Four trombonists for the St. Louis Symphony look to you for help

When I am at concerts such as the Niagara Symphony throughout the year, I am often asked if the orchestra has any recordings available and if so, do I have any available for purchase.  As I explain to people who ask, issuing a disc of any type, but especially classical, is an expensive proposition.  As such, new recordings are becoming fewer and far between.

Individual artists can often produce a recording in a home studio should they choose to and handle a lot of the production and post-production duties themselves or with the help of others, and contract the actual manufacture of the disc out to another organization.  Many don't even bother and offer the recording as an MP3 download through their website.  For these musicians, the modern digital age can have some advantages over the old days.

With classical music, and especially recordings of larger-scale orchestral works with full orchestra, this model often is simply not a viable option.  While many larger orchestras in North America and Europe have resorted to issuing recordings themselves of live performances on their own labels (the London Symphony Orchestra in the U.K. is a prime example), many other competent, quality orchestras are left in the musical lurch.

There was a time such record companies like Sony, RCA and others would issue a recording contract to an orchestra and cover the expenses of recording the ensemble for commercial release.  More often than not, the recorded work was a tried-and-true classical warhorse guaranteed to generate at least some sort of return on their investment.  These recording costs could easily top $100,000 or more, depending on the ensemble, venue and repertoire being recorded.  That means they need to sell an awful lot of discs in order to turn a profit.  In this day and age, that is no longer guaranteed.

In the past several years we have seen the OSM (Montreal Symphony Orchestra) lose their lucrative Decca recording contract, for example, largely due to the expense of recording such a large ensemble.  Even the Toronto Symphony has not recorded widely in recent years for the same reason.

One logical alternative many orchestras now turn to, including the Buffalo Philharmonic, for example, is to jump on the Naxos bandwagon in order to record new discs.  Naxos has always specialized in recording works off the beaten path as well as tried-and-true standards; the catch as I understand it is they forego the paying of royalties and pay out a flat fee for the recording session itself and then the ensemble is left out of revenue generated by sales of those same recordings.  But they do get their recordings out there and for many, that is better than nothing.  At least they are recording and they get some money out of it at the start.

Enter into this situation the four trombonists of the St. Louis Symphony, who this past January pooled their resources, rehearsed and worked with recording engineer Paul Eachus of Oberlin Conservatory for three solid days of recording on the stage of the E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall at Washington University to produce their new album, Fleur de Lis.  To give you an idea how much work is involved in producing just this one disc, they spent 20 hours in the studio and had over 500 takes in order to get the recording just right.  Granted, this is not a full orchestra recording we are talking here, but that's a lot of studio time and that costs a lot of money!

So the four, Tim, Jonathan, Vanessa and Gerry have launched a Kickstarter campaign on Facebook in order to seek out investors willing to make a financial contribution, however small, to the campaign to help pay for the project.  You can find the page by using this link:

http://www.facebook.com/l/jAQEYohyBAQHU3qQlrXTPjUxKwebwMCmNN6Djfa4ALfHbug/www.kickstarter.com/projects/1655885023/fleur-de-lis-the-trombones-of-the-st-louis-symphon

As they point out in their Facebook posting, time is of the essence here.  The campaign only runs until September 5th and with the St. Louis Symphony season set to begin in September, they have to get the rest of the work done on the disc soon.  As of today as I write this, they have 125 backers at a variety of  pledge levels, with the total pledged now exceeding the $ 6,000.00 goal by over a thousand dollars.  Your pledge can be from $ 5 to over a $ 1,000.00 and you can do so by following the instructions on the page.

As an incentive, you can receive thank-you gifts ranging from digital tracks from the new disc to a hard copy along with an invitation to their Fleur de Lis CD Release Party in St. Louis on September 10th.  Of course, you have to get to St. Louis yourself, but it is a nice gesture!

The disc is comprised almost entirely of works written for the four by St. Louis-based composers or arranged by the group to showcase the group's versatility.  That means everything from Hindemith piano fugues to Bruckner vocal motets to even the Magic Flute Overture by Mozart, all arranged and performed on trombones.

Incidentally, the significance of the Fleur de Lis title is reflected in the fact it is a symbol of St. Louis' French heritage.  The fleur de lis is everywhere in local architecture and even the city flag, which I for one did not know.

Now, there is a local connection to all this, which is why I am writing about it.  The principal trombone for the Niagara Symphony, Steve Fralick, sent me the link to this campaign earlier this month; his daughter Vanessa is one of those four trombonists and you might be aware of the fact she will be coming north to ply her trade with the Toronto Symphony in the near future.  Make no bones about it, Vanessa is the real deal, and she along with her talented colleagues in St. Louis are looking to all of us to help with a very ambitious project.

Give it some thought...are you in?

August 23rd, 2013.