Bonjour et bonne année!

The better part of three weeks has been spent in France, two of them getting to know my new orchestra and city.

But first, it was a little holiday. I must have been coming to this country for 40 years now, but there is very little that I have had time to enjoy simply as a tourist. Sure, I had been on the Bateaux Mouche and went up the Eiffel Tower, but rarely when I had some free time.

When we last left off, the Detroit Symphony strike had entered its third month. Now the winter solstice was approaching. This year, it coincides with a lunar eclipse.

“It’s a ritual of transformation from darkness into light,” says Nicole Cooper, a high priestess at Toronto’s Wiccan Church of Canada. “It’s the idea that when things seem really bleak, it is often our biggest opportunity for personal transformation.”

The majority of you reading this will not know the name, but you have been a part of her world. Deb was my assistant in Detroit. She was responsible for almost every aspect of my professional life.

She kept track of where I was supposed to be and worked with managers, artists and musicians from around the world. Every time I wrote something for this site, it was her hand that dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s.

Weather forecast. Stormy with little chance of sun. Temperatures remain chilly throughout the month. Expect a break in the clouds if the pressure lets up.

The strike dragged into its second month and I continued to keep quiet. But this did not mean that I did nothing. Very few days went by while I was in Detroit, when I did not speak with board members, urging them to help find a way out of this. Most said they missed the orchestra but needed to hold firm. The indication was that when a settlement was reached, purse strings might open once again.

Last month I wrote that I did not feel it was the place of a music director to comment on any labor dispute taking place with his or her orchestra. The musicians of the Detroit Symphony went on strike at the beginning of the month, causing the cancellation of the season opening as well as the concerts for the remainder of the month. There remains uncertainty as to when we will get back to work. Until that time, I will maintain silence on the matter.

In the meantime, there were other musical assignments on my calendar for the second half of October.

Fall is upon us, and another concert season awaits. Here in Detroit, the orchestra is in negotiations regarding a new contract. It is not the place of a music director to get involved with either side, so I will not comment on the situation other than to say that I hope by the time you are reading this, a resolution has occurred. There is nothing better for us than to be making music.

In the meantime, summer has passed and I must say that it was most enjoyable. After the Hollywood Bowl, Cindy and I got in the car and drove up the West Coast. For most of my life, I believed that the United States northwest border ended in San Francisco. But amazingly, there seems to be lots more to visit. I still love the California vistas that extend out to sea. Usually at this time of year, the view is limited by fog. This was not the case on our drive.

One big plus of doing an opera is that there is a lot of free time once you start performances. In fact, with the new/old Spratlan opus, we had one stretch of eight days off. This gave me a chance to do things I normally do not have time for during the concert season.

In the process of writing my book, I have needed to do a great deal of research. Very gradually I am figuring how to manipulate around the net, looking for small details, quotes or information I might need. At one point, I do not remember how or why, this little item popped up, but it prompted a somewhat amusing chuckle from me.

This is the summer way-out west tour. For the next couple of months I will be flightless and mostly humidity-less. Colorado, New Mexico and California will the performing destinations. A mix of student and professional ensembles will make up the musical landscape. The major project is the world premiere of Lewis Spratlan’s 1978 opera, Life Is a Dream. Unlike my last operatic venture, I decided not to keep an actual daily diary, but it is still helpful to let you know how a work like this comes to life on the stage.

Prior to arriving in Santa Fe, there was a nice, leisurely drive to Breckenridge, Colorado. With no airports or baggage claims to worry about, all I had to do was program everything into Gladys, my navigation system partner. From Detroit, it looked like an eighteen-hour journey. Of course, it was not possible to anticipate side trips.

After last month’s blog version of War and Peace, I thought it would be a nice respite for all of us to have a shorter and less scattered web posting. And since I will be on the road, literally, it will be a bit tougher to write towards the end of the June.

As it turns out, getting home was just what I needed. Europe was wonderful, but after almost six weeks on the road, I was very tired and it felt good to be amongst my own pots and pans for 21 days. It was not so good getting on the scale. Although I did not overeat, I ingested more fat than necessary, so now it’s time to get back to the program. Thus, no more sauces, desserts, or red meat.

May was an uneventful month, if you count getting a new job, conducting seven different orchestras, and dealing with volcanoes as uneventful.

Perhaps it is best to start at the top. For the past couple of years, I have been thinking about simplifying my professional life. It has been wonderful to be on the road but as I get older, this has become tiring. Don’t get me wrong, I have loved working with all the different orchestras, getting to know parts of the world I had never visited and experiencing a great deal of personal, cultural and social pleasure. But my sole position with a non-American Orchestra, in terms of a directorship, has been with the BBC Symphony. Now it seemed like a good time to complement my work in Detroit and Pittsburgh with either a European or Asian orchestra, which would then become my second base of operation.