music

Interview with Ming Luke

A conductor and educator for young and old.

In ramping up for the Berkeley Symphony’s new season, which opens Thursday, October 3, it is timely to highlight one of the Symphony’s less profiled programs, but one that has a life-changing impact on many lives. That is, their award-winning Music in the Schools program. Led by Education Director Ming Luke, this program brings stellar musicians into every classroom, and then takes those students through to performance with the entire Berkeley Symphony.

The Berkeley Times caught up with busy conductor Ming Luke by phone last week for a fascinating chat, while he was in Yountville getting ready for rehearsals with Symphony Napa Valley. His first concert with them will be their gala and grand opening on September 21, when they will perform Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite and Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 5, the “Reformation,” as well as arias with star mezzo Denyce Graves and local favorite soprano Marnie Breckenridge. Titled “The Phoenix Rises” in deference to the Firebird, it is also a strong program appropriate for the resurrection of Yountville’s Lincoln Theater and Napa Valley’s symphony.

Asked about the variety of his commitments, Luke replied, “I work at various ensembles but don’t like being pigeonholed. I do community chorus, opera, symphony, ballet and education.”

We spoke longest about his role as a champion for music education. “The Berkeley Symphony was one of the first orchestras to have an educational program, and one of the first to have a collaboration with a school district,” Luke said.

Ming Luke- photo by Angela Landrigan“The essence of the program is to humanize the musicians and show students that these are regular people, like when students see their teachers in the supermarket. No, these musicians don’t walk around with tails all day. They wear jeans, and talk about their backgrounds and that they even used to go to elementary schools! This is a year-round age-based standards-based program, and the students get to see them a number of times in a curriculum that changes over the years.

“Like one year we did [a curriculum based on] American History, and showed them the melting pot… of African American music and the marches of Sousa combined with the syncopation of Scott Joplin, and how that gave rise to Dixieland, and you could see the various peoples coming together.

“We do a “Meet the Symphony” concert at each school and then they have visits from musicians from the Berkeley Symphony into every classroom in each of the eleven elementary schools.”

He went on to describe their music program: the kindergartners all sing, the first and second grade students make their own percussion instruments, the third graders learn recorder, and the fourth and fifth graders choose and study instruments. At the final “I am a Performer” concert all of the students come together onstage with the Berkeley Symphony.

“At Rosa Parks Elementary we had 400 students playing with us! One year we did Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, the famous “Ode to Joy.” They played the chorus and we played the music that accompanies the vocal score.”

At 25 years old, this program is a result of Maestro Kent Nagano’s early commitment to popularizing music along the lines of Leonard Bernstein.

I had an opportunity to hear Luke’s love of education last Monday as he rehearsed a rather different age group, the Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra (BCCO). These 210 singers, many in their fifties and sixties, welcome every level of skill, and are so popular that there is a long waiting list to join. After only one year at their helm, Ming organized and took them on a tour of Eastern Europe, where they performed in Budapest, Prague and Vienna this past summer.

Asked how he dealt with the range of his singers’ experience, he replied, “Music should be available for everyone, whether they’ve been singing… for twenty years or never! Education is simply getting people excited about music.” His own excitement and humor were visible in rehearsal, where he stood on a podium shouting into a microphone, surrounded by a sea of singers.

When they sang ‘sweet touches of harmony,’ he admonished, “Not ‘touch-uhs,’ but taaaah-chaahs.’ It sounds weird spoken but it is so gorgeous sung. “And not ‘harrrrmony,” he demonstrated, bristling and biting down on the ‘r’, but ‘haaah-monee’… beautiful… and again… beautiful… and again…Beautiful! All r’s get changed to schwas!”

His commentary reflected aspects of pronunciation, stress, dynamics, pitch and entrances, so that they could polish a phrase and hear how lovely it was when it came together. While his advice was suitable for beginners, he never talked down to the group, but assumed that they could get the most advanced concepts. “Such harmony is in immortal souls…This is what Mahler does a lot, slow crescendos… it’s a super crescendo over three beats, but make sure it doesn’t become pedantic.”

Then they started working Oseh Shalom Bimromav. “Make sure the vowel doesn’t change. Not ‘ooohaaahooo’ [scooping]. Sounds like you’re reaching out of the sand to grab somebody. (laughter) Can we do it again? Much better. Can we do it again? Much better!”

“I’m getting a sustain without the energy, and it gives it the consistency of cooked spaghetti!”

In the fugue, he looked at the basses and suggested, “Rich, full… and fatherly!” The mature men needed no further explanation on expressing a dignified certainty, even when wrestling with quick wayward notes. And about raising the pitch, he turned to the altos and then came to a full stop, thought for a second, and said, “This is a structural thing. When a piano plays a note and you are below the pitch, just hear the piano and think, Boy, is that piano flat!… and again?…Beautiful!” He made a gesture like turning a key in his head.

After rehearsing a final crescendo, he commented, “You know, I don’t want to be jumping around on the podium, waving my arms and dragging you up the crescendo. It’s supposed to be a quiet inner strength, growing from within. Can we do it again?” They did it again, accompanying his small gestures with eight-part harmonies that bloomed like roses in the desert.

If you would like to catch up with Ming Luke, his busy calendar includes conducting the San Jose Opera in Verdi’s Falstaff on Sept. 15 and 17, and then a gala opening of the Symphony Napa Valley on Sept. 21, as their new principal conductor and artistic director. This October he will be conducting the SF Ballet Orchestra at Lincoln Center, and then returning to conduct several ballet programs in SF. He recently toured with them to Moscow and London.

Ming Luke-signatureOn Nov.16, 22 and 24 he will conduct the Berkeley Community Chorus in their fall program, with Gounod’s St Cecilia Mass and Oseh Shalom Bimromav by Young Composer Competition winner Michael Schachter. And throughout the year he will be acting as assistant conductor of the Berkeley Symphony, where he rehearses musicians and runs the extensive educational arm, leading concerts at every one of Berkeley’s eleven elementary schools.

—Adam Broner

Photo of Ming Luke by Angela Landrigan