Stand Partners for Life

Music or muddle: Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony

Shostakovich had never had it worse: his latest opera, Lady Macbeth, had been panned. And not just by an ordinary critic: Joseph Stalin himself had paid a visit to the opera house. The official Soviet opinion of the work? "Muddle instead of music." Shostakovich therefore pulled his Symphony No. 4 out of rehearsals and regrouped. He determined to write "a Soviet artist's response to justified criticism," a work that would become his Symphony No. 5. Join me and Akiko as we talk Shostakovich, ...

The best cadenza ever? Prokofiev and Ma Vlast

Have you ever "discovered" a major piece, live, in the concert hall? Nathan remembers sitting right next to a big star performing Prokofiev's second Piano Concerto, with its massive and breathtaking first-movement cadenza. Then he and Akiko talk about sitting right next to another big star this week for the same piece. They also reminisce about those stacks of records, cassette tapes, and ultimately CDs from which they learned all the repertoire. Finally, they debate the categories for this...

Stand Partners “Four” Life

This week's landmark episode marks the return of Akiko, plus a pair of fellow stand partners for life: violists Kate Reddish and Eric Lea! We discuss the slings and arrows of a career in music, what you can and can't get from music school, what it's like to be part of a string-playing pair, and much more. Kate Reddish is a Los Angeles-based freelance violist. She enjoys a busy and varied career subbing with nearly every major orchestra in the Southern California area, performing as a chambe...

Travis Maril, Violympic Champion

I'm joined in the backyard this week by Violympian and VMC participant Travis Maril, as well as his fellow USC alum and my Director of Operations, Kate Reddish. Our wide-ranging conversation includes no small measure of pedagogical geekery, as well as such diverse topics as Tae Kwon Do bribery and Michael Jordan's private Space Jam gym. Violist Travis Maril is String Coordinator and Viola Faculty at San Diego State University (SDSU), where he has taught since 2007. At SDSU he also serves as ...

Kerstin Tenney and the Light Album

Nathan, Kerstin and Kate (and Kate's SPFL Eric) in Pasadena Today I'm talking with Kerstin Tenney, VMC violinist par excellence, as well as my Director of Operations, violist (and VMC alumna par equally excellence) Kate Reddish. We talk about Kerstin's musical education, her experience in the Virtuoso Master Course, and the new album she's recorded with Simon Kiln and the English Symphony Orchestra! Violinist Kerstin Tenney finished recording her first solo violin album in England earlier t...

Tour-ready? Copland 3, Mahler 1, and more

It's tour time! While you're listening, we'll be flying, driving, and playing our way through Boston, New York, Mexico City, and Guanajuato. So to kick off the trip, let's talk tour repertoire and hand out some awards. Tour rep includes Copland's Third Symphony and Mahler 1 as the "big pieces", plus violin concertos from Arturo Marquez and Gabriela Ortiz. Which composers would we love to have dinner with? What are the scariest moments in these concerts? And what was the most memorable on-sta...

Welcome back with the All-Time Awards

Akiko and I are back for the 2022-2023 season! In this first episode we share with you a fun new format: awards in all kinds of different categories. Next week we'll focus on the season-opening tour prep weeks at the LA Phil, but for today we're handing out some All-Time awards. Discover which composers we'd love to have dinner with, which excerpts terrify us in auditions, and which conductor gestures stand the test of time. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, jus...

039: Summer motivation, plus Q & A

We took quite a long break from recording the show with everything going on at the moment, but we are so glad to be back. To kick things off again we thought we would use this episode to go through a bit of what we have been up to, staying home with the LA Phil out of action, some of the work and practicing we have been doing and then to field a bunch of listener questions. We look back at the last few days of regular work before quarantine began and then talk a bit about how we adjusted our...

038: Do we really need a conductor?

Here at Stand Partner HQ, we get this question a lot! And that should tell you something without even knowing the answer. Nobody asks what a pilot does, or if we really need one for our airplanes. But the conductor's role isn't nearly so obvious, to our audiences and even, at times, to us! Do we really need someone up front "driving the train"? Do a conductor's responsibilities begin and end with a downbeat and a final cutoff? Key points Akiko's forthcoming appearance on the Every Little T...

037: Orchestra Players Anonymous

Twelve-step programs have helped millions of people, including some of our colleagues. But their constant references to a "higher power" rub some people the wrong way. As orchestral musicians, we only know one "higher power": the conductor, who rules every aspect of our musical lives! Here are some slightly rewritten twelve steps toward embracing musical anonymity in the orchestra of your choice. The Twelve Orchestral Steps Admit you are powerless over your musical decisions and life has b...

036 – Johnny Lee wasn’t meant to be a Harvard MD

Violinist Johnny Lee is Akiko's mirror image on stage at Disney Hall: he sits fourth chair second violin, while she's fourth chair first violin. But they have something else in common too. Both went to Harvard, where there is no music performance major. Akiko thought she'd be a lawyer, Johnny a doctor (or was he just pretending?), but they both found their way back to the violin by the time they graduated. The Stand Partners have logged thousands of hours of "unofficial" conversation with J...

035: Playing by numbers, or Advanced Orchestra Stats

How many times have you been jealous of the box scores for baseball and basketball, or the advanced statistics for football? Don't you wish that you too could be measured by notes attempted, notes played in tune, entrances successfully counted? If we got our wish, orchestra concerts would have their own advanced metrics! Here are the stats (and penalties) we'd like to see.

034: The spirit is willing, but the Flesch is weak

This week, we're talking scales and etudes. Are they the foundational blocks on which your entire technique is built? Or more like raw vegetables that you have to choke down if you want to stay healthy? Akiko actually had a scale class as a kid, while I got a crash course in scales from my Curtis teacher Felix Galimir (who had studied with Carl Flesch himself). Etudes were a different story. Both of us went through a progression of Sevcik, Schradieck, Kretuzer, Dont, and all the rest. But b...

033: The audience experience, with superfan Roderick Branch

Chicago Symphony cellist Brant Taylor may have been our very first special guest here at the Stand Partners, but so far we've been missing the perspective of his partner Roderick Branch. Roderick is a musician, though his day job (and sometimes into the night job) is as a partner at a giant law firm. Roderick is what you'd call an extremely savvy listener, otherwise known as a superfan. So today Akiko, Brant, and I talk with Roderick, to remember just who it is we're playing for. Roderick e...

032: What about Bob? Robert deMaine, our principal cello

Today we're joined by our good friend and LA Phil principal cello, Robert deMaine. Bob tells us about his childhood, his musical family and an early teacher who gave him a complete musical education, including piano and composition. He also unpacks how he fell out of love with the cello during his teen years and took an extended break from playing. Eventually he found his way back and went on a tear, pursuing a solo career and at the same time winning principal jobs in Hartford, Detroit, and...

031: That’s life in the hot seat, Mr. Concertmaster!

Today we're talking concertmaster, and what it means to sit in the hot seat. What are the duties and expectations, and what makes "first chair violin" attractive or unattractive to different players? Is playing concertmaster more like being the point guard in basketball, or the quarterback in football? Remember: besides playing all those juicy solos, you have to deal with walk-outs, bowings, section concerns and principal relationships. Just know that even though the concertmaster position ...

030: All about Amadeus

Nathan says: "My top three movies of all time would be The Godfather, Rocky, and Amadeus in some order." Akiko's not into those "top whatever" lists. But both of us love Amadeus so much that we would drop whatever we're doing and watch it again right now. Here's why...

029: Living the rock star life at the Hollywood Bowl

It isn't every day that you get to perform for 18,000 screaming fans... especially if you're a violinist. But a handful of times each summer, we get the rock star treatment at the Hollywood Bowl! OK, so those 18,000 folks probably aren't screaming just for the two of us... there might be some famous movie tunes thrown in, or some fireworks, or Katy Perry. But we take it all in stride as we navigate the summer home of the LA Philharmonic. Listen up for the inside scoop on one of the most ama...

028: Help, my audition’s tomorrow!

Maybe it's the proverbial "seven minutes to midnight", or maybe you've still got a week or two. It never feels like enough time, trust us. So here's some advice for those last few days, hours, and minutes before your big day, inspired by the recent violin auditions at the LA Philharmonic.

027: A Fistful of Mahlers

First, some exciting news: we've got Stand Partners for Life T-shirts! Check them out here, and show your Stand Partner love! For this episode, Akiko and I just had a one-word outline: Mahler! And it turns out we had plenty to say about his symphonies. What's it like to learn them, refine them, rehearse them, take them on tour? What do committees look for when you play Mahler? Hear about the time Akiko was mortified to play Mahler 9 with David Hyde Pierce (Frasier's Niles Crane) in the fron...

026: Live from the Fischoff, Day 3

025: Live from the Fischoff, Day 2

024: Live from the Fischoff, Day 1

023: What does my future hold?

Here at Stand Partners for Life, we get a lot of questions about the future: what happens if I'm not playing concerto X by age Y? What will happen if I study with teacher Z, or go to school-- I ran out of letters! So even though we can't give definitive answers to these questions, they're still great questions! And one listener email in particular sparked a discussion about success at an early age, the importance (or non-importance) of conservatory for winning an orchestra audition, and lots...

022: An unfortunate break

If it seems like we've been silent the last couple of months, that's because Akiko's life has been pretty different since early March! One moment she was working out at the gym like she did five times a week, and the next she was flat on her back with paramedics on the way. Suffice it to say that she hasn't been playing with the LA Phil since then, but we can see the way back at least! Midway through her recovery, we talk about her time in the hospital and back at home. We also take the opp...

021: The best orchestra audition concerto

OK, you guessed it: it's going to be impossible for us to narrow things down to one "best"! But Akiko and I give it our best shot, outlining the pluses and minuses for all the popular choices. In this episode we refer to an article I wrote a few years ago, "Which violin concerto has the toughest opening?"

020: Ray Chen – how insecurity leads to maturity

Virtuoso Ray Chen hardly needs an introduction, but let's start with his Gold Medal at the Queen Elisabeth competition in 2009, at the age of 20! His career since then, by all appearances, has been an effortless climb. But as you're about to hear, that isn't the whole story. As I've gotten to know Ray (during his solo appearances with the LA Phil, including that one time he stole my bow for a Paganini encore!) I've been impressed with how open he is in person and on social media. Let's star...

019: Joseph Bein and the myth of the “Attic Stradivarius”

I met Joseph Bein almost as soon as I moved to Chicago to join the CSO in 2002. We've talked great instruments and bows ever since, over dinners, glasses of wine, and even Cubs games! Come to think of it, at Wrigley Field the talk is all baseball... Joe has been immersed in the world of fine string instruments his entire life, and when he visited LA I couldn't pass up the chance to talk with him about how his father, Robert Bein, and Robert's friend Geoffrey Fushi started Bein & Fushi in Chi...

018: Fake it till you make it? How we learn music

When it comes to getting all those notes, rhythms, dynamics, and articulations under your fingers, you've got to use every trick in the book. In this episode, we talk about how we get through our stacks of orchestra music. Of course, we need different strategies depending on whether we're trying to revive an old friend, or tame a world premiere. Fakery may just find its way in there somewhere...

017: The show must go on – When conductors cancel

A recent change of plans at the LA Phil leads us to reminisce on other times we've had conductors cancel. What happens when the audience is waiting and the show must go on? Transcript Nathan Cole: Hello, and welcome back to Stand Partners for Life with "The show must go on." That's the name of this episode, not just saying that about our show… But thanks, as always, for being here with me for, I think this will be, a great episode. It's about, well, the show must go on. We were kind ...

016: Violin resolutions we’ve made, kept, and broken

Happy New Year and new season of Stand Partners for Life! In this episode, we take a look back at resolutions we've made about our playing... and not all of them stuck! From scale practice to solo Bach, counting rests to keeping a practice journal, each of us had critical moments in our violin past where we made fateful decisions. Which ones made a lasting impact? Transcript Nathan Cole: Hello and welcome back to Stand Partners for Life. I am Nathan Cole. Akiko Tarumoto: I am ...

015: We all need an audition helping hand

We were pretty good back in the day, but even so we weren’t winning auditions on our own. Here are those moments when we got a helping hand!

014: The very first steps in audition preparation

As soon as we see a job listing online or in the International Musician, our wheels start turning. Which way do they turn? What are the first steps we take to get started preparing? In this episode, we look at the upcoming New York Philharmonic violin openings (September 2018) as an example of how to approach a big audition. We take apart the application piece by piece to make sure you don’t miss any hidden clues. And we reveal Nathan’s project to help those violinists who might be interest...

013: Violin fitness – staying healthy or playing hurt

As Kramer says in Seinfeld’s “The Wig Master” episode, “I don’t argue with the body, Jerry. It’s an argument you can’t win.” Sooner or later, we all learn the truth of that statement, especially those of us who are forced to rely on little tiny muscles to do things like play the violin! In the picture above, you can see Nathan celebrating his twelfth birthday with two fingers taped together. His daily neighborhood basketball game was the culprit. Nowadays, we’d think twice before playing th...

012: Hugh Fink, playing Carnegie and writing for SNL

Some people were just born to do what they do, and Hugh Fink was born to be funny. Or was he born to play the violin? Because even though comedy has set the course of Hugh’s life, he has performed violin solos to a packed Carnegie Hall, something I can’t boast about! Hugh is one of a very few comics who has been able to fuse his musical life with his stage persona, much like the late great Jack Benny, whose violin I’m fortunate to play. Ever since he was a child, Hugh loved getting up in fro...

011: Orchestra tours – the good, the bad, and the ugly

In this day and age, when an orchestra can broadcast its performances worldwide (as the Berlin Philharmonic does with its Digital Concert Hall), why would a group like the LA Phil pack up and lumber around the world? That question was on our minds since we just returned from a two-week international tour. Remember, when an orchestra travels, it’s not just the 100-odd musicians and perhaps their spouses (and even children)! It’s all their instruments as well, the music, luggage, and all kinds...

010: Stand Parents – Nathan’s Mom and Dad on raising a violinist

If you’re a musician and you have a young child, do you start him on an instrument? If so, is it the same instrument you play? If so, do you teach him? Or do you make sure your kids steer clear of the musician’s life? These are questions we ask ourselves all the time regarding our three kids! But a generation ago, Nathan’s parents were asking them. And Nathan’s father’s father asked the same questions a generation before that. So in this special episode, Nathan takes advantage of a parental...

009: Nate Farrington, on stage and on-screen in Hollywood

Summary What would you do if you showed up to an audition and heard, “OK, when I give you the signal, play something intense. Then on the next signal, more intensity!” Well, that’s exactly what happened to double bassist Nate Farrington. Except he was auditioning for a national Honda TV spot, and the mysterious voice belonged to the director! Nate is one of those friends who’s always up for a project: he’s the guy I’d call if I needed to paint a fence, set up a gas grill, or transport a big ...

008: The decline and fall of an orchestra player

Akiko is back to take on what could be a depressing subject: the inevitable erosion of your skills as a violinist when you play in an orchestra. But don’t every violinist’s skills go away eventually, or is there something about being in an orchestra that makes it happen faster? We got the idea for this episode from listener Helen Smit, who brought my attention to a discussion thread over at violinist.com: http://www.violinist.com/discussion/thread.cfm?page=1105 As it happened, I had actual...

007: Why cellist Brant Taylor took a break from the Chicago Symphony

A reminder that if you don’t yet have our free guide to evaluating and upgrading your violin, make sure to click this link to download it. Even if you’re not in the market, you never know when you’ll be called upon to help a friend pick a new instrument…so be prepared! For the first time, we’ve got a special guest here on Stand Partners for Life. Akiko is still alive and well, but her voice needed a break after some extra parenting this week! So I’m thrilled to have our great friend and form...

006: Stand Partner Feud – Etiquette Do’s and Don’ts

Let me start by saying that I just spent five minutes looking up the proper and accepted way to spell “do’s and don’ts”, so you can rest assured that I’ve nailed it! Do you want to be the kind of stand partner that your colleagues dream of playing with? Or do you want them to look at the new week’s roster, and mutter something under their breath? Let us break down the ways to get on your stand partner’s good side, and to stay there through the ups and downs of orchestra life. Of course, we a...

005: What we love (and loathe) about young conductors

“All music was new music once,” we often have to remind ourselves, and the same is true of conductors: they were all young once upon a time. But what does age have to do with a conductor’s artistic vision, or prowess with a baton? That’s what we figure out in today’s episode. Just how necessary is a conductor in the first place? Well, maybe not strictly necessary, but pretty important, as Akiko and the Chicago Symphony found out back in 2010 when Riccardo Muti fell ill just an hour before th...

004: Audition advice for our younger selves

Everything would have been so easy if we’d just known then what we know now! In this episode, we revisit what auditioning was like back when we started, and what’s changed for us as we’ve both taken, and judged, so many orchestra auditions. Nathan likes to compare auditions to blind dates: you’ve only got a minute to show what kind of player you are, and all the details you’ve worked so hard to refine need to add up to a beguiling package. Akiko talks about how it’s all about playing to you...

003: Nathan’s journey from Kentucky to Curtis

Nathan comes from a musical family, which might have saddled him with unmanageable expectations. But his parents were careful to keep things light and fun, while making sure he had a strong foundation. In this episode, Akiko learns about Nathan’s beginnings in the Suzuki method with Donna Wiehe, his transition to Daniel Mason (who was a Heifetz student), and that always-awkward teen period when we all have to figure things out for ourselves. For Nathan, that included his first memory slip (t...

002: Akiko’s journey from Eastchester to Harvard

Akiko’s parents aren’t musicians, but that didn’t stop them from wanting her to play an instrument from an early age. So when she was five, she began the violin in her public elementary school (imagine that happening today)! Before long, she and her mother were taking the train into New York City every Saturday to spend the day at the Manhattan School of Music’s pre-college program. We’ll follow Akiko from there to the Juilliard pre-college program, through her years of lessons with legendar...

001: Secrets of the Symphony; Meet the Stand Partners

In this first episode, we reveal the secrets of the symphony: what it’s really like to work day in and day out with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. As two violinists raising three kids, we find that our job means different things to us on different days. It’s our passion, of course, but it’s also a marathon. The repertoire changes every week, and those weeks keep coming! We talk about the great parts of the job, as well as the not-so-great. Why do musicians tend to end up with other musicians?...