by DARKO BUTORAC

It’s that time of year again. The shopping (holiday) season is upon us, and everywhere we go we’re surrounded by Santas, lights and of course, the ubiquitous music repertoire. On one hand, I love holiday music. On the other, too much repetition and I’m tired of it long before the real St. Nick makes his appearance. (Note to box stores – please don’t play the stuff before Halloween).
December is also a good time to spend in the kitchen – from reworking Thanksgiving leftovers to baking shortbread cookies. Could we combine the two together? Is there such a thing as a perfect holiday music recipe?
First, we need to look at the status quo – are there common threads that connect the dots between works a disparate as the “Nutcracker,” “Jingle Bells,” “Baby it’s Cold Outside” and the “Christmas Song?” Is there a musical theme that permeates this repertoire once the sappy lyrics and movie associations are removed?
If we take a step back, we can broadly generalize that Christmas music makes us generally feel either happy and elated, or warm and reflective (think “Hallelujah Chorus” vs. “Silent Night”). This, after all, is very much the essence of the spirit of the holiday itself. And so, to construct our musical recipe, we’ll need some major chords, an upbeat tempo, high registers, and bright instrumentation to create a musical sugar high (“Sleigh Ride,” “Joy to the World,” “Feliz Navidad”). But then we’ll want to add a little reflection to our masterpiece, by peppering our song with minor chords and dissonances in key places (imagine the line “fall on your knees” from O Holy Night – gives me goose bumps just to think of it). And let’s finish with a side dish of melancholy by sticking to the darkness of string instruments, low registers and slow pacing.
Since we’re now well on our way to producing the next holiday smash hit, let’s not forget the importance of percussion. Take the lyrics out of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You,” and you just have a pretty average 90’s pop song. But if you pay closer attention, you’ll notice three essential ingredients for a Christmas tune: the celesta, bells, and sleigh bells. The celesta is a keyboard instrument which produces a very high, pure, heavenly sound (hence the name) – it was first used by Tchaikovsky in the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.” The bells add a hint of solemnity and the sleigh bells make the snow begin to fall. Bam – we’re ready for the big time – serve with a generous glug of eggnog and side of Santa cookies!

Darko Butorac is music director of the Missoula Symphony Orchestra. For the “perfect holiday musical recipe,” the Missoula Symphony Orchestra and Chorale perform their ever-popular Holiday Pops concert December 1 at 7:30 p.m. and December 2 at 3 p.m.

by DARKO BUTORAC

I was in the symphony office the other day sorting out the nitty gritty details of symphonic life, figuring out if we need five saxophones for a piece written before the saxophone was even invented. As my research deepened, a curious sound emanated from the speakers.  I stopped, and begged my colleague, Adrienne, to turn it up—it was like a foggy memory coming back from the past with a vengeance. To Adrienne it surely must have sounded like the cheesiest 70s movie soundtrack with a prominent synthesizer part. It was the song Chi Mai by Ennio Morricone of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly fame, written for the French movie Le Professionel. A great tune surely, but definitely cringe worthy. For me, it was a trigger into major melancholy—a reminder of a past long gone. Why the different reactions? It is one of the aspects of music that fascinates me most. How can one piece resonate so much with one listener and not the other? How can anyone not fall deeply in love with Morricone’s tune, synthesizer and all? And by extension, what determines the music we do love, and how do we arrive at our chosen playlists?
Turns out, in the case of music, familiarity does not breed contempt. The more we hear a tune, the more we actually love it. This is why great composers in long works always bring back the best tune numerous times—usually we are not even conscious of it, yet each time we are bonded ever closer, until it passes the threshold and we walk out of the concert whistling it.
There is another element of determining our favorite songs and pieces—personal events that we associate with the music. Think of your own top ten songs. Chances are you heard them first during your youth, hormones raging and life changing. These are powerful associations that we carry our entire lives. I am sure we all have a personal soundtrack to our first love, the warm embrace, the awkward first kiss? This is why the cheesy movie music from 1981 moved me so much - it was a reminder of my own youth, synthesizer be damned!
The cool thing about great music is that it can also work in the other direction—it can heighten an emotional response in a less dramatic situation. Imagine Star Wars without the John Williams score, it would lose so much of the drama. Good music can add so much to a film. And this is exactly the case with two pieces we get to perform this November with the Symphony. The first, Barber’s Adagio for Strings made Platoon unforgettable, and the second, Ashokan Farewell, gave Ken Burns’ Civil War documentary a poignant melancholy. Add some major Hollywood talent - hometown hero JK Simmons will be the guest artist and narrator for our Veterans Day concerts—and we’ve got ourselves a show to remember.

Darko Butorac is music director of the Missoula Symphony Orchestra.  The MSO performs  “America Salute,” a show in honor of Veterans Day and featuring J.K. Simmons as narrator, on November 10 and 11.  www.missoulasymphony.org

by DARKO BUTORAC

One of the great things about being a conductor is that you get a chance to meet many people, from musicians, to community leaders, enthusiastic audience members, kids in schools, university students and professors. And when you add the multiplier of traveling for guest conducting, the number multiplies quickly. You trade a little privacy for much learning and hearing some pretty spectacular stories.
But when it comes to meeting musicians in an orchestra, one starts to notice surprising parallels, no matter if it is a rehearsal at the Dennison Theatre, or a group of string players from Georgia (and that would be the Republic, not the state).
It is a universal truth that when you spend time around someone, you probably adopt a few quirks from being in their presence. Hence it is not surprising that people from across the globe carry similar characteristics when spending thousands of hours with an instrument. I remember reading a book by a certain Mr. Fuchs in college about the very subject, the man managed to write 200 pages on what type of personality can be most found among harp players!
For one, the instruments where invented quite a long time ago, and ergonomics was not on the priority list. If you have a big hickey under the left side of your chin and you are not an enamored teenager, you most likely play the violin. All string players develop calluses on their left hand due to the eternal battle with the tension of the steel strings under our fingers.
The function of the instrument in the orchestra also plays an important role, especially when facing the group in number. Instruments that play bass lines (think basses, tuba and trombones) tend to have a little less activity in their parts – the first violins, for example, will often have ten times as many notes to play in the same piece! As a result, this gang tends to be quite laid back in character, easy going, and most likely to celebrate a good concert with a pint in a pub.
The trumpet generally gets to shine and take over the entire soundscape of the orchestra, and it is no surprise you will find confident characters among their ranks. Their neighbors in the horn section battle with the most unstable of instruments, and one must be empathetic when approaching them. Cellists get the juicy tunes and rich bass lines, and thus tend to have a romantic, soulful personality.
Then there are the violas, the victims of the jokes - there must be thousands of them, whereas the other instruments might have a dozen at best. That’s what happens when you are unnoticed in a big group (the violas play in the middle register rarely stepping into the limelight) – think New Jersey or Belgium. Yet, just like the Belgians, the violists of the world tend to just be really normal and mellow – like a good neighbor. No wonder they get picked on among the other idiosyncrasies of the orchestral milieu.
But there is one instrument to which all the others aspire. Every treatise on every instrument states at some point: Make it sing, emulate the human voice! It is the most human of sounds – the one most likely to grab a hold of your heart and stir your soul. And it is this month that the MSA celebrates the glory of the human voice, at our Symphony Chorale stand-alone concert at the Dennison Theatre (formerly known as the University Theatre). Come check out a vivid program of a wide variety of repertoire, along with the irreverent and eclectic Missoula Brass Consort. Now as far as singer personalities, that will have to be an article all unto itself.

Darko Butorac is the music director of the Missoula Symphony Orchestra and a cello player at heart.  The Missoula Symphony Chorale Stand-Alone Concert featuring the Missoula Brass Consort performs on October 28 at 3 p.m.  www.missoulasymphony.org for tickets and more information.

by DARKO BUTORAC

At the risk of ruining any ruse of coolness, I must confess that I’ve always been fascinated by the lives of classical composers. A mundane fascination, you may think, but on the contrary — the lives of many of the great composers rival today’s soap operas and reality shows for juicy story lines. Thing is, it is unlikely to be a musical genius and not have a spectacularly interesting life, with a little mental illness thrown in for good measure. The history of music gives us a plethora of larger than life characters, most who died too young with at least a scandal or two under their belt. Today’s rock stars have nothing on these guys.

Take the case of Robert Schumann — a great German Romantic composer today slightly overshadowed by his predecessor Beethoven and his protégé Brahms. His short and turbulent life (he only made it to 46) wasn’t lacking in drama. Considered one of the great romantic composers, his music mimicked his life. He became a promising pianist but because of a permanent hand injury (speculated to be a side-effect of mercury treatment for syphilis) his performing career came to a screeching halt, which, luckily for us, led him to composing instead.

At the same time, he started dating his future wife, Clara, the daughter of his former piano instructor, absolutely against her father’s wishes. The official story was that dad didn’t approve of marrying musicians, but the fact she was only thirteen to Schumann’s twenty two might have been a factor in the matter. This resulted in a long and embarrassing lawsuit, which finally the couple won, eight years later.

And then there was the mental illness.  In this day and age, Schumann would more than likely have been diagnosed as manic-depressive. He had bouts of depression that led to suicide attempts, but also influenced the themes of his composition.  His Symphony in C, for example, reflects his state of mind as it explores themes of exhaustion, obsession, depression and finally triumph, despite the fact he was hearing voices and “angelic music.”

He also insisted that he constantly heard an A-natural in his ear, which eventually drove him to jump into the Rhine in the middle of the night.  He admitted himself into a mental institution as he feared that he would harm his beloved Clara, and he died there two years later, only seeing her again once, on his death bed.

But above all the drama and turmoil, he composed such glorious music, especially for the voice and the piano. His orchestrations are often heavy and thick, but the energy is incredible. He was especially good at repeating an idea over and over again, raising tension to unbearable levels. Perhaps, again, a reflection of young Schumann’s state of mind.

Hear Schumann’s manic A natural and other notes in his Fourth Symphony with the Missoula Symphony Orchestra on September 29 and 30.  Also on the Program is “Rhapsody in Blue”, by George Gershwin, whose eccentricities included, of all things, olfactory hallucinations.  Oh those crazy composers.

Darko Butorac is the music director of the Missoula Symphony Orchestra.

By Darko Butorac

A few of you may know this already, but not only can I dunk a basketball, but I also play the cello. When people learn this in casual conversation, the inevitable response is, "I love the cello!" Emphatic and absolute. None of the indifference heard by piano players, ("Sure, I learned to play ‘Für Elise’ when I was 9"), the confusion heard by English hornists, ("Is that like a French horn?") or the ennui expressed to viola players, ("Oh, I see ... "). For the cellist, it’s nothing but love, baby. So why is there such fascination and adoration of the cello?

First and foremost, let’s talk of the color and range. It’s rich on the bottom, sweet in the middle, brilliant on the top — a layer cake of musical magnificence. Also, it neatly covers the range of the human voice, from the low resonating C sung by a Russian bass over shots of vodka, passing through the smooth range of the heroic tenor, and all the way up to the floating quality of the soprano, but without the glass-shattering shrillness. The cello stands as the closest thing among orchestra instruments capable of imitating the human voice, and as such, is absolutely adored by our narcissistic selves. Well, and then there is the shape. Let me just remark that Beecham, a conductor who was a pioneer in the field for letting women play in orchestras, explicitly forbade them to play the cello. Need I say more?

Yet for all the approval cellists get for contributing to sonic enjoyment, there are relatively few solo works for cello and orchestra. Piano and violin lead that charge. Why? Because the cello, for all its beauty, does not possess a piercing power to cut through the orchestra sound. The piano has force, and the violin is so high it can ride the sonic wave. To hear a cello solo, the composer has to be able to let the beauty of the instrument show without burying it in a thick orchestral sonority.

Perhaps one of the most beloved concertos for this very reason is the Saint-Saens Concerto. I remember the first time I came across the work – it was a recording that featured as its soloist Yo-Yo Ma (or, as a young friend once referred to him, Yo Ma-Ma). The orchestra blasts in with but one short chord, and the cello counters with a furious outpouring – tailor made for one of those head-banging, hip-swaying moves that is required from a concert soloist.

In a span of a few minutes, it growls deep, floats high, bursts out in double stops (playing two strings at a time) and flies in rapid triplets across the instrument. It is like a calling card for our instrument; this is what you play to a kid to convince them that the cello is the answer to all of life’s problems.

And the drama continues — the lyrical middle part pulls your heartstrings like a forgotten tune from your childhood, and the concerto comes to a fiery close with all kinds of cello pyrotechnics. This, my friends, is what all the fuss is about.

A public warning: If your child happens to be studying the piano, French horn or viola, this piece may alter their musical future forever. Heck, all dreams of becoming the next Shaun White, Peyton Manning or Bill Gates may go by the wayside. Such is the majesty and power of this most "human" of instruments.

Missoula Symphony Orchestra, featuring cello soloist Robert deMaine, will be performing one of the most beloved cello pieces of all times, Cello Concerto No. 1 by Camille Saint-Saens, on April 21 and 22.  For tickets and more information go to www.missoulasymphony.org.

Darko Butorac, besides being able to slam dunk a basketball, is the music director of the Missoula Symphony Orchestra.