This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing, My chance to talk with artists, policymakers and performers, to hear their stories, what inspires their creations, what decisions change their careers, what relationships influenced their work. I began listening to classical music in my twenties. Job hunting as an actor in l A meant you'd be in your car
three four hours a day. I drive around listening to the local classical stations, sometimes pulling over to call from my car phone to find out the name of the piece, who composed it, who performed it, and who conducted. While I was learning the difference between Maler and Mendelssohn. My guest today as Apeca Solomon, a Finish French horn player, also in his twenties, was making his conducting debut with
the Philharmonia Orchestra in London. Today Solomon is their principal conductor and the new composer in residence at the New York Philip Manik for the next three years. And that's new because I, I mean, obviously, I've been composing for decades and since I started studying music, really, but but this is the first time I have an official position as a composer as opposed to being a conductor of some orchestra, and that for me, this is really fascinating,
exciting for a lot of people was fascinating. Actually, was composition something that was the goal originally and conducting was accidental, I'm told correct, that's true. Yeah, I I started studying composition quite early in my teens. We started a group of young composers in Finland. I was born and raised in Helsinki, Finland. We had a group of young composers. Mongst Lindberg was one of them. He was actually the first composing composing in residents with the New York Philarmonica,
another very well non composer. Now, so we started this group together, um so idealistic group of young tucks, kind of trying to change the world olden you know. We thought that new music is good for people, and therefore we took it out to you know, gas stations, prisons or people's homes. So and then it was one of those missions. Um. And it turned out that the real conductors at the time in Finland we're not interested in
our stuff. So we felt that one of us has to conduct something has to be able to do it. So I was kind of voted um to become the conductor of the group because I had a lot of performance experience. I was a home player French home player, and I used to sub in in healthy orchestras in the opera at radio orchestra on zone, so I knew what it meant to be on stage and play and so on. So I started studying conducting just for this
purpose basically, and so it was a fluke. And then I realized that I actually enjoyed it quite a bit, and it seemed to becoming natural you to me, and so on, m what did you enjoy about it? The people? Now, when I think about it, I wasn't so clear about that before, But now when I have long periods of of composing only, which is very lonely, of course, you know,
you're you're alone, essentially, it's very slow. You know, you imagine something, then you kind of translate that dream into a sort of notation and so on, and it's a very slow processing and lonely, as I said, and and the energies a different kind of energy. It's the sort of marathon runner's energy, you know, the long haul you have to kind of pace yourself, and you have to be very very patient and so on. Whereas conducting, of course,
it's a very intense thing socially. I mean, you are on stage with hundred other people, and in the rehearsals you're trying to focused them. You're trying to present your ideas about the piece in such a way that they not only accept them, but they they would willingly follow you to wherever you want to go, and so and and and I really enjoyed that aspect of it. The actual act of conducting, you know, standing there on the box waving the stick in the air, is not very
interesting in my opinion. It's it's just like the tip of the iceberg. But then why is that person there? For those who don't understand that history of classical music, there wasn't always someone standing on a podium conducting, correct, That's right. Yeah. In the old days, I mean the very old days we were talking about Bach and Hayden
and more Set and so on. The music was simple enough and it behaved in a sort of predictable enough way that the musicians could actually take care of themselves without somebody giving the beat, and you know, giving instructions as to where it course and so on. But then it started to become a little more complex with bet often, and you know bet often. Symphonies are already very difficult to perform without a conductor unless you're okay with a
totally standard, middle of the road kind of approach. But if you want to do something, if you want to do something with the music, then there has to be somebody behind a concept. And then, of course, you know, we move on in history onto the big opera guys their Divagner zone, and then you know, onto Schraus, Bruckner, Mahler,
you know, Stravinsky. That music cannot be played successful. It's impossible. Yeah, it's impossible from the coordination point of view, but also the way it's composed, because the composer assumes that the interpretation has some kind of flexibility and ideas about the tempo and the pacing so on. Wagner for instances, all about the pacing. So what the conductor does is to handle the flow of time, um over an arch of I don't know, five hours, six hours on including the
breaks of course. UM. So it's a it's a profession that became necessary. Um. And somehow Somewhere during this process, the conductor also became more visible, more of the center of the musical life and the musical musical process, the
musical culture than the composer had been. And of course, if you think of the modern um recording industry, you know, with the with the LP and especially c D and now the tvds and what have you, had, the performer seems to be the center of all almost all attention, and the person who wrote the music, who in my opinion, is rather a big part of the chain, is actually not well recognized, yeah, but not not treated in the same sort of heroic way as as the conductors are.
For instance, I had a really kind of illuminating experience in in l A some years ago. I was I was in a I was at Starbucks, actually queuing for my coffee, and there was a guy in front of me who asked where whether whether I was songs and I said, yes, I am. And he introduced himself and he said he was also a composer. And I said, um, okay, sorry, I don't recognize your name. I'm sorry, sorry about that.
And he said, no, nobody does, but I write songs for pop stars and and he said I told me that he had written a couple of songs from Madonna and you know these huge names and his his name doesn't appear anywhere, and I thought, you know, this is symptomatic. So it's not only a classical music problem. I mean
it's a problem across the board. There was some guy in London composer who calculated that if if a composer wants to get up to the minimum wage annual meanium wage of the UK, he or she needs like one point seven trillion downloads be here or or hitsp here. What I want to get back to is you are in London and you're at the phil Harmonia, correct, and you're playing the French horn and not anymore to know
what what what? What were you playing at the moment you were asked to step up and conduct Isn't that when you were first asked to conducted? I was still playing you're playing those And who was the conductor at the time, Michael Tilson Thomas Tilson Thomas was conducting the phe Harmonia. Then yes, he was supposed to do the Third Symphony and what happened? I think he injured his elbow like a tennis elbow or something like that and
had to pull out. And they called everybody on the planet with no success, obviously, and then they ended up with me, who was completely unknown. I had an agent who worked with a few artists, but his main business was in golf accessory uh and he operated out of a golf course in a smallish city of in Finland when nobody spoke English and zones so forth, so it took a little while for the messages to get through.
I had had a long night with my pals, composer pals when the call came in early in the morning. So it's this guy from the golf course saying that the Philimonia wants you to contact Marla three and I told him to disappear in using expressions I will not repeat here public radio. Yes absolutely, And he called back a couple of hours later, when I was already talkable, and said, okay, here's the deal. So do you want
to do it? And I thought, okay, So if it goes well, fine, if it doesn't, at least I can tell this to my grandchildren that I've done it once, or at least tried to. And then I went and did it. And that's how I became a full time conductor for a while. Your parents were not musicians, correct, No, No, My father was a businessman and my mom was mostly home. They loved music, listened to music. They went to concerts occasionally, but they didn't practice music in it and listened to
recorded music. Yes, my father especially, he loved opera, and he loved Italian opera. So I had a lot of very d and Puccini playing when I was going up and had that affect you. I have had a very problematic relationship with Italian opera every since. This is quite normal. I guess you know it when your dad is really into something, when and then you grow up, you kind of decided not to be into the same thing. Um. I think it's a healthy reaction. So that's not just
a finish thing. It's a no. I think it's the universal, it's a global And once he came home, he was very proud. He had bought a new recording of of Laboy m and he said it. He told me that he got it really cheaply. It was a special offer, um. And it was a Deutsche Berlin version of the Labom in German UM. And I grew up with this recording It's funny because when I hear it now in Italian it sounds all wrong. I can't listen to it in Italian because it it's it's it goes in German in
my memory. And it's funny how we get conditioned in our child childhood and it never changes when you when you stepped up at the age of to conduct the Maler third with the Philharmonia, did you have a sense like what did you do that? You think? How did it go? What do you attribute to that it was
so successful? Because everything I read they talk about you becoming an overnight sensation as a conductor as a result of this performance while you were doing it, where you're saying yourself, Wow, this is really going well, where you don't think about that. I think that the critical moment is the first minute in the first rehearsal with the orchestra. I mean most of my colleagues can actually say the
same thing. I'm sure that when you meet a new orchestra, especially when you're young and you don't have that routine how to deal with with people you don't know, Um, that's the moment when you don't know how it's going to go. Um. And with the Philomonia. I felt this connection in a really strange way, and it's very hard to explain. It's something it's something that happens between people.
I mean even in your private life, and you meet body and you know from day one or the first second actually that this person is going to be a very important influence, positive constructive influence in my life. And the opposite happens as well. All the flags go up and you know that you you you have to stay away from this person no matter what. And you're very
instinctual that way. Well we all are all are. I think it's a it's a biological thing you know that you know has to do with survival and you know, the forming internal relations which tribe but you know, keeping the cohesion of the society and isn't that um. But so with the Philimonia, I felt straight away that wow, these guys seem to not only accept me, but but
they seem to follow me and kind of willingly. UM. And I was quite an experience because it was the famous Philimoni Orchestra and the conductor was recorded the multi at that time, and you know, it's like a deal um. And I have had these kinds of experiences later on in life as well, and they they it never fails, the mechanism might. I felt the same kind of thing in l A a year after the Philomonia concept when I met them for the first time, and I had
no idea what to expect. That it was my first trip to the US ever, so it was a culture shock. And of course I start out in l A, which is even more of a shocked than anything else would have been. And then I can say that again, yeah, And then I stepped in front of the band and and and they're terribly nice. But but more but more than that, you know, like connecting straight away and and that for me is the very essential thing about making music.
And and with both focus with l A and the Philimonia, I've sometimes had this very strange experiences, you know, some kind of communication that is beyond certainly beyond words, but also beyond gestures in a way. And I'm thinking of something I can I can swear that they do it before I've done it, so that they this this kind of fine tuning, fine tuned trust in each other in a way, and it has to be mutual otherwise that's work. So after the performance of the Maler in London. You
were twenty six years old. When does your first assignment come as a music director of ensemble? I started out in Stockholm with the Swedish Radio Orchestra. Soon after this un did the job you wanted. It was the best orchestra in Scandinavia at the time and and still is one of the very best, if not the best. And um and that was perfect for me because I I was in a in a culture that was familiar to me, I spoke the language, and still it was away from home.
Was staying in the Scandinavian sphere? Did you want to stay there for the time? Thing? It felt like a very good idea because I I like the idea of being in a culture where no particular translation was necessary, and I understood the reactions with people, and they understood reactions of mine or the lack of lack of lack of reactions and um. And it was a very good orchestra and they were very nice people and um and the same kind of thing that there was a very
sort of intuitive understanding people. People who have a prejudice, I suppose myself included that there's a Scandinavian soul and that they crave music of a certain type or key or do they want that not true? Did they want to hear everything? I'm not sure there's a Scandinavian soul.
It's it's a it's a myth in many ways. Technically, if we look out from the finished perspective and try to decide who is who are the ones that are closest to us in you know, historically, traditionally, temperamentally, in every way, it's the sweet. Also, Finland was part of Sweden for six years. Um, so there's there's a lot of history, but still there's a fundamental difference in in how we behave in social life and um, the Sweets are very smooth, socially smooth, skillful to people. They work
very well in groups. They they're very successful in everything they do. You know, they they are experts at selling their products globally and internationally so on. Um, and they're very brilliant in many ways. Finns. First of all, Finns don't speak much. I mean talking using more than the absolute minimum amount of words to get your mess it across is somehow considered being frivolous or you know, suspect or something like that. And yeah, some kind of you know,
trying to achieve your goal through flattery or whatever. Um. I realized this. I saw this very clearly when when after some years in l A, I went back to my country house in Finland and went up jogging. And I had learned this habit of greeting everybody like you do in l A. You know, you're walking on the street and you just great, great people. Um. And I was greeting everyone, you know, every villager, and they looked at me like some kind of space aliens. What what
has happened to this guy? He was perfectly normal a few years ago. Now he's been in America anyway, Now he's like this or what's rotic? What is this all about? Salmon is rooted in the United States. Two of his three children were born here. And I'd love to claim Salmon and as our very own, but I'd have to get in line. He's an international superstar, with seven honorary doctorates from four different countries. Be sure to explore the
Here's the Thing archives. You can find my conversation with Alex and Jamie Bernstein, whose father, like Solomon, had a serendipitous debut as a conductor at a major concert hall. So he gets back to Carnegie Hall at you know, five in the morning and passes out, and then like an hour and a half later, the phone rings and it's Bruno Zerato of the New York Philharmonic saying, this is a kid, you have to go on this afternoon. And it was on the radio as a national broadcast.
Take a listen at Here's the Thing dot org. This is Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's the Thing. In two thousand three, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, home to the l A Philharmonic, opened in downtown Los Angeles. The spaces internationally beloved for its design and its acoustics as a pack of someone in the music director of the orchestra at that time, Chris in the space when it opened. The project got started in the late eighties already,
so I was involved. I was a music director designated from from So I started talking with Frank Garry already then and um, but they had started the fundraising and the first donation came in and in already I believe, so, so it really was a fifteen year project. Um. And then we started developing the idea and it came to a halt a couple of times, um for financial ways,
financial and political like garious conception. It was not so much about that, but it was just things that happened, like the riots in ninety two in l A and you know somehow around King. Yeah, when when you realize that the society was kind of falling apart, and and and and everybody realized that they were these huge tensions and that the kind of peace and and rule of law was just a base of thin layer on top
of it all. So I think everybody felt that that there are huge problems that need need to be need to be addressed. And at that point, to even speak about building a new concert hole in downtown l A felt like the wrong thing to do. And I think it a new police station maybe, yeah, rather some you know, more constructive ideas as to how to alleviate the situation,
how to make things better and so on. Um. But then things moved on luckily later in the in the nineties, and I think the turning point was in when the Philharmonic did a month long residence in Paris and and lots of people came to hear their own orchestra playing in a great concert Hall in Paris to shutly and and then that I think that was the thing that changed the whole thing, that all of a sudden people realized that a musical experience is really as some of
its parts. And one very important thing is that the space where the Oxtrad place. And if it doesn't sound good, there's little hope. What was it like to live so many years in Los Angeles coming from where you came from, and just culturally I loved it. I think it's a really great place to live, and it takes a little
while to get used to it. To be honest, it's allows the place to visit because in in two weeks you're only confused and you don't get it, but it really does grow on you and um and also for me as a as an artist and as a as a person, it was really incredibly helpful to be away from the sort of European counton, you know, the sort of arrogant European intellectual canon that you know in the
music world. And of course when I started out in l A, I had this some kind of residue from this European thing that okay, I'm here too to bring some kind of culture to elevate you. Yeah, this culture is medicine kind of thing which is vile. Thank god
I'm here, Yes, aren't you lucky? Um? And it was an interesting process because I was talking about things, you know, the way we used to in in your bost days, and you know, with this kind of all kinds of intellectual constructs and you know, the historic necessity of a tonal music and listen that. And people were very nice, they said, oh, yeah, great, interesting, But how does it sound?
Or asking these questions that are the obvious questions that everybody should ask, but we we weren't for some reason asking so what that sounds great? But um, what does it do to me? How? How will I feel? One? Is the actual effect and impact of what you're doing on me? And and I couldn't quite answer to those questions. And and this started a big process where I kind of rethought my values, my life and my artistic hearth. While you're in Los Angeles, yeah, while I was there.
And I describe that process. Um, it's hard to describe it in words. But but what happened composition wise was that I had come to a drought. For a few years. I hadn't written anything, Um, and I was blaming the conducting schedule. I was. I was conducting around the world, and I was learning all that repertoire, you know, all of a sudden, I was doing all the betomin symphonies and the Brahms and the Bruckner and god knows what. So I was I spent lots of hours in front
of the score buried. But it was not only about the lack of time. It was it was more like a crisis. I didn't know what to write and how to write. And I had this like a dichotomy. Um that the music I loved playing and performing was not like the music I wrote. Um, I love playing the the big lash stuff by you know, Racha, Schraus and Maler and Bruckner and straviing skincy bellies and all that.
I love that resonant sound of symphony orchestra and the the fact that when a hundred people played full throttle, it's more thrilling than almost anything else in the world. To witness that energy coming at you, it's more thrilling than anything in the world, and almost anything anything. I agree. Thank you. I'm with you on that. Thank you. And the music I was writing at the time was not like that. It was because I was still in the European modernist um kind of box straight jacket rather where
so many things were forbidden. And it sounds utterly ridiculous I'm here telling you what was forbidden, because there was no particular body that was doing the forbidding. But it was just like it was considered to be wrong to write a melody. It was considered to be wrong too, to use pulse. It was considered to be absolutely wrong to do something that sounds like a modulation moving from one key to another. And you didn't have anything like that. So finally I get to a point in l A
with the sort of newly found freedom. I think that's the thing about Southern California, the freedom, the sort of um openness of the culture, that curiosity. You know, UM many colleagues. I've been talking to composers and other artists, people like Peter Sellers and Bill Viola, John Adams. They all say the same thing that coming to southern Southern California, or California rather, was essential for them to became the artists they wanted to be, or had had the potential
to be. When the time comes to create the schedule for a given season. What factors go into that beyond availability of artists or whatever? Is it all you do? You sit down and people just take dictation, You say, I want to play this and this and this and this, or their board influences. It's a it's a very complex process, actually, because I think it would be irresponsible, irresponsible for the music director to dictate every program according to his or
her tastes. Because at the end of the day, this is a public institution. We are serving the public, and and and and a symphony orchestra has to be and is a constructive force in the community. And and therefore it has to cater to more than one taste, and and it has to find the balance between leading and
satisfying the needs. But also you kind of gauge the reactions after every concept, And you know I did in my years in la I did about thousand concerts with them, so so I learned to read the reaction quite well, I think, and and I I think that towards the end, especially the audience was quite proud of the fact that they are the cool audience. You know, they they can take all this stuff. You know, they are comfortable with
new music. They are comfortable with less known works, but also they love the Jakovs, they love their you know, very direct commended and there's nothing absolutely nothing wrong with that. When seats open up inside the ensemble itself described that process of how those seats are filled? Is it a committee typically of of of the orchestra itself? Do you have an input into that? Every orchestra has a slightly
different process. What was it like a lost But first of all, they announced the opening in in publications, you know, the UM musical publications and and on the internet and so on, and they get applications. In these days, a major US orchestra gets at least hundred and fifty applications for one position. If the positions are like principle player or something like that, they might get three hundred or five hundred insane numbers. In any case, so there's a
there's an auditions committee that listens to the candidates. Some orchestras screened them based on the CVS and just invite a smaller number of people to play. Some orchestras listen to everybody. But in any any event, the committee elected committee sits there and listens to everybody who play behind the screen, so there are no extra musical issues at play, UM and the and for the final round, usually the
music director joins them for the final round. They then vote and recommend a number of players, mostly like five or six, for the music director to choose from. The music director does indeed choose, yes. But but you know, this is also something where I think it makes a lot of sense to trust the instincts of the players, the colleagues, because they are the ones who actually sit next to this finalists. How do you know which one they favor? Well, it's they've told you. There's a discussion.
There's a discussion. And then quite often I used to invite a couple of people to play with the Oxford for X number of weeks to see how they fit. Change And sometimes you know, people are doing individual people are just not tuned into collaborating and and so on. So and this this no way to discover this until you you've seen it. During the time you were in Los Angeles, how, if at all, was there any frequency in which people tried to co opt you, especially with
your success as a composer into creating film score. I had a couple of discussions with a couple of people directors, but but it never materialized. And and I know, were you open to the idea? Yes, yes, I find fascinating, especially when I hear a great film score by a great film composer. It it really is. It's an up form.
It really is an art form. But then when I talked to my friends in the film business and they tell me about the schedules, you know, like I think James Newton Howard took over the King Kong project four weeks before the film was supposed to be finished, and he worked more than two hours of music in in three and a half weeks. And I said, well, did you sleep? He said, now, ye, that ideal. And that's a skill. I mean to be able to do that
and and deliver like highest quality film music gets. It's a skill, and I'm not not sure I have it. Many conductors, many people in the classical repertoire, some of them a bit older now, have tried their hand to varying degrees as composers and had some success. Some pieces they've done are are performed and are admired. Why do you think some of your colleagues don't get the traction with their work that you have had well lots of reasons. I I believe first of all, our era, um is
that of specialists. You know, everything is getting more and more specific. Everyone gets as small as small as segment of the full process. And um, and if some is trying to do more than one thing, that is immediately suspicious somehow. UM. You know, if you think of say chocolate, When I was a kid, I went to a supermarket
and bought a chocolate bar. Now I would go to a you know, specialist chocolate late and I would choose between beans from beans from the Jap chocolate and there would be like six beans as opposed to sugar or whatever. And and everything is just becoming more and more and more specific. Um. So I think the same process happens in in culture as well. The idea of covering a bigger segment of the entire process is not popular um for some reason, I don't know why. UM. This happens
with builders, you know, like people in construction work. You know, people specialize in in smaller and smaller parts of the building process. And then you have to have like eight specialists to do your house instead of having one or two guys in the past who would do everything and and I think it has to do with that. The other thing is most of mundane, I think it. You know, in order to be a composer, you have to compose.
I you have to set aside the time and in my case, I made the decision that I conduct only six months a year or less and the rest is for composing something you worked out. Yeah, this needs planning, you know, and and of course an inspiration and couldn't And you have to have management. You have have to have people who support you in this um and of
course you know, to be totally you need isolation. Yeah, you need to be in one place and and um and also you know, conducting is is more lucrative from certainly from the financial point of view, but but also you know, you get this service, you fly first class and you stay nice hot star. You're a star. And people clap when you come in. I mean the clap when you come in. Well, well by definition they clap, and mostly they clap after the show. Also, so it's
it's okay. Composer is just sitting there, you know, uh, and long days and quite often nothing different lives. It's a different life. I had an experienced many years ago. I was in Paris invited to they did the French Radio did a festival of young then young European composer's work, and they played a piece of Mind, and and I
went to hear the concert. I couldn't go to the rehearsals, and and they had booked I guess a perfectly fine little hotel close to the radio, French radio, and I'm checking in with my wife and and I get really sort of annoyed as look at this piece of you know what, how can they expect anybody, anybody to stay in a place like this. And she looks at me and says, shut up. You're here as a composure, This is composed life. You're not here as a conductor. So
just suck it up. Were there were zero piece you wrote that that came out of you more spontaneously, When that just came flowing out of you. It's always different, It's always different. It's just slow. This is my experience it. And you cannot make make it go faster. It just takes the time it needs. And then sometimes a pieces comes out pretty much as it should, and it sounds as it should in the first rehearsal, and then I change, maybe a up, a little dynamics or something, but that's it.
And then with some other pieces they I'm not born right somehow, and and I take them back and fix and modify and change things, and then played again, still not good. And then in some cases this process has gone on for a couple of years. In some cases I've been able to fix it and you know, get to a result that I wanted to have in the first place. And in some cases I just gave up. I thought, okay, this is it, Watson all you know, this is the way it came out, and I'll I'll
try again. Do you yourself ever get overwhelmed by a piece when you're performing it? Even now? Do you yourself even find I mean, I have had other conductors say to me, I tried my best to leave the tears for the audience. But do you find sometimes even you get crushed by the music you're playing? It does happen? It does happen. Give me an example, if you will,
um there are two kinds of occasions. I think that there's, you know, the expectation rewards cycle, where you know, there are some spots in some works that I find so unbelievable that when I'm conducting, I'm not hurrying exactly, but
I can't wait to get to that spot. And it does it well some modulations, for instance, you know, like in Brookness seven in a slow movement, when the the big combination of the adagio where the whole orchestra falls onto a C major chord, and it's just overwhelming, and it's an experience which is physical and emotional and everything, and it's almost sexual because it's spiritual. Yeah, it's it's everything, and and it's very hard not to be very, very
moved by this. And it's funny because I've conducted this piece I don't know, thirty or forty times and over the years, and still it does it every time. But then there's a different category, which is more like it doesn't have to do with the actual piece so much, but it's more like the it's called it flow. It's
it's those moments. And this is not it doesn't happen every day or every week even but they sometimes I experienced this kind of flow state where I feel that I'm one with not only the piece, but also with the orchestra and somehow in some way with the audience also that we create this kind of ocean or a river, and I'm just like riding on a wave. And I'm this sounds terribly in your age, but I can't really
describe it very well. It's I'm receiving and not giving, and I'm writing on something which is my much much more powerful than myself, and those are incredible moments, and but I cannot call them, you know. It's it's there's no way to guarantee that this happens, and when it happens, there's nothing like it as a peck of Salon in the rare combination of conductor and composer. He said recently that he's finally got the balance right A fifty fifty split.
To see Salmon at work, check out the orchestra app he created for the iPad. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing