JMR: Cincinnati's New Pops Star
Before Dec.
6, 2010, John Morris Russell had never addressed Cincinnati with his trademark: “HEL-LO _______!" (Insert locale)
As associate
conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony from 1995-2006, he had conducted the
orchestra in communities throughout the tristate, where
he liked to preface concerts with a salutation like the above. This time it
was different. As Russell stood before reporters and cameras in the Music Hall foyer, it was as conductor designate of
the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra (the CSO in red blazers), successor to Erich Kunzel who
died in September, 2009 after nearly 45 years with the orchestra.
Now
music director of the Windsor Symphony in Windsor, Ontario, Russell had
been away from the city for four years, so he could truly exclaim
"HEL-LO Cincinnati!"
The announcement
came after a yearlong search and was greeted with universal approval. His contract is for four years, effective
Sept. 1, 2011.
At Music Hall Dec. 10 and 11, Russell conducted his first concerts with the Pops in his new role. The occasion, “Happy Holidays with the Pops” with guest star Debby Boone, could not have been more appropriate. As co-creator of the CSO’s “Home for the Holidays” concerts at the Taft Theater from 1997-2003, Russell earned the title “Mr. Christmas.” He dusted off some HFH hits for the Pops show, including “Santa Does the Mambo” and “Mele Kalikimaka” (“Merry Christmas” in Hawaiian). It was a highly emotional evening, he said, with members of the audience breaking into spontaneous applause at the mention of “Home for the Holidays.”
His welcome from the orchestra has been nothing less than inspiring, he said. “Practically every single player has come up and we’ve just had a beautiful, beautiful reunion.”
After this whirlwind homecoming, Russell -- JMR for short -- sat down with Music in Cincinnati to express his feelings about assuming the Pops mantle and his plans for guiding it into the future.
It might have been a very brief interview. When asked if he could put into words how he felt about being named Cincinnati Pops conductor, he said, “No, I can’t.” As it turned out, he had lots to say.
How did his family react to the news? Eleven-year-old Jack burst into tears, but quickly reassured his father: “Don’t worry Dad, they’re tears of joy.” As for nine-year-old Alma, she is looking forward to getting to know her hometown (the family moved to Windsor when she was five). Wife Thea Tjepkema, a historic preservationist, can’t wait to come back and get re-immersed in the city’s rich architectural heritage.
They will make Cincinnati their home again beginning this summer, after the school year ends in Windsor. Russell will retain both positions initially (his Windsor contract expires in 2012). The commute is “reasonable enough,” he said (he does it in four hours, door to door) and "it's not like I haven't done it before." He began in Windsor in 2001, while he was still CSO associate conductor, and went back and forth for several years before moving there.
Russell's contract specifies that Cincinnati will be his only pops orchestra. “I love pops. I also love Brahms,” he said. Classically trained, he is a graduate of Williams College in Massachusetts and has a master's degree in conducting from the University of Southern California, where he studied with Daniel Lewis. “I didn’t want to devote myself to a pops orchestra unless it was the big boys and this (the Cincinnati Pops) is the big one.” (In a way, Russell shares credentials with Kunzel, who was personal assistant to the great French conductor Pierre Monteux. Russell also studied conducting with Charles Bruck at the Pierre Monteux School for Conductors in Hancock, Maine.)
A native of Cleveland, Russell was amused to see headlines identifying him as Canadian. “To think that for ten years the American who’s been conducting the Windsor Symphony Orchestra has been trying to convince Canada that I’m a Canadian and when I get the gig in the U.S. . . .” Still, he feels "honored” to be pegged from north of the 49th parallel, he said. “I love Canada and Canadians. My adopted home for so many years is Windsor and all the people I’ve worked with.”
Russell, 50, has done honor to Windsor as well, having presided over a decade of unprecedented growth, brought media attention to the orchestra and earned a fistful of awards.
The Cincinnati Pops is a different animal, he said.
“The beautiful thing about the Pops is there are no borders, there are no rules. It’s music for music’s sake. There’s no intimidation factor. It brings diverse elements of the region and the community together.” As CSO associate conductor, Russell founded the orchestra’s “Classical Roots, Spiritual Heights” series featuring music by African-American composers in area churches (this year’s concert, to be led by Michael Morgan, is March 11 at Music Hall).
“People are hungering for a shared, communal, positive experience. This is why, I think, flash mobs are such a phenomenon. The fact of the matter,” he said with typical Russell humor, “is that the orchestra is the oldest flash mob there is: ‘Come on, everybody. Come down to Music Hall. There’s going to be a bunch of players making music together.’
“This is one
of the things that Erich did exceptionally well, breaking down that perceived
wall between the audience and the performers onstage. As
my old conducting teacher (Lewis)
said, ‘It’s a “we” thing.’” He featured members of the CSO and the Greater Cincinnati community in starring roles, including students at the
School for Creative and Performing Arts, whose new facility on Central
Parkway has been named the Erich Kunzel Center for the Performing Arts
in his honor.
As for programming, Russell likes to quote Duke Ellington’s famous line: “If it sounds good, it is good.” Kunzel’s programming was of a generation where Broadway was the main avenue for popular music, he said. “All the pop hits came out of Broadway. For me, growing up in the 60s and 70s, pop music became an entity unto itself. People were writing things for radio and bands, for recordings. I’ve been fortunate to grow up in a time and place where there were no boundaries.” Russell views his task as “finding the music of today and the stars of today and the great legacy of pop music I have been steeped in and to draw on that.
“On the other hand,” he said, the CSO has "an incredible orchestral collection, this library that has been developed over the last 40 years. On my list of things to do is to go into that library and see what we’ve got in there and to pull from those, because there are some gems. Again, it’s pulling from our own rich legacy and re-thinking and finding new ways and new music to clothe in orchestral splendor.”
Russell has his eye on the “really great orchestral classical music that folks probably don’t even realize is classical,” what is sometimes referred to as “light classics,” he said. “I hate that word. Let’s come up with something else. I’d much rather say ‘the really good stuff, popular classics.’ That’s the whole reason it’s called the Pops because it was popular classics.”
Russell likes to do what he calls “informal audience polling.” “In Windsor we can’t afford to do things like surveys, so when I bump into someone at Home Depot and they say that they are a symphony subscriber, I say, ‘So, what was your favorite program? And which one didn’t you like?’ They’ll tell me both.”
He did an informal poll after the Cincinnati Pops holiday concerts while signing autographs afterward. “‘Ave Maria’ got a whole lot of votes and you know what? ‘Ave Maria’ is based on the Praeludium (Prelude in C Major from “The Well Tempered Clavier”) of Johann Sebastian Bach, with a melody by Charles Gounod. Speaking of 'light classics,' here’s a piece of music that expresses about 250 years of musical experience." (Also on the Pops holiday concerts was the chorus “See the Conquering Hero” from Handel’s oratorio “Judas Maccabeus.”)
A trait Russell has in common with Kunzel is boundless energy. Said CSO communications director Christopher Pinelo: “We’ve been doing a lot of interviews, and everywhere we go we run into someone or John meets someone and ideas start popping up. We were at Fox 19 and there was a person who runs Findlay Market (historic outdoor produce market near Music Hall), and all of a sudden there were ideas about collaborating with Findlay Market.”
Russell has so many ideas he can’t sleep, he said. “When did I get the phone call (from Cincinnati)? In the middle of November? It’s been a month and I just cannot sleep. Every morning it’s about 5:30 and I just wake up. I have a pad of paper next to my bed and if I can just write it down, get it on paper and put it back, then maybe I’ll be able to get a couple of hours of sleep.” (In this respect, he resembles Kunzel who famously got to Music Hall at the crack of dawn and kept everyone hopping.)
Some of those ideas involve the Taft Theater, where the CSO will move during the renovation of Music Hall beginning in September, 2012. Not only was this where “Home for Holidays” was produced (and may be again, he hinted), but its proximity to Cincinnati’s big corporate buildings makes it a natural for after-work, early evening concerts.
“Imagine. You’re busting your . . . all day at the office. You go with a couple of your co-workers, you grab a couple of drinks, go to a concert and you’re home at a decent hour.” As for evening concerts in general at the Taft, “there’s plenty of parking, Chiquita, Chemed, and it’s all empty in the evenings.” (The CSO will continue to manage the Taft after it returns to Music Hall.)
The Pops will continue its highly successful recording activities on the CSO’s new in-house label, “Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Media” (whose first release, “American Portraits, by music director Paavo Järvi and the CSO, due Jan. 25, is already available on streaming audio via the CSO’s distribution agreement with Naxos Records). Russell will continue to do Pops community concerts and will take over the “Lollipops” Family Series for children (now led by CSO assistant conductors). These popular, themed concerts fit right into the Russell mold and vice versa, since he was the creative genius behind the CSO’s “Sound Discoveries” education program with its sequential, themed approach to presenting classical music to children and young people.
Russell is considered a national leader in orchestral educational programming. For 12 years (1997-2009), he conducted the “LinkUP!” educational series at Carnegie Hall, making him a lineal descendant of Leonard Bernstein.
Filling Erich Kunzel’s shoes will be a “huge” task, Russell concedes (actually he did fill those shoes --in 1999 at Vienna’s famed Musikverein, no less -- when he substituted for an ailing Kunzel on short notice for a concert televised on PBS). “Everything was kind of done in his mold, so in some ways, I can see that as being constricting. But actually, if you switch your perception a little bit, there’s some freedom to it. You know the types of things that he did very well. You also know that there’s a lot of stuff that he didn’t do. You can see all the other stuff that’s out there very, very clearly, silhouetted against the remarkable things that he did.
“In a way, it’s the best of both worlds. I’ve learned so much from him and the traditions he developed over 45 years, but I’ve also seen this other world of possibility in our community and our region, the opportunities that haven’t been taken. There’s so much going on here for a city this size. For people who have lived here all their lives, it’s just modus operandi. But you go away for a little bit and you come back and you see with fresh eyes. You see all the connections that can be made and celebrated.”
Russell will be back with the Pops in February for its Valentine-themed show with Monica Mancini at Music Hall (Feb. 11-13) and to announce the Pops’ 2011-2012 Music Hall season. After that? (The CSO's summer 2011 Riverbend season will be announced contemporaneously.)
“Let’s just
say, start looking for some red, white and blue sox,” he said.