Kira at Tanglewood
Copyright© 2026 by Gina Marie Wylie
Chapter 3
In the next hour, John Williams conducted once, so did a half dozen others; Kira watched, fascinated. Finally, the famous conductor pointed to a young man in the flute section. “Mr. Alter?” The other nodded. “Mr. Alter, describe in one word the musical style of this piece?”
The other hesitated for a second, then said, “It’s a fugue.”
“Correct, Mr. Alter! Very good! A fugue!” He pointed at a young woman who played oboe. “Miss Shaeffer, tell me about a fugue.”
“A musical theme repeated as in a round or canon, but more freely interpreted. It can vary in any number of ways, following contrapuntal rules.”
“How many voices in this piece, Miss Ryder?” He was pointing to one of the young women who played the flute.
The girl looked uncertain. “Four voices.”
John turned and speared Kira with his pointing index finger. “Kira, the name of the piece!”
She’d forgotten that! In spite of all the times with Jerry and Taylor, she’d forgotten! “‘Father, Mother, Daughter,’” Kira said with only the barest of pauses. It felt right. Very right.
Kira added, “There are three voices.”
John smiled slightly. “Kira, what part of speech is the word, ‘the’?”
“An article.”
“And the words ‘A’ or ‘an’?”
“Articles?” She wasn’t sure what he meant.
“You don’t seem to appreciate them very much.”
It hadn’t been a question, but Kira blushed anyway. Seeing her expression, he laughed. “Hey, a trademark is a trademark! Don’t worry! At this level, you get to call it style, anyway!”
He looked around. “Three voices. Father, Mother, Daughter.” He pointed at one of the clarinets. “Miss Humphries?”
“It’s Linda Annacker, sir.”
John looked at his seating chart and bowed gallantly. “Miss Annacker. Three voices. The same notes, but yet completely different. Give me some insight into how the composer did that.”
The young woman wasn’t much older than Kira, and she stood, obviously nervous at being singled out. “The father’s voice is played heavier, slower, more ponderous; a bass line. The mother’s voice is higher, a little faster; clarinets and violas. The daughter is bright and quick; flutes and violins. Much faster.” She bit her lip again. “The notes form chords: Father and mother. Father and daughter, mother and daughter, and all three together. Sometimes.”
He nodded. “If I were to sit and write something like this, I could. The chord progressions really aren’t that complex; the blending of the notes with the different timings is trickier. I wrote the basic theme for this yesterday on the way up here. Ten or fifteen minutes is all I took. I’ve done work like this before.” He grimaced. “Movie themes might sound like an easy idea, but they want variations on them forty-five different ways from Sunday. Typically, it takes me one to two weeks to produce an outline, another couple of weeks to firm it up. Sometimes faster, sometimes slower.
“I handed this to Miss Kinkaid yesterday evening. She’d flown from Phoenix earlier in the day; flying from west to east is jet lag city. You leave early in the day and arrive much later than when you took off. She arrived here yesterday evening, our time, checked in to Miss Hall’s, where she took, I’m told, a nap. Miss Kinkaid thinks the beds there are quite comfy.” There were chuckles.
“She had dinner, then a rehearsal for a string concerto which she also composed — you’ll hear that Saturday afternoon and evening. Two hours. Then she played some with Anner Bylsma and Yo-Yo Ma. That’s master stuff, you’ll hear the three of them Saturday too. Two more hours. I’d given her the theme by then; say eleven o’clock. After the gang of cellos played, they went around for a few more hours demonstrating to various late-night sessions. Two o’clock? Something like that? After that, back to her room for the night at Miss Hall’s. This morning at 9:00, she ran this off at the office. A half hour later, in my hands.”
He seemed to change the subject. “Most of you will be teachers as well as musicians. Most of you will earn far more teaching than you will earn as performing musicians.
“One thing as a teacher, one of the most critically important things you must remember, is the need to balance praise and criticism. I had hoped someone would say a few positive things about Miss Kinkaid’s conducting. Most of those things said negatively were quite correct, very correct. Deficiencies, but correctable deficiencies.
“But, let’s look at what she did right. First and foremost, when she was at the podium, all of you watched her. Trust me, that isn’t as easy as it could be for a conductor! She knew what she wanted to achieve. Yes, sometimes she allowed the orchestra to define the work, but only in the sections she felt equivocal about. The music is still a little fresh in her mind.”
Everyone laughed, but he shook his head. “For those of you who wish to conduct, you too will conduct a piece of music for the first time — one you’ve never seen before, and may have never heard either. You’d best start thinking now about how you plan to deal with it.
“The most important thing: when Miss Kinkaid was working on defining the voices, she’d stop the orchestra, point out the mistakes, and then made the orchestra play them correctly. Before others took over, it was quite obvious that there were three voices and what they were and how she wanted them expressed. What the others did was sharpen the entrances, tighten some of the slop along the way. She too did that when she conducted. Unlike the other conductors, however, Miss Kinkaid understood where the music was going. And conducted it that way.”