G.P.

When you are a conductor with an international career (or just an international man/woman of mystery) jet lag might become a constant companion to you. Before starting to conduct I did not travel much, and the concept of jet lag did not have any meaning to me. My first long haul flight was in 2005 when I flew from Finland to South Korea (7 time zones east) to take part in the Suwon International Conductors Competition. From that trip I have no special recollection of suffering from jet lag - granted, my body was younger then and I probably spent most of the nights studying my scores anyway!

The next year I traveled to the US for the first time, to take part in the sixth Vakhtang Jordania Conducting Competition in Chattanooga, TN (8 time zones west from Finland). On the day of my arrival I did feel the effects, wanting to crawl in my bed much earlier than usual. Luckily the competition did not start for another day still, and the next day my wonderful hosts (who were experienced travelers themselves) took me sight seeing and I got to spend the whole day outdoors in bright sunlight. From that on spending a day outdoors in good company has been one of my favorite remedies against jet lag!

In 2009 my transatlantic travels suddenly multiplied when I took part in the Aspen Music Festival and School in Colorado, and had a guest conducting engagement in South Africa in the middle of the festival. First thing I noticed was that traveling west did not cause a jet lag this time, probably due to the amount of sunshine and pure mountain air in Aspen. But the most bizarre observation was that after traveling from Aspen to Cape Town (which took me 35 hours including the stupidly long layovers!) I recovered from jet lag in one day, no more!

I had arrived in Cape Town early in the morning after an overnight flight from London, and I was rushed directly to an orchestra rehearsal in nearby town of Stellenbosch. I had absolutely no time to rest or adjust, and during the whole rehearsal I was in a kind of haze and thought the lighting in the room was really bad since I could not see my scores properly (in retrospect, probably the lighting was OK and I was just a "little" tired). After that I was taken to my lodgings and had barely time for a short nap before I was taken back to Cape Town to rehearse the chorus for one of the pieces in my repertoire. After I got back to my room I just crashed on the bed and did not wake up before 8AM the next morning. And guess what - when I woke up I felt fresh as a flower! Since then, working all day became another of my natural remedies against jet lag.

After starting in my job with The Cleveland Orchestra last year I have crossed the Atlantic for dozens of times already, and to ensure functionality in all circumstances I have had to pay more attention to jet lag. I admit, while I get older and/or my work load gets bigger, recovering from jet lag has become slower, especially when traveling east. Traveling west is not problematic at all with a little commonsensical planning, and that is what I will write about in my next post.

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Leah Nelson playing the Shostakovich violin concerto

Last week I had the pleasure to return to the Cleveland Institute of Music and perform a highly demanding program with the young musicians. I wrote earlier about my previous concert with them, and fruits of that labor can be heard on the Instant Encore website.

This time the program was Smetana's overture to Bartered Bride, Shostakovich 1st Violin concerto and the 5th symphony of Jean Sibelius. All of them pose a challenge even to a good professional orchestra! Anyway, like the last time, the students made remarkable progress during the week and by the concert it sounded better than many of the professional orchestras I have worked with. The overture was simply smashing, and Leah Nelson was shining as the soloist for the Shostakovich.

Sibelius was the most challenging of the works being totally new to vast majority of the players, but gradually everyone seemed to find themselves at home in this wildly original score. This was the second time I conducted this work and I was happy to find so many new and interesting details in the score. The next chance to work on those findings will come soon enough, when I will perform this piece next spring with the Jyväskylä Sinfonia.

Our concert got a nice review on Lincoln in Cleveland, and it was also broadcast on WCLV. Hopefully we will find parts of it later on Instant Encore like the last time!