Review: Mozart in the Jungle by Blair Tindall

I couldn’t wait to read this memoir after beginning to watch the eponymic series on Amazon.

Tindall began playing the oboe, a difficult but hauntingly beautiful instrument when played well, almost by mistake. When they were handing out instruments alphabetically by last name in band, by the time they got to T there was only a bassoon and oboe to chose from. The oboe being smaller she chose that.

Somewhat intimidated by her academically overachieving brother who went to Exeter and with poor grades not to mention a boyfriend who would be closer, she opted to attend NCSA a new (founded in 1960) school devoted to teaching professional musicians and ballet dancers. Regretfully, she focuses more on the unwanted (sometimes) sexual attentions of her teachers (this was a time when sexual harassment was more than prevalent and teachers would use the subjectiveness of musical grading to get what they wanted) and boys, not to mention drinking and drugs, than on the intricacies of the oboe. As someone who has played the piano, organ and french horn, I have no knowledge of woodwinds and would have liked to learn more. But, nevermind.

The musical education at NCSA was apparently quite good if at the expense of other academics and when they went to take the SATs some students had to ask was the SAT was. A test given on Saturdays? They were prepared for little else. “The noble intentions of NCSA encapsulated what would later plague classical music in America: explosive growth without a realistic mission, few accessible resources, and the simultaneous isolation and elevation of a foreign art form above the comprehension of those who were expected to support it.”

Unfortunately, while in her early twenties in NY she was having affairs with several other oboists and being the principal players they controlled hiring of oboe subs and arranging for other gigs. When those affairs fell apart (inevitably as they were married and everything was always supposed to be kept secret) the jealous reactions would lead to her lack of employment. Coupled with many of her friends and acquaintances dying from AIDS (this was the early eighties and at one time the list of dead friends topped one hundred when she quit keeping track) it was a discouraging time.

Much of the book details the trials and tribulations of the orchestral world in general and orchestral musicians in specific. Orchestras had proliferated during the sixties and seventies as federal grants provided the seed money, but soon it became apparent, especially during economic upturns and downswings, that paying musicians from revenue derived from ticket sales was often oxymoronic. Another problem was too many musicians, often uneducated except for their instrument, were chasing too few gigs. Those privileged few who made it through the auditions to get a position in an orchestra were usually life-tenured so few positions ever opened up. Positions that did pay well like those on Broadway could be mind-numbingly boring, playing the same music over and over and over again; some players could read a book while playing the music. As stages became larger and more front row seating was added to sell more tickets, orchestral pits became hellish holes, dark and removed from the performance and audience, almost an afterthought, as the music was piped out through speakers. For long-running shows (she played for Les Miserables and Miss Saigon among others) it was at least a dependable source of income, health and pension benefits.

Eventually, by her mid-thirties, Tindall realized she had to make a change having been unable to find a long-term relationship and becoming totally bored. A job satisfaction study revealed that Orchestral musicians were near the bottom, scoring lower in job satisfaction and overall happiness than airline flight attendants, mental health treatment teams, beer salesmen, government economic analysts, and even federal prison guards. Only operating room nurses and semiconductor fabrication teams scored lower than these musicians…. It took a couple of strange men who didn’t know anything about classical music to make me realize I wasn’t nuts after all. I was in a narcissistic industry that was stuck in the nineteenth century. At that moment, I gave myself permission to escape.

One rather dispiriting piece of information she writes of was a study done “in 2001, [in which] Harvard researchers would challenge this assertion [that studying music helped academic performance], combing 188 studies published between 1950 and 1999 to evaluate the effect of arts education on general learning. Their results were shocking: No reliable causal relationship was found between music education and academic performance (except for spatial reasoning). Creative thinking, verbal scores, and math grades were all unaffected by studying music.”

The movie is sooo different from the book. About the only common thread is the oboe. This is a book that probably won’t be of interest unless you play an instrument or love classical music. I liked it, but the movie is better.

Review: Sword of God by Mark Dawson

Milton is walking from Ohio to points west as the result of almost taking a drink (he tries to attend regular meetings of AA) beset as he is by demons from his past hits. Walking in the rainstorm in the Upper Peninsula, he’s given a lift to a campsite by the local sheriff who sees him as just another drifter waiting to cause trouble. Being a contrary person, Milton walks back to town and walks into the local hotel to clean up and then to the local bar and grill for dinner. There, he is seen taking down a couple of very large tourists by himself, by Mallory and two FBI agents. (He’s also seen by the sheriff leading to some momentary unpleasantness that we need not go into here.) The FBI and Mallory are both seeking a group of modern-day outlaws they think might be hold up somewhere in the UP; Mallory only because she believes her “simple” brother may have hooked up with them.

To make a long introduction short, Mallory and one of the FBI agents (Ellie), follow Milton (who agrees to lead them reluctantly) into the back-country to look for Mallory’s brother and the gang. Turns out to be a Christian militia determined to attack the federal government.

Sound like a Reacher story? It certainly has much of the same flavor although personally I like Milton better than Reacher, but both Lee Child and Mark Dawson write more than competently. A very good story until the ending which is ridiculously over-the-top. 3.5 rounded up to 4.

Review: Real Men Don't Rehearse by Justin Locke

Watch the short video of Justin Locke talking about one of the episodes from the book on his Amazon author page. Very funny. Also at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFm7xp7DRHg

A very charming book filled with short anecdotes and stories of events and behind-the-scenes activities in a famous orchestra. Hard to write a review. I’ll just say if you are a musician or love classical music, these little stories will charm you.

Playing in an orchestra is really an extraordinary task that involves getting as many as 90 narcissistic individuals to work together as a group in harmony. (Full disclosure: I have played the French horn in an orchestra.) How that is done involves a lot of hierarchy and tradition, much of which Locke explains quite humorously. The conductor's role is somewhat special often having little to do with setting the tempo (read the part about what happens during the milliseconds between the conductor’s open and down beats.)

Once a piece of music starts, many people believe that the orchestra needs the conductor’s non-stop stick-waving as a sort of visual metronome to keep the orchestra together. However, in hard-core professional orchestras, the beat lies, not within the conductor, but within the orchestra itself. Better conductors know this, and they take great advantage of it by swirling the baton around in very vague artistic ways so as not to interfere with the orchestra’s intrinsic rhythmic sense. This is harder than it sounds; in the midst of all that dancing and swirling, it is very important to avoid doing anything that the orchestra will interpret as an actual instruction for a rhythmic change, as this can really gum up the works.

In a major orchestra, the players are all so skilled and experienced that they aren’t dependent upon the conductor for very much of anything. And they are generally very assertive, if not downright aggressive, in their approach to playing. For the neophyte conductor in this situation, “leading” is not so much like urging a birthday party pony to greater effort as it is like hanging on for dear life while riding Seabiscuit in the back stretch of the Preakness.

You’ll have to read the book to find out about John Williams and the spinning basses in Japan. Great story. And by the way, there’s a reason why conductors always need to be nice to the principal bass player.

I loved this book.

Review: Ghosts (#4 in the John Milton Series) by Mark Dawson

Continuing in my read of the John Milton series, this being #4. As I noted in my review of Beatrix Rose (#1 in that series) one almost has to read the two series concurrently in order to keep the relationships of the characters straight. They are as much about the interactions of the assorted assassins employed by a secret British government agency, in this case one that has been taken over by “Control” and used for his own purposes. That results in the disaffection of several of the best agents including Beatrix, Milton, and Pope. (I’ll try not to reveal too much of the plot in order to not drop any spoilers into the mix.)

In this one Milton is rescued from a Texas jail just ahead of control by a beautiful Russian agent (frankly I found it refreshing they never jumped into the sack; Reacher would have overwhelmed her with his charms within 24 hours - but done it politely even though he might not have showered in a week). A Russian agent whom Control tried to have taken out years before uses his capture of Michael Pope to force Milton into delivering some information that will destroy Control. Milton turns tables and mounts a rescue operation knowing that Control will probably try to have him assassinated along the way.

I like Milton as a character and I like the stories. Lots of good fun reading. On to #5 Sword of God which starts out much like a Reacher novel.

Review: In Cold Blood: Beatrix Rose #1 by Mark Dawson

So I started this book about a year ago, dropped it in the middle for whatever reason, and then recently began reading Ghosts, #4 in the John Milton series, which I enjoy. In that one (see my review) Milton is helped out of a jam by the Russians who want him to locate Beatrix Rose, who had been #1 in “Control’s” British secret organization of assassins. Hence the backstory in the beginning of Ghosts wherein Rose’s husband is killed after she discovers that Control is running his own little personal operation. With me so far?

So now we’re back to Beatrix Rose #1, In Cold Blood, in which she, having discovered she has cancer, has embarked on a journey of revenge to get those operatives who were involved in the killing of her husband and abduction of her daughter. So she proceeds to take on hordes of Somalis bailing out an entire SEAL platoon in order to kill Joyce, #10, who had participated in the killing of her husband. She, in turn, gets rescued by the fortuitous presence of Michael Pope (more later) who is monitoring everything and uses some drones to take out some more bad guys. I never said this would be easy.

Surprisingly, the Milton book, Ghosts, does begin to tie things together. Kind of clever on the author’s part to relate the series together like a mosaic. The two series should probably be read concurrently and in order, starting with the John Milton books. They get better as they go along and the author does have a nice vocabulary. Mine is pretty good but I had to look up about half dozen. Fun, fast, light reading.