Santa is Sick? Call the Librarian!
By Drew Holmes
When getting to know new people, especially musicians, I like to share a fun fact about myself: my only performing credit with a full-time professional orchestra was as a percussionist. Most find this odd, since I have played trumpet since I was 10 years old and have never taken a formal drum lesson.
When I accepted the position of Principal Librarian with the Naples Philharmonic it was with the understanding that I was not a performing member of the orchestra. Flexibility and adaptability are crucial to the success of an orchestra librarian. Day to day or even moment to moment things can change based on the repertoire or the conductor’s artistic vision, so adjusting to the current situation is an essential part of the job.
One day an unusual opportunity presented itself for our performance of the Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. The percussion requires six pairs of hands, and we were one pair short. Principal Percussionist Jim Dallas was in the library lamenting this problem a couple of weeks before the show. I mentioned that The Philadelphia Orchestra had used one of the librarians to cover parts in situations like that, since the librarian is a musician and would be at the show, dressed in concert attire.
That was the solution Jim has been seeking. He gave me a quick lesson on playing the church bell part of the piece (which involved hitting chimes fast, loud, and in the key of Eb). The performance went smoothly, and I got my only program credit performing with a full-time professional orchestra. As a percussionist.
This flexibility of roles was recently on display at one of the top orchestras in the United States. My start in the orchestra library world was as an intern in the Philadelphia Orchestra library, so the recent article from the Philadelphia Inquirer was of great interest. In The Philadelphia Orchestra’s holiday concert, Santa Claus was to make an appearance on stage, ham it up with the conductor, and play the whip cracks in Leroy Anderson’s Sleigh Ride. Unfortunately, Santa was quarantined at the last minute with COVID. To the rescue came the Principal Librarian Nicole Jordan, ready, willing, and able to take on the role of Santa.
From the Philadelphia Inquirer article: “Really it’s just about being useful where I feel I can,” said Jordan. “In the role of a librarian, most audiences don’t see us, even though they see my work, they hear the by-product of the months and hours and weeks we spend preparing music that my playing colleagues perform. And so to have an opportunity to — we can’t really find a Santa, it is dire straits — for me, I was in a place where I’m the one musician who’s not on this show tonight and I can go out there and ham it up for two or three minutes.”
I have not had the pleasure of knowing Ms. Jordan but having “grown up” in the same library I know the kind of people she has worked with and the professional standards of the organization. The audience and the performance are most important, and she went above and beyond to make sure that they were entertained. Even if her beard got caught in the slapstick.
Orchestra librarians have a great tradition of being ready to adapt to whatever curve balls are thrown at them. Even if they are not on stage, they are doing whatever needs to be done at that moment to create a great experience for the audience. Sometimes that means playing percussion and other times it means playing Santa.