Andrew Massey, Middlebury College orchestra conductor, has been at the helm of professional ensembles for over 30 years. His career has taken him across the pond, from England to the United States, and most recently to Vermont. This year will be his second with the College. He sat down with The Campus to discuss the transition into student work and his vision for the coming year.
This is your second year with the orchestra. How did you find your way to Middlebury?
Well, if we start with the Big Bang, I grew up in England and came to the U.S. a few years ago. I worked with a lot of professional orchestras. Most recently I was living in Toledo, Ohio working with the orchestra there. My wife and I had a vacation home in Vermont, and decided to move here permanently. The year Troy — the former conductor — was leaving I got a call from the orchestra at Middlebury asking if I was interested in taking over here. I came to the College, auditioned and found there were a lot of interesting things going on.
Were there any differences conducting a student rather than professional orchestra?
Professional orchestras have a lot of support staff. Of course here, orchestra is only a small part of the College’s activities. It became my job to run the orchestra, finding music for people to play and keeping track of where people were. It’s been fascinating. I didn’t have much experience with that kind of thing so I’ve been inventing new techniques. For example, there are always plenty of flutes and clarinets, but not necessarily other instruments. I have to adapt parts. A lot of parts are obsolete so I must transpose, do a translation from that part. I handle all the backstage work, as it were. It’s a challenge and takes a lot of time which in the past I would have used thinking about the music. I’m finding it a wonderful education. You know they say when you get into an educational establishment it doesn’t matter if you’re a teacher, you still learn a lot.
Did anything surprise you?
The interesting thing is that all the students are so bright. They get the point very quickly. Anywhere else they may not get the point as quickly or I may have to go over it several times. The question becomes: can they do it? Which is a different issue. Of course some of them can. Others don’t have the technical skills. How often should I go over each piece in rehearsals? The paramount problem is that students are so busy. It’s not like a paid orchestra so I can’t just say show up at rehearsal. If they’re busy doing other things they need to do those things. Rehearsals become more like a patchwork. Everyone is trained at some point, and we come together when we can.
You tried some new things last year. Could you tell me a bit about that?
I found last year that we got off to a fine start, then we had the same repertoire for a long period during the fall semester and people didn’t always come, so even though we played the same music it wasn’t really getting that much better. It wasn’t a system I was much used to but it was the tradition, I guess. In the end a concert didn’t come to fruition. We postponed until Winter term when we did three weeks of rehearsals, with six rehearsals total for Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony. It was a small period of intense commitment. We copied that model in the spring. We’re going to try to do it again this fall, so that way the rehearsals aren’t spread over our whole lives.
What kinds of pieces do you choose for a college orchestra?
I know from students that they really like playing large-scale romantic pieces. It’s yummy, it’s emotional; you can get really involved in it. A lot of musicians are saying they’d like to play in orchestra but not this month, next month or vice versa. It’s hard to do the large pieces that way. Older music, such as baroque, is beautiful, but you have to be extremely careful all the time. You’re playing in smaller groups.
What else goes into choosing repertoire?
When you’re looking for pieces you’re trying to shape the whole. You need to find something that fits — how long does it last? Can you get the materials? Would the audience enjoy listening to it? If it lasts three hours and is all slow, it may not be a good fit. Similarly, if you find a piece that needs 12 tubas, you won’t be able to do that. I aim towards romantic pieces people find they prefer, while also balancing some of the older music it’s very likely we can play well. It’s like choosing between Apollo and Dionysus — do we want a piece where, if we make a slip, it’s not damaging, or a beautiful piece where we can’t afford to make an error at all.
How would you describe your role as conductor?
Not to trivialize it, but in the end rehearsal is a kind of social event. Why I love orchestras, why I love working with them, is that there’s no greater kick than being on stage listening to all these other musicians who are all listening to each other, playing with each other. As a coordinator and facilitator, I seem to control things, but I also need people to be able to do things quite freely. There’s always a soloist. It’s obvious in a concerto — I watch the soloist so that they can play as they like, and everyone else must be supportive. In other pieces I coordinate the rest of the orchestra so they don’t drown out whoever is playing at that time. We somehow create a situation in which there is artistic freedom.
Could you give me a preview of your plans for the orchestra this year?
Well to start we’re going to participate in the family weekend concert with François Clemmons, where we’ll do two rousing Hungarian Dances by Brahms, a few spiritual pieces, then something by Bach. For our next concert I’m looking into Mozart’s Eighth Symphony, for the second part a series of overtures by Wagner and perhaps a Strauss overture to end. For Winter term we did the Eroica last year, so we’ll do Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony this year, which makes sense to build on, and hopefully explore some bits by Mahler.
The Hungarian Dances are actually quite interesting. They’re played in certain way with lots of starts and stops, which is more tradition than what’s actually written. A lot of firm orchestral music is based on 19th century editions, when any additional notations were expensive. I made parts that have all the wild and crazy things written. I was inspired by some work I did this summer with the Green Mountain Mahler Festival in Burlington. I conducted some amateurs playing Mahler’s Third Symphony, and it was okay but not great. On reflection it became clear to me that enthusiastic and pleasant as these people were, they didn’t know what they were being asked to do. It wasn’t that they couldn’t play Mahler. So this is an experiment for me, I’d like to make parts clear and tell people exactly what they’re going to do.
Spotlight On ... Andrew Massey, College orchestra conductor
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