I recently attended 10 day long workshop for emerging and professional workshop provided by Robert Ryker and Tokyo Sinfonia. I have so many good things to say and I wanted to share my experience in my post.
Three other conductors and Maestro met everyday for lunch and we hD rehearsals almost every other day. During lunch, we discussed the various topics of being a professional conductor such as rehearsal technique, rehearsal scheduling, educational programming, communication with orchestra, etc. Maestro Ryker was a former Principal Tubist for Montreal Symphony Orchestra when Zubin Mehta was conducting. So, he had insight of how professional orchestras ran. Also, having managed and conducted Tokyo Sinfonia for more than 20 years, he had a lot to say about making the orchestra attractive for the audience in Tokyo area. He encouraged every conductor to start a sting orchestra.
At a glance, in Tokyo Sinfonia’s rehearsal, you see predominantly female musicians. I found only two male players out of 19 piece string orchestra. The orchestra provides friendly environment for working mothers, as it seems. Many of them plays with the orchestra since the beginning of the orchestra 20 years ago. Also, it seems that the musicians own parts of the orchestral management such as contracting and time management. My impression was this orchestra is women powered and women run orchestra.
Also, Tokyo Sinfonia challenges themselves to higher artistic excellence by having each player play like a soloist. Robert’s (with respect, as Maestro prefers to be called by his first name) philosophy is that every player should play like a soloist and he makes arrangements for 19 piece orchestra. In other words, instead of mainly 5 parts in the string orchestra, there are 19 parts in the orchestra. Nobody can play behind someone, in other words. He also assigns each player to be a soloist in their regular orchestra season, so each player has to continue to keep their skills up.
To be continued
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