies of the music. In orchestra rehearsals I often tell the musicians exactly what is happening onstage so that they can imagine the movement as they are accompanying it. And in the studio, I often help individual dancers to understand how they are embodying a musical phrase. In performance, of course, my job is to act as a conduit between the two. I stand in a position that allows me to see all the musicians and all the dancers at once. When a dancer makes a leap, my baton follows the same arc as the dancer's body, landing at the same instant so that the music can connect exactly.
But there's something more. In an ideal performance, there is a marvelous creative spirit that infuses the dancers, the musicians and me simultaneously. We are not so much reacting to each other as sharing equally in this communal spirit. This is something I feel in the best symphonic performances as well. We're not making music -- the music is making us.
Q: What is your process when preparing for a piece? Is there something unique in the process for each ballet?
A: Well, first and foremost, I study the score as thoroughly as I can. I come from the tradition of orchestral conducting that says you must know each musician's part better than the player does. (By the way, I notice that Ashley seems to have the same philosophy about dance. I'm constantly amazed at how well he knows every detail of these ballets — sometimes better than the choreographers themselves).
Next, I immerse myself in studio rehearsals, which are a great deal of fun. I sit by the piano and conduct the piece over and over, for one cast after another. Our brilliant ballet pianists, Paul Lewis and Mongo Buriad, are extremely helpful to me during this stage. They have spent even more time with the dancers, and they help me understand the needs of each one.
What is unique for each ballet is the exact mix of dance vs. musical elements. Here's an example: Stravinsky's Violin Concerto is an unassailable masterpiece of musical construction. Certain musical phrases have to remain in tempo, unaltered, just by nature of the music. The dancers have to learn how to fit their movements into the phrase that the composer intended, and luckily Balanchine understood that in his choreography. On the opposite end of the spectrum are ballets like Le Corsaire, which are primarily dance showpieces. The music is almost incidental -- it exists to give the dancers a chance to show off. As such, it can be altered almost infinitely to suit the needs or whims of the dancers, and it survives just fine that way. So I am much more likely to insist on a particular tempo or phrasing in Stravinsky than I am in Corsaire!
Q: What do you find special or inspiring about The Merry Widow's score? Is there any aspect of the music you find especially evocative?
A: As you know, The Merry Widow was an operetta first, and Ronald Hynd had the idea of doing it as a ballet without singing. Operettas are operas with spoken dialogue between the songs — they are the precursors of our Broadway musicals. The pianists and I have been amazed at the beauty of this music, the infinite variety of feeling and style embodied in the supposedly "simple" dance forms of the waltz and the polka. Lehar, like the Strauss family, did for the waltz what Piazzolla did for the tango -- he made it encompass the entire world. We've also been fascinated to hear in this music not only echoes of Johann Strauss, but also pre-echoes of Rodgers and Hammerstein. Certain melodies in this ballet would be equally at home in The Sound of Music or The King and I.
Q: How do you connect to the composer? How much of your own "flair" do you give the music versus keeping it true to the composer's original vision.
A: Connecting to the composer is my eternal quest. I have always taken the word "conductor" literally. Just as a conductor of electricity focuses energy in one place and projects it to another, I feel that my job is to focus the energy of the composer and project it to the musicians and out to the audience. (Similarly, I feel that it is my job to focus the energies of the community onto the cause of live music). Ideally, my own "flair" can be transformed into the particular flair of the composer. Of course every conductor brings a different energy, but in the best performances of my life, I felt that I completely disappeared into the music. The self became burned up and joined something much, much bigger.
That's why I've never understood conductors with big egos. We don't compose the music, and we don't play it — we don't even make a sound. Our perceived "greatness" depends completely on the achievements of others. Put any novice conductor in front of the Chicago Symphony and it will sound pretty damn good. It's not about us!
Q: If you could tell the audience one thing to consider/pay attention to while listening to The Merry Widow, what would it be?
A: Listen to the endless variety that can be achieved in three-four time!
For more information and tickets to The Merry Widow visit www.joffrey.org/merry. For more information about Scott Speck visit www.joffrey.org/scottspeck.
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