Mel Bay's Creative Keyboard® Webzine | Misha Stefanuk - William Fred Scott Interview

William Fred Scott Interview

Artistic Director of the Atlanta Opera, William Fred Scott has become as known for its vitality and variety as for his own personal commitment to the arts and the community. Scott came to The Atlanta Opera in 1985, and under his artistic direction the company became one of the fastest-growing opera companies in the United States. By the completion of the 2003 season, The Atlanta Opera will have produced more than 60 productions and well over 200 performances under his direction. Maestro Scott made his European debut conducting The Marriage of Figaro at The Theatre of the Estates in Prague.

Last season, he appeared as guest conductor with the Hawaii Opera Theatre for Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, in a co-production which was presented to Atlanta Opera audiences this February, 2004. The Maestro asked me to be the Russian diction coach working with the principals for the Atlanta production.

Having known Fred for almost two years, since my wife was in his production of Verdi's Aida with the Atlanta Opera, it is my firm belief that he is an extraordinary musician and a fascinating and charming person. We have enjoyed his support and friendship. The interview you are about to read was given in March 2005.

Fred Scott's full biography can be found at http://www.pinnaclearts.com

Misha V. Stefanuk with Maestro William Fred Scott

MS: Why do people compose and perform music?

FS: I suppose there is something deep inside that needs to get out. I think that we have, I mean. Why did I start playing tables and chairs when I was four years old. There was some pianist dying to get outside, you know, there was something in me that, I was pulling out the tables and chairs and playing as if I were playing the piano when I was four, before I ever touched the piano. So I suppose that there is something inside someone that says: I must say this, I mean I can imagine that Mozart was already composing before he was born, you know, because there was not enough time for him to thought it up and write it all out while he was alive. So why do people write and compose music, I suppose they feel, it's not exactly the same with: I have something to say, which is a little self-important, which may be what you get in the simplest terms in case of Beethoven or Wagner, but rather there is something in me that is just burning me up, that I have to get out, and I think that's what happens. I think we all compose in a way, we all improvise in a way, just whistling tunes, humming snitches of this. I think there is music in one's soul that was there from birth, I mean babies sing before they learn how to speak, so I have a feeling that there is something inside that they feel has to get out, there is a quality of sound, a quality of melody, a quality of rhythm, that everybody's individual personality has this component, and they just, some never realize that they can write it down, others know I have to.

MS: What of your achievements in music are you most proud?

FS: I think I am proudest of the ensembles that I have created. There are certain pieces that I have played well at the piano, there are certain pieces that I have played well at the organ, but none of it to my mind is really world-class, the way that great pianists and great organists are, it was good for me and it moved the public, that's nice, it was fine, but what I think I've really done and that makes me proud is that I have created situations in which ensembles played better than they could, or sang better then they could, and I love the joy that comes from making music with others, because for me the things that are great in music are things that are greater than I am. So I love the fact that here at the opera company we created a chorus that was so fine, we created the orchestra that can play Salome and Rosenkavalier and Dutchman and Onegin so handsomely, that the Brahms' Requiem at the Cathedral of St. Phillip was, two very big really amateurish church choirs that aren't used to singing big repertoire went well, it is just not part of their style, and yet we had a performance that was very, very moving. I have been to other opera companies and to other symphony orchestras, I have conducted student ensembles, Georgia State University for instance many years ago, in which the actual performance was infinitely better than it should have been, and I think it is because somehow, and I don't like to brag and I am not a bragging type, but I think there was a kind of condition, a kind of spiritual condition which enhanced the actual music making, that made it sort of come alive in a way that was very, very satisfying and probably better than it should've been. And so I am very proud of ensembles that we have been able to create, that have been able to make music together, because it was very satisfying to me to know that we have all responded together to my leadership. That is far more interesting to me than my own accomplishments as a soloist, are the accomplishments as a leader of groups of people that have come together to make music, and I know it's made their souls rich and the same it's made my soul rich. That's been very good to me.

MS: What is it about music that you like the most?

FS: That's a good question, because it is not the same question is it as: what about the piece do you like the most, I mean do you like, you know, it's different. What about music, what I like about music is its sound. And the way its sound is different from cars going down the street, or a baby screaming at the grocery store, I mean the organization of sound that becomes music, the organization of sonorities and time that becomes music, It's beautiful to me, I love the sound of it. I love the visceral response that I get, and it can be, I can be just as moved from a solo flute as I can from the sound of a beautiful pipe organ at Westminster Abby, whether I am playing it or not, or a sound of a choir singing the end of the Mahler's second symphony or unaccompanied negro spiritual or pianist playing Scriabine. You know there is something just about sonority of music that washes over me and give me a feeling deep down which I like very much.

MS: It will be the same answer for anybody who is talking about feeling the music before the game when you start playing the musical chairs.

FS: Aha, I remember when I was very little when I was four or five, and we had a record player in the living room, and we had an RCA collection of, I mean the RCA album which was a collection of all of its new releases for whatever that year was 1957, 1958..

And one of the bands on that record was Marian Anderson, the great American black alto, singing Schubert Ave Maria, and I remember lying on the floor of the living room, almost with my head in the record player, because I was so mesmerized by the sound of her voice, and I said to my mother: that's what I want when I grow up- I want to sing like that. And she said: Well, for one thing she is a woman, and your voice is gonna change, you will never sing like that, and furthermore she is a black woman, so you are just never gonna be Marian Anderson, there is just no way. But I remember that, and I remember when I was in kindergarten a few years later, or may be a year later, a woman came to play stupid little songs and teach us all how to sing, you know she called a music teacher at kindergarten, and I remember wanting to sit as close to the piano as I could, as if I could crawl in the piano, I would be happy. It's kind of a way the dog when I come home from a conducting gig and I've been gone for six weeks, Sam comes up and it's like if he could cut a slit in my side and get in me, that's how close he wants to be to me, that's the way I felt about it, I mean I wanted to be inside Marian Anderson's sound, I did not know from Schubert, I did not know from Latin, I did not know any of it, I just thought this sound is the most beautiful thing I've ever heard, and the sound of somebody sitting at the piano playing it, I wanted to be there. I think that might have something to do with it.

MS: How did you start, what influenced you the most?

FS: Well, like I said, I've started playing tables and chairs when I was four, so obviously there was a manual dexterity that was during to come out. My grandmother had a grand piano at her house, and she encouraged me to play, she also had a very pretty soprano voice, of a sort of church choir soprano sound, it was not an operatic sound, but she sang very beautifully, I thought, and so she encouraged me to play, she encouraged me to sing, I had an environment in the church where I grew up which was very conducive to singing and playing, there were children's choirs, they were very excited that I wanted to play piano and later the organ, so I think my own love for music and the encouragement that I received, especially from my grandmother and from my church crowd, that's not to say that my parents weren't supportive, that not to give them a bad rap, but my grandmother really is the one that said: listen to this, she also, oddly enough, is the reason that I play piano the way I do, my grandmother loved a beautiful singing tone, and she encouraged me to listen to Van Cliburn and Rubinstein, and I thought this is the kind of sound, and my first piano teacher also had a beautiful singing sound at the piano, and I thought this is what will make my grandmother happy, therefore I better do it cause then I'll get a, you know a typewriter when I'm fifteen, I mean I didn't really put it all together, but I knew I wanted to please her. So I made myself play what I thought was a very singing tone, and a very big tone, and I really do love that, I've been through and I am answering questions you are not even asking, but I've been through periods of being crazy about Horowitz, being crazy about Lipatti, or being crazy about Moscheles, any number of pianists, but I find actually I keep coming back to that kind of really noble singing quality that Rubinstein has, even when it is fashionable to go: Oh, Rubinstein, he is no this, that or the other, it's like really what he is, is absolutely elegant, solid, big music making, that's the kind of sound I wanted to have at the piano. So a lot of it is actually due to my grandmother, more than I have realized maybe until this moment.

I don't ever remember learning how to play the piano. In the same way I don't ever remember, I remember learning how to type, but I don't remember learning how to play the piano, I mean I know I did, I don't remember learning how to read music, I just did, I know it did not come full forth from Medusa's head, it just sort of.

MS: It's very funny, because I deal with so many people who don't know how to play piano, and it is quite painful process, and I remember being at my piano teacher's, my first piano teacher's apartment maybe twice, maybe three times before I actually played. And now I got all the books, all the Russian books, and the first book opens with fist Clementi Sonatina (sings the opening)

FS: Oh, yeah, yeah, a-ha do you remember learning, do you really remember learning, you just did it, all of the sudden you were just doing it, right?

MS: Yeah, I think they figured out that I had perfect pitch in the third grade or something, but I probably had it from the beginning.

FS: I'm sure I did too. Did you practice a lot as a kid?

MS: No. Absolutely not.

FS: I never practiced.

MS: I think I actually would be great pianist if I would, but until I got into jazz, I wasn't interested. I remember sitting at great hall of Moscow conservatory, listening to Eliso Virsaladze playing four Mozart's quintets with Borodin Quartet, knowing absolutely everything that was going on, being bored to death. That was so long ago, that was probably the best Borodin quartet that ever was.

FS: Yeah, you're right. I did not practice much, and I could sight read better, I could play something better at sight better than if I practiced it. And so I took the easy way out, probably, and I'm sure there are things that are totally wacky in the way I play, but I mean it was just, after I got to about the age of fourteenth or fifteenth, I thought I am not gonna be a concert pianist, I will play fine, I'll play beautifully, but I am just not interested in that life.

MS: With me it was even more interesting, because it was all music, and I made an agreement with my mom that I finish the music school and I won't have to do it any more. And then my mom took me to a jazz concert, there is a guy called Raymond Pauls who is from Latvia, and it was a pop music concert, but the beginning was they've played five Scott Joplin's Ragtimes with two pianos and a rhythm section, and a couple of standards like Caravan and Misty, and that was it. And then for about five years I was there and I realized that there is no way that I can sound like Oscar Peterson, and my next logical idea was; maybe I'm not black, that's a problem.

FS: Well, see it's like me and Marian Anderson, I would like to sound like Oscar Peterson, but I also would like to be able to play like Art Tatum. The idea that you can just do all that and land on the right note is just like how did he do that? And blind to put, how did he do that? It's in here ( points at his chest) from before he was born, that's how. His eyes already saw where his hands were gonna go before he thought about piano. I'm sure of that. And Oscar Peterson has that same kind of sound that I love, that's exactly the sound that I love in jazz, Oscar Peterson, George Shearing, beautiful, gorgeous singing sound.

MS: How did music change your life?

FS: Well, it became my career. I didn't think it was gonna be my career, I though I was gonna be a diplomat, I went to Georgetown University to study at the school of foreign service. And the man who was then the music editor and principal critic at Washington Post took me aside, I'd started playing for his (Georgetown University) male glee club because I was bored and I wanted something to do with music, and he said: Listen if you don't go into music it will be like a slap in God's face for giving you the talent. He said: This is what you're made to do, go ahead and finish your degree, but I'll teach you everything you need to know and he said: I think you have makings of a conductor and all the great conductors I know started as opera house repetiteur, I'll find you an opera company and get you a job. And nobody'd ever talked to me that way, so I just did it, I had such respect for him and I loved music, so I thought: Well, if that's what he thinks I should do, I think that's be just fine, so literally it changed the direction of my life from what I thought I was gonna do, which would be something in languages, social sciences or diplomatic career, something like that. It all of the sudden became my profession. So that's pretty big news, I think.

MS: Is your idea of what you would become as a musician the same today as it was when you started?

FS: I didn't really know what I was gonna become. Growing up there weren't role models. I grew up in a small town in the southern part of the state, there was no real classical music, so I didn't get to see conductors, pianists and it was who was your choir conductor that was sort of your role model. I thought may be for a while I would be an organist, in fact I was in the final two to be the assistant organist and choir master at the National Cathedral in Washington. I thought may be that's what would be my calling, would be church organ. I thought I might be the music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra at one time, I just thought that would be good just because I love Philadelphia orchestra, and I got so consumed by this music idea, and I got so busy learning music, cause I had spent a lot of time knowing nothing but piano and organ repertoire, and then I had a church choir music director that introduced me to the great works of the choral sacred repertoire, Missa Solemnis, Verdi Requiem, Mozart Requiem, Elijah, that sort of thing, so I began to know that, but all of the sudden I started going to the National Symphony concerts. It was the first year of the Kennedy Center, so I went as a student every Thursday, and all of this repertoire, all of the symphonic repertoire was new to me, and I thought making programs learning music, and I made out two or three seasons worth of programs for a major orchestra, I gave myself that test of how the music fit together, how the concert fit together, length of pieces, key relationships, sonority relationships, composer relationships. If we did, we should do all Beethoven symphonies in the course of three years, you know, I had it all plotted out, so I was thinking about being a professional musician, but I really did not know what it is going to end up being. I got very hooked by the opera bug when I started working for Sarah Caldwell in 1974 and she took me to the opera company in Boston, and I enjoyed very much that experience because I was learning so much, I was conducting a lot but I was also learning about the intricacies of how you put the opera together and how you put an opera company together. But I didn't think I was going to, her own style was so improvisational and so slapdash and so mismanaged in so many areas of making a company work. I got very tired of that system, and so when Robert Shaw asked me to come here and work for the Atlanta Symphony, I was very excited to get out of opera business, so thirty years ago I wouldn't have thought I would be running a five million dollar opera company twenty years, I just sort of, I took what came to me, I guess I thought I would be a symphony conductor, but you know, I don't remember having a conscious plan of attack, I was just happy to be in music, happy to be able to make a living as a musician, once that door was opened, I just went through it as if, without fear, I didn't have any feelings of- Oh, I'm not going to make it, as soon as mister Hume said: you have to be a musician or else, and : This is also God's plan for you, was very clearly part of his speech, so in that case: OK, take me, here I am! Show me what I've got to do. Make it happen. It's your big idea, let's see what's gonna go.

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