This has turned out to be a big weekend for substituting around here, and it reminds me of how fun it can be to be the one who sort of rides in to the rescue.  Friday night, it wasn’t me who was the sub but rather James Setapan, who came to town to conduct the Racine Symphony in the absence of the regular conductor, who had to conduct an orchestra in sunny Italy – dirty job but someone’s got to do it.  This was by no means a last minute thing but nonetheless it is no small matter for a substitute conductor to get in front of an orchestra of strangers and make things happen- but this guy managed to do that pretty darn well and the night turned out to be a big success.   Part of what made it work is that Maestro Setapan had no interest in doing anything fancy or flamboyant.  He was there to get the job done- to shepherd the orchestra do a successful performance and he did that graciously and impressively. I hope he works with the RSO again and I hope I get to sing under his baton.  The closest I came last night was in helping to lead the Christmas singalong, which doesn’t really count, although Setapan told me afterwards that he liked my voice.  So maybe something will happen someday that will allow us to truly collaborate someday.

By the way, one of my least favorite things about the night – I’m going to speak fairly frankly here – is that Maestro Massey left behind for me a word-for-word script for the entire concert. . . complete with comments like “wasn’t that wonderful” to be spoken after various pieces had concluded. There were also jokes (Massey, for as much as he is a proper Englishman, has a fine sense of humor) but I didn’t want to tell any of them because they would have sounded so false and phony coming from me. Plus, in several cases they came in places where I absolutely would not want to tell a joke.  For instance, just before the guest choirs sang “In the bleak midwinter” Massey would have had me say that the hymn was composed by a 14-year-old organist who was paid five pounds for the song (not very much money, but I don’t know exactly how much that is) and never any more after that initial payment.  “The moral,” Maestro Massey would have me say, “is this:  if you’re a young prodigy, make sure you get a lawyer.”  And then, in the next breath, I was to say “Maestro,” which meant that it was time for the orchestra to play.  I definitely could not see talking about the song right before this exquisite setting of it was to be sung- I would never do that myself and that’s why I simply refused to say those lines as written.   This was a script that would have sounded absolutely fine coming from Maestro Massey himself, but he was in no position to write a script that would sound like yours truly because he really hasn’t heard me emcee very much.  (He does not conduct the summer pops concerts, and as far as I know he hasn’t really been present for them, save for one or two at the very most.)  And that’s the moral of the story- if you’re going to write something for someone else to say, do your darndest to craft it in their style of speaking- or, if they’re capable of it, allow them to do the actual crafting of the words, even while offering suggestions.

On to other substitutions-  I almost was a substitute this weekend for a Messiah conducted by Ron Arden, a really fine musician who lives and works down in Zion, Illinois. He lost his scheduled bass soloist, (his son Nicholas) for some unnamed reason, and he hoped that I would have been able to step in.  But I simply don’t feel up to it thanks to a worsening cold and my rather exhausted depleted state on the heels of the last full week of classes at Carthage which has kept me from feeling better and able to sing the aria “but who may abide,” one of the most challenging in the whole work.  It saddens me because I really loved the idea of being the knight on horseback,  the cavalry arriving just in the nick of time,  the lfieguard saving the drowning man – and loved the idea of finally getting to solo in Messiah after years away from it (except for the singalong Messiah which i conduct. ) It sounded like spectacular fun,  but alas, it simply wasn’t meant to be.

I did manage to be the substitute emcee tonight for a benefit for the Racine Unified music fund. . . the scheduled sub has been feeling poorly all week long and just had to bow out. So I walked in with only the vaguest notion of what was going to happen . . . and with even less notion than that of what I should be talking about.   (At one point between two sections of the concert, when we had to get the local barbershop chorus off of the risers and an elementary school choir on to those same risers, I was asked to talk for approximately FOUR minutes to pass that time.  I never would have guessed how tough an assignment that would be, to try and say something meaningful and helpful to an audience comprised almost entirely of adults who were complete strangers to me and there for the sake of their kids and not to listening  To such a gathering, what do you say?

Fortunately, I managed to say something halfway interesting without resorting to a four minute explanation on the early operas of Verdi.  Of course, doing that might have ensured that I would never be asked back. . . and actually, I wouldn’t want that.  I think it’s fun to  be the person who sort of keeps things going, flowing, etc. – and to be the cavalry riding to the rescue makes it even more fun.  By the way, the Dairy Statesman barbershop chorus was the featured ensemble of the year (this event was really organized around them) and they had to go on with a substitute director – Bill Novak – who happens to sing in my church choir now.  Bill was stepping in on very short notice, but fortunately he is a fine musician who also keeps his cool – and he led them with full assurance,  as if it had always been planned that way.  Such is the central challenge of the Sub. . . to make such a difficult assignment look like the easiest thing in the world.

pictured:  from the RSO’s concert Friday night-  They performed the overture to Berlioz’s opera Benvenuto Cellini- and one of his most innovative gestures was to write the timpani part to be so intricate that you would have to have three players, one in front of each kettledrum,  rather than the normal situation with one player handling all three.  The effect was electrifying.