Oregon Music News

Since his arrival at Portland State University in 2006, Ken Selden has kept things exciting for the PSU Symphony, especially by challenging the orchestra with a lot of new music. As a result, Selden and the orchestra were awarded consecutive first prizes in adventurous programming from ASCAP and the League of American Orchestras.

Now the plucky, young conductor and band are collaborating with Portland Ballet, a terrific youth ballet company, to present La Boutique Fantasque (aka The Enchanted Toy Shop), which opens this Thanksgiving weekend at the Newmark Theatre.

I asked Selden a few questions to find out more.

Who came up this idea of collaborating with the Portland Ballet?

Selden: It was about two years ago that Portland Ballet contacted me and mentioned the idea. They had been doing this concert for the last five years on Thanksgiving weekend. Portland Ballet is a youth ballet company and has been using canned music, which is recorded music rather than a live orchestra. Canned music is pretty typical for youth ballet companies in general. Nancy Davis and Jim Lane who run Portland Ballet came up with the great idea to collaborate with a non-professional orchestra in performing the ballet.

I’ve been very interested in this kind of collaboration, because one of my goals is to give the orchestra students at PSU as many collaborative experiences as possible. When I was a student at Indiana University, I benefited from the fact that they had an excellent ballet company there. I played violin in the orchestra and got to play for the ballet performances and for opera as well. That’s a very important experience for any young orchestra musician. So I wanted to make sure that my students not only had good solo and orchestral repertoire to do, but to also do collaborations with other groups.

The music is originally from Rossini but orchestrated by Respighi?

Selden: Yes. La Boutique Fantasque has music by Rossini that he wrote after his last opera, William Tell. He wrote six short piano pieces for his own amusement. They are dance-like. In the ballet there’s a tarantella, the can-can, another is a nocturne that sounds like Puccini or Verdi.

Ottorino Respighi discovered these pieces by Rossini, who had never sought to publish them. Respighi had been contacted by Léonide Massine, who was one of Sergei Diaghilev’s great choreographers. Massine wanted to uses this music as a ballet that would depict a toy shop. So Respighi orchestrated the six piano pieces and enlarged their scope.

Respighi has a huge orchestral palette. He used triple woodwinds, a lot of percussion and harp, and other instruments for special effects.

How will you fit them into the Newmark Theatre?

Selden: The orchestra pit in the Newmark Theatre won’t accommodate an 80-piece orchestra. So we had to shift the music around a little bit to create the right sound. We did that last year when we played Verdi’s Falstaff at St. Mary’s and the year before when we did La Boheme. For both of those operas we used a reduced orchestra, and we could use some traditional reductions. Those kinds of adaptations for smaller ensembles are published by major companies like Kalmus.

Does La Boutique Fantasque have such a reduction or adaptation for a chamber ensemble?

Selden: No. I suggested that we get a composer to do an adaptation of Respighi’s score. We talked to some of the composition faculty at PSU, and they have all done reductions, but they were too busy. They suggested a recent graduate of PSU, Eric Allen. Eric won the concerto competition at PSU as a cellist during my first year. He had also written some classical music, rock music, and some jazz as well. Now Eric is a graduate student at Indiana University.  He is an assistant to the great cellist Janos Starker.

Eric came back to Portland during the summer to work on the orchestration with me. He completed the score and my orchestra has been rehearsing the music since October.

The pit at the Newmark has a funny shape. It’s very wide. We will have 40 musicians in there, including harp and several double bass players. We’ll be packed in there like sardines.

Has the orchestra been able to rehearse with Portland Ballet?

Selden: Not yet. Because Lincoln Hall is under repair, we don’t have a hall where we can rehearse together. Portland Ballet has come to PSU to watch the orchestra rehearse, and I have gone over to their studios to work with the dancers. I’ve been using a pianist for those rehearsals. The week before we perform, everyone – dancers and orchestra – will meet at the Newmark for rehearsals.

You have to work out all of the tempos and get the timing figured out.

Selden: Right. For example, in the can-can number the dancers have to jump and kick. If you go too fast, they can’t kick high enough. If you go too slow then they have to jump too high. So you have to get the perfect tempo for every dance. I have to make sure that every dance has some drama and energy or the audience is going to lose interest.

What is the story line of La Boutique Fantasque?

In the original choreography two of the can-can dancers in the toy shop were sold to different families. So, in order to be together, they ran away from the families and came back to the toy shop. Portland Ballet has changed the story a bit to accommodate its students. For example, in one of the waltzes two girls are dressed up as poodles. There are kids who run into the toy shop to get toys. There’s also the husband and wife who own the toy shop.  It’s a nice story that is just right for the holidays.

How long is the performance?

Selden: About an hour. So, it’s just perfect for kids. My daughter is four years old, and she has seen some of the rehearsals and is just glued.

What’s the difficulty level for your musicians?

Selden: The level of difficulty is pretty high. There are some big solo parts for the woodwinds and a high trumpet part in the can-can. The percussion part is hard too. It’s a challenge for us.

It’s also a challenge to teach the students how to work with the dancers. The orchestra can’t see the dancers and it’s not like opera where you can hear the singers.

Are your students looking forward to this collaboration?

Selden: Totally! I told them that if they need to go home for Thanksgiving, they are excused. Well, no one wants to go home. They all want to play in the ballet! I really like their enthusiasm for the project.

And a week after the ballet performances, the PSU Symphony has another concert. We are doing Elgar’s Cello Concerto, Bloch’s Concerto Grosso No. 2 with the Third Angle String Quartet, and the West Coast premiere of Goebbels’ Surrogate Cities.

Wow! You guys don’t slow down.

Selden: Everyone will be ready for the Christmas break!

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Extra note: This production of La Boutique Fantasque will be the only one in town that will feature a collaboration between live orchestra and ballet. That’s because Oregon Ballet Theatre has been financially strapped and cannot afford to hire its own orchestra for performances of The Nutcracker.