I’m now in my late-50s, and the romanticism of playing music in Europe is still yet to wear thin. As a kid, I often fantasized about seeing, hearing, and (mostly) playing the great and glorious organs of Europe. True confessions: American organs have rarely held the same appeal to me – except to the extent that they emulate their European prototypes. As I’ve frequently remarked in other blogs, it’s the connection with the European tradition, both musical and ecclesiastical, that has been my greatest source of interpretive inspiration. Like many musicians, my impressions of concert tours were formed by reading biographies of the great 20th century performers like Rubinstein and Casals. Rubinstein’s first tour of the States was a 75-concert tour (one in which, incidentally, he did not receive very high acclaim)! Casals’ first American tour was similarly grueling (although it was cut midstream by a hiking accident on San Francisco Bay Area’s Mount Tamalpais – which nearly ended his career). Concert touring sounded so easy to me, an impressionable young man eager to perform. But of course, going from Europe to the States in the first half of the 20th century was generally by boat (a long excursion), getting around the country was slow and expensive, and impresarios were eager to get their money’s worth. It made perfect sense to have a long concert tour if an artist was going to take the trouble to get across the Atlantic.
Fast forward 75 years.
I didn’t realize it as I entered this profession, but organists are unique in the musical world of performers. Only organists write letters to other organists in an attempt to garner a concert. (Imagine a pianist writing another pianist for a concert, or an orchestral flute player writing another flute player for a concert. You get the picture.) For me that has had both advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that I’m only limited by my imagination; especially in our current day of internet use. A bit of research, and connections through my colleagues, can help me connect with most organists around the world. The disadvantage is that the endless email-writing business is very time-consuming (and often disheartening – as only a fraction of my colleagues answer), as are the huge logistical concerns of transportation, accommodation, and arranging concerts in relative proximity to each other.
Having been on several concert tours with the San Francisco Symphony, the difference between solo tours and symphony tours is like night and day; and it comes down to one main thing: On symphony tours, I never meet any musicians other than the ones I am traveling with. But when I travel on solo tours, I make many warm friendships, with my host, with my people at the accommodation site, with other colleagues who attend the concerts, etc. In short, it’s only when doing a solo tour that I find that I get a real sense of what an area of the world is like – a direct interaction with the culture and people.
Of all my solo tours to date, I think this one may have been the longest. When I play my concert Sunday (in Cape Cod) – 7/26/15, I will have been on tour for more than five weeks. But, that being said, I only had eight concerts – which means that there were gaps in the schedule. OK, so there’s nothing wrong with having a bit of vacation in Provence in between concerts (which we did), but from a strictly business point of view, I would have preferred a more steady stream of concerts. The process of booking this tour started more than two years ago. Slowly, over the course of a myriad of emails, the tour took shape, including the route I would take from venue to venue. In Europe, an organist’s fee always includes accommodation, but it never includes travel. That expense is left to the performer. In every venue where I performed this summer, I was the only American performing on the summer series. (Europe and America have opposite concert schedules: because many European churches are not heated in the winter, their organ concert schedules are mostly in the summer.) Travel expenses for Europeans moving between neighboring countries is considerably less than for me, living in San Francisco; so, logistically, it is far easier to live in Europe and have a concert career.
Then there’s the weather. It just so happened that we hit a heat-wave for virtually the entire trip through Europe. George and I had rented a car for three weeks, so we traveled in comfort; but invariably air conditioning was non-existent in our places of accommodation (many of which were AirBnB sites). I felt painfully aware of being a “soft” 21st century Westerner – quite uncomfortable in the omnipresent heat. A couple of the organ lofts were still cool and comfortable, but most were quite warm.
The last of my European concerts on this trip was in Freiberg (Sachsen), Germany – on one of the great instruments of the 18th century. Gottfried Silbermann finished the organ in the Marien Dom in 1714, and today the church is celebrating with a year-long 300th anniversary concert series. What a privilege for me to be a part of this. An instrument quite likely played by Johann Sebastian Bach, himself – we don’t really know, but since it’s so near to where he lived, it’s highly likely – and shimmering with silvery tones sounding forth in a large, resonant space. The pitch of the organ is roughly 3/4 of a step high; and although I don’t have perfect pitch, my relative pitch is accurate enough that it made all the pieces I played there sound as if I was transposing them – rendering them strangely new. Freiberg itself epitomizes what I love about doing organ concerts: small, intimate (and immaculate) town with a huge, historical organ. What’s not to love?
Each organ of my trip was unique with its own set of challenges and rewards. The overall experience of touring like this is undeniably incredible. Making music in various different places around the world feels like stitching thread from one village to the next, from my city to another. The real goal, the ultimate purpose, as I see it, is stitching a bond of compassion from one culture to the next, from one heart to the next. Musicians make the best ambassadors.