The New Yorker Radio Hour - Patty Marx Conducts an Orchestra

Episode Date: December 27, 2019

Patricia Marx is a staff writer at The New Yorker, and has contributed pieces for thirty years. Still, it might not be too late to try out a new career. “There are some jobs and endeavors that look impossibly hard,” she notes. “But conducting [an orchestra]—I just thought, How hard, really, can it be?”  Prepared with a little coaching from the real-life conductor Bernard Labadie, and armed with an eight-dollar baton from Amazon, Patty Marx takes a stab at conducting the prestigious Orchestra of St. Luke’s through Hayden’s Symphony No. 45. Marx doesn’t want to do a passable job of conducting the piece; she wants to give it her own unique stamp. With that goal in mind, she devises a set of sui-generis conducting techniques derived from daily activities like hailing a cab, or yoga. “I want to be one of the greats,” Marx says. Plus, the New Yorker’s Kelefa Sanneh sings the praises of his favorite Christian rockers. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNNIC Studios and The New Yorker. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. Thanks for joining us today. I'm David Remnick, and now I'm going to turn things over to Patricia Marks. Don't worry. You're in good hands. I'm Patty Marks, and as a writer, I spend a lot of time at my computer thinking of careers I should have chosen instead. And high on my list is being the conductor of an orchestra. You know, there are some jobs and endeavors that look impossibly hard, like computer programming or landmine removal or swing dancing. But conducting, I just thought, how hard really can it be?

So I think I've got what it takes. I know how to clap on time. I know the difference between loud and soft. And I have free time. Miraculously, the orchestra of St. Luke's, a very prestigious orchestra, gave me 36 musicians to play with. That's three dozen. And they let me conduct the Haydn's Symphony number 45,

which they were rehearsing that day because they were going to play it at Carnegie Hall. Hi, Patty. Nice to meet you. Likewise. I was introduced to the real conductor, Bernard Labadee, from Montreal, and he is a specialist in classical and baroque music. So we're looking at this score. Yeah.

There are many, many, many pages. Yeah, and that's a small score because there are not so many instruments. If we'd be doing Stravinsky's right of spring, you would be facing a huge wall of notes and lines. But in the Haydn Symphony, it's something much lighter. And there's a line for each instrument, correct? Exactly. And it's clearly written. So you see that the top line is...

Fagotto is bassoon. A bassoon. Corno, one in a law, must be a horn. It's a horn, definitely. The second... Violino must be... So there are two horns. It's important, you know, and that's an important part of your...

Two oboes. Yeah. One, bassoon. Bissoon. Two horns, but it's important. Why do they call it Fagato? Fagotto is the Italian word for a bassoon. They make everything sound like pasta.

So are your gestures, you prepare so much, are your gestures planned or do you feel it in the moment? Well, and when you learn how to conduct, you have to learn the gestures, and you have to learn the impact of gestures on musicians. And also you learn to adapt them to the different musicians you're working with. So it's not specific. choreographed? No, I mean, it's part, how could I say that? It's not choreographed, meaning that...

It's like you're dancing with the orchestra. To some extent, but I'm... Maybe it would be more precise to say that I'm dancing ahead of the orchestra, because my job is to convey through my gestures how I want the music to sound like. We are usually one beat ahead. How can I tell, as an audience member, how can I separate a good from a great conductor? The truth is in the music that you hear. What I mean is you cannot really trust what you see because sometimes some conductors have a very weird conducting technique and it seems offensive or anything, but the results are fabulous.

I thought what Bernard said was very reassuring. If I interpreted this right, he said it really doesn't matter what you do as long as you do it extremely. even if it's offensive. So I brought my own baton, which I had gotten for $8 on Amazon. I could have splurge for more, but I thought,

how good does a baton have to be? Though I also thought, why don't they give me two? I don't know why. I guess I was thinking of chopsticks or something. You don't need to use a baton to conduct. It's not an absolute necessity. It can help.

And I would say it helps, especially if you have a very large orchestra. If you were in the pit and people have a harder time to see you. What it does is that it focuses the message. It concentrates the message of the hand into one point, which is easier to read. But it's a matter of choice, I would say. Well, I like toys, so I'm going to use it.

It's a big joy, yeah. Fencing without a sword or being a jockey without a whip. Yeah, but be careful. It can be dangerous. I'm well known in Quebec City for having stuck one of these up my nose in rehearsal and ending up in emergency room of the hospital. So I walk up to the podium and not only am I holding a deadly weapon, but I look at the orchestra and I think,

shit, I can't do this. It's terrifying. Maybe sticking the baton up my nose isn't such a bad idea because surely that would be an easier route to go than trying to conduct 36 musicians. But there was kind of no turning back. So the tricky thing, of course, is to make you start together.

Here goes. What's wrong? What they do? So one beat of preparation, one, two. Bernard is sort of telling me to do things that I don't understand with the beat and that I'm, I didn't even know it was possible to hold a baton the wrong way, but I was. I thought it would be like tennis, you know, shake hands with the racket, but it's not that.

So I proceeded to raise my arm up and down and occasionally outward and hope for the best. Clearly these guys are really good because they're not getting any help from me. Okay. actually at some point started beating suddenly much quicker that's good right and not necessarily I think it's supposed to be in the same tempo okay and that's because you I wanted to personalize it yeah yeah that's good okay we'll do it well let's try really fast and with regret may I suggest something let's do it with only one hand you don't need the two that's all right you you can do I wanted to be a

megalomaniac though that will come in time trust me okay so so so I It's just that, let's try to consciously shift the tempo. If you start beating a little quicker, they will follow you. If you start beating a little slower. But like trying to get quicker, accelerate, and then decelerate, just to see how they react to it. So I decide to take semantphetamines here. And here I took an ambient, and now it's worn off. So obviously, I've mastered the cramines.

of conducting. I sound pretty good. The orchestra sounds good. I know what I'm doing, but maybe it's a little cookie cutter. Maybe it's like every other conductor on the block. I decided I wanted to stand out. I want now to create a visual repertoire. I want to put my personality into my technique, add to the language maybe. I want to be one of the great So here I am pointing at people in the orchestra. I'm leaping and I'm glissotting. I'm swatting flies. I'm trying to hitchhike.

I'm playing with my hair. Here I started doing a little yoga. Could we call this sublime? This is easier to work than my TV. I want to be careful because I do want to come across as humble. but, dare I say, I've impressed myself. If there's another baton accident, call me. Patty Marks, she's been contributing to the New Yorker since 1989.

Will you talk to us for... We're both named Melanie, by the way. Oh, Melanies, will you talk to us? Okay. And which instruments? I think I know, but which you were... Obo? Double bass.

Double bass. How'd they do? You did okay. There were moments that you did really well, and then there were moments that you had too much fun. So if this were a report card, you'd say shows improvement. No, you're not kidding. Keep your day job.

That's the orchestra of St. Luke's with Bernard Labadee conducting. No musicians were harmed in the making of our story, not permanently anyway. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around. Much more to come. We're going to end today's program with Kellef Asane. Kelfa knows more music and more about music than practically anyone I've ever met. He's written for us on everything from George Strait to Paul Simon to Gucci-Main to King Crimson. And Kay is absolutely full of surprises in the very best way. Kay, you had a piece in the magazine about Christian rock and it was...

No pun intended. It was a revelation. to me. Well, thank you. And what was amazing is how soon it started. I knew, you know, a fair amount about the way gospel had been drawn upon to become soul and R&B in the tradition of Sam Cook or Aretha Franklin. But the way it came into rock and roll is a history. I don't think that we know quite as well.

Now, obviously, a lot of people making rock music over the years have been Christian one way or another. But what starts, a lot of people say it starts in 1969 with this album called Upon This Rock by Larry Norman is you get what I would call intentionally Christian rock. In other words, you have someone part of what he's trying to do is make an album about Christianity, calling people to Christianity, educating people about Christianity. And he's kind of associated with the Jesus movement, which is this kind of hippie Christian revival that's taking place around the same time. And whereas at the beginning he starts to, he seems like a real anomaly when he first comes out. By the 70s, he seems like the godfather of what is this growing genre of Christian rock. There's the so-called Christian Woodstock in 1972 in Dallas called Explow 72. One of the headliners is Larry Norman, but another of the headliners is Billy Graham.

I'm assuming Billy Graham was there to preach, not to sing. Billy Graham did not sing. Yeah. But these things in the 70s kind of merge. a Christian rock and the mainstream of American Christianity so that by the end of the decade, a lot of mainstream pastors, a lot of big churches have embraced Christian rock.

One of the great Christian rock artists to come out of the 1970s is this guy Phil Kagee, who was in a band called Glass Harp and then goes solo. You might know of him, David, because he's a guitar shredder. And I know you are also a guitar shredder. Should we listen to a little? Absolutely. What's the song?

The song is called Time. It's from his 1976 album, Love Broke Through. This is a live version from 1977. We're headed towards Sticks Country here. Well, yeah, and this is what a lot of these bands do is they draw from all the secular stuff that's going on. Right. And, you know, it's interesting. A lot of the stress and the anxiety in this world of Christian rock is about the lyrics, right?

And how should we praise the Lord and how frequently and how explicitly and how much Jesus needs to be in there. Kegi kind of gets away with something different because he's a guitarist and he create, some of his songs are instrumentals, you know, he does incredible acoustic finger-picking records and he can really shred. And obviously when he's shredding, you know, he could be shredding in the service of anything. There he is. He's up in the stratosphere. He's on the 19th fret here. Okay. And again, you know, the lyrics of the song are about how the Lord's going to come back and you're running out of time, brother. And so there's a,

certain severity in the words, but the music is much more joyful. Who else is a favorite, Kay? So... So this is Leslie Phillips. I can't trace. Out of way from love I long a taste. Why do I run away when I can face to face? She's not that well known, but she's a little better known by the name she used later in

her career, which was Sam Phillips. So in the 1980s, as Leslie Phillips, she released a series of Christian rock albums or Christian pop albums. She was sometimes promoted as the Christian. Cindy Lopper. A little Linus Morris that thing going on. Yeah, although this is before that. This is from 1987.

This album is called The Turning. It was the last album she made as Leslie Phillips. It was also produced by someone who wasn't well-known then, which is T-Bone Burnett. And they ended up getting married. Are these bands playing at the same places that everybody else is playing it, or are they paying mainly at big churches? That's a good question.

Sometimes they are playing regular clubs, but also they have their own circuit. And financially, there's a lot of money in this circuit. There's big festivals, there's big churches, and churches are eager to raise money to bring these bands in. So there was big money in it, too. Yeah, there's always been big money in Christian rock music. Partly, I think, my theory,

is that it's partly because there were often parents willing to buy their kids Christian rock albums and buy their kids' tickets to go see Christian rock music. To keep them on the up and up. Yeah, so it was kind of subsisting. So for Christian rock, there often was this sense that the lyrics are what matters. And as long as you're singing about God, the music can really sound like anything. And for some artists, this meant, oh, we're just going to take whatever the popular styles are

and kind of remake those songs with God lyrics, and it's going to be not that good. But some other bands realized, like, oh, this is going to give us license to do all sorts of stuff. Like we can really, we can stay in this world and make really crazy noise. Like Christian punk? As long as we're, as long as were, the lyrics are right. So this is a band called Ex-Tol from Norway, whose first gig was in a church outside Oslo in 1994. The song is called Celestial Completion. That little loot recorder thing going and then all of a sudden.

They fooled you, didn't they? This is, so stoll. Wouldn't you in a band like this? I was not in a, well. Yeah. But it might be a little hard to hear without the lyric sheet, but right now they're actually singing Matthew chapter 25 verse 23. Well done, good and faithful servant.

You have been faithful with a few things. And so... That's coming through my headphone? I can't hear. Absolutely. And so... And so they're a great example of if you really believe this idea that the lyrics are what makes something Christian.

Christian rock could mean a whole lot of things. But the religion is sincere. I mean, nobody's doubting the sincerity of it. Oh, I mean, you know, there's always doubters. But yes, absolutely a band like Exstol, which has, you know, had a long career. And yes, stayed in this world. Amazing. Amazing.

Amazing. And then. So this is a band that's been one of my favorite bands, actually, for a while. They're called Me Without You. They come out of the sort of post-hardcore scene in Philadelphia, formed around 2000. They put out their first album in 2002 on Tooth and Nail, which is a very influential Christian kind of punk and alternative label. Over the years, a lot of Christian rock kind of became very mainstream, became very popular. Me Without You sort of brings the tradition back to its countercultural roots.

The lead singer was famously a dumpster diver, and they ended up drawing in all sorts of things, not just Christian traditions, but Sufi traditions, Baha'i traditions. So they're a band that's actually been influential on a lot of Christian bands, again, showing that this tradition can be a big and capacious tradition. So Christian rock has stayed a lot. and thriving now for almost the length of rock and roll itself. Absolutely, and depending on how you define it, right? You could look at bands like The Killers and Imagine Dragons,

which both have Mormon lead singers, Paramore, even Katie Perry come out of the Christian rock and Christian pop world. So there really is a wide number of different kinds of Christian rock music, and oftentimes people are listening to it even when they don't know they are. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. I wish you a solid goal. I hear it all.

Kelifasana. You can find his article about Christian rock at New Yorker.com. I'm David Remnick, and thank you for listening. I wish you a happy, happy new year. We'll have a lot going on in January, including an interview with Terry Gross, who will join us next week. See you then. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production

of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tuneiards with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Cario, Riannon, Corby, Karen Frulman, Cala Leo, David Krasnow,

Caroline Lester, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino. With help from Morgan Flannery, Alison McAnnam, Monk-Faicheng and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Turina Endowment Fund.