Anybody Here Want To Share About Meeting Famous Classical Artists?

[Dinger]

Who have you met? What were they like?

I'll give one. Van Cliburn. I met him in the 80's. Very tall, and very kind. I wish he wouldn't have went on hiatus. I heard him play the Tschaikovky (#1) with the Moscow Philarmonic in '94.
Wow!!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1. I met Christopher Parkening, Jon Nakamatsu,

conductor Murray Sidlin, and Baroque violinist Monica Huggett while volunteering for a classical radio station.

All very pleasant.

[Dinger]

2. Cool (nt)

[curse10]

3. Edgar Meyer

Nicest guy and an amazing performer.

I've never met Yo Yo Ma- but I know several people who have. They also say he is absoultely wonderful. The cello professor at my school had met him years before- he ran into him years later and Yo Yo remembered his name, and let him play his cello.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. Edgar Meyer is a regular at Chamber Music Northwest

He's a charming pre-concert lecturer and an excellent performer who writes fun music for his otherwise neglected instrument.

[MuseRider]

5. He is so cool!

I saw him in a small concert venue with Bela Fleck. It was very cool.

[fortyfeetunder]

6. Several...read on.

In a previous life, I had opportunities to meet artists who performed with a local group. Others were available after a show I attended, these are the ones I can remember offhand...


Prof. Peter Schickele aka PDQ Bach. He was a guest artist for a concert. It just happened I found an old PDQ Bach book at a garage sale, and he was delighted to autograph it. He was very funny too.

Other classical artists I've met:
Evelyn Glennie, percussionist, soloist with Seattle Symphony. A joy to talk with. We talked about her hometown, which I visited long time ago.

Branford Marsalis. (Wynton's older brother), soloist with Seattle Symphony He was interesting too, he was telling me about his soprano sax, how he modified it to create a darker tone.

Pamela Frank, a violin soloist with another orchestra. I think this was early in her career, awesome performer.

George Walker, composer. He wrote a work for an orchestra I played in. We didn't get to talk much but he came in and listened to us rehearse the music.

That's all I can remember now....

[stopbush]

7. I was in the performing and recording biz for years and met many, many

musicians, most of them while I lived around NYC. Most were pretty super people. I won't take all day, but the major people I've met, conversed with, performed with (and beyond) include:

Lorin Maazel, Renata Tebaldi, Carlo Bergonzi, Jon Vickers, Birgit Nilsson, Bernd Weikl, Seymour Lipkin, William Wildermann, Leonard Bernstein, Richard Cassily, Franco Corelli, Enrico di Giuseppe, Fiorenza Cossoto, Bonaldo Giaotti, Leonard Rose, Daniel Majeske, Jerome Hines, Renee Fleming, Vance George, Robert Page, Margaret Hillis, Richard Westenburg, Michael Korn, Tatiana Troyanos, Renata Scotto, Teresa Stratas, David Stivender, Sherrill Milnes, Eliot Fisk, Vladimir Spivakov, Chee Yun, Mary Costa, Jan Peerce, Gérard Souzay, Phyllis Curtin, Alfred Brendel, Carol Neblett, Anne Sofie von Otter, Valery Gergiev, Marilyn Horne, Leontyne Price, Clamma Dale, Anton Coppola...the list goes on.

Met Plácido Domingo twice. What an asshole.

[Turbineguy]

8. Maxim Vengarov

After the recital (Seattle) he signed CD's. We stood in line and waited.When our turn came, my Wife marched up to him to shake his hand. I was flabbergasted. So was he. You could see he was deciding what to do and end, shook her hand. He signed the CD. I then shook his hand (carefully) and thanked him for introducing me to Shostakovich.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. Late last year, I met Libby Larsen, because

a friend of mine studied composition with her.

She gives a wonderful lecture series on how to listen to music, her own riff on Aaron Copeland's book.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

22. I knew her from way back --

Haven't seen her in years, but she was involved with the Minnesota Composers Forum back in the early '70s, and I knew a bunch of those folks pretty well -- also Steve Paulus, whom I knew from college.

[Sancho]

10. Van Cliburn played here last year at age 72!

I couldn't believe it. He was amazing.


http://www.sptimes.com/2006/09/24/news_pf/Floridian/His_life_s_work.shtml

Pianist Van Cliburn returns to Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 yet again, this time with the Florida Orchestra.

By JOHN FLEMING
Published September 24, 2006

Van Cliburn and Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 go back a long way.

"When I made my debut with the Houston Symphony when I was 12, I played the Tchaikovsky, and when I made my New York Philharmonic debut, it was the Tchaikovsky," Cliburn said in a recent phone interview. "I always smile to myself when I think how that piece has sort of been with me all my life."

It was the Tchaikovsky, of course, that Cliburn played in 1958 to win the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. At 23, the tall, lanky Texan became an instant icon, an American hero through his triumph at the peak of the Cold War, six months after the Soviet Union's launch of the first Sputnik satellite. The pianist came home from the competition to a ticker-tape parade in New York and a meeting with Dwight D. Eisenhower at the White House. He remains America's most famous, beloved classical musician, both for his career and the international piano competition that bears his name.

Now Cliburn will play the concerto again in a concert Monday night with the Florida Orchestra at Mahaffey Theater. The engagement was originally scheduled for last spring to mark the orchestra's return to the St. Petersburg hall after a nearly yearlong renovation, but delays in the reopening of the venue pushed the concert back. Monday's performance will be the first of the orchestra's 2006-07 season.

[teenagebambam]

11. Met Rostropovich a few years ago

when I was interning at a music festival. Also got to drive Jennifer Larmore and her parents around, and got lost taking her to a party, and she was very good-natured and gracious about it.

Met a lot of now-stars when they were up-and-coming at above mentioned festival - Joshua Bell comes to mind - but of course I didn't really know anything about them then.

[dickthegrouch]

12. James Galway and Marisa Robles

As a teen (in early 70's) I used to volunteer at the local technical college concert series as an usher to get in free.

I always had the opportunity to meet the artists and I was in awe of James Galway since I am also a flute player (nowhere near as good as him). He was very gracious and friendly.

Marisa Robles explained each of the pedals on her harp after I asked and gave me a one-on-one demo of some of the techniques she used to change the sounds coming out of it after I had asked a question about one of the pieces she played. I remember getting yelled at for being over an hour late getting back out to my Mom's car, so Marisa must have spent some serious time with me, but I was again in awe of her skill and had always loved the harp, so the time flew by.

Those were the two most memorable of many I met during those concert series.

[momto3]

17. Oooo - I am jealous!

I would have loved to have met James Galway. He and Jean Pierre-Rampal, although having very different styles, were my "heroes" as a budding flautist.

[ozymandius]

20. He has a reputation of being hot tempered.

I met a music show host who James Galway shoved against a wall. He was, as you say, very gracious when I met him. He told lots of jokes.

[Aristus]

13. I met the members of the Canadian Brass, 1999 line-up.

Charles Daellanbach is a hero of mine. I played the tuba in high school.

I went to a concert they gave at the Pantages in Tacoma. All five of them signed the liner notes to my copy of Canadian Brass - Great Baroque Music.

[CBHagman]

14. Does talking to Harolyn Blackwell on the phone count?

I remember she called the music store where I was working and asked for Peer Gynt (the work, not the employee ;-)). When she gave her name, I asked if she was the recording artist who has signed with BMG (I think it was BMG, so many mergers ago). She seemed genuinely flattered that I recognized her name and that I was thrilled to be talking to her.

[Mira]

15. I'll tell you who it was, and that I dropped my silverware and had to set my

plate down and lost support of my legs. After I picked up my silverware and steadied myself against the wall tears started to run down my face as I stared at Jessye Norman.

I was at Maya Angelou's house, who is a resident of my town, and we know each other well enough for me to be invited. The guest list was illustrious to say the least, not only Oprah, but also Tony Morrison, many others. I had been invited before, and had met these super celebrities.

But ONE NEVER EVER KNOWS what will undo you.
For me it was Jessye Norman, with whom I later had a long involved private conversation and she was as gracious as a diva of such renown will be, and I will never know if she had a good time as she pretended to have. I sure will never forget it, and she let me photograph her, too.

The only other time I lost it like this in my pretty long life was on getting my first glance of the Grand Canyon, peeking through the forest of the North Rim.

[Lithos]

16. Van Cliburn

In the green room before he went on to play "Happy Birthday" to Helen Hayes as part of a birthday surprise.

L-

[momto3]

18. I met Keith Lockhart, conductor of the Boston Pops.

I guess he is not precisely a musician per se. But, he started out as assistant conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. I studied music at a small liberal arts college in Cincinnati, and he ended up teaching my conducting class for a year. He is my "claim to fame".

[ozymandius]

19. Quite a few.

But then, I used to work in public radio. The partial list:

Van Cliburn - very cordial, energetic and quite flirtatious
Mark O'Connor - somewhat aloof when he was not 'on mic' but very friendly when 'off mic'
Gil Shaham - playful, witty, fun with a wisecracking sense of humor
John O'Conor - great interview, loved to play the piano while he spoke and extremely charming
Frederic Chiu - salt of the earth; he went wayyy out of his way to visit the radio station and a mental giant in music theory (computer science major in college), very devoted husband and father
Dmitri Hvorostovsky - Russian opera star; he was very friendly but shy in person and a very difficult interview despite being very comfortable in English
Sharon Isbin - just a joy to interview, always knew what she wanted to say and very playful; she would often call me when she planned to be nearby to schedule an interview; liked 'hanging out'
Konstantin Lifschitz: brilliant and completely flakey; he often has a weak anchor in this reality, speaking to a person; he can be in the middle of an answer and suddenly appear interrupted by a dust mote, fall silent and stare into empty space for long periods of time. His agent said that when this happens - the conversation is over.

There were many more artists I met. Only a couple were real jerks.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

21. I met Olivier Messaien back around 1970.

Also met Krzyztof Penderecki, Beverly Sills, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski