During a lull in the action one recent night in Winnipeg, home of the
Manitoba Moose IHL hockey team, the huge crowd was asked by the announcer
what they thought of their players and what they had achieved.  The mob,
bristling with young people, stood as one, whistling and hooting.

But this wasn't the Winnipeg Arena.  The 1200 loyal fans in Centennial
Hall were rooting for an orchestra, not a hockey team.  For more than a
week, they had been fed concert after concert of new music.  This wasn't
Last Night at the Proms, redolent with sentimental favorites.  Few of
the concertgoers had ever heard the music before.  Yet they actually
liked--loved--the music!  Yours truly, a crusty critic from San Francisco,
accustomed to new works sandwiched between war horses, inured to the
indifferent rustling of hands that normally passes as applause for new
music, eye-bent by years of deciphering convoluted conceptualizations in
program notes, pinched himself--hard.  Had Heaven relocated to Winter
Winnipeg? How can this be? Investigations by this startled correspondent
indicate a miraculous, perhaps unique combination of six factors seem to
have made the du Maurier Music Festival such an astounding success.

Success Factor #1:  the vision, charm, and musicianship of Winnipeg
Symphony Artistic Director Bramwell Tovey.  No relation to the musicologist
Donald Francis, Tovey was appointed to his post in 1990, and since has been
touted as having engineered "one of the most creative
orchestra-and-conductor partnerships on the North American continent"--all
this with the understated manner and wry humor of his native Britain.  His
ability to educate and entertain audiences is on the masterly level of
Leonard Bernstein or Marin Alsop--an approach he described in an interview
with the present writer:

>I felt . . . that basically, the Festival style of introduction to music
was
>going to be, not as much light-hearted, as un-stuffy.  There's nothing
>worse in my view than a composer standing up there and speaking
>technical jargon to the audience, who is interested in the subject, but
>needs to have it explained in reasonably non-erudite language--and yet
>an educated language.  So we took that approach, and that was the
>thing that really got [the Festival] off the ground.

Typical of Tovey's talk-show-host manner was his handling of Distinguished
Guest Composer Christopher Rouse:

   [To the audience] I want to let you know that Mr. Rouse has donated
   to the Festival the greater part of his fee.  [Thunderous cheers.]
   [To Rouse] I see that there are snakes on your tie.  I'm curious,
   when was it last in style?  [Audience laughs.  Rouse describes the
   coiffure of Medusa, the subject of his work Gorgon.]  Oh, I see, now
   it all adders up!

And behind the Tovey stage presence is the thorough tactician, planning
successful performances with the heart of a long-distance runner:

   For Gorgon you have to rehearse in a totally different way compared
   to any other piece I've ever come across.  It's really rather like
   running the marathon.  You have to build towards it [live performance
   before the audience].  There's not point in trying to solve the
   problems at a high energy, at a high tempo.  Everyone must familiarize
   themselves with the landmarks, and then build towards them.
   Synchronization is key.  Otherwise you end up with less impact.  And
   synchronization oddly enough ensures more note accuracy.

Success Factor #2:  the incredibly dedicated musicians of the Winnipeg
Symphony.  Precise performance makes them sound like a larger orchestra (23
violins vs.  34 for the San Francisco Symphony).  Quick mastery of many new
works warmly impresses visiting composers.  Tovey is proud of his players:

   First of all, there has to be the individual preparation.  That's
   very important, and that's what this orchestra's so good at.  They
   just take the parts home, they NAIL them at home, and bring them in.
   I have a fantastic team.

Success Factor #3:  the people of Winnipeg.  The Festival is in a time
warp from earlier in the century, when art music was more an integral part
of the culture, when it was a duty and pleasure for old AND young to absorb
the classics.  Of the dozens of people queried during intermissions, most
of them were either musicians themselves, or friends or parents of
musicians.  All of them were enthusiastic.  The ever-increasing audiences
bewilder even Tovey:

   The curious thing is you can see blue rinse, and blue HAIR, next
   door to each other. . . . In addition to the regular symphony goers,
   there's a huge cross-sectional slice of the population.  We have a
   lot of "Pops" subscribers who don't like the classics, but the new
   stuff to speaks to them.  I find that absolutely gripping. .. It just
   blows my mind--they'll sit there with rapt attention while Bright
   Sheng has his String Quartet playing--it's just amazing!

Success Factor #4:  rock-bottom ticket prices.  A Festival pass for
nine concerts costs only $37 US.  Needless to say, extensive public and
private subsidization is required.  du Maurier, the Canadian tobacco firm
sponsoring the Festival, has been a big help, but recent laws have made
it more difficult for carcinogens and culture to go hand in hand, so the
Festival is currently in a tentative financial position.  A campaign has
been launched to raise a $10 million endowment to cover the $560,000
deficit (Canadian dollars), which is expected to continue on a yearly
basis.  Item (3) above should come through to make the endowment a reality.

Success Factor #5:  winter in Manitoba.  Aside from drinking, watching
hockey, movies, TV and dogsled races, what else is there to do? As the
Winnipeg 2000 website promotes the climate in boosterly fashion, "Winters
are crisp and bright, offering the dynamic seasonal changes typical of a
continental climate." Right.  But even during this year's Festival heat
wave where it only got below zero degrees Fahrenheit at night, it's better
to huddle together than apart.  Tovey is not unaware of the situation:  "In
the middle of winter, we're all stuck here, and the arts scene is very
lively and exciting.  The fact that it's January helps enormously."

Success Factor #6:  the music of Christopher Rouse, which energizes today's
crowds the way Beethoven's did 150 years ago.  Critics have been for some
reason reluctant to document that wherever Rouse's symphonic music is
played, standing, cheering ovations are the rule.  This is especially true
for the Violin Concerto, this century's greatest audience-pleaser since
Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, and understandably a huge hit at the
Festival.  It is a sad state of affairs that this masterpiece remains
unrecorded while junk-pop like Daugherty's Metropolis Symphony gets an
instant CD.  Tovey himself is hot on Gorgon:

   Oh my God, what a sound world! . . . You hear this great, great, rash
   music, and you meet this man who is anything but rash, who is actually
   quite gentle and sensitive. . . .You know, if I were an American
   orchestra, going on tour to Europe, I'd take Gorgon along as my
   encore, and I'd absolutely bring the house down everywhere we went.

So there you have it, six reasons for success at six degrees below zero.
When the Winnipeg New Music Festival is in town, the Manitoba Moose has
to take the caboose, with Bramwell Tovey stoking the engine!

Jeff Dunn
Foster City, CA
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