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Large crew behind Minnesota Orchestra tour

BY MATT PEIKEN

Pioneer Press


LEEDS, England — Tim Eickholt's weathered poker face masks his thoughts. But ever since the Minnesota Orchestra planned its European tour, he saw Feb. 21 as a test of mettle.

"There's no elevator," he says without a drop of inflection, pointing a day ahead to Saturday's concert at Victoria Hall. "We have to carry everything up the stairs."

By everything, Eickholt means 92 instrument trunks, many he built himself, ranging in size from coffins to rhinos. They house all the instruments and concert wardrobe musicians aren't carrying on their own — some $1.8 million in gear Eickholt and an assistant set up, tear down, pack up and move from one town to the next as the orchestra winds its way through Germany, the United Kingdom and Finland.

The tour ends Friday in Lahti, Finland, hometown of new music director Osmo Vänskä.

About two dozen staffers and others are traveling with the orchestra, working behind the scenes to ensure the musicians have to do little more than rehearse, perform and make it to the lobby on time to catch the morning bus.

There's a medical doctor, a publicist, stage and personnel managers, tour directors, a music librarian, an editor for the orchestra's online "Virtual Tour," an associate conductor — the orchestral equivalent of a backup quarterback — and a chiropractor doubling as a massage therapist, which musicians are finding a godsend.

Mele Willis is traveling the entire tour with her Macintosh laptop seemingly fastened to her forearm. The computer is open, webcam attached, as she hunts down musicians to interview, shoots photos of rehearsals, writes text for the Web site and scrambles hotel to hotel for Internet connections.

After a rehearsal in Stuttgart, Germany, Willis raced to catch up with violinist Peter McGuire, pointed the laptop camera at him and had him answer a question e-mailed from an elementary schooler back home: Do musicians in the orchestra get to know each other better during the tour? About 10,000 people clicked on the orchestra's virtual tour on the first day.

"The beauty of this is that on a personal and professional level, it's allowing the musicians to open up and share their experiences," Willis says of the online program. "And on a global level, it gives people a window into a world they can't otherwise get."

BACKUP, BACK HELP

At every rehearsal, associate conductor Giancarlo Guerrero sits in the concert hall several rows back, score in hand, taking notes. His job is to rise at the moment of crisis, covering for Vänskä should he not be able to make it to the podium on any given night.

"It's 99 percent relax and 1 percent panic," he says.

Guerrero last filled in at a concert a year ago, when flight delays kept the scheduled conductor from making it to Minneapolis. Otherwise, he conducts perhaps two to three concerts each year, mainly touring dates in Minnesota's farther reaches and one subscription program each season.

This is his fifth year with the Minnesota Orchestra and he says it is his last. Guerrero is dedicating himself in the fall to his music directorship with the Eugene Symphony Orchestra in Oregon and looking forward to the day he takes on a "cover conductor" of his own.

"The challenge is, if I do get the call, I can't conduct as I might otherwise — I have to be Osmo, because that's who the orchestra has rehearsed to and prepared to," Guerrero says.

"I love touring, bonding with the musicians, and there's a part of me that's always on edge. At this point in my life and career, I have to move on, but if I have to cover for anybody, I'm thrilled it's Osmo."

About 15 minutes before the start of Saturday's concert, trumpet player Charles Lazarus tells Kathy McClure he has a knot in his upper back. She has him lie face up on a couple of chairs, sits behind him and works her hands under his neck.

It was Janet Horvath's idea for the orchestra to bring a chiropractor along for the tour. Horvath, the orchestra's associate principal cellist, has written a book on repetitive stress. People who initially labeled her suggestion an indulgence now see it as a necessity. McClure is booked solid every stop of the tour, in her hotel rooms and backstage at the hall, at $1 a minute.

"People come up and say their thumb doesn't feel right or one spot in their shoulder is stiff," McClure said. "Some are in great shape and some are really soft, but I'm amazed at how hard these people are working and the stress they put on their bodies. They really are athletes."

Orchestral musicians in Europe who have crossed paths with the Minnesotans, after first reacting with bemused jealousy, say they will talk to their directors about bringing along chiropractors for their own tours.

KEEPING THE 'CAR MOVING'

But Eickholt is the guy more than one musician consider the unsung hero of the tour.

"He's an amazing guy," says timpanist Peter Kogan. "He plays the accordion and he knows the music, but he's really the guy who keeps this car moving."

Long before the orchestra left Minneapolis, Eickholt drew up schematics for every venue on the tour. He worked out the load-ins, the seating and, in at least one hall, a plan to build add-on staging to make room for the percussion.

In Leeds, about two hours north of London, in a hall opened by Queen Victoria, Eickholt figures on few options. For all its ornate and decorative arches, expansive ceilings and columns lined in gold leaf, the hall is startlingly claptrap — a rickety stage floor, no easy access from backstage to the stage and a floor so small that the horns, winds and percussion will have to stand on fixed risers.

Eickholt has been the orchestra's stage manager for more than 20 years and, in that time, overseen each of its tours, so it's not as if he's daunted by his lonely task.

He left Minneapolis before anyone else, escorting the equipment to Europe on a cargo plane. During the day, while musicians are anywhere but the concert hall, Eickholt and Dave McKoskey are there, leading a small crew of stage hands in preparing the stage for the evening's concert.

In Leeds, McKoskey took a glance at the chaps hired to lend their hands and backs to the task — a couple of them clearly still in their teens — and wondered whether they could unload four small semi trucks without damaging anything. But they caught a break — there was a working freight elevator, after all — and an experienced stage manager from London was here to help. The crew had to use ropes to haul a piano up steps into the hall, but the load-in went without a hitch.

That night, Eickholt stood backstage in his tuxedo, just behind the door leading to the stage, towel in hand like a rock 'n' roll roadie, ready to hand the rag to violin soloist Joshua Bell the moment he comes off stage. And long after Bell and the orchestra would leave, Eickholt would remain, taking down what he'd just erected hours earlier.

"I love this work — pretty much everything about it," he says. "Great music and great people. It's a lot of work, but I'm just happy to be a part of it."