James Gaffigan speaks about the Verbier Festival Junior Orchestra in Le Quotidien interview
Verbier Festival Junior Orchestra 2023 (Lucien Grandjean)
James Gaffigan, who has worked for some of the world's leading opera and concert houses, has also been musical director of the Verbier Festival Junior Orchestra (VFJO) since 2021. He is currently at Les Combins, with the orchestra and violinist Nicola Benedetti, in a program combining Richard Strauss's Don Juan and Wynton Marsalis's Violin Concerto.
James Gaffigan, these young people come from very different backgrounds, and you've only had a few weeks to work with them. How do you build the sound of the VFJO?
The most important thing for me is to get the young people to understand their role in the orchestra and how they interact with each other. Like chamber music, a symphonic orchestra requires listening to others and blending in with them. The magic formula is the combination of talent and the desire to play together. The sound comes in addition. Admittedly, we don't have a lot of time to put together the three concerts, but the young people of the VFJO have a very exciting quality for a musical director: they arrive with no preconceptions or habits. They don't have ten Scheherazade or five Rake's Progress performed under one conductor or another behind them. They're eager for feedback and incredibly receptive. For me, it's exhilarating. It's like drawing on a blank sheet of paper.
James Gaffigan (Lucien Grandjean)
How did you choose the works for this summer?
From Rimsky-Korsakov to Marsalis to Richard Strauss, I've chosen composers who are all extraordinary orchestrators. Through them, young people discover a great diversity of styles. Scheherazade's textures are shimmering, with lots of solos. Richard Strauss's Don Juan introduces a more complex harmonic language, albeit with a touch of unwieldiness. Marsalis, on the other hand, takes the youngsters into the world of jazz, totally new to most of them. Finally, Stravinsky is undoubtedly the most difficult composer. The score of The Rake's Progress is clear and precise, in a language close to that of Haydn or Mozart, but at the same time atonal, with very strange harmonies. With this work, most of the young people discover the genre of opera, which adds complexity and beauty. With the singers, they discover breathing and natural phrasing. This is particularly decisive for strings, which do not have the constraint of breath to play. Any instrument is like the voice of its player. Breathing and phrasing are essential.
How do you work with them when you approach a piece?
It all depends on the circumstances. This year, when we tackled Don Juan, the orchestra managed to pull everything together on the first reading. It was unbelievable! But they did it!
Generally speaking, I work in minute detail, then come back to the work as a whole. Extreme precision and broad strokes, working and letting go: that's how I work with them. For me, the back-and-forth between these two poles is the very foundation of any musician's work.
Your work with the VFJO is part of a very intense career, divided between symphonic concerts and operas. How do you balance these two repertoires?
Both are indispensable to me. I couldn't do without symphonies by Mahler or Bruckner, or operas by Mozart or Wagner. As for the Verbier experience, it's a natural extension of my work with young people at Tanglewood, Aspen and the Juilliard School. The Verbier Festival is a very special place: young people are part of its ecosystem. Just as nature needs sun, earth, water and seeds, Verbier needs the VFJO, which is the ferment of the future.
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