Symphony Opener Features Two New Faces Violinist, Executive Director Ready For First Performance

The Spokane Symphony opens its 1999-2000 season Friday with two important new faces in the Opera House. One will be very visible on stage as soloist with the orchestra. The other will be nearly invisible either backstage or sitting discreetly in one of the symphony’s “house seats” in the hall.

Violinist Robert McDuffie will stand stage front performing the ardent solo part in Max Bruch’s Concerto No. 1 with the orchestra. John Hancock will be out of the limelight, taking a mental count of ticket sales, listening to “his” orchestra and the reaction from “his” Spokane audience.

The orchestra, under the baton of music director Fabio Mechetti, will open the concert with Hector Berlioz’s “Roman Carnival” Overture. The program also features Paul Dukas’ “La Peri” and Ottorino Respighi’s “Pines of Rome.”

McDuffie is one of those musicians who didn’t burst on the scene as a wonder child but rose steadily from a little-known violinist to international recognition as a major artist.

Hancock, too, rose through the ranks. He was a French horn teacher and orchestral horn player in Nashville before moving to the horn section of the Toledo Symphony and then entering the ranks of management there.

In summers, Hancock is also orchestra manager of the Des Moines Opera Festival. He is now the Spokane Symphony’s new executive director.

Hancock grew up in Iowa where he attended Simpson College in Indianola. He received his master’s degree from Boston University and a doctorate in horn performance from the University of Michigan.

McDuffie, however, was born in Macon, Ga., where he began violin studies at age 6 with a Hungarian teacher who gave him a gypsy’s flair. At 16, he moved to New York and studied at Juilliard where the legendary Dorothy Delay impressed on him a strict professional’s discipline.

Macon, McDuffie likes to point out, is the home of other famous musicians, among them Otis Redding, Little Richard and the Allman Brothers. McDuffie grew up with Mike Mills, bass player for the rock group R.E.M. Mills recalls young McDuffie playing in church as though his violin were a fiddle, much to the annoyance of McDuffie’s mother, the church’s organist.

Both McDuffie and Hancock are sensitive to the concept of partnership in music.

For McDuffie, this means partnership in performance with conductors like Christoph Eschenbach, Herbert Blomstedt and Leonard Slatkin - maestros who value what they can learn from a soloist as much as what they can offer themselves.

And it also means partnership with the community. The violinist with his wife and two children live in New York where he serves on the board of the Harlem School of the Arts and is proud of the school’s music graduates who have been accepted by Juilliard and other music conservatories.

McDuffie’s partnerships have resulted a half dozen or so of highly praised recordings, concert engagements with major orchestras, and collaboration with such composers as Tobias Picker and Stephen Paulus. Telarc recently released McDuffie’s recording of the Bruch Concerto No. 1 partnered by the Scottish National Orchestra led by conductor (and McDuffie’s Juilliard classmate) Joseph Swenson.

Hancock, since his August arrival in Spokane, has been at work to establish partnerships with the Spokane Symphony and other area arts and educational institutions as well as Spokane’s churches.

“I’m pleased to see our symphony musicians playing in every local arts organization, including the Spokane Opera, Connoisseur Concerts and Zephyr, and teaching at all the Spokane colleges and universities. We belong in those partnerships; we contribute to them and they contribute to us,” Hancock says.

Hancock’s concept of symphony partnerships with Spokane’s arts and educational organizations and the city’s churches is just beginning to take shape. He is negotiating for Spokane Symphony concerts in places other than the traditional series in the Opera House and at The Met.

“In Toledo,” Hancock says, “the orchestra played 100 neighborhood concerts in more than 48 different schools, churches and community centers in addition to its regular concert performances downtown. In Spokane, I think there are lots of people out there who would love the symphony if they just got a chance to hear it.

“I am very impressed by the technical skills of the people in this orchestra,” he says. “And Fabio Mechetti gets the best playing from them.”

Of Friday’s concert, Hancock says, “There’s no better set of pieces to demonstrate the orchestra’s virtuosity than `Pines of Rome’ and the `Roman Carnival Overture.’ “Robert McDuffie is a great violinist,” Hancock adds, “and the Bruch is a beautiful piece - in the old-fashioned sense of that word. I think this concert has something for everybody and is a great way to start the season.”

Mechetti will discuss the music on Friday’s concert as a part of the symphony’s Gladys Brooks Pre-Concert Lecture series in the Opera House auditorium beginning at 7 p.m.

THE SPOKANE SYMPHONY PERFORMS AT 8 P.M. FRIDAY AT THE SPOKANE OPERA HOUSE. TICKETS ARE $14 TO $33 AND ARE AVAILABLE AT THE SYMPHONY TICKET OFFICE (624-1200) AND AT G&B SELECT-A-SEAT OUTLETS, BY PHONE AT (800) 325-SEAT OR ONLINE AT WWW.TICKETSWEST.COM.