(363) Andrew Litton, Musical Director of the New York City Ballet
Today on ‘Conversations On Dance’, we are joined by Musical Director of the New York City Ballet, Andrew Litton. Andrew takes us on a journey from his days as a kid learning about music by sitting in the orchestra pit at the metropolitan opera, to the first ballet performances he played in accompanying Rudolf Nureyev, to the work he does now bringing scores to life rehearsing and conducting performances at the New York City Ballet. You can catch Andrew at the podium starting September 19th at New York City Ballet’s fall season.
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TRANSCRIPT
This transcript was generated automatically. It’s accuracy may vary.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:00:04]:
I'm Rebecca King Ferraro.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:00:05]:
And I'm Michael Sean Breeden. And you're listening to conversations on Dance. Today on Conversations on Dance, we are joined by musical director of the New York City Ballet, andrew Litton. Andrew takes us on a journey from his days as a child learning about music by sitting in the orchestra pit at the Metropolitan Opera to the first ballet performance as he played, accompanying Rudolph Narev to the work he does now, bringing scores to life, rehearsing and conducting performances at the New York City Ballet. You can catch Andrew at the podium. Starting September 19 at New York City Ballet's. Fall season. Good morning, Andrew. Thank you so much for joining us today. We're so excited to talk to you about your illustrious career, but we'd love to start right at the beginning and just hear, I guess, how you first began a life in music and at what point that started to intersect with dance.
Andrew Litton [00:01:01]:
Well, I was born on the Upper West Side in Manhattan. In fact, I was born two days after ground was broken for Lincoln Center. So I like to refer to myself as the other West Side Story. But anyway, my kindergarten teacher apparently said to my mother, you should give him piano lessons. We have no idea why. She's long gone. In fact, now, sadly, as my mother, I was an incredibly pathetically, shy little kid. And so the way she got me to take my first piano lesson, there was a legendary chocolate shop right across the street on 72nd street. This is decades before designer chocolates. Like not even Godiva existed. It was called schwartz. It was a family run operation, and there were chocolate covered marshmallows that were to die for. And so two things happened that day. I fell in love with music and I got fat. I took to the piano immediately, and it was such an outlet that I lost my inhibitions, basically. And of course, when a couple of years on, when I could actually play pieces, kids would gather around the piano and say, Play. Play. And so I got friends, and I certainly wasn't winning any athletic awards, so it was great to have an outlet that was something I could pursue. And when I was ten, I started going to the Leonard Bernstein Young People's Concerts. It would make a much better story if I told you it was the first one that I attended that was an epiphany. I was squirming just like all the other little kids. But the fourth or fifth one I went to, I came out and said to my mother, who picked me and my best friend up from nobody was walking around the Upper West Side in those days, unescorted. It was pretty dangerous. But I said to my mother as soon as we met her, I said, I want to be a conductor. And she just rolled her eyes, because up till that morning, I wanted to be a fireman, but not just any fireman. I don't know if you remember your 1970s TV dramas, but I was going to be the one on the back of the hook and ladder, way up high, so people were still looking after me and some form of control, I guess. But I was actually really serious and I was very lucky. Neither of my parents were musicians, but they loved music. And we went to everything. I guess I was at the opera or a concert once or twice a week. It was incredible. And occasionally the ballet. I mean, I remember being dragged to the famous Balanchine Nutcracker when I was five or six, and of course I loved it. It was an amazing experience. So to make a long story a tiny bit shorter, my family's best friend was the Timpanist at the Met Opera, and he actually retired after serving 66 years in that position. It's the longest serving principal musician in the world in history so far.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:04:19]:
Wow.
Andrew Litton [00:04:20]:
So he was kind of a legend, but back in the 60s, when he was quite a bit younger, he said to my parents, okay, I got this. And so the deal he made with my mother is if I finished my piano practice and my homework, I could go sit in the pit next to him. And so I was at the Met two, three times a week, starting from the age of eleven. And it was amazing. And that lasted till about the year before I graduated from high school and got into Juilliard. There was one performance of The Magic Flute where there were like 80 people in the pit. And of course, it's a Mozart opera, which has like 40 maximum people. So many of the musicians saw me over the years sitting in the pit at the Tiffany. They figured they could bring their students in to watch too. The management said enough already. But it was fine. I learned so much from that vantage point. I could see two thirds of the stage. I could, of course, see the conductor very clearly, and by the time I was 13 or 14, I could read the score, not just piano parts, but the whole score with all the instruments. And so he would set me up with my own lit music stand. I was wedged between the wall of the pit and the biggest drum, the 30 inch timpani, and it was phenomenal. In the beginning, of course, I didn't know when all the subito fortissimo loud timpani rolls were in Italian opera that are every time somebody's been discovered to be a traitor or an adulterer or whatever. And so he'd go and I'd grab my ears and of course, within two or three years, I knew where they happened, in Tosca and Carmen and all those. So it was it was fine. But anyway, it's an incredible educational experience. So I get into Juilliard first year as a piano major, and I hadn't even auditioned for the conducting program yet. I didn't know anything, really. And I don't know about February or so of my first year, I got kind of depressed because there were 199 other pianists who, it seemed could play everything faster and louder than I could. Which, of course, is your objective when you're 18. But then suddenly one night, about 11:00 p.m., the phone rings and it's a friend of mine was an older student at Julia. He said, Andy, you got to do me a favor. I said, what's up, Bill? He said, I took a gig playing some ballet for some ballet. And it's the one week in the year I have another engagement and they won't let me out of it. I said, well, what is it? He said, It's playing solo piano on stage with Rudolf Noreav. Have you heard of him? And I said yes. And it's more involved as Schubert Trout Quintet besides the Bach with Sony to Cut and Fuse and a new Paul Porter arrangement by some guy called William Balkam who, of course, became a major composer after that, basically. So I thought about it for five minutes and called him back and said, Absolutely. And, of course, it was my first professional experience with none other than Rudolph Norev on stage at what was then called the Minskov Theater on Broadway. And his friends. It was Narev and friends was the Murray Lewis Dance company. And of course, Murray Lewis was a larger than life character. And so I got thrown into this amazing world know physical perfection and watching ballets be created. And it was so inspiring. And then back to know the next morning. But it was amazing because, as luck would have it I got mentioned in both The New York Times and the New York Post very favorably. So I walked into school the next day and everybody's know and I suddenly became somebody thanks to ballet. In fact, it was really interesting. And so I became like the house pianist for a couple of years for the Nederlander Group, the producers of all these various ballet shows. And so I got taken out to La with a group of other New York musicians to do Pierre Lunar with Urea and I think it was Yuri Killian, who it was his choreography. And then the most exciting after that was Bakarva started her own ballet company in 1980. I don't think it lasted terribly long, but we had this season at what's now called the Gershwin Theater. And it was amazing. There were six ballets, three of which were keyboard ballets. So I was very busy. And after that, one of the members of the corps and I got friendly. In fact, we started going out and she had just gotten into New York City Ballet. And I also knew from another connection, one of the ushers, and this was way before security. So I literally snuck into the ballet instead of the opera. Now it was the ballet three or four times a week. And there were some pieces that absolutely blew my mind. The pieces of music that I actually learned because I saw them first at New York City Ballet. So it's really sets. Talking about Cart before the horse. Examples, examples. Ravelle g major piano concerto, of course. It's called in g major. Jerome Robbins. I was playing Rakamanov and Beethoven Ravel. I don't know some of the solo pieces. Never heard the piece before. And of course, I start watching this incredible choreography, particularly the second movement, which is the high point of the piece. Anyway, it blew my mind and I ran out and bought the music the next day and started learning it. And it became a party piece I play conducted in concert many times over the years. But it's thanks to Jerry, thanks to mean, in a way, or thanks to my piano teacher. It was one of those things. Another, of course, I'm sort of an expert on Gershon, but I had never really learned Concerto and F. And then I saw Balanchine choreography to it. This is fantastic. I got to learn this piece. And then finally, who cares? Which is coming back this season in a modified form. Talk to you about that in a second. I was like, this is incredible because as a pianist I had a reprint of the original Gershwin Songbook, which George Balanchine had sitting on his bookshelf. The original Gershwin Songbook was published in 1932 because all of Gershwin's friends kept saying to him, these fantastic arrangements you play at these elite social gatherings every night, write them down so we can try and play them, too. Because, of course, there were no recording devices back then. You don't know what you pick on it, walk them in and tape it. He obliged, but the frustrating thing is that he only set down one chorus of I think it's 16 songs, so he didn't flesh them out. So Balanchine Sheen had that idea on one rainy Monday afternoon. Let me get Hershey Kay to flesh them out and add the intro, add verse, chorus, bridge, chorus out, and the second chorus would be the piano solo. So it was a fantastic way of giving life to this book, which otherwise just sits on bookshelves and looks pretty. It was published with these amazing kind of perverse illustrations as well by a Russian artist, obviously a friend of his, I guess. Anyway, the funniest thing is, years later, I'm now working at City Ballet and I meet Alastair McCauley. The one thing we disagree on is the Hershey K origin of who cares? I think it's adorable.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:12:06]:
And he hates well, I was just going to say, I don't know about controversial, but it definitely has its detractors. Some people are not fans. I wonder if that's just like the way that they grew up listening to those songs or they have like a nostalgic attachment to it in a specific way, whereas most of my associations with those songs are from the ballet. Right. I'm a fan of the K arrangement.
Andrew Litton [00:12:29]:
Exactly. So fast forward to 2023. We have this big gala coming up, and so I've hired composer Robert Miller. Oh, I should explain. We're adding voice to these songs. The seven songs. The eight songs. Sorry. That the soloists, the principals dance. We need a new arrangement, basically. And the constraints to the arranger is it has to fit this choreography, because the balance sheet stuff isn't going to change, but what you listen to is going to change. So it's fantastic. He's about halfway through them. Embraceable you. Sounds great. Vanessa Williams is going to be singing that.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:13:14]:
Wow.
Andrew Litton [00:13:16]:
Yeah.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:13:16]:
Okay. Who's doing a man I love. That's all I care.
Andrew Litton [00:13:20]:
I care about all of them, but Kelly O'Hara.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:13:24]:
Oh, wow.
Andrew Litton [00:13:25]:
Yeah.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:13:26]:
Star Power.
Andrew Litton [00:13:27]:
Exactly. No, it's going to be amazing. That was another one of the ballets, of course, that changed my life, as it were, because I actually made the first commercial recording of Who Cares? Of the Hershey K back in the mid 80s. In the mid 80s. So ballet, in a funny sort of way, was very influential at the beginning of my career, because my career started in 1982. I won a conducting competition while I was still at Juilliard. And that was it, suddenly, management. And six months later, just the week after I graduated, with my master's sitting around going, OK, now what? And the phone rings and it's the National Symphony in Washington calling, saying, our music director, Mr. Stalvrostropovich, wants you to come down and audition. We have an assistant conductor opening. So I went down and I got the job, which was so amazing, so moved away from New York for the first time in my life. Because, of course, when you go to Juilliard, you're mean there were no dorms back then? There were no dorms, so my friends used to give me grief. Oh, Litton. You live in an eight room apartment on Central Park West with two and help, meaning my parents, they didn't resent me or anything, but my mother ran a soup kitchen. She said bring whoever over. So she just fed all the everybody loved my mom. Anyway, there I am. 2014 is rolling along. I mean, I've run a bunch of different orchestras in my life, starting with Bournemouth in England for six years, dallas for twelve years, bergen, Norway, bergen Philharmonic for twelve years, colorado for five years. And actually, while I was in Colorado, I got the invitation from Peter Martin's to come and conduct Capella. And I thought, sure, I'll give it a you know, it's one of those pieces, actually, that for weeks after you finish conducting it, you're still singing the songs, the tunes. It's nasty in that way. You can't get it out of your head. But I had so much fun. It was just a weekend with four performances. My capellas were Tyler Peck and Megan Fairchild. So couldn't be two nicer people to break me in, as it were. And Joaquin got injured. So Andy Valett wound up dancing the male lead in all of the performances. And it was really fun. And so that was February, and I guess in June my ministry gets a call saying they'd like to offer you the job. And so my first actual conducting, because I had so much work still in the calendar was not until the 2015 Nutcracker and we do 48 Nutcrackers, but whoever opens it gets the rehearsal. It was really fun. And I think a lot of old and not so great habits.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:16:36]:
Can we talk about that a little? Because there was a New York Times article where you were talking about your first Nutcracker. And you know, this music has been played for centuries. How are you breathing new life into something like Nutcracker that everyone's so familiar with?
Andrew Litton [00:16:50]:
Well, one of the things to remember is Nutcrackers by somebody. It's by Tchaikovsky. And I've had the great privilege of I've recorded all the Tchaikovsky symphonies, including Manfred, way back at the beginning of my career and performed them many times. Conducted Eugene and Yeagen at the met. So it's not just coming to Nutcracker like it's a static piece. It's part of this huge, incredible output that this genius composer gave us. And so there's certain stylistic needs in Tchaikovsky. When he writes a woodwind solo, a line, it tells a story. Just think of the oboe solos in Sean Lake. Gorgeous. And he also was going through things cyclically. So at exactly the same time as he's giving the oboe this huge part in Swan Lake he also wrote the Fourth Symphony which has a huge oboe solo in the second movement. So it's clear that this sound was something that was capturing him at that moment. And, I mean, that's almost meaningless except that when you start approaching all the music as being from one source and having a sense of style to it, it creates a different understanding. So one of the things that I was surprised at is Waltz of the Flowers, one of the, I think, greatest waltz has ever written. And I'm including the entire Strauss family on this. I mean, it's just extraordinary waltz. And the French horns are going. And I'm like, no. Okay. There's no slur over it. Which would be they're lines. And in Tchaikovsky, lines means you sustain the sound to the next note. But there's a front. So I came up with this one of those. You can't believe you've thought of this because, God, you must be a genius. How did you think of this at the moment? But sometimes one is just blessed, as you know, and come up with a great idea. And I said, this is by Balanchine. This is his nutcracker ballet. And you see how the longer notes Balanchine and I sang it to them. And they're all it took me three years to get rid of that, to get the habit. And it's funny because you go to conductivity orchestra in this music and they just naturally play a long line because it's a lyrical line. It's not notice, right? So that was one tiny tip of the iceberg. But there were lots of things and of course, I have to be honest, I'd been conducting and following sound by the time I got this job for 37 years. But suddenly to be following sight, it is a completely different set of chops. And so it was a very steep learning curve. I think early on, the dancers were rolling their eyes and going, oh, my God. Oh, no, not litton. Can we have one of the other people? But the good news is, I think I know how music goes. And so it was just a question of knowing how to put the music to the dance.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:19:54]:
Right?
Andrew Litton [00:19:55]:
And it's a much more comfortable place now for me. I understand the dance steps and I understand what they need. And there's great differences between when you need to follow a dancer and when they really kind of need to follow you, right? The biggest thing for me that I bring to the table is after all these years as an orchestra conductor, so much of our repertoire is concert music, concert hall music, not ballet. It started life as a concert hall piece. And so for me, I come in with that perspective and say to the repertory director really should go a little bit faster by the second show. Do you think I can push it forward a little bit in this particular passage? And I've gotten them so that they'll come up to me and said, okay, go by the second or third show. And it's fantastic watching them fly around the stage. And then I come upstairs and I'm expecting dirty looks. And they said that was.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:20:58]:
You know, that's what they're trained for. That's what they like to I mean, I want to get into some of the details of what the musical repertoire is at New York City Valley. But I know exactly on joke about classical music and I thought maybe you would be amused by it. How many symphonies did Tchaikovsky compose? Three. The fourth, fifth and 6th. It's a joke. Like, I guess that the first three are not thought to be as. They're not masterworks on the same level as the fourth, fifth and 6th. But the Third Symphony is what Balanchine used for diamonds. And Balanchine chose to use Tchaikovsky's Second Piano Concerto versus the first, which was very popular. So some of the things that are in the repertoire aren't necessarily like go to know Baroko is really it for bach never touched Beethoven. So sometimes the musical rep isn't I don't know. I guess if you're being snobby, maybe it's not top drawer or you have things like agon that isn't going to be played in a concert hall or things like Biz Symphony and C, that Balanchine sort of maybe resurrected. Even though they're great musical works, it's not necessarily like the greatest hits of classical music. So what is that like, conducting some of those works? And how do you bring out the best of those?
Andrew Litton [00:22:22]:
Well, it's so ironic, some of the things names you mentioned, Tchaikovsky, third I call the Underdog Symphony, was the first one I recorded when I was recording all the Tchaikovsky symphonies with Bournemouth, because I believe in it so much. So the one thing I'm sad at is that he didn't bother with the first movement, Balanchine, because I really love the rest of the piece. And you've got to approach those early Tchaikovsky's with just complete abandon and take no prisoners. And I'm not apologizing for this. It's got to have that feeling. And I think Balanchine knew that. So that's why I think the choreography improved the music, even. And that's the key. A lot of the repertoire you mentioned, the Balanchine, has helped its shelf life. Nobody knew BZ Symphony and C till the 50s when he got a hold of it, and suddenly, how many times a year do we play it alone? And orchestras and ballet companies all over the world have jumped on the bandwagon because it's actually a beautiful piece, even though he wrote it when he was 19 and as a school exercise, it's kind of incredible. Agon absolutely. The one thing that attracted me so much to this job, because after doing same 40 pieces again and again, to come into a company where I suddenly had to learn agon and Symphony of Three Movements, one of my I love Symphony of Three Movements, that was one.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:23:50]:
Of the it's our favorite ballet. Rebecca and I, we did like March Madness for Balanchine ballets and you always think Serenade's going to come out on top, but we didn't look at each other as we shared it. At the end. We both picked Symphony and it's just amazing, it's just perfect.
Andrew Litton [00:24:10]:
It is. And I'll never forget the first time I was going to get to conduct it. There was a party of some sort of reception the day before and I ran into Barbara Horgan and I said, I'm so excited. Tomorrow is my first symphony in three. And she said, do you know, he was driving everybody crazy when he created it because he couldn't figure out the counts. And then Peter Martin corroborated that later, he said, it was two weeks before and he's still changing his mind and we're going crazy. And he finally walked in one morning, apparently two weeks before the premiere, was smiling and says, I got it, I got it. So what's fascinating for me is because the dance counts have nothing to do with the printed page of the music, sure. But he, of course, could read music. He was a very fine pianist. So it's like something obviously inside his amazing brain just said, no, my one is going to be on the third beat of this part. It's like we feel it. So sometimes we actually, literally have to start halfway through a measure at dance rehearsals so that we're with them.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:25:18]:
Is that common in some balancing ballets? Have you noticed where the dancers have different counts? Like you're saying he does read music. Is it corresponding with what you're looking at?
Andrew Litton [00:25:27]:
It's more common in the later compositions, the Stravinsky's. But to think we recently tried to recreate the Stravinsky Festival that he did in 1972. I guess it was or was it 73? I don't know.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:25:44]:
72.
Andrew Litton [00:25:45]:
72.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:25:46]:
Yeah, I know.
Andrew Litton [00:25:50]:
I think I did 16 ballets, but that was nothing, aside of what they did in one week. This is over two weeks back then. And of course, they were all new. We only had one or two new things, so it just must have been insane. But to have come out of that. The Violin Concerto Symphony and three and duo concertant is already a yield like anybody would dream about, any choreographer would dream about. I love the opportunity to work on a ballet from scratch with the choreographers, because there's much more give and take. And also you can establish what the tempos are really going to be, rather than being told later it needs to be this. And so there's a wonderful sense of interaction. I had great time with Chris Wieldon, his latest ballet, which was set to Sternberg's for Kaepernick, until I tested positive. So I did all the pre rehearsals, the orchestra rehearsals, and that was a total bummer. But working now with Alexei Ratmansky on choosing music for his next ballet, I don't want to tell you more because I think he's still know toying between a couple of ideas, but brilliant ideas, Shimanovsky and Franc and composers that, again, like Balanchine, are underrepresented in the orchestra pit and the concert stage. So I think it's a very wise thing, in a way, to take music, maybe lesser known works by great composers, because there's still something in there that made them great composers. And so what I love about City Ballet is the chance to conduct these works multiple times, like Stravinsky Violin Guccaro I probably did in Concert Hall three times in my career, and now suddenly I'm doing it eight times a season. And it's a phenomenal piece. We got great violinists, so all of that stuff makes it really exciting and rewarding. There was another ballet. Oh, the most fun though I have when I do little lectures about the musical side of the business and ballet is concerto Baroco. Because Balanchine was really astute as to what the tempo he knew what the tempo should be, whether in the process he added a few more steps to make it impossible to actually do that tempo in whatever piece it's conceivable. But when Balanchine did his iconic concerto Baroko we had no idea what authentic instrument practice was going to teach us about the performance of Bach and Baroque music. So he was probably listening to a Fort Vangler recording from the 50s when he came up with this. Right, sorry, I have a terrible voice and I then will put on Hillary Hahn from 2014 and it's can you imagine? No, like that. But that wasn't Balanchine's fault. We didn't know it took literally the teach us, all these learned scholars instructed us, no, it's been wrong all these years. The 19th century messed up performance practice of Baroque music. And so I'm still a dinosaur. I love the old fashioned stuff. I don't mind taking these ridiculously so Bach tempos, but that's the only place where he and Innocently completely got the tempo wrong. And again innocent.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:29:32]:
Well, I remember there was some sort of I think it was in Jennifer Holman's book they were writing about I think it was Serenade that Tchaikovsky wrote the tempo in a specific way, but then they kind of guessed that he had flipped a number. I don't know how this I'm a musical novice here, but let's say it's meant to be like, I don't know, let's say 127, but it was written as 172 or something. And then they were like, it couldn't be that we're just going to flip it. I feel like there are instances where he was willing to take some liberty. Well, I mean, of course, flipping Elegy and the Russian section, why didn't he use the first section of the Third Symphony? That sort of thing. Right.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:30:21]:
And how do you feel about that? Because this was one thing we talked with Alastair about and Alistair McAuley put us in touch, which is so great. So we're able to speak with you today. And when we talked to him about Serena, that was one of the things we were talking about the musical changes. And he was kind of saying, like, what would.
Andrew Litton [00:30:40]:
I think? I think Tchaikovsky, who, by the way, took criticism I mean, he was always criticized by his friends, by his colleagues reasonably well, for know he was the greater genius than all of them put together. But I think because Balanchine had so much respect for him, they would have been friends had they lived at the same time. And I think Tchaikovsky would have worked well with him. I have absolutely no doubt that he would not have minded the flipping of the movements because he didn't write it as a ballet, he wrote it as a piece of music. But you turn it into a ballet. And of course, as we watch this iconic ballet, another iconic ballet, you can't imagine it the other way around with a triumphant ending. So Balanchine sean makes this change. He also adds a repeat in the waltz, which is maybe Naughtier, even. But the interesting thing, I think that maybe Alastair was referring to. Is I own a DVD of in the Late Fifty S. The company went up to Canada and filmed a bunch of balance ballet with the CBC Symphony. And there's a performance of Serenade where instead of the loud ending of the first movement, there's this big demiguendo, and he actually leaves out the last bar. There's no last. And then the couple is together and they go, it's absolutely beautiful, it makes so much sense. Instead of this loud, crashy string sound, it's just so I mentioned it to everybody, including Alistair, and they let me do it that way for one season. Balanchine Trust came back and uh uh, put it Bach. But it was really interesting. Everybody's like, wow, that's really interesting. I don't think they liked it better. But the point is that at one point Balanchine tried this and I just thought it would be neat for everybody to hear it, including myself, in the context of the choreography.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:32:54]:
I'm mad that I missed that and that it's going in the fall and it's not going to be there because I'm a big Balanchine bunhead. But I don't know that I'm a purist in the sense that I don't always feel like we need to only see the last thing he ever did, like his last decision on anything. So I would love to see that, but I guess I'll be missing it. Sometimes when you get the thwack, it feels like it feels a little dead in the water before you move into the next section. Right, exactly. But if you have that serenity yeah.
Andrew Litton [00:33:28]:
You see, so it sort of, I thought, just morphed into this waltz much more cohesively with the visual, but the computer said no.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:33:43]:
I wonder from your very first performance with New York City Ballet of Copellia till now, what are some of the biggest lessons that you've learned about dance and conducting for dance?
Andrew Litton [00:33:53]:
Well, the biggest lessons I've learned is what I'm looking at, because before, as you can imagine, just looking at it, oh, they're so pretty. That's so nice. Look at that. It's like going to the Rockettes, for crying out loud. But then you get your chops together, you learn what a Fuete is and do I follow them or do they follow me? And all that sort of stuff. And of course, it's also piece dependent. And as I said to you earlier, it's a concert piece. I weigh in a little bit more heavily than if it's Sean Lake or Sleeping Beauty, because those are ballet. Ballet. And I feel that it's like conducting del Canto opera what the soprano wants, soprano gets, and in ballet, what the prima ballerina wants, she. So what I've learned is there's much more give and take, tempo wise, interpretively than I first thought. It's just we've had to learn to communicate with each other because dancers don't know how to speak music and musicians don't know how to speak dance. We certainly don't know physically what it feels like to do what you guys are doing. To sort of learn that vicariously is part of the process that has now made it a lot easier for me to do my job and feel like I'm not being embarrassing in any way but to actually I used to tell Tyler Peck, I love you so much because you make me look good, that's.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:35:37]:
We had a couple of conversations recently. We were talking to, for instance, Janie Taylor about this wild time where she had to basically improvise on stage a whole know, we love those moments of live theater and they certainly happen in the pit as pianist. We were just talking about this rebecca and I were talking about this earlier. Like our pianist, in the middle of a performance of California that we were doing, his sheet music blew away because, you know, in Florida, that AC is always this this pianist is pretty unflappable. But I remember him practicing that score every morning. He was like, this is the hardest thing. You have no idea. And so for that to be the valley where his sheep away and he's just like but I'm sure you have stories like that where you're conducting and something just goes awry and you have to just on the fly go with it and correct it or whatnot.
Andrew Litton [00:36:31]:
Well, the funniest thing recently was nutcracker. This past year I came in late in the run and we have a new pianist, who's fantastic, by the way. She's going to be playing Shike Two when it comes this year, but we use a synthesizer for the boys chorus at this. Most companies do, right. We've been working on it since I got there and I'm sure way before me to try and make it actually sound like voice and not a stupid synthesizer, right? We finally got it so that it actually sounds really good. The balance is right in the house. So I turned to give her the first cue and somebody had hit a button and it went boop boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop boop. It was instead of getting mad, you just start laughing. I was roaring with laughter and the snow's flakes are just like, what the and of course, she's just a pianist, she didn't know what push fix it. That will never happen again because she's been trained now and what to push and make sure. But that was hysterical and nobody got hurt.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:37:53]:
I'm sure those snowflakes were happy. They were like a change, something to think about.
Andrew Litton [00:37:59]:
Well, they're looking and laughing down at me like it was my fault.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:38:07]:
That's pretty good.
Andrew Litton [00:38:08]:
Hysterical. Yeah. I don't usually go up till the end, but I went up on stage afterwards and explained, so it was fun, but that's mean. Otherwise there isn't really thankfully fortunately, nothing catastrophic has happened so far.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:38:24]:
One of our biggest stories Michael and I were talking about, too, was during Symphony in Three for us, someone who was supposed to be keeping the bass. At that moment, our count fell asleep or something and wasn't there. And so our pianist started trying to play what that was supposed to be, but then he was missing the piano and everyone was on stage, like three, four.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:38:48]:
So chaotic. I think it just like bottomed out. It's in the middle of the six principals dance we call Row, Row, Row Your Boat because of the step you do, but it was just like you go it's a rest. Right before that right before row your boat yeah, and then it was just like they just didn't come back in because it was so chaotic and disorganized and we're just like okay, I guess we do now we just have to go with it.
Andrew Litton [00:39:12]:
Oh my gosh. No. There's fun things though that I've gotten involved with visually that I feel kind of good about because for example, in the infernal dance in Firebird, at one point the kids who are running around do claps, but they were doing one more than the music. And I said to Rosemary, there is no way Jerry would have choreographed for twelve of those, they're only eleven. And she said, oh. And so then I had to teach everybody the correct and what's so funny is you can't even really hear it because they have costumes on but it's the visual. There's no way he was smart enough to know there's only eleven. The other thing was when we were doing Symphony and Three, I noticed that there's only so long you can hold the last chord but they were getting to the final pose of the first movement late and I kept saying can't they start turning sooner? And it will work. So I managed to achieve that and I also said, please drop the curtain 2 seconds later because it starts to come down, people start to clap. But that freeze is part of the visual. You don't realize that not only has the chord stopped, there's still a rhythm going, obviously, but the music has sort of frozen too, even though it's still going. But the visual to actually register that it's over. I think it's so much more telling if the curtain comes down just a second or two later. That's the only time I open my mouth otherwise that's important, it's collaboration, that's very important. And the greatest thing is every night walking out into the pit, looking up at that gold curtain and saying we're going to change lives. And we do.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:41:03]:
You do. I think so many of us remember our very first performance in that theater and it changes the course of your life.
Andrew Litton [00:41:14]:
Yeah. And I can see the faces in the first row because if I turn around because both stage light illuminates them and there's just always like awe, there's never.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:41:29]:
Well, maybe before we wrap up, could you tell us over the course of the next year which is the 75th anniversary of the New York City Ballet. So that programming is pretty bonkers. I want to see everything. But maybe what you're most looking forward to conducting this year.
Andrew Litton [00:41:46]:
Well, I'm opening the season, doing all the Jules's. My favorite experience with that was when one summer, the Paris Opera Ballet Company and the Bolshe came over and we swapped. But I was same conductor. It was fascinating working with these two other companies. And Peter was know he kept wanting to fix stuff. Peter, calm down.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:42:18]:
You have to let it fine.
Andrew Litton [00:42:19]:
There are guests. But that was love. I love doing the also one of the later seasons, which is Spring. It must be midsummer. I love Balladin's. Midsummer. It's so great. But I'm looking forward to Tyler Peck's new ballet because it's her first ballet for us. And like I say, I love working with her. But she's chosen a challenging piece, pulenc two piano contrado, which is challenging for us, getting two pianos in the pit. But I think that's going to be a very exciting show. And that's it. I mean, otherwise I'm doing the Return of Bouray fantask, which I'm looking forward to.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:43:07]:
My favorite.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:43:08]:
We love that ballet.
Andrew Litton [00:43:10]:
Nobody knows it here. It's been a long time.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:43:12]:
We did it.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:43:16]:
We did a lot in Miami, but we did it in another at Lincoln Center. Oh, yeah. We performed it in New York at the State Theater. Well, I call it the State Theater. Still.
Andrew Litton [00:43:25]:
It will always be the State Theater.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:43:29]:
But there's a perfect example of maybe Balanchine. He's not always right about his own work.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:43:35]:
He lets out fall out of rep.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:43:37]:
And we love that ballet.
Andrew Litton [00:43:39]:
That is cool now. So that's basically it. I just am very excited to go back to work. And August is boring. Very excited about it.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:43:55]:
Yeah. Thank you so much for your time. This was so much fun getting to chat with you. We love to hear the other side, different perspective. It's really fun for us. So thank you so much for joining us today.
Andrew Litton [00:44:05]:
My pleasure. Thanks so much for your interest in asking.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:44:08]:
Thank you so much.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:44:16]:
Conversations on Dance is part of the Acas creator network. For more information, visit Conversations on dance pod.com.