Banjo and Orchestra

[dmiller]

Playing banjo with an orchestra

Friday, June 29, 2007

Watch the video

I recently had an amazing banjo experience. I got a call last year from Tino D'Agostino, the director of a local high school orchestra who was looking for a banjo player to perform Aaron Copland's "Hoedown" at his orchestra's spring concert. I met with him, and he explained that he simply thought such an American piece of music should have an American instrument in the blend. He was very persuasive, and he gave me the first violin score for the tune. If you're not familiar with Hoedown, you might recognize it as the theme from the "Beef - it's what's for dinner" ad campaign. Very appropriate, considering my signature line of the past couple of years. Anyway, other than jam sessions I've never played with an organized group of more than about six musicians, so the idea of playing with an 85-piece orchestra was, well, different. I decided to take the music home and give it a try.

The first question I had to answer was: is this thing playable on a 5-string banjo? At this point, I had a recording and twelve pages of sheet music written for the violin right around the time Scruggs-style banjo was being invented. I could have done sections of the tune or adapted it, but first I decided to try transcribing the violin score to the banjo, as close as possible to note-for-note. In its favor, it was written in the banjo-friendly key of D, and the amount of repetition meant that the further I got into the tune, the less new stuff there was to deal with. After experimenting with most of the themes, it started to look like I could at least come up with a playable arrangement.

It took about two weeks to translate the violin score into banjo tab, complete with left-hand fingerings for the really hard parts. Now came the other big question: could I play it fast enough to keep up with the orchestra? The score was in 2/4 time with a tempo of 112bpm - not fast by bluegrass standards, but scary in a tune with lots of triplets and, among other things, a 4 beat long section that jumped from the 14th fret to the 2nd and then back to the 17th, and three consecutive eighth notes played on the 11th, 2nd and 14th frets. My first attempts weren't encouraging, and I wasn't even trying the hardest parts. I called Tino, and asked him if it might be possible to slow down the tune a bit. His unexpected answer: "we'll try whatever you need". I was starting to like this orchestra business.

January brought the best part of the process: rehearsals. My last experience with high school orchestra was on flute, about forty years ago, and I'll just say it could have gone better. This was completely different. The kids - all 85 of them - were devoted to the goal of making the music sound as good as possible. Any negative generalizations you've heard about high school kids, forget it - and this was a public school system in a large town, Arlington, Massachusetts, just outside the cities of Boston and Cambridge. The orchestra director, who also conducted, was as good at motivating kids as anyone I've ever seen, and the orchestra delivered a near-professional level of performance. During the four months of weekly rehearsals, Tino (Mr. D to his students) got top performances out of everyone, including me. The 112bpm tempo turned out to be possible - I even sped up the recordings and practiced at 118 to give myself a little margin during the performances.

From the beginning of this adventure, Tino had suggested that I add a section to the Hoedown to feature the banjo. I didn't quite know how to embellish Copland, so I let it pass, figuring Tino would too, but about three weeks before performance time he asked me whether I had any thoughts about what to play. Now the pressure was on. We had three weeks till the concert. I had no idea what to do, or what the orchestra would play while I was doing it. Fortunately, a friend's offhand comment solved the whole dilemma.

I mentioned the Hoedown one night to Alan Kaufman, a great New York City fiddler and former member of the Wretched Refuse String Band. Alan told me that Copland had lifted the idea for Hoedown from a fiddle player named William Stepp and his unique version of "Bonaparte's Retreat". After listening to Stepp's version, I decided turnabout was fair play, and asked Tino if we could fit the better-known version of Bonaparte's into the Hoedown. He had the orchestra play a couple of measures of the theme over and over while I played it, and the arrangement was done. (Have you ever heard an orchestra riff on D? It's very strange.)

Performance time: After rehearsing for four months, we did three public performances of the Hoedown. The last one was recorded and put on DVD, and I've put it up on YouTube. You can judge for yourself - the orchestra, under Tino, did a truly amazing job.

The best part of this was seeing the students work together as an orchestra. It really makes me wonder when schools cut back on music programs while trying to preserve their sports teams. These kids are learning every bit as much about teamwork as the school's football players, and they get to practice that teamwork and appreciate the quality of their product without having to prove they're better than some other school's orchestra.

We encourage cooperation through teamwork in every aspect of our society, using sports analogies that bring along the often unfortunate implication that we have to beat someone else to prove - what? That our teamwork is better than theirs? Ensemble music, whether bluegrass, classical or whatever, makes people work as a team for a goal that's entirely constructive. It's a shame that we can't make it a priority to teach that principle to our kids.

In the end, we teach that the score matters far more than the accomplishment itself. That's an unfortunate lesson, but it's one that kids learn all too well, and carry with them through the rest of their lives. My hat's off to Tino, and all the other music teachers who are showing kids that there is another way, and I can't thank him enough for the chance to work with him and his incredibly talented students.

From a friend of mine in Massachusetts. :)

Thought you all might enjoy the concert. ;)

I'm not giving up on the youth of America just yet.

(Ps -- bpm means --- beats per minute)

Edited March 2, 2008 by dmiller

[shazdancer]

That was really enjoyable, particularly when he goes off on "Bonaparte's Retreat" --sweet! I have a version of "Hoedown" done pretty well by LAGQ, and you get the same feeling. that folk instruments lend something authentic to Copland's Americana work.

Thanks for the link.

Shaz

[DontWorryBeHappy]

wonderful post dmiller!....thanks!..............music is the universal language of the human soul..........a much more true and peaceful product of teamwork and cooperation than athletic competition, imho!.............great post!........................peace.

[dmiller]

I have to confess. I like to watch sports, and I enjoy seeing someone win.

Hearing this guy's perspective on *team* effort took it to a WHOLE new level for me.

I'd always known it to be true, but not till I saw it posted, as quoted above.

TEAM -- dosn't always mean *defeating the others*.

Working towards a common goal?? Yes.

It isn't me vs. you. Working together for harmony in life

(musically or otherwise), seems to be the ticket, eh??

[bowtwi]

eh!

Thanks for sharing this fun piece!

[jeast]

Playing banjo with an orchestra

Friday, June 29, 2007

Watch the video

From a friend of mine in Massachusetts. :)

Thought you all might enjoy the concert. ;)

I'm not giving up on the youth of America just yet.

(Ps -- bpm means --- beats per minute)

And I thought learning how to play When the Storm is Over was hard. Most people don't appreciate the amount of discipline and hard work it takes to pull something like that off. Well done!

[Ron G.]

I've always maintained that a symphony orchestra isn't complete without a banjer section.

Why only yesterday, I was listening to Dvorak's Symphony #9 in E Minor "From the New World"...the second "largo" movement and was thinking to myself how cool it would be to have banjers playing that theme.

[waysider]

I've always maintained that a symphony orchestra isn't complete without a banjer section.Why only yesterday, I was listening to Dvorak's Symphony #9 in E Minor "From the New World"...the second "largo" movement and was thinking to myself how cool it would be to have banjers playing that theme.

Couldn't find any banjos but I found this.

[Ron G.]

Thanks, waysider. I enjoyed that as I did the dmiler video.

[wing]

What a beautiful experience for you to have had. I'd bet that that memory is gonna live in you a long, long time.

I'm guessing that the rest of the story would be fascinating too . . . the viewpoint from some of those kids? :)

Man, oh man! What a treat!

[mstar1]

congratulations to your friend! great piece of music and some valuable lessons..

HERE is yet another version of the same song. Interestingly the video starts with one of the performers also talking about teamwork. This one brings in people from all over the world...drums from India, steel drums from jamaica, a sax, bassoon, fife, banjo, electonic drums and odd instrument configurations ...teaming together for a jazzier version..

I wonder if William Stepp while working out his version of Bonaparte's Retreat years ago realized how far his little simple yet beautiful piece would go....and how it would bring people together...

thanks for posting

Edited March 3, 2008 by mstar1

[onegod]

How about this

[batcave]

Really cool! The Bonaparte's Retreat worked very well.