Reviews
MARKAND THAKAR, conductor
“[The] most lovingly detailed 'Siegfried Idyl' in recent memory. Rarely has the work's tenderness, its rapt, pre-dawn languor, been so tellingly conveyed. Thakar's exhortations...found ready response from the orchestra, which played beautifully...an exceptional performance.”
Washington Post
“a poised, seamless traversal of Brahms’ Symphony No. 2. Thakar...gave us a Brahms’ Second to cherish.”
San Antonio Express-News
“It was anything but business as usual last night at the Ohio Theatre, where the Columbus Symphony Orchestra startled its audience with a world premiere and readings of established works that had plenty new to say….Conducting two of the three selections without a score, Thakar showed a genuinely innovative interpretive side….Thakar asked for sustained lines filled with energy and power giving the music a fluid momentum and drive where most readings settle for tenderness. With lots of rubato as well, this was a lushly romantic interpretation filled with joy and emotion….The reading of the Sibelius was the most shocking event of the night…By the time the rapturous themes finally burst forth in the finale, the impact was overwhelming.
Columbus Dispatch
“a degree of polish and refinement that is extraordinary… even to a critical ear that has heard the great orchestras of the world.”
Henry Fogel
“One of the most successful examples of thematic programming heard around here in some time….Conductor Markand Thakar ensured that the crash and boom registered vividly in the Haydn work, but never obscured the ingenuity and infectious spirit in the rest of the score. This was a beautifully balanced, nuance-rich interpretation that found the ensemble playing with admirable polish and sensitivity…The Rossini piece also benefited from Thakar's keen attention to detail. He refused to be hurried, allowing the music's high charm quotient to rise fully, stirring in its percussive flavoring as delicately as saffron in a risotto. Again, the musicians shone.”
Baltimore Sun
“DARING IN DULUTH. On the subject of brilliant programming, see this season's programs by the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra: Love of Country, Tragic Love, Love of Nature (the Pastorale and the Rite of Spring), Unrequited Love, Forbidden Love (Tchaikovsky, naturally), Fatal Love (Carmen), and Love of Music. An article by Chester Lane in Symphony magazine alerted me to this venture, which is the brainchild of conductor Markand Thakar. Last season they did the Seven Deadly Sins, and for Wrath (paired with the virtue of Brotherhood) they put Beethoven's Ninth next to William Grant Still's And They Lynched Him on a Tree. Gives me chills just to think about.
Alex Ross (New Yorker music critic)
“Thakar drew from the [New York] Philharmonic a subtle, nuanced performance of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5....The sweep of Tchaikovsky's language emerged compellingly, and fine details of the work's musical landscape were included. In short, Thakar's was a revelatory performance of this symphonic warhorse.”
Citysearch
“In this third year Thakar's shaping of the orchestra's unity certainly shows. The melodies sing, the rhythm is felt and the audience is quick to recognize how special the DSSO has become.”
Duluth News Tribune
“A stimulating performance by Thakar and the orchestra…the performance was on a par with the best that we have heard.”
Eugene Register-Guard
“This haunting performance [of Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 5] ranks with the orchestra’s finest.…Thakar asked the musicians to perform miracles, and they did.…He’s clearly a major talent.”
Colorado Springs Gazette
“SYMPHONY’S GUEST CHARGES TO THE FORE. The Lansing Symphony Orchestra sounded like a different ensemble at the MasterWorks 4 concert Saturday night....Markand [Thakar] was clearly in charge of the music. He was focused and confident...The orchestra responded with an extraordinarily balanced sound....clearly this was an impressive debut for Markand Thakar. Let's hope he returns.
Lansing State Journal
“How was Mr. Thakar with the GSO? In a word, brilliant....He inspired the orchestra to play with verve and energy that made Thursday night's concert an extremely enjoyable, exciting experience...[In Kodaly's 'Dances of Galanta'] Thakar, working without a score, brought forth a full, rich sound that was hot-blooded in some places, yet delicate in others....Elgar's 'Variations on an Original Theme' (Enigma) is a tour de force for the orchestra. Thakar worked again without a score, but solidly carved out the 14 variations, providing each with a distinctive character. The orchestra played radiantly.”
Greensboro News & Record
“SYMPHONY TRANSFORMED UNDER THAKAR'S BATON. How can the same orchestra, composed of the same musicians, change character so radically under the direction of different conductors? I asked myself this question at the Florida West Coast Symphony's concert directed by guest conductor Markand Thakar...the orchestra seemed transformed—smoothly professional, attentively focused, more musically intuitive and its sound full and rounded....Orchestra and conductor were as one....An opulent sonority and a sense of spaciousness pervaded this performance [of Beethoven's Symphony no. 7].”
Sarasota Herald Tribune
“What was experienced under Thakar's baton was so unusual and gripping as to give the work [Elgar's Enigma Variations] an entirely new and different appeal. Each phrase was molded and shaped to a degree making the entire orchestra sound like a single instrument under the control of a fanatic romanticist. Each of the 14 variations was blessed by immaculate attention to detail, and the intensity of what the maestro brought forth seemed to bring the musicians to the edge of their respective emotional ledges. What an experience! How marvelously different and thrilling!”
KVOD (Denver Classical Radio)
“People standing on their feet cheering for the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. It doesn't happen often, but that was the scene in Boettcher Hall last night after a thrillingly vivid performance of Respighi's 'The Pines of Rome'...with Markand Thakar on the podium.”
Denver Post
“Thakar’s concert was the best of the season—a rapt Siegfried Idyll, a moving Elgar Cello Concerto, and an exhilarating Haydn 104th—but there was more to it than that. Thakar didn’t rush the climaxes; he held to the pulse of the music. He didn’t play the loud parts louder and the quiet parts quieter; he clarified the textures of the music. In rehearsals he didn’t browbeat the musicians or simply belabor the tough passages; he worked with the orchestra to create music.”
Ann Arbor Observer
“His Brahms [Symphony no. 2] is warmly gorgeous, phrase after phrase lovingly shaped, major transitions daringly stretched. Music-making of a quite special kind.”
Kansas City Star
“Working without a score (quite a feat, by the way), Thakar conducted with authority and passion, luring a poised, committed reading [of Schoenberg's Verklaerte Nacht] from the CSO strings. The ensemble produced a warm, nuanced sound, responding well to Thakar's detailed conducting.”
Rocky Mountain News
“Thakar gave them anything but routine readings. He demonstrated that even Stokowski could not totally conceal the contrapuntal architecture of the Bach organ work and he offered carefully shaped and downright loving readings of the remaining works.”
Boulder Daily Camera
Thakar fills up orchestra seats with catchy themes, new sounds
Sunday, October 23, 2005
MICHAEL HUEBNER
Birmingham News staff writer
Markand Thakar is receiving as much good press lately for programming and audience building as he is for conducting. Since he took the title of Music Director of the Duluth-Superior Symphony Orchestra in 2002, he has built attendance to an average of 93 percent capacity in a 2,300-seat hall.
He signs up new subscribers by the hundreds each year and manages to retain 41 percent of them. His accomplishments have been the subject of recent articles in The New Yorker and Symphony magazines.
How does he do it? With catchy themes like "Fjord Explorer" and "Czech is in the Mail," 50 percent discounts to newcomers and, according to reviews from Duluth to Washington to Denver, exceptional music making.
"The orchestra had an image of being stuffy and elite and we were playing to half-full houses," Thakar said last week from his home in Baltimore. "My message to the community was that the orchestra is the most fun two hours you'll ever have. People pay $30 to $40 to be exalted. If we can make sounds that can send them further, more people will come."
As the Alabama Symphony Orchestra seeks to fill Richard Westerfield's slot, Thakar may be the just the conductor it needs to fill seats.
The author of "Counterpoint: Fundamentals of Music Making" (Yale University Press) has impressive academic credentials as well. A recipient of a Fulbright scholarship and a Ford Foundation award, he has lectured on the concert experience at Harvard University, is a frequent commentator on NPR's "Performance Today" (WUAL 91.5, Tuscaloosa) and has appeared on CBS and CNN. Teaching positions have included the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Penn State and Ohio University.
Thakar's positions in Duluth-Superior and Baltimore are with per-service (part-time) orchestras, but he would like nothing more than to conduct a full-time ensemble.
"I want to make a difference, and I can make a bigger difference when I'm working week-to-week with people," he said. "I've been carrying around a contract in my wallet that says, `I will be conducting a full-time orchestra.'"
Age: 50.
Currently: Music director, Duluth-Superior Symphony Orchestra; music director, Baltimore Chamber Orchestra. Conducting faculty, Peabody Conservatory.
Previously: Associate conductor, Colorado Symphony; music director, Amadeus Chamber Orchestra (New York).
Significant guest gigs: New York Philharmonic, Aspen Music Festival, National Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, Columbus Symphony.
Raised in: New York.
Education: Juilliard School (violin, composition); Columbia University (music theory); Cincinnati College-Conservatory (orchestral conducting). Additional studies at Curtis Institute and with Sergiu Celibidache at Ciprian Porumbescu Conservatory in Bucharest, Romania.
Family: Wife, Victoria Chiang, is a viola soloist and faculty member at Peabody. They have a 4-year-old son, Oliver.
Biggest conducting influence: Celibidache. "If he didn't change my life, he certainly gave it new focus. He understood this magic moment we all feel from time to time at a concert when some melody gives us chills, sends us. It's possible for that moment to extend from the beginning of the first sound to the very end of the last sound. I've spent a good part of my life studying this magical experience."
Repertoire strengths: Brahms, Ravel, Debussy. "If I had one program to conduct before I pass on, it would have Brahms on it. The German ideal of everything making being an organic whole fundamentally speaks to me, but I find myself loving music with textures and colors, like French impressionistic music. That's not to say I don't love Stravinsky, Bartok and Mozart. I consider myself fairly eclectic."
Non-musical interests: "I try to spend time with my family as much as I can. Sometimes it's going to the grocery store together, going to the zoo or just staying at home. My wife says I watch too much sports on TV, but I try to do it when I'm on a treadmill.
Top three priorities of a music director: "Number one: fill the hall. Number two: along the same goal, put on the best, most engaging performances possible. Number three: make as much noise in the community as possible. Numbers two and three are ways of getting number one accomplished."
Orchestra league visit sheds light on DSSO's success
Kyle Eller– Budgeteer News
October 3, 2004
Henry Fogel 
Andrew Berryhill says hiring a consultant of the quality of Henry Fogel would have been beyond the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra’s budget, and finding people of his quality would be very difficult anyway.
But Fogel came to them.
His visit provides a unique glimpse into the workings of one of Duluth’s real arts success stories.
Fogel was president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for nearly two decades and has served for more than a year as president and CEO of the American Symphony Orchestra League. He increased the endowment fund in Chicago from $19 million to $160 million and saw attendance at classical subscription concerts increase by more than 20 percent during his tenure.
And while in Duluth, he went over the DSSO with a fine-toothed comb, talking to its administrative staff, the orchestra members and the board, as well as a Budgeteer reporter, in a whirlwind series of meetings that included taking in the season-opening concert, his fourth of the year already, Saturday night.
All told, he’s seen 88 American orchestras perform, including Duluth’s — a number that has grown sharply in his short time as ASOL president. He decided that part of that role should be visiting the organization’s 900 member orchestras. “He knows the American orchestra business better than anyone,” Berryhill said.
Berryhill, Music Director Markand Thakar, the board and the orchestra’s musicians must have Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” ringing in their ears after hearing Fogel’s response.
“It appears to me that the organization is exceptionally well-managed,” Fogel wrote in an e-mail after his trip. “Andrew, working closely with Markand in what appears to be an ideal executive director-music director relationship, has worked to build the audience to a remarkable degree.”
What does remarkable mean? The typical orchestra earns 43 to 47 percent of its budget from earned income, mostly ticket sales. For the DSSO, that number is 60 percent, making it “among the most successful in the country” in that department.
And he walked away from Duluth with a very good idea why those audiences have grown. It’s not just the themed concert seasons, although that marketing strategy has helped.
“If you make good music at a high level, you’ll find an audience for it,” he wrote.
“My honest appraisal is that I was very impressed with the concert I heard,” he wrote. “I have heard many orchestras in larger cities, with significantly larger budgets, that did not play as well as the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra.”
He said he doesn’t believe in a numeric ranking. “But I can say that I haven’t heard any orchestra in a community this size or at this budget level that plays any better, and very, very few that play as well.”
In particular, he cited the ability to play with a full-bodied sound at soft dynamic levels. “This range of color and dynamics is what you usually do not hear in smaller community orchestras,” he wrote.
Hear that Beethoven playing in the background yet?
Fogel also pulled out kudos for Thakar. “In addition to the technical level of the orchestra’s playing, I frankly found Markand Thakar’s conducting to be imaginative, convincing, stylish and completely engrossing.”
Fogel also spoke to the orchestra members at a rehearsal, dealing with ways it could participate in the organization beyond playing the right notes on stage. He wrote that he was “taken with the musicians’ positive feelings about the institution, about its management and its musical leadership.”
Bolstering the board
The access Fogel was given to the DSSO organization was striking itself and went from the tiniest nitty-gritty to the grandest long-term plans.
“He loves looking at tiny little numbers on spreadsheets, and he’s good at it,” said Berryhill, who worked with Fogel in Chicago for six years.
He gave a 45-minute presentation and discussion at the orchestra’s board meeting.
“He’s not here to be polite,” Berryhill said. “He’s here to be very specific, and he was wonderfully generous and very kind.”
“It was a good meeting,” said Bill Gravelle, president of the all-volunteer board.
“I think first of all, the orchestra is very pleased to have a person of Henry’s stature in the music industry visit us,” he said, a visit he attributes to the relationship Fogel has with Berryhill.
Fogel told them much of what he mentioned in the e-mail about the quality of the orchestra’s executive and artistic leadership, as well as its musicians.
“I think he pretty much reinforced what we already knew,” Gravelle said.
However, Fogel also offered some advice. For one thing, he said it’s as important to work hard when things are going well as it is when they are going poorly, a point both Berryhill and Gravelle got loud and clear.
Berryhill said that point makes the timing of his visit just right. “It was a great time for him to come,” he said.
Gravelle said Fogel also asked some questions about staffing. The organization, with a budget of about $1.2 million, is right on the borderline of needing to hire a development officer, particularly in light of a still-recovering grant market.
“I had some questions about the size of our board,” Gravelle said, noting theirs is large at 28 members. “He thought that was appropriate, that you need a large board.”
But the function of the board should be setting a long-term vision around which all of the smaller management decisions will be based. It’s a point Fogel raised during an interview while in Duluth — an organization like Duluth is board-governed, even if the musicians, conductor and staff are the most visible pieces. Berryhill said one of the important things he got from Fogel’s visit is how he can improve on helping the board to fulfill that leadership function.
Putting Duluth in context
As the head of a service organization including 350 professional orchestras, Fogel finds part of his task when visiting is simply educating people about what the organization offers. That package includes training for staff, for music directors, for musicians and for board members. Another interesting function is a series of e-mail lists that act almost as a repository of knowledge for orchestra leaders. If, for instance, Berryhill runs into some complicated logistics involving a soloist, he can send an e-mail to a list of people in similar positions and get some solid advice back probably before lunch.
“The feedback we get is that’s one of the most important services,” Fogel said.
The ASOL also lobbies government and, in a role that has grown significantly in a post-9/11 world, helps smooth out the bureaucratic hurdles of getting foreign musicians on American stages.
Fogel’s involvement with the ASOL dates back to the difficult days of the recession that hit around the year 2000 and particularly hammered orchestras across the country after the 9/11 attacks, a situation he described as the “perfect storm,” saying it hit every source of revenue, from the endowments damaged by the stock market to individual ticket sales when people understandably didn’t have an evening on the town on their minds.
In fact, he has a rather pointed personal anecdote that illustrates. He was still president of the Chicago Symphony after 9/11, and an annual mailing that normally generates more than $1 million of ticket revenue in a month was sent out — on Sept. 9. It sold $85 worth of tickets.
But for all that, it was never as bad as it looked. Orchestras declaring bankruptcy made headlines, but out of 350 professional ones, only eight closed their doors, and some have already re-opened.
“I suspect that’s not a worse track record than any other industry,” Fogel said. “... I’m actually surprised it was only eight.”
Orchestras across the country have had to adjust to new levels of funding, particularly from endowments that are still recovering, and in some major cities conflicts with musicians unions are looming. But things are getting better.
“It does seem to me that the pendulum is swinging back,” he said.
Gravelle says Fogel told the board it is among only about 40 percent of orchestras that are “in the black” financially.
Artistically, things are terrific in the world of American orchestras, and ironically, that’s providing one of Fogel’s challenges. While his praise of Duluth’s orchestra was especially high, he said patrons genuinely don’t understand how good smaller and mid-level American orchestras are.
“There’s a national inferiority complex,” he said.
It comes from a variety of factors. Part of it is simply old stereotypes — even the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, a giant organization, only started to receive wide attention after it had received raves on a European tour.
But other factors are more mundane. Because of differences in pay structures, smaller European orchestras are more often recorded, meaning they are more often heard by an audience outside their own cities.
Fogel said he has a public radio project in mind that will hopefully get more smaller orchestras heard.
Fogel said the success being experienced in Duluth is not typical and relates to the marketing strategy, which he says he thought was clever from the very first e-mail Berryhill sent him, most of all to the good music.
The two work together.
“We are, after all, competing for the discretionary dollar of the audience,” he said.
Duluth News Tribune
Saturday, Nov 01, 2003
Opinions
Posted on Sat, Nov. 01, 2003
Our View
News Tribune Editorial
Duluth Superior symphony thrives while others struggle
A strange -- and wonderful -- thing happened in Duluth last Saturday evening. The Duluth-Superior Symphony Orchestra concert on that night was sold out.
Why so strange? While attendance has fluctuated over the years -- it's currently on a high -- no one can recall a regular subscription concert where NO tickets were available on the day of the concert. (Yes, there were a few empty seats at concert time -- likely snowbirds who are season subscribers and who have already flown south.)
But at noon Saturday, the box office at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center was turning away ticket-buyers. Sold out.
A lot of pop acts sell out, but what could possibly have made tickets to that symphony concert in such demand? It could have been the program that night -- two extremely popular works: Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring," and Carl Orff's medieval-sounding cantata for orchestra, chorus and soloists written in the 20th century, "Carmina Burana." (Not to be confused with the opera "Carmen," by Georges Bizet.)w
Regular symphony-goers and the large percentage of Americans who include some classical music as part of their lives -- 60 percent according to a recent Knight Foundation study -- aren't about to confuse "Carmina Burana" with "Carmen," yet that is the great challenge of symphony organizations around the country, many of which are struggling to stay above middle C in terms of financial support.
The Knight Foundation study found that, yes, while 60 percent of Americans have someinvolvement in classical music, roughly 10 percent to 15 percent of adults "have a close or moderately close relationship with classical music. Yet only half of those who express the very highest levels of preference for classical music actually attend symphony orchestra concerts, even infrequently."
The study says the orchestras must drastically change the way they operate to survive, but the music director of the
Duluth-Superior Symphony, Markand Thakar, doesn't entirely agree. He points to the growing popularity with audiences of our regional ensemble since he took over the orchestra in 2001, even while stressing the traditional masterworks at regular concerts -- as opposed to pop concerts. In the years before that, the orchestra had experienced a gradual slide in audience size -- bottoming out at an average concert attendance of 1,400 in 2000-01.
Because of vigorous marketing and constant striving to improve quality -- the most important element, according to Thakar -- about 730 new subscribers were registered this season.
He says the larger, near-capacity audiences are energizing the Duluth-Superior Symphony musicians and conductor, making concerts an exciting experience.
Readers who attended last week's concert can attest to that. It was an ideal coming together of repertoire -- the Copland and the Orff are vastly different in style but share enormous popularity -- and perhaps scheduling -- no competing hockey games or monster truck shows across the lobby.
It is, however, exceedingly good news that our part-time orchestra is growing in popularity, even as some others in larger venues with full-time musicians are struggling.
As the great final chorus in "Carmina Burana" proclaims: "O Fortuna."
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