Since my last blog entry the Honolulu Symphony took a week off following an action packed month of September. In those four weeks we knocked of two Pops programs and three Masterworks concerts.

At the moment the HSO is both music director- and executive director-less, so to say things are in transition is an understatement. Given that, the month went remarkably smoothly.

The three Masterworks performances were marked by the appearance of three candidates for the Music Director job. I can’t comment in this space on any of the candidates, of course, but it sure is an interesting process. This is the first time since I’ve been here (and I got here in 1977, the same week that Elvis died and Jimmy Carter had just become president!) that we’ve had a real bona-fide search for a music director.

There is such an amazing transaction that transpires between a conductor and an orchestra the first time they meet. Within seconds, as soon as the conductor is on the stage, even before the first downbeat, both conductor and orchestra are appraising each other and usually by the first ten minutes of the rehearsal both sides have a pretty good idea of what to expect.

This phenomena is even more amplified when the orchestra is trying to select a music director. The conductor is usually nervous and smiling for whatever he (or she) is worth; the orchestra is (hopefully) polite and attentive, watching and ready to pass instant judgment. (See the above paragraph.)

Just speaking for my own personal preference, I look for how the conductor uses the rehearsal time. If by the end of the allotted rehearsals I feel confident and familiar with all of the music, I’m happy. If some passages have been overworked and others barely touched, I’m annoyed. This is one factor among many, of course, but is one that I’ve noticed seems to vary greatly and efficient use of rehearsal time is a good indicator of a thoughtful conductor.

I took off the final Pops concert in September (Don Tiki/Monica Mancini), so the one week break turned into a two week break.

What did I do with this gift of free time?

Dug trenches. (We’re installing irrigation in the back yard.) With a friend’s help, cut down four trees and hauled them away (by myself) in about 30 truckloads of trunks and branches to the green waste site nearby. Filled about 20 trash bags full of trimmings of overgrown grass, ginger, bushes and the like. Dug the trenches deeper. Cut my index finger with a pruning saw. Rats!

Plumbing duties: after getting tired of looking at the boxes of new faucets sitting on the bathroom floors that I bought back in April, I finally got around to changing the faucets in the front and back bathrooms- a project that ended up with stripping the sinks and vanities to the wall and replacing the whole thing; valve, lead lines, vanities, sinks, and finally, the new faucets. (THAT’S why I kept putting the job off!)

Started organizing my compact disk collection. There is a fantastic new program for the Mac, called Delicious Library. (Available @ http://www.delicious-monster.com) This ingenious little puppy helps you catalog your books, videos, games and compact disks by reading the UPC bar code with your web cam, accessing the Amazon.com database, and then automatically filling in all the information on your item, down to the cover art. Needless to say, there are many display options including a virtual shelf where your items can be displayed. You can enter by hand the location of the item, a handy thing for me as there are books and CD’s all over the house. I highly recommend it to all Mac users, apparently others feel the same way as the program has won a number of awards.

Made reeds. ‘Nuf said.

Finally, back to work and what a shock. No matter how diligent I try to be about practicing and getting reeds ready for use in the orchestra, the first couple of days back are always SO painful. No amount of practice can duplicate spending four hours a day rehearsing Dvorak and the like. This is the thing I dislike the most about our short (30 week) season, after that nasty little pay situation- back to work and back to unemployment, on and off, over and over. It’s hard to maintain artistic cohesiveness with so many weeks off.

Our management has little pukas all over the place in our season schedule(puka is a Hawaiian word for little hole, as in ‘puka shell necklace’), so we’re always running off to the unemployment office, where we’re on a first name basis with the staff. There’s a week off in November, another week off in December, and three weeks off in January. Then we go straight to the first week of May, which is off, followed by one final week and the season ends on May 14th, Mother’s Day. This crazy schedule is in large part a result of having to use a City auditorium and competing with musicals, Chinese acrobats, graduations and the like. Someday we’ll have a home of our own, but I’m sure I’ll be retired and laid to rest in the ground long before then.

The first week back featured a return of our now ex-music director, and that was also a new feeling for us, as we’d never had an orderly transition of power. (I’ve been in the HSO for three music directors- the first one quit in the middle of the season, the second one presided over the demise of the orchestra, which returned after 18 months in hiatus, this one is the third.) Like a marriage that has ended in divorce, but with the ex-spouse coming back to spend a quick holiday with the kids, seeing X-MD again brought back many memories of various types. Of course, the critics claimed that we sounded relaxed and confident. Interesting!

Now we’re back to another parade of music director candidates, each with a big and demanding program, each with first impressions to be made and given, each with various strengths and weaknesses, and at the end, hopefully we’ll make a love connection with someone and we’ll live happily ever after. (In theory.)

Speaking of making first impressions, I’d better go back to the reed table. Surely there’s a good reed there somewhere. I’ve got to go to rehearsal in a few hours and make another impression. Maybe it’ll be a love connection!?