My 82nd birthday was lovely and restrained, but Nashville was already waiting. In a way, that became the theme of the month: trying to find my footing in a city I know well historically and am now beginning to understand in a different, more personal way.
It is slightly under an hour’s flight from St. Louis, so going back and forth is not complicated. But very high temperatures throughout the country were making things difficult. Many outdoor events were getting canceled or postponed. My first time together with the orchestra was for video shoots inside the Schermerhorn Center, which was a good place to hide from the heat and get reacquainted.
During these sessions, we recorded short excerpts of pieces that will be performed over the course of the season in an effort to reach a broader audience through social media, which seems to be one of the real opportunities here. Later that same day, I threw out the first pitch for the Nashville Sounds, the city’s baseball team. It was aimed perfectly but landed a bit short, right on top of home plate. Afterward, sitting in the stands, several people asked me questions on Instagram.
I have fielded many of these same questions before, although I try to vary the way I answer. One query was different, though. “What music would I choose if I were coming up to bat?”
I truly had never thought about my walk-up song, but after a few moments, I came up with something: the main title from the film Capricorn One, by Jerry Goldsmith. If you are not familiar with it, take a listen and imagine me striding up to home plate. It is probably more dramatic than my baseball skills deserve.
I also led the marching band at a Vanderbilt University football game. Again, questions were asked, one similar to the above—what my entrance music might be for a concert. This did not take a lot of thought—the last 30 seconds or so of Respighi’s Pines of Rome. If you are going to be heroic, this is the way to do it.
As we began rehearsing for our community concert, which would take place on the Nashville Walk of Fame across the street from the hall and the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, temperatures were rising to 100 degrees. We were all grateful to be rehearsing indoors. Still, the setting mattered. If we were going to talk about being part of the community, we had to be willing to step outside the usual walls.
The program focused on American music, mostly to honor the country’s 250th anniversary. There were fanfares for common and uncommon women and men. Morton Gould, Duke Ellington, and Charles Ives were on the menu. The main course was a video piece entitled American Mosaic. Peter Boyer wrote the music, and Joe Sohm created the visuals.
This work premiered earlier this year and has since been performed several times. At half an hour long, it attempts to capture as much of the spirit of the country as possible. It includes narration quoting several Founding Fathers. To perform it accurately, I needed a video monitor with streamers, punches, timecodes, and a click track. This has become standard in film production these days. I encourage any conductors reading this to learn this aspect of concert performance, as you will be doing it more and more.
The texts were delivered by Gary Sinise, whom I met for the first time in D.C. during the Lincoln Medal presentation this past May. He lives in Nashville and runs a foundation that supports the nation’s service members, veterans, first responders, and their families. His son, “Mac,” who lost a battle with a rare form of cancer in 2024, was involved in this important work, serving as the music manager and creator of the foundation’s podcast. He was also a drummer who wrote and recorded several songs, many of which have been released on albums whose proceeds benefit the foundation. We played an orchestral version of one of them, “The Veterans.”
This concert also provided an opportunity to honor a country music legend who passed away recently. Although she never sang with the Nashville Symphony, Dolly Parton embodied what the city is all about. Her youthful enthusiasm and sense of humor made her a truly beloved figure worldwide. My mother recorded with her in L.A. and said that she was the nicest musician she had ever met.
We were supposed to do a sound check in the late afternoon, but the rules state that the orchestra cannot play if the temperature exceeds 96 degrees. Depending on where one took the reading, it was pretty close. Since we knew the music, we just needed to make sure the sound system worked and that I had all the tools for a proper presentation. We did it in fifteen minutes as the heat gradually lessened, but not by much.
By 7:30, the sun had mostly set. It was a little cooler but still uncomfortable, at least for me. Then the wind started picking up. The musicians have clips on their stands to keep the music from flying around, but the conductor has to turn pages every ten seconds or so. The gusts came in spurts, and all I could do was hold the page down with my left hand while leading the orchestra with my right.
Nashville has its own vibe. Some vehicles circling the park could be described as “transportainment.” The brews flow freely, and the occupants are quite boisterous. The traffic noises during the concert included sirens, pedestrians, and a bucket drummer who clearly wasn’t listening to what the orchestra was playing.
My headset didn’t let me hear the musicians very well, and sometimes the click track didn’t match what was on the screen. Just figuring out how to coordinate everything was a challenge. I cued Gary for each entrance, and he did a tremendous job with the text. Not that I would know, as I couldn’t really hear much of anything going on. People, including the composer, told me I got everything right. It might have been luck in a few instances.
This is the kind of event the orchestra should do annually. Reaching into the community and showing off our skills creates an atmosphere of fellowship and understanding. Even if no one in the audience ever steps foot into the concert hall, the awareness factor is still valuable. From my first few days here, I think that may be one of the most important parts of the job: not only making music inside the Schermerhorn but also helping the people of Nashville feel that the orchestra belongs to them.
Next, it was time to bear down and work on the first subscription program of the new season. The outdoor event had been about meeting the city on its own terms. Now we were back inside, with a great deal to celebrate. The country was still marking its 250th birthday, the orchestra was commemorating its 80th year, and the Schermerhorn Concert Center was acknowledging the 20-year anniversary of its opening concert, which I conducted back in 2006.
There was also a sense of loss. Purely by coincidence, our first concert would be on the same day as the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Moreover, the person most responsible for backing the hall’s construction, Martha Rivers Ingram, passed away about a month before our performances. The opening was not simply ceremonial for me. It felt like a reminder that places, people, and memories all have a way of showing up on the podium at the same time.
Rehearsals were a pure joy. In some ways, it felt similar to when I became music director in St. Louis almost 50 years ago. At that time, I already knew the orchestra well, as I was the second in command for ten years. In Nashville, I helped guide the ensemble when the hall opened, and I have conducted them several times since. This wasn’t exactly a homecoming, but it also wasn’t a new city to me.
The first thing I told them was not to call me maestro. I welcomed them to call me Leonard if they felt comfortable, and if not, Mr. Slatkin was okay. However, they might come up with alternate forms of address, probably not for public consumption.
The program itself wasn’t overly complicated, but it was set up to celebrate all the anniversaries happening at the same time. All-American music was on the docket, starting with a piece we played and recorded 20 years ago. Joan Tower’s Made in America won the orchestra its first Grammy and felt most appropriate for the occasion.
It was not until recently that I realized our opening night would fall on September 11th, certainly ensuring that the Barber Adagio for Strings was the right piece to play. However, this program was planned more than a year ago, and the juxtaposition of the work and the commemoration was purely coincidental.
Nashville is fortunate to have a marvelous chorus. They are all volunteers and, under Tucker Biddlecombe’s leadership, are outstanding. Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms fit well after the Barber, and again, the resonance of the tragedy could be mitigated with the overall message of peace contained within this marvelous composition. I could not help but think of events in our own time when the men of the chorus sang, “Why do the nations rage?” As I addressed the audience, I emphasized that the unifying words take on even greater meaning today.
It was important to have representation from a current Nashville resident, so I had asked to see scores written by composers living in the area. We settled on “Strut,” a six-minute piece by Cristina Spinei. It is a quasi-minimalist work that one could envision being danced.
Next came the most complicated of all the works we were doing, but not because of the music. Aaron Copland arranged two sets of Old America Songs, each containing five traditional melodies, several well-known. Usually, they are performed by one singer, but for this occasion, I had the idea to secure five people from different musical backgrounds.
Sylvia McNair joined us for “Zion’s Walls,” followed by Storm Large singing “At the River.” Boston-based Baxter Hall crooned through “The Dodger,” and then we let the city have its turn. Suzy Bogguss sang “The Little Horses,” and Kathy Mattea performed “Simple Gifts” as a tribute to Appalachian-born Dolly Parton.
That part wasn’t too complicated, but I added one humorous number. “I Bought Me a Cat” is a cumulative song, with various animals appearing one at a time, then repeated as a new one is introduced. There are eight stanzas. With five singers, as well as the men and women of the chorus, seven of them were covered. As each animal and its associated sounds were repeated, the groups would stand and sit accordingly. It became very funny as the audience saw more and more ups and downs.
At this point, I stopped conducting, explaining that we had run out of voices, only to be chided by the soloists, who cajoled me into doing the last verse myself. Now I had to apologize to the audience for the very politically incorrect phrase, “I bought me a wife.”
This was my singing debut in public and more than likely my last appearance in that role. The audience roared its approval of the whole thing. There was no way anyone could have expected something this silly or entertaining at a symphony subscription concert. But that was exactly the point. Diverse backgrounds, different methods of presentation, and high-quality music-making are exactly what we need these days.
To wrap up the printed program, we turned to Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess in the Robert Russell Bennett orchestration. Again, we deviated from the norm and had the chorus join in for “Oh Lawd, I’m on my way,” the song that concludes the opera. We were not quite done.
Regular readers will know that as an encore, I often perform my father’s delightful “Carmen’s Hoedown.” This takes “The Toreador Song” and imagines it as a country fiddle tune. It is replete with percussion effects and, at least the way I do it, the occasional shout of “yee-haw” from one of the orchestra members.
In keeping with the festivities of this second half, we had two men in the chorus do the honors. At one of the post-concert receptions, a female chorister said that the ladies did not want to be left out, and I said I would be delighted to let them join in.
After that moment, all the singers, including the boy sopranos from the Bernstein, came onstage, dressed in their best cowboy regalia, to encourage the audience to clap along, with Storm descending a staircase and whooping it up with audience members.
To say that the three performances and indeed everything about the week was successful would be a true understatement. We made new friends and kept the old ones on board. My relationship with the Nashville Symphony was off to the best of all possible starts.
I see the orchestra again in mid-October, and I know one thing: We will not be doing yee-haws during the 39th Symphony by Mozart.
See you soon,
Leonard