James Smelser has served as second horn in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 2000. He shares memories and lessons learned from his long experience.
James Smelser has been a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's horn section since the year 2000. He shares what many years of experience have taught him about playing second horn parts to maintain the high musical expectations of the CSO. He recalls fond memories of playing for 13 years next to the orchestra’s former principal horn, Dale Clevenger, and describes the role he now also occupies as the chairman of the CSO Members Committee.
Episode 2: Second thoughts with CSO second horn James Smelser
Jim Smelser: Go big, go hard or go home — you had no choice but to exceed, if possible, what they had set out for you to do.
John Hagstrom: Welcome to Intermission at the CSO, taking you behind the scenes at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and sharing stories and insight into what makes this one of the world's greatest orchestras. I'm John Hagstrom, and I play in the CSO's trumpet section. Today we are featuring just one of the CSO's musicians, Jim Smelser, a member of the CSO horn section since the year 2000 — but he started playing as a substitute with the Orchestra in 1986.
Jim was born in Chicago but grew up in Joliet. He studied at Northwestern University, and before joining the Orchestra, he studied also with several CSO horn section members, including the Orchestra’s former principal horn, Dale Clevenger, and Norman Schweikert, who was Jim’s predecessor as the CSO’s second horn player — and that’s a chair Jim has now occupied for 20 years.
Now…most people know that the horn is a brass instrument, but the horn is one of the most versatile of any of the instruments in the orchestra. So, Jim, welcome to Intermission at the CSO and what can you tell us — what does the horn do in an orchestra?
JS: Of course, it's, it's a brass instrument. In the brass section, it's not the most brilliant instrument but it provides support for the brilliance of the trumpets and provides stability for the foundation of the brass sound. But I think one of the most important purposes of the horn is it's an absolute bridge and link between the woodwinds and the strings, because it's very often used in close conjunction with the woodwind section. It's a bridge to the string sound, particularly the cello sound. So to say the horn is a mellow sound is true, but it also has a brilliant sound, if you think of it as a brass instrument. So it's really a chameleon instrument to intertwine between the strings, the woodwinds and the brass.
JH: I want to ask you more specifically, because your role, as is my role, we don't play the solos very much. We’re the second part, and so if someone has been in their high school band or orchestra, and they were the second chair, it's usually because they wanted to be first chair but they failed, and so they're secretly hoping maybe they could still be first chair. There's a, you know, that kind of element of competition is, is usually embedded in a student experience, but in our experience in the section is not just waiting to see if you might move up. In fact, we take great pride in the role of our part, the way the composer writes it, and I'm hoping you can describe your way of approaching the second part, the kind of reflexes, the kind of priorities, the kind of achievement you look for to bring your part to such a great quality.
JS: That's a great question, with some good points. You know you have to be a master of your part; you have to strive to be the best at your job, your job function, your job duties. But the most important one of those is to really be part of the group, the whole group, and at certain moments, split seconds, you're in complete harmony literally or just in walking side by side with another instrument 30 feet away from you in the orchestra or your colleague next to you, the third horn. It's not always that you're just following in the footsteps of the shadow of the first player and matching him and going with him, that's not enough. It's very specific for literally each nanosecond, each moment that you're on stage.
I think in schools and universities people are taught, and just like in high school bands, people are taught to play the first parts, and those are the juicy solos, and that's what you get tested on in auditions but one thing is not in my opinion taught so much in school is, is how to listen, the value of listening and the hardest thing is how to improve that.
JH: You make a great point about listening because every member of the orchestra is constantly adjusting how they play their part, how they fit together within the orchestra in the best possible way. And I remember hearing the CSO when I was growing up and being so impressed by not just the power of the sound but by the unity of how the players align themselves together. And so when I ask you about your first time actually performing with the orchestra, that has to be really memorable for you.
JS: It's something you'll never forget ever in your life, and it was in March of 1986 and the CSO was about ready to go on tour to Japan and Hong Kong. The first rehearsal was The Rite of Spring with Daniel Barenboim, and you'll never forget it. Barenboim came out, no score, just turned to the orchestra, and the bassoon started and the piece unfolded. Barenboim didn't have a score, and we went on for a little bit, then he stopped and pointed out some instruments that he thought needed to be together and then the second oboe and the bass flute here, and these combinations of things that, I was just blown away. I couldn't I couldn't believe that I was sitting in the middle of this.
JH: It’s bigger than you. My first time playing was Bruckner 9 at Ravinia and in the first big tutti, I actually stopped playing. I couldn't believe it, with the energy of the horn section coming at me and being in the middle of it was just overwhelming. And you know two seconds later, I had to, like, play. I’m no longer a consumer, I have to contribute to this somehow.
So you played as a substitute with the Chicago Symphony for quite a few years before you became a member, and what is that life like as a substitute player?
JS: Well, you have to quickly leave the mindset of the student or the newly post-student and just be a professional just on the spot. And the colleagues around you consider you to be one of them because there is the expectation that you can play your part like them, and you have to blend and match them instantly. Of course, it's difficult but you have the sound in your ear from your teachers and all the learning that you've been doing for many many years. For the audience, they look down there, and they don't know if it's somebody on cloud nine because it's their first concert.
In The Rite of Spring, in the first performance, I remember looking, just glancing down at the horn, you're checking the slides or something, and I saw a cat hair on my leg. And I thought, oh, my gosh look at that, I see a cat hair on my leg. Then I thought, oh my gosh, I'm going to lose my place, and I'm going to mess up, and it's the first night, and how how can I be thinking about the stupid cat hair on my leg? But the audience doesn't know if you've been doing this for decades and decades, and for 14 years I played as a regular sub, and so the audience gets to know, the orchestra gets to know you. In fact, I remember when the personnel manager came to announce we had a new horn player, a position had been filled, people came up to me in the first rehearsal break and said, “What happened? Did you leave and go to another orchestra and come back?” And I said no, I was never in this orchestra, not as a member but as a guest for all those years.
I don’t want to say it was anticlimactic, because for me of course it was a huge moment to win the job but it was it was just a continuation of what you had been doing before, but with a whole new set of expectations that you are going to surpass what we know you to have done in the past. Of course, you have an official probation period. And that's taken very seriously as it should be. I remember the beginning of my probation, it seemed like every piece with prominent second horn passages, solos, duets with the principal, happened to come up — Beethoven 7, Overture to Fidelio, Mahler 1, Mahler 9, Mahler 7, Beethoven 3 — those all came in the first season and the first part of the second season.
So the test came fast and heavy and hard in the beginning, and it really, it really was the attitude of, you know, go big, go hard or go home; you had no choice but to exceed, if possible, what they had set out for you to do.
JH: You know that this is an important distinction that I think a lot of people don't understand, and it has to do with the founding of the orchestra, and the reason for the Chicago Symphony is, you know, it was Theodore Thomas, the founder of the orchestra was someone who had his own orchestra, which they sort of brought into Chicago as the Chicago Orchestra. What made it good was that the security of the players was already assured; they could devote their entire effort to their craft and not having to take, you know, any little job that came along just to make ends meet. So I guess I'm setting up a question to say, how does it change your life to suddenly have this transition where you can make your top priority the quality of what you do and not having to make sure you get called enough for other jobs?
JS: It can be a difficult thing to be a free-lancer; unfortunately, many times a free-lancer is out of necessity having to spend a lot of emotional energy managing their business, meaning hunting for work and things like that. I think that's a problem you see in the workplace in the country in a lot of different sectors is that people don't have a sense of security in the workplace and some, not all, have a reduced sense of responsibility to their company or their profession. And that shouldn't be — people should be secure enough to be able to rise to their fullest.
And I remember when I won the job, I didn't think right away that oh, OK, maybe I don't have to worry about my next paycheck, but it did become clear to me that you were now here for a different reason. It wasn't just a job, it was never just a job, but you have a responsibility to play in the most inspired way, and to follow in the footsteps of those in front of you.
JH: Following in footsteps at the CSO, I know, often requires filling some pretty big shoes, and I know that you and I also both grew up admiring the CSO's great principal brass players, and you also studied in college with the CSO's former principal horn player Dale Clevenger, who since his retirement, is teaching at Indiana University. But you played second to him for 13 years and so please tell us what was what was that like?
JS: Dale Clevenger was principal horn from February 1966, when I was 5, almost 6 years old, until June 10th, 2013, and I have the great pleasure and honor to sit next to him for 13 years as his colleague and studied with him in college at Northwestern and continued to study with him when I was out of college and had a chance to play principal horn in his Elmhurst Symphony Orchestra. Dale was an amazing, amazing of course horn player but also an amazing person, just filled with energy and passion for his job. He often said, “I don’t know why I do it, I just do it,” and if you think about it, that really summed it up. He just sat down and played. That doesn't mean he didn't study his craft when he was younger and work on things; of course he did. But he was such a natural that he just did it, he just sat down, and he did it.
He had a couple of sayings that he was famous for, which really epitomized what he thought about and how we approached it. He would often say, “When I pick up the horn, he said, I am 99.9% sure I am going to hit that note, and when I don't, quite frankly, I am perplexed.” And he really meant it; he would pick up the horn, he didn't think about if he's going to miss the note or not. He hated to hear people say, oh, the French horn is one of the most difficult instruments in the orchestra. He hated that, that was a negative approach, and he said it doesn't matter what it feels like, it matters how it sounds. He didn't experiment with mouthpieces and equipment. He was just a sit down and do it type of person.
I remember as a young student saying to him one time, “Mr Clevenger, you know I see you come on stage before Mahler 5, and you don't warm up, you just play a few notes. I see you on the stage before the concert starts, and you know, how do you do that?” “Boy, I never warm up because I never cool down.” And it's true, it's absolutely true, that's just what he did, and it’s in his mind, he's ready to go. “I don't need to warm up, and I'm ready to go.”
So there are a lot of Dale Clevenger stories. He was from Chattanooga; you think he spoke with a Southern accent, but he didn't until he got excited about something, then it all came flowing out. That was his controlled, Midwest Chattanooga accent. I'll never forget when I was playing second horn to Dale, and after the concert, he said, “You did good, boy.” And you know he was proud of you, and I'll never forget what that meant to me, that this person was saying this. It’s like a parent in terms of respect and who you’re following.
JH: There are so many moments in the orchestral repertoire where the first and second horn are beautifully intertwined, you know, seamlessly working together, and you’re so good at that, but what are your favorite moments where the first and second horn are written prominently together?
JS: Some of those moments that we would play in Ravel and especially Debussy were really magical because the orchestra probably did more classical and Germanic classical music, Mahler, things like that. Dale Clevenger loved French music, so for me to get to hear him change styles, change color, change articulation, change everything to play that, that was a real treat to get to play that. But I would have to say for sure one of the biggest moments would be, say, and it’s only been done a few times in my career, Mahler's Third Symphony, in the later movements.
It's so special because the moment is, for the horn section, the emotion, or part of the emotion, is is coming from the horn section at that time. But I could not give a single piece in a single place but I attach many of the pieces that are special to me to places because we just happened to do those pieces all around the world, thankfully. And so if we were to do that piece at home, my first thought goes to, oh, we played that in Vienna, or we played that in Buenos Aires or something like that. We played that in Lucerne on 9/11, you know, that type of memory.
JH: Right, I remember that very clearly that we played just a few hours after 9/11, after all the events of that day, because it's six or seven hours later, we had to very quickly decide whether we’d play a concert, whether it was even safe to do so. There was a lot of confusion, but in the end, we decided to play, and it was one of the most memorable concerts, I think, of my life, because the audience was very sympathetic. We knew that we were all trying to just make sense of the day and then express ourselves, and it was unforgettable.
JH: Most CSO fans have no idea but you are currently the chairman of the Members’ Committee of the orchestra, and most audience members, they have no idea that there’s a Members’ Committee. What is that? And so how do you describe what you do as a leader of musicians in the ways that we govern ourselves and sort of establish a stability and a continuity and especially an integrity?
JS: Well, the fact of the matter is we are in a union workplace, which means we have rules from a contract that must be followed, both by us and by the management, and that will surround all aspects of our work life, our benefits, our compensation, rehearsal times and breaks, and many, many details of our working life. The committee is the liaison between the players and the management. But you are there to provide guidance for the process and in the most dignified way possible represent them in negotiations, which are uncomfortable, because you're talking about money and some other serious things with your managers, and it's a negotiation and it's the most humbling experience to, for example, to come — you talk about some of the concerts and moments that are memorable; there are also the moments when you come on stage in the middle of negotiations, and it could have been an all-day or all-night session and things could be very tense or just precarious for continuing forward. Or when it is concluded, and you come on stage, and now your job is to play your instrument with your colleagues, and you look around and you think you're representing all of them, and they have placed their trust and faith in you to do this. It's the greatest thing to be able to serve your colleagues in the workplace.
JH: Well, Jim, all of us in the orchestra are grateful to you for your investments in us as the Members’ Committee chairman, but especially for your great example as a musician and as a colleague. We hope the commitment of all the CSO musicians can inspire our listeners to imagine what dedicated work can accomplish, not just in our lifetimes, but through generations of CSO players and supporters. So thanks again, Jim, for your time today.
JS: Thank you, John.
JH: And thanks to everyone for listening to this podcast. We hope you will take the time to explore and enjoy some of the great recordings made by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, some excerpts of which you just heard, and we'll look forward to seeing you again soon at Symphony Center, after our “Intermission at the CSO.”
For more information about this podcast, our guests and links to the music you’ve heard, please visit cso.org, where you'll also find complete and up-to-date information about the exciting programming we're planning this fall on CSOtv, as part of our commitment to provide musical excellence both before and after our regular concerts resume at Symphony Center. While you're visiting cso.org, if you've enjoyed our podcast and would like to support the mission of the CSO, please consider a donation or sponsorship.
Intermission at the CSO is produced by John Hagstrom and Scott Brewer for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association, and thank you for listening.
Next time on Intermission at the CSO:
Jennifer Gunn: You cannot slow down when you see the brick wall coming before you…
JH: We’ll be talking with CSO musicians to learn some of their secrets for how they perform at their best.
Jennifer Gunn: You have to run straight into it, but when it’s over, it’s like my heart rate has made up for lost time.
JH: They’ll describe some of the challenges they face, and share how they overcome even the most stressful moments.
Patricia Dash: We’ve done it before; it can be done.
JH: I learned a lot of new things myself doing these interviews, and I know you will, too.
John Bruce Yeh: I feel like I’m laying my soul bare for the audience to see and to hear.
JH: And you will hear all they have to say — don’t miss it! Next time … on Intermission at the CSO.