The Short End of the Stick

Nov 28 2007

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Wow, you’re really asking us to put our feet in it this time… But with all the obvious caveats about generalizing and stereotyping, I’ll try to wade in…

1. Everyone coming to work prepared. It never ceases to amaze me that ANY professional musicians show up to a first rehearsal not having looked at their music sufficiently. It’s a rare to very-rare situation in winds/ brass/percussion, but exists to some extent in every orchestra at every level of artistic accomplishment. Annoys me, but I can’t begin to imagine how much it must annoy those players who HAVE come to work prepared.

2. Developing a better appreciation for non-musician staff. Without defending orchestras that are actually overloaded with staff or stocked with complete incompetents, it’s been my experience that most support staff are hard-working professionals who perform indispensable functions (e.g., fund raising, marketing) that cannot be done effectively by volunteers, amateurs, or inadequately-staffed departments. To the extent that musicians belittle, denigrate, resent, or deny the importance of the work these people do, they’re undermining their own best interests.

3. Ditto for trustees. Most orchestras do have some out-to-screw- the-workers dinosaurs in their volunteer leadership (though not mine, fortunately). But it’s been my experience that the vast majority of orchestra trustees care deeply about and dig deeply for their musicians. And to the extent that there may be dinosaurs out there in those board rooms, it’s the responsibility of Music Directors and Executive Directors and board leadership to turn them around or turn them out.

4. Fostering an awareness of the audience as a vital part of the institution. When the house lights go down, the audience disappears, and it’s easy for onstage musicians, busy doing a high-concentration task, to forget that the audience is there, watching (and sometimes listening) intently. How the orchestra looks and acts onstage is an important part of the audience’s experience, and with more and more unsophisticated or musically deprived folks sitting in the seats, it behooves us to do everything we can to make the listener’s experience a positive one.

Four seems to be my limit right now.

About the author

Neal Gittleman

The 2011-2012 season is Neal Gittleman's 17th year as Music Director of the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra. Gittleman has led the orchestra to new levels of artistic achievement and increasing acclaim throughout the country. American Record Guide magazine has praised the orchestra's performance as has the Cincinnati Enquirer, which called the DPO "a precise, glowing machine." When the Orchestra christened the Mead Theatre in the Benjamin and Marian Schuster Performing Arts Center in March of 2003, the Enquirer reported that "Gittleman has brought the DPO to a new level." During his tenure, the orchestra has received nine ASCAP awards from the American Symphony Orchestra League for adventurous programming.

Prior to his arrival in Dayton, Gittleman served as Music Director of the Marion (IN) Philharmonic, Associate Conductor of the Syracuse Symphony, and Assistant Conductor of the Oregon Symphony Orchestra, a post he held under the Exxon/Arts Endowment Conductors Program. He also served ten seasons as Associate Conductor and Resident Conductor of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.

Neal Gittleman has appeared as guest conductor with many of the country's leading orchestras, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago, San Francisco, Minnesota, Phoenix, Indianapolis, San Antonio, Omaha, San Jose and Jacksonville symphony orchestras and the Buffalo Philharmonic. He has also conducted orchestras in Germany, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Japan, Canada and Mexico.

A native of Brooklyn, New York, Neal graduated from Yale University in 1975. He studied with Nadia Boulanger and Annette Dieudonné in Paris, with Hugh Ross at the Manhattan School of Music and with Charles Bruck at both the Pierre Monteux School and the Hartt School of Music, where he was a Karl Böhm Fellow. It was at the Hartt School that he earned his Arts Diploma in Orchestral Conducting. He won the Second Prize at the 1984 Ernest Ansermet International Conducting Competition in Geneva and Third Prize in the 1986 Leopold Stokowski Conducting Competition in New York.

At home in the pit as well as on stage, Neal has led productions for Dayton Opera, the Human Race Theatre Company, Syracuse Opera Company, Hartt Opera Theater, and for Milwaukee's renowned Skylight Opera Theatre. He has also conducted for the Milwaukee Ballet, Hartford Ballet, Chicago City Ballet, Ballet Arizona, and Theater Ballet of Canada.

Neal is nationally known for his Classical Connections programs, which provide a "behind the scenes” look at the great works of the orchestral repertoire. These innovative programs, which began in Milwaukee 22 years ago, have become a vital part of the Dayton Philharmonic's concert season.

His discography includes a recording of the Dayton Philharmonic in performances of Tomas Svoboda's two piano concertos with Norman Krieger and the composer as featured soloists. Gittleman has also recorded a CD of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and Concerto in F with Krieger and the Czech National Symphony. Both recordings are available on the Artisie 4 label. The DPO's second CD, A Celebration of Flight was released in 2003 as part of the celebration of the centennial of the Wright Brothers’ first powered flight. The orchestra’s most recent CD, of live archival performances from four eras, released in 2008 in conjunction with the DPO’s 75th anniversary.

When not on the podium, Neal is an avid player of golf, squash and t'ai chi ch'uan and has added yoga to his regimen. He and his wife, Lisa Fry, have been Dayton residents since 1997.

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