THE ROAD TO RECORDING

by Cindy McTee

Circuits • Symphony No. 1: Ballet for Orchestra • Einstein’s Dream • Double Play

Leonard Slatkin and I first met in 1987 during his tenure as Music Director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. I was one of several “emerging” composers chosen to participate in a readings program sponsored by the American Symphony Orchestra League and the SLSO. Leonard read through my largely forgettable piece, and I returned to my teaching job in Texas, unsure about who I was as a composer.

Three years later, things changed. I embraced my roots as a jazz player and gave myself permission to think beyond the stylistic confines of my academic training. I found my true voice in a short, jazz-inspired orchestra piece called Circuits. Composing the work was so liberating and affirming, and it really caught on, receiving a couple of awards and many performances including concerts at Carnegie Hall with Dennis Russell Davies and the American Composers Orchestra. It was in 1995 that Leonard first performed Circuits, back on the stage of Powell Hall with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, where seven years earlier I had struggled with my musical identity. Leonard played it pretty consistently for about ten years after that: in Japan with the NHK; at Blossom with Cleveland; in London with the Philharmonia Orchestra; at the Kennedy Center with the National Symphony Orchestra; at the Opera House in Sydney Australia; and at Ravinia with Chicago. I attended all but the Sydney performance. Leonard and I would often participate in pre-concert talks and other such events together, so we became good friends and kept in touch via email over the years.

Sometime in the year 2000, I was contacted by the National Symphony Orchestra and asked to write my first symphony, a request that came directly from Leonard who was by then their music director. In 2002, Symphony No. 1: Ballet for Orchestra was premièred at the Kennedy Center and performed at Carnegie Hall a few days later. The reviews were strong, and everyone seemed to have a good time.

In 2003, we did the Ravinia performance together, but after that, I didn’t hear much from Leonard until 2006 when he proposed making a recording of my orchestral music for Naxos with the Nashville Symphony. Naxos responded favorably as did Nashville. But in 2007, I was told that I would have to raise $28,000 myself to help fund the project. I couldn’t do that, so we tabled the idea. Leonard did, however, perform my Einstein’s Dream with the Nashville Symphony in February of 2009, just one month after we started dating. More about that later.

In early 2008, something caught my attention: notice of the relatively new Elaine Lebenbom competition for composers of orchestral music. The competition had no age limit—a good thing because I was already old—and was limited to women. It was also sponsored by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, which had just announced Leonard as their new music director beginning with the 2009-10 season. Much to my delight, I got a call from the chair of the committee, Bright Sheng, to say I’d won and would be writing a new piece for the DSO!

A few months later, I read that Leonard would be conducting the Dallas Symphony, my hometown orchestra, in January of 2009. So I quickly wrote to him and asked if he might be willing to spend some time with the students at the University of North Texas where I had been teaching for 25 years. He agreed and we arranged for him to do some conducting and give a talk. The next day, Leonard and I went out on our first date, and we’ve been a couple ever since.

But back to my piece—I still had to write it. Now the pressure was really on! And we had a little “’splainin’ to do” as well. For appearances sake, I offered to give back my prize. But the Detroit Symphony folks would have none of it. Leonard had not judged the competition, and they wanted me to write the piece as planned. So Double Play was premièred in June of 2010 and also recorded. Yes, the proposal to make a CD of my orchestral music was revived, and both the DSO and Naxos became willing partners. Recordings of live performances were therefore scheduled over the subsequent two seasons.

Little did I know that during this very happy and productive time, I was developing breast cancer. In fact, the physicians who discovered it in May of 2011 were quite certain I had gone undiagnosed for several years despite regular mammograms. Five surgeries, chemotherapy, and radiation followed, but all that didn’t slow me down too much, in large measure because of Leonard’s unconditional love and support. In fact, just three days before I went under the knife for the first time, Leonard proposed marriage. On November 20, 2011, we tied the knot and settled into a beautiful home in Bloomfield Hills, MI. The recording projects moved forward as planned, and I was able to solicit significant funding from some of my friends to help pay the production costs.

I am absolutely delighted with how the recording turned out, and enormously grateful to the musicians and staff of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for having given me so much of their time and talent. I could not be more proud.