Thank you Ludovic Morlot

Last night we heard Ludovic Morlot our brilliant music director of the Seattle Symphony conduct his final concert as director at Benaroya Hall, Richard Wagner, Claude Debussy and Leos Janacek. It was on the theme of love. It was a stunning concert that seem to be caressing us with one beautiful complex work after another. The music reached into every corner of the orchestra, we heard outstanding brass, woodwind, strings, drums and voices coming together in his final gift of his conducting to us and to Seattle. We could also sense the orchestra playing better than ever as a gift to Ludovic himself. He chose a choral piece as part of the concert in order to include the Seattle Symphony Chorale and the Northwest Boys Choir.

I was bathed in the music.

At the same time I was holding the memory of Pieter Vance Wykoff, in my mind. He died last week in his mid forties from brain cancer. He was a bass trombone player with the Hong Kong Symphony, a delightful young man whose life was cut short. Every time the bass trombones played last night I thought of him.

To give a sense of Morlot’s work in Seattle here is an article I wrote about just one week in March, 2019|

“In the last few weeks, our Grammy award-winning Seattle Symphony has outdone itself performing difficult contemporary music and presenting FOUR world premieres!

 The Chamber Music concert featured Tessa Lark in a preconcert (they always have a free recital before the main concert.) Lark is a violinist, but she played fiddle inspired violin music. Her humorous dialog explained the intersections of the blue grass music of Appalachia with classical music. She also played pieces of her own and an impossibly difficult contemporary work by John Corigiano. Then in the main concert the highlight was Leoš Janáček String Quartet No. 1 “Kreutzer Sonata” led by Grammy award nominated violin player (and artistic director of the Seattle Chamber Music Festivals) James Ehnes. This intense piece of music featured crashing conflicts played by the two violins, cello and viola, inspired by a Tolstoy novella about infidelity sparked by a violinist falling in love with a pianist while performing Beethoven’s Kreutzer Violin Sonata. That was thrilling!

We were so fortunate to go to “Celebrate Asia,” friends gave us their fabulous center of the orchestra tickets. It included a stunning succession of Asia related and/or composed pieces including a world premiere by Chia-Ying Lin, a 28 year old Chinese composer who won a competition for young composers sponsored by the Seattle Symphony. The highly experimental work Ascolsia, featured instruments and musical tones inspired by folk music of Taiwan. Shiyeon Sung, a South Korean born conductor, dynamically led the orchestra. A brilliant piano player, Seong-Jin Cho, also originally from Korea, played Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. It was stupendous. Katherine Kim then sang a wildly contemporary song cycle by Unsuk Chin, also Korean, based on Alice in Wonderland. Then the undauntable Symphony gave us Pubbanimitta for Orchestra by Thailand’s most famous composer, Narong Prangcharoen. Wow!

But there is even more. Later that week we heard another amazing pianist, Jonathan Biss, who had commissioned contemporary composers to create works inspired by Beethoven concertos. First he played Beethoven’s third concerto and then a SECOND concerto, the World Premiere by Caroline Shaw, inspired by the Beethoven, but totally avant-garde of course.

And last, and maybe the most thrilling of all, was the Silkroad Ensemble with Kinan Azmeh, a Syrian clarinetist, originally from Damascus. It was a truly international concert, inspired by “Beyond Borders,” a Seattle Symphony concert two years ago reacting to that original dreadful travel ban (Azmeh performed then also, barely able to get back in the country). Sandeep Das, from South Asia, gave us staggering drumming, and the world-renowned Chinese composer Wu Man performed several solos on the Pipa, a stringed instrument like a lute. Expanding our geography further, we heard the dynamic Venezuelan Christina Pato on Galician bagpipes, playing a fast moving “Latina 6/8 Suite” that included brilliant musicians from the symphony performing solos on the bass, viola, cello, and violin.

Again, the Seattle Symphony had commissioned premieres, one by the award winning Chinese composer Chen Yi (she had been composer in residence at Seattle Symphony in 2002–03). Then Kinan Azmeh transported us as he played his own new work, a clarinet concerto with the Symphony. As he played, I felt the deep tragedy of Syria in his music, in his life.

We are incredibly fortunate to have this amazing Symphony and its commitment to contemporary music. They are even launching a new venue Octave Nine, at Second and Union, which will feature an acoustic system that uses 42 speakers and 30 microphones, modular surround screens and movable panels that will immerse the audience.”

I couldn’t help thinking as I listened to the concert last night that classical performers are still dominantly white, we have quite a few Asians in the strings, one African American cello player, and of of course the incredible Demarre McGill, the African American flute player. The Boys choir was a sea of white faces, except I think one Asian. Knowing the schedules of my own daughter and her family, each of those boys came from the privilege of having a parent who could support them extensively, both logisiticaly and financially. My grandchildren fortunately have a very good music program in their public school in Nutley New Jersey, but carrying and delivering for an intense commitment like a choir is not on their horizon.

In 2006 we heard from the Young Eight, an entirely African American ensemble of classical musicians put together by Quinton Morris, our world famous violinist who teaches at Seattle University, originally came from Renton and is committed to reaching out to low income neighborhoods with music education in his Keys of Change. I wondered why there was no sign of him at the Symphony since that performance.

But the strength of Ludovic Morlot’s tenure was reaching out to many communities in Seattle, collaborating with groups such as Path with Art, offering free concert attendance to youth and teens accompanied by their parents, artists in residence, new commissions, encouraging young composers. Who knows how much of this will continue.

Thank you Ludovic Morlot for your generous 8 years in Seattle.