HITTING THE ROAD WITH THE NACO
Steven Mazey

Ottawa Citizen
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Canada

Seven concerts, seven cities, seven different pianos, so little time.

That sums up the challenge that Canadian pianist Jon Kimura Parker
faces when he hits the road with the National Arts Centre Orchestra
Friday for a 20-day tour of Western Canada.

As part of the orchestra’s $1.25-million tour with conductors Pinchas
Zukerman and James Judd, Parker will perform as soloist in seven of
the 10 evening concerts the orchestra is presenting through British
Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the Yukon.

Before the band hits the road, Parker performs Tchaikovsky’s
Piano Concerto No. 1 with the orchestra and Zukerman tonight and
tomorrow. On the tour (Parker’s third with the NACO), he will perform
the Tchaikovsky concerto in some cities and Beethoven’s Concerto
No. 4 in others.

Like Zukerman and orchestra musicians, Parker will also offer master
classes and post-concert talks as part of the more than 130 educational
events the orchestra will present.

Parker, 48, says he has to be careful to allow time each day to get
to know the instrument he’ll be playing. He doesn’t want a repeat of
what happened in Guelph with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony in the
mid 1980s. Parker walked out to perform a Prokofiev concerto. He had
not had a chance to try the piano before the concert, though he knew
it was a Steinway. Parker looked down and noticed that the pedals had
been left on the floor, rather than attached to the piano. In front of
the audience, he and conductor Raffi Armenian got down on their hands
and knees to correct the situation, then went ahead with the concert,
which Parker says went fine.

"The biggest single concern for a pianist going on an orchestra
tour is performing on a different piano for every single concert,"
says Parker. On hectic tours he sometimes finds himself wishing he
had chosen a more portable instrument.

"I’m always desperate for piano time. I’m so envious of violinists,
who can get up in their hotel room in the morning, pull out the violin,
make a coffee and practise scales for 15 minutes. I can’t do that so
easily, and it drives me crazy," Parker said recently from Wisconsin,
where he was performing.

"On tour, we often travel on the same day as the concert, so there is a
limited amount of time before the concert that I can actually work at
the piano. Ideally, I like at least a few hours on a concert day, but
on a tour you sometimes don’t get it, so you take what you can get."

Parker says improvement in high-quality electronic keyboards in recent
years has made his life easier when he’s on the road. He sometimes
rents a keyboard from a local music shop. On tours, he asks the
orchestra to provide one he can use in his hotel room.

"I’m grateful to have access to one. I can at least do lots of warming
up on the keyboard if that’s the only alternative," says Parker,
who will perform with the NACO in Prince George, B.C., Whitehorse,
Kamloops, B.C., Calgary, Regina, Saskatoon and Winnipeg. Parker will
give five master classes, and take part in a post-concert talk with
the audience in Prince George.

Parker says he supports the educational work, but had to look
at his schedule to see what he could manage between performances
and preparation for concerts after the tour, including his first
performance of Shostakovich’s Concerto No. 1, immediately after the
tour, with the Houston Symphony.

"I haven’t been able to agree to every single educational request,
unfortunately, but I’ve agreed to almost all of them, and I’m looking
forward to it," says Parker, who teaches at the Shepherd School of
Music at Rice University in Houston.

"If I perform in a city and haven’t interacted with music students,
I always feel that a bit more could have been made of that trip. Doing
this with the NACO makes me feel I’m a bit more a part of the musical
community."

Born and raised in Vancouver, Parker studied with teachers who included
his uncle Edward Parker, Kum-Sing Lee at the University of British
Columbia, Marek Jablonski at Banff and Adele Marcus at Juilliard.

"Teaching is very different for me at the age I am now," Parker says.

"I’m approaching 50, and I feel differently about it than I did when
I was 30 and would occasionally give a class and it was a fun chance
to share some of the stuff I had learned in school fairly recently
myself. Now, when I do these classes, and with my position at the
Shepherd School, I feel a real sense of passing on a legacy. My
teachers passed on an era of music-making to me that I can pass
forward, and that feels great."

Parker’s tours with the NACO included a memorable 1988 Canadian
tour when orchestra musicians helped him when he was in the midst of
quitting smoking. Parker says he owes thanks to NACO violinist Mark
Friedman and violist Neal Gripp, who’s now with the Montreal Symphony.

"Mark and Neal would come back to my dressing room and say ‘You don’t
need a cigarette.’ There were moments before and after concerts when I
thought I would break down, and I didn’t. On that tour, it was pretty
much a given that after concerts we would all go out for dinner, and
it was a lot of fun getting to know the musicians. I don’t know if
that will happen so much this time because of all of the educational
stuff. I have the feeling there will be less free time."

But he says he still expects to have fun. "It really is an adventure. I
love the romantic notion of taking music to an audience. I travel
constantly on my own to perform, and when you have a whole orchestra
doing that with you, there is a real sense of being on a mission,"
he says.

"With the smaller cities and venues where there isn’t a lot of music,
it’s particularly important to do this kind of thing."

For Parker, the Tchaikovsky concerto he’s performing in Ottawa and
on tour brings back memories of the less-than-ideal circumstances
for his recording of the piece in the mid-1980s with Andre Previn
and the Royal Philharmonic for the Telarc label.

"Andre Previn had been ill and had to cancel a concert that we had
been scheduled to do before the recording. But quite heroically he
showed up for the recording session. We had literally never rehearsed
or performed the piece. We had one three-hour session to record it. He
looked at me and said ‘what’s your tempo?’ and we started recording.

"I think it’s a good recording, but it’s a slightly safe performance
because I was worried about doing anything too crazy under those
circumstances."

He says his performance has evolved since then.

"At that time, I was going through a period where I wanted the piece
to be even more serious and deep than it is. Now when I play it,
the parts that require that kind of emotional depth, I’m perfectly
comfortable with, but I’m wanting more to show the real virtuoso
sense of the work. That’s a legitimately important part of this piece."

When the orchestra and Parker hit the road, music lovers will be
able to follow the tour’s progress on an NAC website, NACOtour.ca,
that will include a tour blog, audio clips and a photo gallery.

Jon Kimura Parker performs tonight and tomorrow with the NACO and
conductor Pinchas Zukerman.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress