New York, New York!

What a great day!
Students and staff are unanimous in their appreciation of the workshops we did this morning. The orchestra clinician, Michael Adelson, was engaging, highly knowledgeable and innovative in his approach. His suggestions had an immediate impact on both the players - and their conductor! He started working on the Corelli Concerto Grosso, completely changing the way the orchestra produced its sound, thinking about the relationship between music making and vocal communication, and listening really actively. The sound created was a revelation.
Moving onto the Britten Simple Symphony, he worked on the orchestra both with and without conductor. Without going into too much detail, he got me to let go of some of my conducting habits in a way that again changed the way the orchestra sounded. Comments, orchestra?
And then tonight we went to the New York Philharmonic at the Lincoln Center. What a treat. Anne-Sophie Mutter playing the Dvorak Violin Concerto and then the New World Symphony. It was really exciting; wonderful ensemble playing with a rich string sound and brilliant brass. And despite knowing the piece backwards, it was like a new piece and compelling from the first note to the last. This was a real highlight.
David Saffir

Wow!
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre Studios are situated in central Manhattan so the view from our workshop window was that of the American cityscape we know so well from the movies. It was genuinely difficult to concentrate on conducting the ensemble with the high rise cityscape landscaped behind them.
Dianne Berkun-Menaker workshopped the choir - focusing in on matters of sound, support, head and chest voice, pop, classical and interpretation. It was simply fantastic, both for the students and for their director. At the end we had the choir stand in the space with New York behind them and record Billy Joel's "And so it goes" as the ultimate YouTube moment.
It has been an ambition of mine to conduct a choir in the vast space of St. John the Divine Cathedral for twenty years. Acoustically the cathedral was like nothing the choir had ever experienced before, with an echo of four seconds rolling around the 183 metres long, 49 metres high building. They adapted their sound admirably.
Whitacre's "Goodnight Moon" has been taken to the hearts of Barker singers, and on top of our Australian premiere we were informed by the composer that we were in fact giving the work its Boston, New York and Washington premieres. At the risk of ruining my reputation as the living embodiment of jaded cynicism it may be the time to quote for you what I wrote on my facebook page earlier.

"THAT moment when you're conducting the New York premiere of a Whitacre piece inside one of the largest cathedrals in the world and it all gets a bit overwhelming. So you look down at your stand, bite your lip and manage to stem the tears at the moist eyed stage, then look up to be met with moist eyes and slowly falling tears all around. They actually pay me to do this for a living. Truly blessed."

As you can tell - it was a great day for me and I think the students enjoyed it too.

The New York Philharmonic were brilliant, and Anne Sophie Mutter was as flawless as ever. All in all what an incredible day in NYC.
Peter Ellis