Laurie Plays in the LA Phil: Second Violinist Faces Fear of Heights

By Laurie Niles: So I got to play with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. This was definitely a bucket-list moment, something I will always remember. You might ask, how did that come about? To back up, to back waaaaay up, yes, I did audition for the LA Phil - in March 2004! That's 20 years ago - almost to the day - of this concert series that I had the privilege of playing in. Back then, I worked very hard, but I did not get in. I learned a lot. In the time since, I bought myself a much nicer instrument, and I have played hundreds of gigs in dozens of other orchestras. But never in the LA Phil. Honestly, I haven't gone knocking at the door of the LA Phil since that time. I love and respect the orchestra. I love and respect the people in it. About 15 years ago, my son got to sing in a choir with the LA Phil, with Gustavo Dudamel conducting, and I was so happy for him. He innocently said to me, "You should see if you can sub for the LA Phil!" I explained to my son that no, that ship has sailed, I won't ever be playing in that orchestra. So in late February, I received an e-mail from a personnel director whom I'd never heard of: "Are you available for these dates?" As the longtime editor of Violinist.com, a longtime free-lancer and a teacher, I get a LOT of e-mail, a lot of not-doable requests, a lot of spam. My first assumption was, "Hmmm, this is probably some non-union gig that I'm going to have to politely decline..." I looked a little closer, hmmm, I actually was available on those dates - in mid-March, right around and including St. Patrick's Day. Wait, does that say "LA Phil"? To back up again, just a week before, another contractor had accidentally sent out a notice asking all 12 violinists she was trying to hire, "I'd like to offer you concertmaster for..." then a few minutes later, "Sorry about that everyone, I'd like to offer you section violin for..." Was this a similar thing? Maybe the folks at the LA Phil just got mixed up and they were actually trying to contact me about their ads on Violinist.com? Yet it all looked pretty convincing, though this made me rather nervous. Really? I suppose I could just answer the question, very briefly, and see what happened. So that's what I did. "Yes, I am available on those dates," I wrote, and quickly pressed "send," feeling like I was doing something a little naughty. Because of course they were not actually trying to ask me to play. This was a mistake or joke or mix-up. For sure. "Great Laurie! You'll be in the first violins, eighth stand!" WHAT? Okay, look, first of all, I play second violin. The last time I played first violin I literally had a panic attack on stage. (That is a whole other story....) I've done a lot to get beyond that psychologically painful experience, but it's a pretty indelible memory. I thought for a moment about writing back and saying, "Um, excuse me, I'd be a lot more comfortable playing in the second violins..." And then it came over me: This is actually real, and it definitely has nothing to do with being in my comfort zone, AT ALL. Also, there was just enough time to practice my a$s off - I had about three weeks. It's not like I can't play in the firsts, I used to do it with some frequency. I'm just AFRAID to, which is a different situation. It's also a pretty sorry excuse. Do I cry? Jump for joy? No, actually, just practice. "You're playing first violin in the LA Phil, kid, suck it up," said some kind of Jiminy Cricket inner voice. "Get the music immediately and practice." Beta blockers will keep you from having a panic attack, you can rest with that. But they won't keep you from getting nervous and they won't practice for you. But first, I needed to make a call to Nathan Cole, who was First Associate Concertmaster of the LA Phil at the time. I was pretty sure this was his doing. He has been writing on Violinist.com for a long time; I've interviewed him, and I see him every week because I've been teaching his daughter. I've never asked him if he would put me on any kind of list for LA Phil because, well, I would not do that. Also, I honestly wasn't even sure if I could handle that or if I wanted that. As it turned out, the upcoming concert coincided with a LOT of musicians in the Phil taking time off, and there was a real shortage of personnel. (This has been happening in local orchestras a bit more, I have noticed.) They had called the people on their list, and the personnel manager had asked for more names. So Nathan gave her my name. "I thought it would be fun for you," he said very kindly. "Would it be fun?" I swallowed a lot of things that I was thinking and feeling and said, "Of course. Yes! It would be fun!" Actually, I thought about it, and playing for the LA Phil probably would be fun. It is such a professional organization, and thus there is a lot more support and less stress involved for the musician - at least in certain ways. For example, after I requested the practice parts, I had them within 24 hours. No, "Oh we don't have them yet, maybe we'll have them the week before." No losing or forgetting my e-mail because I'm a sub, etc. Still, I'm not delusional. The regular musicians of the Los Angeles Philharmonic are basically elite athletes, and I say this with no exaggeration intended. They play some eight services per week, split between rehearsals and concerts. During the season they have about one program a week, but during the summer they can be playing up to three programs every week. Not three concerts - three programs, with entirely different music for each one. And while a portion of their repertoire is fairly standard, they play a ton of new music. They are constantly deciphering the unfamiliar, often with quirky techniques, unusual notation, nutty rhythms, etc. They are also elite in having won the audition in the first place. In my mind I saw a picture of the quintessential elite first-violinist: a musician with perfect pitch - who looks at a note floating high above the ledger lines and immediately knows its name, hears it in their head and can then land on it with uncanny accuracy. Suffice it to say, I did not want to be sitting there counting ledger lines. If I was going to be thrown in with this group of elite pros, I was determined to prepare properly. For this concert, the conductor would be Thomas Wilkins, and Nathan Cole would be concertmaster. We were playing three pieces - Leonard Bernstein's "Symphonic Dances from West Side Story," which I'd played before; Samuel Coleridge Taylor's "Ballade," which I hadn't played before, and a concerto by and for the genre-defying and wicked-talented electric bassist Victor Wooten, called "La Leccióh Tres" - a relatively new piece. Generally, here is how I prepare for any orchestra concert. I get the music as soon as it's available and upload it to my iPad on Forscore. I have a "setlist" for each orchestra that I regularly play in, so I can get there quickly. And, of course I'm a Suzuki teacher, and I practice what I preach, so I listen. I find that listening makes the process happen faster and more thoroughly. I go to Spotify and create a playlist for that week, and the next time I drive anywhere, I start listening in the car. Even if I know the music, I still listen. So I boldly started a new setlist on Forscore, and a new playlist on Spotify, called "Los Angeles Philharmonic." Hah! I'd heard "West Side Story" many times, but since the Samuel Coleridge Taylor piece was new to me, I listened to that more. The Wooten piece - well, it's never been recorded, so there was no listening to that! For that reason, even though it was technically the "easiest" piece, I started my practicing with the Wooten piece. I knew there would be some math to solve, some metronome work. The orchestra had played this piece before, last summer, but I had not played it, nor had I heard it. With two rehearsals (on that piece - there were three rehearsals altogether for the concert), I wanted to feel familiar with every tempo change from the start, and I was going to have to get that from metronome markings and playing it through. Looking at it, there was a 6/8 section with a decent amount of toggling between triple and duple-feel, enough that I needed to get comfy and adept with it, even though the notes weren't complicated. There were measures that looked easy and repetitive - in other situations I might choose to ride along the wave of the orchestra. But no, I was going to practice like I was the section leader - I turned on the metronome and went all the way through several pages of easy 3/4. And the ledger-line stuff - yes, I came up with fingerings and strategies. There was a goodly passage of ricochet, but on just one note. I do scales with ricochet every day, so it's just about stamina and composure, getting straight to the right part of the bow and keeping concentration, as the rhythms varied. As I practiced, I did have this persistent feeling: if I were really good enough, I could just sight read all of this and I wouldn't need to practice. Just show up and sight read perfectly. But another equally strong voice was telling me, "No, great players DO have to practice." Maybe a little more efficiently than the obsessive thing you are doing right now, but they do. As it turned out, there were only about two short passages in the Wooten that were truly hard, the rest of it was just a matter of getting into my bones so that it could feel good. I still wanted to play it through a lot in order to feel secure, but I could hone in on a few measures. Next was Coleridge-Taylor "Ballade," because I'd never played it. It was super-straightforward - technically it laid well on the violin, and musically it was consonant and predictable - no unexpected twists or turns. It was also good exercise because it was full of scales, scrubby notes, string crossings, high playing, and also some lyrical playing. Wow, it was so fun to have a reason to practice, and to practice a lot. It dawned on me that I actually love to practice. The only trick was, surely this Coleridge-Taylor piece was going to be insanely fast. No way was the LA Phil going to play this music at anything resembling a leisurely pace, and I didn't want to be left in the dust. Nonetheless, I started at a very leisurely tempo. Once I had it all in hand with consistent fingerings, adhering to the bowings and dynamics, I went the next step. I clocked the recording, added a few ticks for measure, and practiced it very, very fast. I tell my students to practice fast passages a few notches faster than they're going to be, at least a few times. Then the fast tempo will feel relaxed. I was left wondering if that "too-fast" tempo would be the actual tempo. It wasn't, whew! Finally, I came to the piece that made me smile the most: Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from "West Side Story." I have happy and varied memories attached to this music, starting with listening to my parents' LP of the 1961 film. It's a recording that I know inside-out - I think my favorite part is the way Jimmy Bryant (who sang for the actor who played Tony) sang "Something's Coming" and "Maria." I also remember playing the Bernstein in the Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra, with conductor Victor Yamposky admonishing us (in his Russian accent) because we were meekly mumbling the word "mambo" during the dance music when our parts asked us to vocalize. He just stopped in his tracks. "No, no, NO!" He dressed us down, and we practiced until we all were bellowing, "MAM-BO!" at the top of our lungs. And another memory - during my summer as a 21-year-old performing the Disney All-American College Orchestra at Walt Disney World's EPCOT, we played a much-shortened version of highlights from West Side Story. It ended fast and loud, with the dance music. It was also a "show" as much as it was a concert. As we played, a dozen of Disney's "World Dancers" danced in front of us. This number came at the conclusion of each of about 130 concerts we gave that summer - three shows a night. At one point my stand partner Adlai looked at me and said, "Do we really need the music any more?" No! So we chucked it. It was a lot more fun that way. So yes, I'd swallowed those rhythms a long time ago, and sometime last century I'd also memorized a small portion the first violin part. However, I wasn't about to take anything for granted; this was probably the hardest piece we'd be playing. I'm all too aware of how exposed it all is. Pizzicato and finger snaps have to be TOGETHER to be together. It's about "fitting" not "following" - no, actually in the end, it's about "feeling" it. But it starts with accounting for every beat and fraction thereof - executing it in time, on time. No substitute for playing it through, with the metronome. Or without - there are places where the meter changes so often that the metronome is not that feasible. And then there's this iconic bit at m. 410:

Violin 1 excerpt from Bernstein's "Symphonic Dances" (my fingerings are in red).

...and that Roman numeral IV casually written overhead. Note the speed - it wasn't going to go any slower than 132. There is no way to get by the fact that one has to whiz up and down the fingerboard, playing this all on the G string. I realized that there would be no fudging it with this crowd - Nathan wasn't going to turn around and say to the section, "Hey guys, if it's easier, just go ahead and play it on the D string..." HAH! NO! It's just hard to play this in tune and in time. I wrestled mightily, trying to force this passage into submission before I realized the solution: just walk away from the music. Relax. Play four notes, by memory, until it gets easier. Check the music. Now two measures, by memory, until it gets easier. Relax. First position to fifth. Second position to sixth. I kept playing little bits of it by memory, until it coalesced. It wasn't so bad. I smiled. I actually like practicing. The very, very end of the piece has a beautiful first violin "soli" section - for just some of the section. (Because the music is divided into three parts, just six of the 16 first violins would be playing that top-line melody - every third stand. It's the melody Maria sings at the very end of West Side Story: "I have a love, and it's all that I have..." This melody (at m. 813) is very exposed, and it gets extremely high on the tightrope. Quiet, slow, exposed, really high positions - wow, just the kind of thing that might give me a complete panic attack...like the one I had the last time I played first violin...Ugh, the crafty demon! Okay, banish the thought. I did the math and - whew! Thank goodness, I did not have to play that part. I figured out that I'd be playing the second line, and I could get behind that, even if it's a bit exposed. It has such cool Bernstein-esque harmony - an awesome D natural (m. 827) that sounds deliciously out of place but isn't. Yes, I was going to enjoy that - not worry about it, enjoy it. I had mapped out everything to the point that I had things decently in hand and could just practice, and that's when I got a call to play a concert with the Long Beach Symphony the week before this LA Phil concert. That would mean 8 p.m. rehearsals and an 8 p.m concert, five nights in a row. That's five nights of getting home after 11 p.m. - with nearly two hours of driving a night added to the rehearsal time. Should I do it, or save my energy and also have more time to obsessively practice and stress out over this LA Phil concert? What was Long Beach playing anyway? I looked: "Brahms Requiem." Awww geez. I have a rule about Brahms Requiem: "Never say 'no' to Brahms Requiem." I love it, I know it well. It's in my fingers, in my bones. I'd be playing second violin. I said yes. And I was happy I did - I greatly enjoyed that week, and I still managed to practice the LA Phil music. At last, the first rehearsal for the LA Phil concert rolled around - it was on a Wednesday morning at 10 a.m.. This felt like a strange time for a rehearsal, but - I suppose a full-time orchestra can employ people during the work day. I'm so accustomed to playing in regional orchestras which do not provide full-time work for anyone except the administrators (maybe). It's an unspoken rule that they hold rehearsals and concerts at 7 p.m. or later, to allow everyone their day-jobs. As I wound my way down the Pasadena freeway toward Walt Disney Concert Hall in the morning sunshine, I mulled the thought: a morning rehearsal...peak concentration time, right after coffee. Nice! In the front of my mind were all the concerns that go along with doing anything for the first time. For example, parking. I knew that I'd have a parking pass, but I still needed to figure out how to procure that, as the rates at Disney Hall are "$3.50 for every 15 minutes with a $20 maximum." (This is actually the best bargain in downtown Los Angeles, but still a lot.) I arrived very early, and the parking attendant helpfully told me where to go for musician parking: "Go to Level 5 and then to the very back: Row G as in 'God.'" Row G as in "God," OMG. Right. Not to be dramatic. So I rolled on down to Level 5, found "God" and also the elevator at the back wall, which I rode up to the second floor. The security guard greeted me, "Ah, you are an alternate?" (For some reason this sounded so much nicer than "sub.") He took out the list, found me, and granted me entrance.

I placed my things on the backstage table, stage right, then went on a quest to find the personnel office and the parking pass. As I made my way downstairs to the parking office, I ran into my friend, the violist Andrew Duckles who had played with me the week before in Long Beach. He seemed to know exactly where I was headed, "Are you looking for the parking office? It's so confusing, here's where to go..." Wow, so much friendliness! Parking pass procured, I finally took my instrument out. I'd already been tuning my violin a bit higher for the last few days - I knew that the LA Phil tunes to a 442-hertz "A," as opposed to 441 last week in Long Beach. I found my way to my perch in the first violins: last chair and happy to be there. And when I say "perch," I mean it. In Disney Hall, the seats are on risers, with the back seats highest of all. Violinist Vijay Gupta, for a time the youngest member of the LA Phil, told me that they called these back seats "suicide corner." Thankfully I was one stand in from the very corner, but I was certainly "suicide corner"-adjacent, and I came to understand this extreme characterization. But first, I had brought along my iPad with the music, and I wanted to mark in at least a few fingerings before the rehearsal started. While I'd exercised no restraint in marking up my own practice parts, I knew that I needed to keep any markings in the performance parts to a minimum. Honestly none at all would have been preferable, I was conscious of that. It's just not cool to fill a shared part with tons of fingerings. People have differing ideas, and no one likes to get thrown off course by unnecessary marks. So the fewer markings, the better. But just a few breadcrumbs to remind me, way up in those ledger lines - I hoped my stand partner would be understanding. Soon thereafter I met my stand partner: Kyle Gilner - a young violinist (okay, a lot younger than me!) who had grown up in the LA area and studied at the Cleveland Institute. He also had subbed in the Cleveland Orchestra. The week before this, he had been playing in the orchestra for the Academy Awards. Dang, impressive. He was personable and engaging - very kind about my markings, waving off my advance-apology. And once we started playing - wow, just so solid. Here was someone who was on top of every entrance, no hesitation, and a clear veteran of the high ledger lines. I couldn't imagine a better person to be stuck with, so close to "suicide corner." I started noticing right away that this location did indeed have its challenges. Sitting in the back, the risers lift you above of the section: it's hard to hear, and it's hard to feel immersed in the action. We had our stand raised pretty high - which is how I like it. Normally this is great, the conductor is up on a podium, so it works for the line of sight. But then I started noticing - that large wooden music stand - so beautiful and functional - was a wall. With the conductor below us rather than above, it simply blocked the conductor from view. It also blocked the rest of the section from view. After a while we lowered the stand. The first rehearsal included just the Bernstein and Coleridge-Taylor. On the podium way down there was conductor Thomas Wilkins - friendly and personable, but clearly a no-nonsense guy. There are conductors who "follow the orchestra" - their beat gets later and later and the orchestra gets slower and slower in the circular effort for everyone to follow each other. This was not a problem with Wilkins - he laid down the beat efficiently, and he took no prisoners: get with the tempo or be left in the dust. I liked it. If you know what to expect, and it's all quite clear. You can enter with confidence. Throughout these three rehearsals and two concerts I found myself encountering various legends of the Los Angeles classical music world - and in retrospect, I feel like I had a little window on an era of the LA Phil that was about to pass into history. I had come to know these musicians individually by writing various stories for Violinist.com over the years. I felt humbled, adding my voice to this particular choir. As I mentioned, Nathan Cole - officially the LA Phil's First Associate Concertmaster - sat in the concertmaster chair for this concert. Nathan pretty much stayed in his warm-up room before, after and during break times, but in his role as concertmaster he was genial and effective. He made it all run smoothly in the section, without drama. The bowings were great. Little changes were made with no fuss. This is a musician in his prime, and the concertmaster solos wafting up from the front were pure gold. But this turned out to be one of Nathan's final performances before being named Concertmaster of the Boston Symphony - news that came in late May. Nathan has been with the LA Phil since 2011, but over the next year he will transition to Boston. Awesome for him, and for Boston - but what a loss for Los Angeles! Over in the viola section was the amazing and vibrant Teng Li - another musician who has since left the LA Phil to be Principal Violist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. No, don't go! She also said hello - we had such a nice talk back in 2022, before she gave a solo performance with the LA Phil of one of the hardest works ever written for viola, Paganini's Sonata per la Grand Viola. I sat in the audience for that particular concert - wow. At another point, the violist Mick Wetzel and violinist Stacy Wetzel - a married pair - came up together to say hi. Pretty recently I'd attended a master class given by Mick at Colburn, for an American Viola Society event. He had all kinds of great ideas about sound production, offered in a helpful and kind way to the students. I'd also sat next to Stacy for a church gig some years ago - it was so out of context that I hadn't realized she was actually a member of the LA Phil. I remember thinking, "Good heavens, where did she come from? She is so GOOD!" I also had no idea this was Stacy's final season in the LA Phil. She retired just a few months later, after 29 years in the orchestra. She and Mick had played together in the orchestra all those years - and before that they played together in the San Francisco Symphony for eight years! The second rehearsal took place at a time that felt just as foreign to me as a weekday morning - this was at 1:30 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon. The entire rehearsal was devoted to Victor Wooten's "La Leccion Tres," his concerto for electric bass and orchestra. In introducing Wooten, Wilkins explained to us that he had known Wooten since he was a child - a long friendship that was clearly filled with a great deal of mutual respect and admiration. In guitar circles, Wooten is nothing less than a deity - a technical wizard and brilliant improvisor with five Grammys, a genius of the guitar. For example, my hairdresser Al - who moonlights playing bass guitar in cover bands - was clearly WAY more impressed with the fact that I was playing a concert that featured Victor Wooten than the fact that I was playing with LA Phil. "Victor Wooten is A M A Z I N G," Al said, as he worked his own kind of wizardry on my hair earlier in the week. "That concert is going to be totally sold out." "There are two concerts, Al." "Both of them will be! I promise you!" To that point - I of course wanted my family and also everyone I've ever known to come to Disney Hall and witness this rare occasion - me playing in the LA Phil. Short of that, I at least wanted my husband Robert and grown kids Natalie and Brian to see Mom play in the Phil. Ideally, for free. So here is what Personnel said about free tickets: "If and when complimentary tickets are offered, you will receive an email notification. If you do not receive an email notification of a ticket offer, we do not have comp tickets." I waited patiently for that e-mail, but it was getting very late in the week, and I had not received it. Recalling Al's prediction, I decided to take a look at the LA Phil's webpage to see how ticket sales were going. Conclusion: they were going extremely well - better than most classical concerts I am used to attending. All the cheap seats were sold out, as were a majority of the other seats. I felt a pang of panic. I'd better buy tickets immediately, if any of my family was going to see this concert! Not cheap, but this might be the only time this ever happens, I wanted them there! Good thing I got those tickets - the e-mail never came. There were no comps for these concerts! Back to the rehearsal - all that metronome work paid off, and the Wooten concerto came together relatively smoothly for me. The amazingly reliable Kyle helped; there was just no hesitation, ever. The couple of tricky passages seemed to be tricky for everyone - nice that it was not only me. The piece contained some unforeseen humor - during a long period of rest for us in the fiddle section, there was a passage that featured the bass section. After all, Wooten is a bassist - it makes sense he'd feature his own! The way Wooten wrote it was so clever. During a pause in the music, the orchestral bass section "went rogue" - they played a little ditty - just a few notes - as if issuing a challenge to Wooten. He turned around, looked at them. Then he turned to Wilkins, as if to say, "What is this?" Wilkins looked at his score in confusion - turned it upside-down - shook his head, looked back at Wooten, threw his hands up and shrugged dramatically. The basses played it again, more insistently. Wooten rummaged around his equipment and found... a bow! Using the bow on his electric guitar, Wooten issued his own musical statement back at the bass section. This grew into a call and response, the bass section trading licks with Wooten, each becoming longer more and more complicated. Just when Wooten seemed to have brought the bass section under his control, there was another outburst - an interruption from the principal cellist. It was so funny. The end of the concerto was a wild ride, punctuated by our ricochet passages and some interesting percussion - castanets and maracas. Joyful and fun to the finish. And for this rehearsal, it was a really early finish - I beat rush hour traffic! (This is saying something in Los Angeles.) The dress rehearsal came on the morning of the first concert, and it brought a bit of a surprise. Someone in the section had dropped out sick, and the seating chart posted backstage suddenly was different: all the inside players (me) were moved up a stand. So instead of sitting with Kyle, I would now sit inside on the seventh stand, with Aroussiak Baltaian, a veteran player in the LA Phil who is also a member of the Pasadena Symphony. I've known her for quite a long time - but we'd never sat together. Those eighth-stand parts - the sheet music with my bread-crumb fingerings - would be staying on the eighth stand with Kyle. Aroussiak was not going to want me marking up that part at this late stage in the game. "Oh, your fingerings!" Kyle said, as I left the eighth stand for the seventh. Oh geez, am I infamous now for the "fingerings"? And at the same time, I had to admit, I wondered if I would remember everything without them. Aroussiak clearly sensed my unease - she'd been doing this LA Phil gig for so long, and she explained the way it was. "You can't rely on being on the same stand or having the same music," she said to me, "it changes all the time. Sometimes even more than this." Yes, sure, of course. I reviewed everything in my mind: I'd practiced a lot, I suppose I could try trusting myself. Would this change anything else? I remembered that potential panic-attack tightrope walk at the end of the Bernstein...I'd been playing the relatively innocuous second line. Seventh stand - where does that put me in terms of the divisi in three? I did some math: 1-2-3-1-2-3... 1. The top line...on the tightrope, that really high, exposed melody. Well, there was no time now. I'd just have to do my best for this dress rehearsal and then practice in the afternoon, before the concert. Weirdly, though, once we started playing, I felt considerably more at ease. Sitting just one riser down from that back riser ("Suicide Corner"-adjacent) - I could hear everyone around me, front, side and back, and I could see better. The Coleridge-Taylor provided the perfect warm-up before "facing the music" with the Bernstein, and I was actually feeling pretty comfortable.