Low-Key Conducting

Shannon Hall is tucked behind Vanserg which is hidden in back of the Biological Labs. It's a long walk to Shannon from almost any other part of the University. The ground floor of the building is one large, cold room made colder by the glare of fluorescent lighting. Inside, stage flats, the pine skeletons of platforms, plastic jugs of Elmer's Glue-All and piles of dingy muslin are stacked along several walls. An old upright piano, its guts exposed, has been pushed over to one corner. Grade school desks with writing arms and stenciled numbers on the backs are scattered around the room and an old Mikado poster from the fall is tacked up on one wall. Despite the clutter and trash, Shannon seems empty and a little forlorn.

Outlined on the floor in masking tape is the shape of the Agassiz stage, a tiny area that will somehow have to accommodate 26 costumed actors. Two columns of support beams march in formation down the length of the room, through the stage, and iron grating covers the windows. Originally Shannon was the ROTC building. Now the Harvard Gilbert and Sullivan Players use it as a place in which to hold rehearsals and build sets for their productions.

Tonight all the lights are on for the second rehearsal of Princess Ida, Harvard Gilbert and Sullivan's spring production. Tom Fuller '74, an earnest tenor who has starred in four past Gilbert and Sullivan shows, is singing at one end of the room. Standing in front of him, next to a working piano, is Karen Krag '76, the music director and conductor for Princess Ida. Krag is singing along with Fuller, using a pencil as a baton, and swaying from side to side with the rhythm of the music. Her long, thick hair is plaited into two golden brown braids. Dark, almost black, eyebrows give character and distinction to regular features and pretty blue eyes. She looks like a blonder, less painted, Maple Syrup girl.

Krag is the first woman to conduct a Harvard Gilbert and Sullivan musical and probably the first female undergraduate to conduct any Harvard production. It is not a distinction that particularly impresses her and only occasionally has it been called to her attention by anyone else. When she asked Michael Loo to be her concertmaster, a service he has performed for past Gilbert and Sullivan shows, he replied, "What happened? Did no one else want to be conductor?" but comments like his have been rare. Krag is not an Antonia Brico, either in her ambitions or disappointments. Talent and effort have paid off in her case and she is able to do with her music what she wants--enjoy it and the opportunity it affords to "work with a group of people toward a common goal."

The production is still in its infancy, so tonight there is no real rehearsal, only a singthrough with Fuller and David Bachrach, a baritone. The director, Kathy Gratto, sits and talks with whichever singer isn't working with Krag. Krag stops Fuller periodically, marking points of emphasis, interjecting at a particular phrase, "Dance it," and indicating with her hands and body how she wants the melody to move. For the next few weeks she will be teaching the singers their music and trying to improve their diction. Most of the humor of a Gilbert and Sullivan play depends on being able to hear and understand the words. Intonation and inflection come after getting the t's and d's right.

A question arises about the way Fuller should sing the line "hearts of stone, heart of fire" which Hilarion, the hero, sings to his beloved, Princess Ida. Everyone pauses for a moment. Krag, Fuller and Gratto discuss various interpretations and finally compromise with Krag saying, "Emphasize the note on heart and the diction on stone and fire." Throughout the evening the singthrough is punctuated by conferences, laughter and corny jokes. Afterwards, walking back to North House. Krag talks about choosing the cast. The auditions were low-key and relaxed; Krag and Gratto sat cross-legged on a couch and listened to people sing. There was not long table from behind which the play director and music director scrutinized prospective cast members or furiously scribbled notes during an audition. No physical barriers between those choosing and those being chosen. Final decisions were made on the basis of ability to sing, physical characteristics and acting ability. Finally Krag says, "If you have to choose between two people who are equal, you pick the nicer one. It makes a world of difference in cast spirit." And that is what makes the play worth doing.

Krag was eating dinner at Jordan K one night last spring when the musical director of Kiss Me Kate began to complain about his accompanist, who wasn't any good. Krag "jumped at the chance" to accompany the musical and pretty soon was showing up for every rehearsal, an unheard of thing for an accompanist to do. That led to an offer for the next fall to be associate music director with John Posner for Fiorello!, a Grant-In-Aid production, which led to an offer this spring from the Gilbert and Sullivan board, to be music director of Princess Ida.

How much of the Grant-In-Aid board's reluctance to let Krag handle the musical direction of Fiorello! alone is due to her being a woman is "debatable," says Krag, and she cites her inexperience and the fact that Grant-in-Aid has worked with Posner before as more important factors. "Right now I'm much happier I did it with John. I learned so much from him....Fiorello! really worked. I got on really well with the orchestra and they thought I taught them a lot."

Although music has played a major role in Krag's experience of Harvard, in the eyes of the University it has been an extra-curricular interest. When she entered Radcliffe as a freshman she was unsure what the nature of her commitment to music would be. "The main idea I was toying with was to be a music major and a pre-med." Her freshman year she took Music 51, the general theory course for music concentrators, from F. John Adams. It turned out to be "pretty much of a bomb." "Adams has a fantastic ear, he can hear anything," but he was impatient with students who did not have the same ability. The course covered too much material too quickly and was more frustrating than inspiring. Enjoyment and appreciation of music were subordinate to scholarship and "after that I had no desire to have anything to do with the music department."

Krag also met resistance when she tried to get independent work credit for the piano lessons she was taking outside the University. Through freshman and sophomore years she continued the lessons she had been taking since grade school and practiced three hours a day. But when Krag talked to the senior tutor of North House about calling her lessons independent work, "she was very against the general idea of it." Krag is getting credit for conducting Princess Ida, however, through a Music 91r, sponsored by Luise Vosgerchian, professor of Music. Vosgerchian is one member of the Music Department for whom Krag has high praise. "The more I can talk to her, the happier I'll be, because she just knows so much." Unlike some music professors, who approach music as literature, something purer when read than heard, "she can inspire anyone to love music."

The rehearsal the next night is for the chorus. Thirteen basses, tenors, altos and sopranos are huddled at one end of Shannon in a semicircle around Krag and the piano. Jay Banks, a Gilbert and Sullivan "groupie," is the accompanist. He's a small man, with brown hair, a brown beard, brown rimmed glasses, and a penchant for bright colored turtlenecks. He's a physics major at Harvard and has been involved in a lot of Gilbert and Sullivan shows, often unofficially. He has no part in Princess Ida but he comes to most of the rehearsals and often gives Krag good advice.

The cast is loose and relaxed and the whole scene has the ambience of a group of friends who have gotten together for a good time. As the chorus finishes a passage, Krag smiles and says, "Beautiful!" then reminds the singers to emphasize diction and watch their pronunciation of consonants. She asks them to do the passage again and remains seated while she conducts. Only the pencil she is again using as a baton distinguishes her from the rest of the cast. Gratto, the director, is seated in the semicircle with the chorus. She is filling in for several sopranos who are out with the flu and she makes up with gusto and expression whatever she lacks in vocal range.

Krag is responsible for the music--vocal and instrumental--and Gratto is responsible for the blocking, the acting and the overall production. There is a lot of give and take between the two women. Krag often looks to Gratto for her opinion if not for advice. At this stage it is the petty details that keep causing problems--should the chorus sing "can't" or "can't," "humbly beg and humbly sue" or "soo." Each alternative is discussed, sung by the chorus and decided upon. When Krag admonishes the chorus to sing. "They are men of fight ha! ha!" louder, "stamp your feet or something," six people immediately start stamping their feet. "Again, without books," is met with loud groans and cries of "but we don't know the words!" While the altos practice their parts, one of the basses reads a newspaper.

After Krag decided not to concentrate in music, she did a short stint in anthropology and then, at the end of her sophomore year, switched into the biology department. Being a pre-med and a musician doesn't seem to cause any internal conflicts--she grew up with both interests and has always pursued them simultaneously. "When I was little I always wanted to be a vet," she says, and that desire, at some point, changed into a desire to be a doctor. She thinks now that she'd like to be a general practitioner or a gynecologist and obstetrician.

Piano lessons started in the fifth grade--"I was going to start in the fourth grade but I took a musical aptitude test and flunked it"-and continued until this past summer. There was little parental pressure to be a star and she doesn't regret starting lessons so late, "because when I did begin, my parents didn't have to nag me to practice." She spent the first month of the past summer studying intensively under Russell Sherman, a teacher associated with the New England Conservatory. Sherman at one point, Krag says, told another pupil of his that "he took me on to broaden his horizons." She practised eight hours a day and "got my playing to as high a level as it could ever be." That experience fulfilled a need but also reinforced what she had always known. "Total immersion in piano is not something I could take for a long time. I'm not super dedicated to music, I'm not going to spend 24 hours a day thinking about music." She spent the last two months of the summer building a log cabin in Alaska, hundreds of miles from a piano.

Yet, though she intends to go on in science after graduating and says, "I don't think after I get out of here that I'll ever conduct," she also adds, "I'm much more tied up in music than in my biology right now." When I first talked to Krag, over dinner in North House, she said that she turns premed only during reading and exam periods. Later she told me that wasn't really true, that she did work and just used her time efficiently, and then she added, "I essentially did Chem 20b during spring reading period." There is a lot of intellectual confidence behind her statements, and the offhanded pride in the way she describes her activities says. "I know what I can do and what I can do, I do well." At the same time there is little of the temperamental artiste in her.

La, la, la, la, laaaaaa. Up and down the scale, hold for 12 beats, faster, slower, "watch my hands!" The chorus is finishing its warmups. After it sings the first number, Krag remarks, "The reason we went over diction in the beginning was so you would do it in the song. Also, there was no difference between the forte and the rest of the song." It is the mildest of reproofs.

Krag asks one of the singers, "Do you want to run over your part now or later?" He decides to do it now. Several minutes later she asked another singer. "Do you want to do this a second time?" When one of the tenors stumbles over a passage he's done well before, she tells him. "You'll be better when you get more people singing." The cast is in a boisterous mood, and they're paying less attention than usual. Songs that were practiced in earlier rehearsals sound ragged and the singers are faltering over the words when they close their books. Ending the singing part of the rehearsal Krag addresses the chorus with the slightest hint of irritation. "If everyone could look over his part so I don't have to keep teaching it each time..." It is the first time there has been any tone of disapproval in her voice and even then that seems to have crept in only after great effort. Kathy Gratto takes charge now, announcing. "By Thursday night we will have the entire first act blocked except for the hip, hip, hoorays and the finale." Actors gasp Gratto then proceeds to demonstrate and describe the stage directions for act one in a rapid spiel that leaves most of the cast game but confused. Gratto is a natural clown, constantly mugging and cracking jokes; she is far more the ham than Krag is. Tonight, for the first time. Krag appears overshadowed, a little hesitant about giving out orders or reprimands.

Loren, one of the accompanists and Gratto's husband, told Krag after the first chorus rehearsal that she has "good conducting technique and no self-confidence." I ask if she thinks that is true. She pauses and then answers. "I'm getting it." She says she has to learn how to sell and regrets she can't whistle like so and puts two fingers in her mouth. "Right now I have to steel myself to get through a rehearsal. I'm not that good with a whole group of people I don't know. With Fiorello I could wait until I knew people better and then teach small groups. But I'm pretty sure of what I can do--it's not going to be bad, that's for sure."

She learned to conduct by directing a girls chorus in high school and by being conducted herself. "Years and years of experience teach you where the music needs a break." She has accompanied musicals and during her sophomore year she sang in Collegium. F. John Adams conducts the group and one senses how much her second experience with him shaped her own attitudes toward conducting and music in general. She criticizes Adams sharply for directing his attention only toward the sound a voice produces rather than to the voice and the person who owns it. "Singers come out of his concerts hoarse." Adams is a "very talented conductor" and his concerts sound "spectacular," but during the year she was in Collegium he made no efforts to bind the group. Her own efforts as a conductor are directed toward creating a rapport with her cast and orchestra. "I enjoy the leading." If she had to act or sing on stage, she says. "I'd get stage fright," but "when I come out to conduct and the spotlight is on me, I'm not scared at all."

Princess Ida opens April 17 Long hours of rehearsals, marking scores, teaching the orchestra its cues will culminate in eight performances and become only memories. Karen Krag is determined that for her and her cast those memories will be sweet ones.CrimsonJoseph A. Kovace