OREGON SYMPHONY MUSIC DIRECTOR CARLOS KALMAR WORKS WITH MCNARY STUDENTS

While other area high school students were figuring out how to spend their final few hours of a freedom on a Friday with no school, some choir and orchestra students at McNary High School were headed to school for an opportunity to work with Oregon Symphony Music Director Carlos Kalmar as part of the Oregon Symphony in Salem’s Master Coaching and Music Educator of the Year Programs. As Kalmar arrived in the music wing, the choir could be heard warming up and he was quick to begin singing along as he walked down the hall.

The group quickly transitioned into the band room where they joined the orchestra as they finished their warm-ups and prepared for three hours of work rehearsing selections from Handel’s Messiah, Vivaldi’s Gloria and Faure’s Requiem. Kalmar was noticeably impressed with the discipline of the students as they took their places and prepared to begin rehearsal. After a brief introduction by McNary Choir Director James Taylor, Maestro Kalmar took a seat on a nearby stool, score in hand, while Andy Wilson, a Willamette University Master’s Candidate took the baton and led the group through a selection from Handel’s Messiah. When they were done, Kalmar got up, gave a compliment to the group, stepped up on the podium and went to work finessing the details on this and a selection from Vivaldi’s Gloria. After a short break, the group went to work on Faure’s Requiem, but not until the choir had performed Herz, mein Herz; a special request from the Maestro.

Transitioning between Spanish, German, Italian and English as he would count off the beat, Maestro Kalmar would use vivid imagery to relate to the students the effect he was looking for in a particular section before moving on to the next. During a particular slow passage in the Faure Requiem, Kalmar recognized that the choir and orchestra were performing the section with the relative energy and exuberance that comes from youth, but that this particular passage should be slower telling the students that it should have “the feeling of a bubble bath.”

Before the three hour rehearsal was concluded students were given the opportunity to ask Maestro Kalmar questions during which he left them with some words to live by; “Fifteen percent of music is talent,” he said “the rest is work.”