ENCOUNTERS by George Sturm
Michael Feldman
"We're the best little orchestra in the world,"
says Michael Feldman, "and if you don't believe me, come spend a morning
listening to us. Or better still, if you're one of the conductors or soloists
we're trying to enlist, come spend a morning working with us." The us
he refers to is New York's Orchestra of St. Luke's, an outgrowth of the St.
Luke's Chamber Ensemble Feldman founded in 1974. As one hears him review
his remarkable background and career, one is struck by his distinguishing
characteristics: his pragmatic professionalism, the unusual scope of his
musical knowledge and interest, his ability to attract and retain a loyal
core of musicians of consummate taste and total devotion to their art, and
an avoidance of the first person singular. Michael Feldman would rather focus
on his group than dwell on himself.
A native New Yorker he was born in The Bronx Feldman attended
the High School of Music and Art and went on to Queens College where he encountered
two musicians who greatly inspired him, Luigi Dallapiccola and Boris Schwarz.
"I was a crazy kid," he recalls. "Boris befriended me during
my most difficult time and let me play first clarinet in the orchestra at
a point when everyone else wanted to throw me in the garbage pail. I didn't
know what I was going to be doing." So he enrolled in the [City
University] Graduate Center's doctoral program while at the same time finding
a teaching job in the junior high school system. This tenure was soon interrupted
by three years of military service between our national involvements in Korea
and Vietnam. Fortunately for Feldman he was selected to play in the West
Point Band. "I think the most important thing about the West Point Band
for me was that I got to meet a lot of wonderful musicians from all over
the country. Being a wind player myself, I got a clear understanding of what
standards were and how people played I sat next to Larry Combs who is now
principal clarinet in the Chicago Symphony and, although I knew some repertory,
I had never played in a band before. The virtuosity required for a wind player
in a band, especially on the clarinet, is of a higher level than anything
I had experienced."
On being discharged from the army in 1965, Feldman went
back to teaching junior high school. "It was a cultural event, when
one thinks about it, being with that extraordinary generation of kids of
the late 60's and early 70's that were almost ruling the roost for a while.
Parents had almost lost faith that they could control their children, and
teachers were the last bastion of belief in things other than protest, sex,
and drugs. Of course the children didn't really want all that power. What
they really wanted was to find people to tell them what to do. What we did
was to treat the youngsters with enormous warmth and care, sometimes pick
them off the streets, but also push them very hard in our respective areas.
I'd get my chorus together with some of Johannes Somary's older high school
kids and we'd sing some of the choral masterpieces. But one day I suddenly
realized that I wanted to be doing something else, something in the music
field which teaching is not. So I gave up all the nice secure things
that parents are so concerned about and marched out to become a free-lance
conductor and musician."
It was a good point in his life to shift gears. He was 32
and had just recovered from a mountain climbing accident in the Tetons that
had led to a two-month stay in a Jackson Hole, Wyoming hospital. While waiting
for his body to heal, Feldman took stock of his resources. On returning to
New York, he was invited to conduct and help run a little group called L'Ensemble
de Sacre Coeur which gave chamber concerts of unusual music. It was there
that he gained experience at the nitty-gritty that must accompany all artistic
ventures: contracting, scheduling, merchandising and promoting. No sooner
had this project come to an abrupt end than there came a call from the organist
of St. Luke's Church in Greenwich Village asking if Feldman might be available
to start a concert series and do some teaching and conducting there. Thus
endowed with a few thousand dollars and much encouragement from the Church,
and accompanied by a small group of free-lance players (some of whom he had
worked with at the Convent of the Sacred Heart), Michael Feldman was ready
in 1974 to launch the St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble.
From the very beginning, the ensemble devoted itself to the
most diverse musical fare. Its very first program contained a variety of
concert music in the first half, followed by a staged contemporary chamber
opera in the second. They squeezed in as many concerts as they could book,
taking "wild chances," and facing dire financial straits. But Feldman
and his small band of collaborators were determined to perform the music
they loved without being swallowed up by big establishment orchestras and
their seemingly unavoidable ennui and routine. Their reputation as an ensemble
grew and soon they were invited to participate in offerings by the Gregg
Smith Singers, the Harlem Boys' Choir, the beautiful and imaginative St.
Thomas' Church on Fifth Avenue. In 1976 Feldman created Children's Free Opera
in association with the Consolidated Edison Company and began conducting
fully-staged productions of short operas by Haydn, Rossini, Offenbach, Ibert
and Stravinsky. Performances, produced by Feldman and promoted by Con Ed,
are given in such major New York City houses as Carnegie Hall, Town Hall,
and the Brooklyn Academy of Music with children's audiences selected from
the schools. Invited to join one of these audiences was Michael Sweeley,
president and executive director of Caramoor, one of our most colorful summer
festivals.
For several seasons Caramoor, then under the music directorship
of Julius Rudel, had put together its own free-lance orchestra but after
Rudel left, Sweeley had begun seeking new options. He had always thought
about having a permanent ensemble in residence at the Katonah, New York festival
and it wasn't long before he invited Feldman to become music advisor to Caramoor,
in charge of putting together opera productions and bringing with him the
expanded St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble, now dubbed (1979) The Orchestra of
St. Luke's. Among the eminent conductors who have appeared with the group
have been Raymond Leppard, Lorin Maazel, Sir Charles Mackerras, John Nelson,
and Julius Rudel.
For Feldman, the administration of his organization has become
a full-time occupation. His players may have other professional commitments
as well but they now devote between 40 and 75% of their time to St. Luke's.
When Caramoor's present music director, John Nelson, recommended the orchestra
to Matthew Epstein for the Choral Celebration of Bach at Carnegie Hall in
1985 and, in the same year, for that hall's series of Handel operas, it was
"a tremendous step forward," according to Feldman. Michael Tilson
Thomas, who had guest-conducted the orchestra at Carnegie, asked to use it
for the Pina Bausch Dance Company stint at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
He engaged it again for last season's Gershwin Festival (also to be seen
on television) as well as this season's Nixon in China. Julius Rudel
continues to be associated with both the festival and the orchestra, serving
on the advisory committees of both. Feldman: "This orchestra is crying
for the Viennese approach to music-making and of course Rudel permits and
encourages them to do this. From the very first time he conducted them I
thought it was a nervous conductor in front of a nervous group there was
an immediate rapport, a mutual recognition, and I think he's led some of
the most wonderful concerts we've ever given."
Structurally there is no orchestra like it anywhere in America,
the idea of a crack ensemble at the service of differing events and directed
by a number of conductors being essentially British.
But what of Michael Feldman, the conductor? "There was
a big piece in The New York Times a couple of years ago in which I
said that I was stepping down as a conductor. I was making a statement that
my organization played better than I conducted and that I didn't wish to
be a liability to them. I truly believe that. I still enjoy conducting and
have worked with Twyla Tharp and Mark Morris and other dance companies and
they're now talking about sending me to China to conduct the Beijing Ballet."
His role with St. Luke's, however, has become that of a catalyst,
an idea man, a builder and "quality control expert." He is assisted
in achieving the group's objectives by his wife, Marianne Lockwood. Work
with Children's Free Opera continues and he talks about doing more regional
conducting. And some day, maybe, running an opera house ...In the meanwhile,
the couple are enjoying their new son, the first child for the 47-year-old
Feldman. (Mrs. Feldman has three grown children from a previous marriage.)
Moreover, St. Luke's is now involved in television production
and in recording a whole series of classics for Musical Heritage. They want
to record some Johnny Green compositions and arrangements ("Johnny Green
is 80 now and still plays a lot of piano"); and a dance company wants
Feldman to put together a Benny Goodman-based choreography ("There's
a guy in Riverdale who listens to a recording twice and the entire arrangement
flows out of his pen."). How does he do all these seemingly disparate
things? "Well, obviously there's a restlessness in my character. But
philosophically, the idea of St. Luke's musicians is that stylistic flexibility
is infinite. By having people that are specialists at one thing or another,
aside from the general repertoire Myron's [Lutzke, principal cello] and Dennis's
[Godburn, bassoon] expertise in early music as it is being played by the
most advanced thinkers of our age that idea permeates the whole group. They're
the ones who are playing with Trevor Pinnock, Christopher Hogwood and the
like. They're also the ones who are used by such contemporary music groups
as Speculum Musicae. There's nothing these people can't do. Take someone
like Louise [Schulman, principal viola]. She hears something and understands
it immediately. It's like a description of Handel by [Paul Henry] Lang who
called Handel a musical sponge who was able to sop up the crucial aspect
of any music he heard. The nature of how she listens to music is such that
she is able to assimilate the essential rhythmic and contrapuntal structure
of whatever she hears, and then describe it to, everyone around
her. To her there is no need to be exclusionary. She gets right to the essence
of Josquin Des Prez and contemporary music, Gershwin and Benny Goodman and
is able to make a convincing argument for it stylistically. While Steve Taylor
[oboe] just does it, Louise can also describe it intellectually. She's a
very unusual artist."
Considering Feldman's penchant for pragmatism, it comes
as no surprise that he has given much thought to the problem of American
orchestras as our century winds down. "I have my own somewhat radical
views of the situation. I think that these orchestras very often paint themselves
into a corner by not being more flexible. We survive because of our ability
to pull back one year and push forward the next, depending on the availability
of funds and other immediate circumstances. Larger orchestras that are tied
into contracts and commitments there's a tremendous dichotomy between what
these people make compared to what my kids make these large establishments
are sometimes crippled by their own largeness which reduces their ability
to do what the moment demands. With St. Luke's we have our own personal problems.
We don't really have a base of our own support, so that we don't actually
know who our supporters are. We work for Carnegie Hall and Caramoor and BAM
and Children's Free Opera, and not really doing much of our own. It makes
our audiences too amorphous to identify. In building the Orchestra, we had
not been paying enough attention to chamber music, and the next step is to
reestablish our very important chamber music program. We're now doing about
35 or 40 run-out chamber programs and I'd like it to be about 60 or 70."
When Feldman talks of his primary goal vis-à-vis his audiences,
be they children or adults, he doesn't hesitate for an instant. "First
and foremost," he says, "we must entertain. If we don't do that,
if we fail to entertain them royally, then we have not done our jobs. And
if we do, then we can hope at the same time also to educate without condescending."
As to words of advice to those young people who may just be contemplating
a career in music, he says: "Assuming that your skills have been developed
to the stage that you are confident of having something to offer, and assuming
that you are able to be perfectly truthful with yourself, then the most important
qualities are perseverance and a willingness to sacrifice. On a short-term
basis at least, you should be willing to put material gain aside in favor
of what you want to be doing for the rest of your life."
Reviewing Feldman's own achievements thus far, it is clear
that he practices what he preaches.
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