As Stéphane Denève takes up the reins as Artistic Director of New World Symphony in Florida, Michael Andor Brodeur investigates the organisation’s rethink of everything - from how a concert hall functions to how an orchestra should sound.
Conductor Stéphane Denève has just one note for the string section of the New World Symphony as they work through the first movement of Jacques Ibert’s “Escales” on a recent Friday morning. During a pause in the rehearsal, he tells them “preparation is key.”
In the context of the movement, he is urging them to mentally queue not just the next note, but its shape, its color, its character, to summon all of these things in the moment before the note arrives so its sound can be released like a bird. The newly named artistic director specializes in sonic guidance, the kind that doubles as sound advice for outside of the concert hall. Everything at NWS seems to resonate as a bigger lesson.
And unsurprisingly, his tip works: When the orchestra resumes and the strings come sentimentally swooping in like gulls over the harbor, the music as a whole just sounds (how to say this?) readier. Which is sort of the whole point of this place...Keep reading on The Washington Post.
Conductor Stéphane Denève has just one note for the string section of the New World Symphony as they work through the first movement of Jacques Ibert’s “Escales” on a recent Friday morning. During a pause in the rehearsal, he tells them “preparation is key.”
In the context of the movement, he is urging them to mentally queue not just the next note, but its shape, its color, its character, to summon all of these things in the moment before the note arrives so its sound can be released like a bird. The newly named artistic director specializes in sonic guidance, the kind that doubles as sound advice for outside of the concert hall. Everything at NWS seems to resonate as a bigger lesson.
And unsurprisingly, his tip works: When the orchestra resumes and the strings come sentimentally swooping in like gulls over the harbor, the music as a whole just sounds (how to say this?) readier. Which is sort of the whole point of this place...Keep reading on The Washington Post.