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It turned into a din of chatter, and the audience picked up their bags and hats, put on their coats and scarves, strolled down the aisle a little, and slowly disappeared out the exit. After the hall was empty and we had a quick beer backstage, the orchestra began to play.
Just outside the stage door, a pair of climate-controlled trailer trucks sit rumbling with their doors open and ramped down, providing everything an orchestra needs as it embarks on its first multi-city European tour. I was waiting for 76 luggage in a precisely fitted trunk. First overseas tour under Maestro Gianandrea Noseda since 2016. From here the truck headed to Carnegie Hall. From there, it’s his two-week, nine-city journey through Spain, Italy and Germany.
But first I needed to pack.
Like many of us, orchestras spend years planning the details of a successful international trip, sometimes packing everything in a hectic few hours the night before departure. But unlike the customary scramble for adapters, chargers, and passports, the orchestra’s packing operation is a finely tuned, precisely coordinated effort, involving months of advance planning and permissions, and dozens of people It requires the collective effort of the nearby workers, staff, and musicians. themselves. Backstage, a towering coffin-like case awaits the double bass. The string section takes over a row of folding tables for packing instruments. The red case of the Celesta I rented sticks out like a sore thumb, but it fits snugly into the elaborate packaging structure like a Tetris block.
More than 16,000 pounds of instruments, musicians’ wardrobes, and specialized equipment (from trolleys and racks to stools and stands to Noseda’s personal podium) are transported by plane and truck, just like the orchestra, at each stop along the way. must be packed, shipped, and paid for. Move from one city to the next.
This will be NSO production manager Darryl Donley’s seventh tour, having been with the orchestra since 2000, but the tour will include the orchestra’s unfortunate 2020 tour, which was canceled for three days due to the pandemic. Plans for an Asian tour are not included. before it starts.
And this is the fourth tour for the NSO’s senior manager of production and orchestral operations, Christa Chihi, who helped facilitate the previous two European tours and the orchestra’s 2017 tour of Russia.
Donley’s vision is skewed toward the macro: transporting cargo across a network of trunks, trucks, crews and warehouses. He mostly travels before the orchestra’s arrival, as his five pallets loaded with the orchestra’s cargo are trucked across Europe. Sometimes he is transported in a team of two drivers to ensure efficiency on long-distance transport, such as between Madrid and Berlin.
On the other hand, Cihi’s big area is micro. She carries around a binder filled with hundreds of pages of documents and permits that are difficult to bind. While most international travelers are aware of the trivial question of “do I have anything to declare?”, the strict rules of international travel are on a completely different scale for an orchestra.
“To the best of our ability, everything in the trunk has been itemized for the various paperwork involved,” Schich said on a Zoom call with Donley from Barcelona, the first stop on the tour. told me. “This is what strings and bows and trumpets and mutes are all about. Everything.”
This itemization goes beyond simple aggregation and evaluation of products. In addition to airline rules and TSA requirements, Cihi must also comply with international customs regulations governing the international transportation of endangered materials (rare materials that occur in disproportionate amounts in orchestras) .
In 2016, new rules and widespread implementation of regulations established by the 1973 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) require orchestras to meet strict requirements for the declaration of musical instruments. He faced even more pressure. According to a 2020 report from the American Federation of Orchestras, “export licenses granted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service doubled from 20,000 to 40,000 in 2017,” most of them related to musical instruments.
Think of the ivory bell rings often found on bassoons, the monitor lizard skin or whale bone sometimes used for the tips and grips of violin bows, the Brazilian rosewood used in violins, or the pernambuco wood used in bows. If you look at it, you’ll understand. About how quickly these details add up and how thick Cihi’s binder gets.
Chihi also acts as a “luggage magistrate” for a tour party consisting of an orchestra, staff, tour librarian, cover conductor, two tour managers, a doctor, a photographer, and, if he is present, over 120 travelers. Accepts informal roles. He can pack his bags in time to catch a flight to Cologne, and he has some nasty critics. Everyone will be traveling according to a tight schedule of buses, trains, and planes. Add to this the unofficial movement of spouses, friends, family, and his 60 or so regular guests (who have dedicated itineraries from Berlin to Milan), and NSO’s number of people on the move almost doubles. Become.
“It definitely feels like you’re on a school field trip when you’re all together,” Cihi says. “But it’s fun to be in a different place with 100 colleagues. It’s an adventure. I just hope people don’t leave their passports in hotel safes.”
“We prepare as much as we can and then improvise the rest,” Donley says.
As is often the case with classical music, improvisation has its limits. Touring an orchestra in 2024 is a hugely expensive undertaking.
Including the Carnegie performance, the tour’s total cost is approximately $2.1 million. This figure includes costs for artists and staff, travel, accommodation, per diem, freight, promotion, and other miscellaneous expenses, and is comparable to historical European tour budgets ( 2016 tour costs ($2.2 million) and Asia (the budget for the canceled tour to Asia was $1.8 million).
In terms of revenue, the orchestra’s tours are rarely funded by fees and rely heavily on philanthropic donations. To this end, NSO’s $2.3 million in touring revenue consists of $1.4 million in donor funds and just under $1 million in tour fees.
Touring orchestras also come with significant environmental costs, but they may gain attention in their own right by 2024. The pandemic has halted international orchestral touring for two years, and many orchestras are rethinking the purpose and effectiveness of decades of practice.
Donley points to a number of internal measures taken to reduce emissions (and costs). For example, a new set of wardrobe trunks You can now store twice as many players’ clothing, reducing your total luggage by one pallet. In the Korngold he required a 10-foot chime, but the acoustically similar he was replaced with a 49-pound bell plate, which also had a relatively small footprint. A review and modification of the instruments and equipment we bring on tour has reduced the orchestra’s total transportation volume by approximately 20%.
NSO has also begun a partnership with American Forests, a conservation group that works with organizations to reforest areas devastated by wildfires. In fact, the NSO Partnership is spending $7,000 to reforest 660 acres in northwestern Oregon, which would theoretically offset the tour’s own emissions.
NSO Executive Director Gene Davidson said that in addition to the reduction in cargo volumes, the partnership: This amounts to “concrete actions” to reduce the orchestra’s carbon footprint while on tour. (To this end, on the home front, the NSO recently reduced wattage by 95% by reducing paper program printing and replacing the canopy lighting above the stage with 60 LED fixtures.)
“Whether you’re a nonprofit or a corporation, it’s up to all of us to find ways to run our businesses in a more environmentally friendly way,” Davidson said by phone from his tour stop in Madrid. Told. “And what I learned is that no one has all the answers, and many of us try different things to get the right answer. This is what we I think you have to have the mindset that it’s a journey you’re on and you need to keep learning.”
Given the rising costs, painstaking efforts, looming uncertainties, financial burdens, and environmental impact that make touring orchestras such a daunting undertaking, how much is it worth it in the first place? The question may immediately arise. But no one I spoke to, either in the belly of the Kennedy Center or honking from the streets, expressed doubts about the value of putting on this show — especially Davidson.
She points out that the notable spike in ticket sales in January and February may have been due to increased hometown pride in the orchestra before the tour. But as the group moved from one hall to the next, she also saw the direct impact that American orchestras with “The National” in their names had on the people who came to listen.
“People talk about soft power and cultural diplomacy, and those words get thrown around a lot,” Davidson said. “But for me, being on the ground and seeing the 123 artists and staff interacting with people in all the cities we’re in, it really builds relationships. Maybe it’s because of who Americans are. It will deepen your understanding of what is there.”
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