David Kim

David Kim is an American violinist, writer, and pedagogue born (in Carbondale, Illinois) on May 24, 1963.  He is known for being the long-time concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra.  His tenure began in 1999 (at age 36) and he now ranks among historic concertmasters for longevity, along with Raymond Gniewek (Met Opera), Glenn Dicterow (New York Philharmonic), Norman Carol (Philadelphia Orchestra), Naoum Blinder (San Francisco Symphony), and Richard Burgin (Boston Symphony).  Kim’s playing has often been described as elegant but he is equipped with a superb technique as well.  As all concertmasters do, he has been soloist with his orchestra many times and his solo repertoire is extensive.  In addition to his duties as concertmaster with the Philadelphia Orchestra, he is concertmaster of other orchestras (such as the Aspen and the All-Star Orchestras), although (understandably) on a part time basis.  Kim began lessons at age three, but I don’t know who his first teacher was.  (For unknown reasons, most violinists leave that information out of their biographies.)  He began classes with Dorothy Delay, a well-known teacher in New York at age 8.  Later, when he enrolled at Juilliard as an adult student, his main teachers there were Delay and Felix Galimir.  From that point, he took the career route that hundreds of violin students take.  His goal after graduating from Juilliard (in 1985), as is the goal of many graduates, was to become a touring concert artist – a soloist.  That field is, and has always been, extremely crowded with musicians who are seeking the same kind of spotlight.  Sometimes, Fate smiles on you and you make it into the top tier of soloists, say into the top twenty, and sometimes, it doesn’t.  When that doesn’t happen, you must take an orchestral job which offers financial security.  It is not a bad alternative, especially when it comes to a position as concertmaster of a world class orchestra.  In many ways, it is a far superior alternative - financially, artistically, and personally - to a touring life.  (Emanuel Borok was earning $800,000 as concertmaster of the Dallas Symphony before he retired in 2010.  He could never have made that kind of money as a soloist.)  From an artistic standpoint, concertmasters get to know dozens upon dozens of artists intimately, exchanging stimulating ideas about music (old and new), teaching, careers, instruments, conductors, and contacts among the world’s top artists.  Most concertmasters also enjoy teaching careers, and they get to play as soloists in recital or with orchestras around the world.  For Kim, being appointed concertmaster in Philadelphia came after he had already gained experience playing as concertmaster with other orchestras – those included the Dallas Symphony, the Jupiter (New York) Symphony, and the Norwalk (Connecticut) Symphony.  Kim’s orchestral life actually began at the late age of 31 – most concertmasters begin in their twenties.  (One of the youngest concertmasters in history was Paul Kochanski, who became concertmaster of the Warsaw Philharmonic at age 14.)  It is very rare for a concertmaster to remain with the same orchestra for 25 years or more, but Kim has done it.  Most jump from one concertmaster position to another.   Mischa Mischakoff was concertmaster of ten different orchestras, including the Philadelphia Orchestra – I think he holds the record.  Kim has written a book – The Audition Method for Violin - published in 2022, which guides aspiring orchestral players on the auditioning process.  To say that Kim is a very busy concert artist, adjudicator, teacher, chamber musician, festival director, and recitalist is an understatement.  There is an abundance of information about him on the internet.  Here is a YouTube video of his, playing a slow movement from the Bach a minor Sonata for solo violin.  His strings of choice used to be the Thomastik Dominant brand but now he uses and endorses Larsen Strings.  Among the violins Kim has played are a 1757 J. B. Guadagnini, a Michele Bergonzi from 1754, and a Francesco Gofriller from 1735 – the dates given are approximations. 

Orchestras in Trouble

The latest news about happenings in the music industry includes plenty of articles regarding the financial troubles the Minnesota Orchestra, the St Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony, the San Antonio Symphony, and the Indianapolis Symphony (among others) are experiencing.  This comes on the heels of bankruptcy declarations by the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Syracuse Philharmonic, the Louisville Orchestra, the New Mexico Symphony, and the Honolulu Symphony in 2011.  The Detroit Symphony musicians’ strike last year was also well-publicized.  It’s like an epidemic.  The situation is so dire that orchestra musicians are not even being given the option to strike – the management is simply locking them out of their working venues before any threats of strikes are uttered by the musicians union – the American Federation of Musicians.  That is truly unfair to the musicians.  I won’t go into where you can find the various sites where you can read detailed reports – they are in all the major news journals.  Just google orchestras in trouble and you’ll find as many as you have time for.  Many professional experts (and other people “in the know”) have opinions as to what might be to blame for the mess although, logically, there is really only one culprit: the Board of Directors.  The union shares a little blame, but not much.  Among other things, the Board is responsible for fiscal oversight – their function is not all that different from the function of any other business board.  Whatever else they do, fiscal soundness is their most important responsibility.  It is serious business, but it’s as simple as running a household – you either live within your means or you don’t.  It’s as simple as balancing an equation: X (expenses) must equal Y (income.)  X cannot be greater than Y.  Reading a financial report is not rocket science.  Even I can do it.  In any case, Boards typically hire CPAs who take care of analyzing budgets for them.  If an important and culturally significant enterprise like a world-class orchestra goes under, the blame can only be laid at the feet of the Board which has been appointed (or, in many cases, volunteered) to make certain that these problems don’t suddenly catch up to them.  We are not talking about an ENRON situation, where bankruptcy might be largely due to malfeasance, to put it politely.  We are talking about numbers on a sheet of paper which send clear distress signals (warning bells, if you will) far in advance of any peril.  If an orchestra suddenly finds itself in precarious circumstances, that can only mean that the Board ignored the warnings which were visible to them.  They failed to act.  It cannot mean anything else.  Commentators who are looking for other answers – failures in planning, failures in marketing, failures in programing, in audience building, in communications, in education outreach, in personnel policies - are dancing around the real problem. 

Arts organizations are not expected to turn a profit.  Since time immemorial, artists – composers and performers alike - have turned to the Church or to wealthy and generous patrons for assistance – Bach, Vivaldi, Wagner, Prokofiev, etc.  This is especially true of orchestras because they are so expensive to maintain.  There have been very few exceptions to the need for subsidies (at some point) in any artist’s career, but only in the case of individual artists.  Today especially, for instance, top violinists depend on benefactors to provide fine instruments for them to use.  If that’s not a sudsidy, I don’t know what is.  I have never known any orchestra to subsist entirely on ticket sales.  It could be done, but every ticket would have to be priced in the stratosphere where, in fact, nobody could afford one. Not only that, but every seat would have to be sold for every concert.  If you look at it another way, the arts patron – private or public – is really subsidizing the average concert goer, by as much as 60% of the cost of attending any given concert.  Without the benefactors, there would be no art, except for the wealthy, as in days gone by.  This formula however, does not absolve the Board from its responsibility of looking after the fiscal health of the orchestra.  When funds are lacking, it must sound the alarm, but never after the building has gone down in flames.  If the union – having received due notice of impending doom - balks at renegotiating a contract which by its weight may soon kill the whole enterprise, the union should be shut down because at that point, it is getting in the way of sound fiscal planning.  Nevertheless, it seems like that’s already a moot point in the cases cited above. 

Management is frequently asked to enter into iron-clad contracts (containing salary guarantees, etc.) which are unrealistic in income projections; they do so hoping for best-case scenarios which usually don’t materialize.  They also do so to avoid nasty confrontations with the union.  When these contracts result in deficits, the Board then goes begging for extra funds to make up the shortfall.  Even wealthy Foundations and patrons get tired of the same old routine and sometimes close their purse strings; when that happens, a crisis results, especially in hard economic times.  Then, the finger pointing begins, after which a seriously adversarial relationship between Management and musicians develops.  Usually, the enterprise collapses and then is almost inevitably re-started under a cloud of bad feelings.  Contingency funds should therefore always be in place to help during hard times and contracts should be written with plenty of contigency clauses to cover unintended emergencies, regardless of what the union demands.  It beats having to shut the doors.  Will things ever change?  I doubt it.  Ask the New York Philharmonic if it has a surplus – or ask the Boston Symphony or the Chicago Symphony or the Cleveland Orchestra.  I hope so.  

Emanuel Borok

Emanuel Borok is a Russian (many would say American) violinist and teacher born (in Tashkent, Uzbekistan) on July 15, 1944.  Although he was Associate Concertmaster of the Boston Symphony for 11 years, he is best known for being the long-time concertmaster of the Dallas Symphony, a post from which he retired in 2010.  As a child, he studied violin at the Darzinya Music School in Riga (Latvia) with Voldemar Sturestep.  At age 15, he entered the well-known Gnessin Music School in Moscow.  One of his teachers there was Michael Garlitsky.  After winning some of the top prizes in the All Russian Republic and All Soviet Union Violin Competitions, he joined the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra as Assistant Concertmaster in 1969.  He was 25 years old.  He became Second Concertmaster of the Moscow Philharmonic in 1971.  Two years later, he went to Israel to serve as concertmaster of the Israel Chamber Orchestra.  In 1974, he came to the U.S. to join the Boston Symphony as Associate Concertmaster, a post which automatically made him concertmaster of the famous Boston Pops Orchestra.  In 1985, he joined the Dallas Symphony as concertmaster.  He was 41 years old.  The Principal conductors under which he was concertmaster were Eduardo Mata, Andrew Litton, and Jaap Van Zweden.  Besides concertizing in South America, Canada, and Europe, he has several times partnered in solo appearances with Yehudi Menuhin, Pinchas Zukerman, and Janos Starker, among many others.  He continues to perform and teach at several music festivals in the U.S.  Borok has taught at the Tanglewood Music Center, the University of Houston, Southern Methodist University, and the University of North Texas.  However, he has also occasionally taught in Italy, Switzerland, France, Russia, the Czech Republic, and England.  In addition to the dozens of recordings with the Boston and Dallas orchestras, Borok has recorded as a soloist on the Eroica label and has also published cadenzas for the Mozart concertos.  A 1727 Stradivarius which Borok played was stolen from him in 1985 in Europe.  It was recovered 20 years later before being auctioned off by an unsuspecting auction house.  This is unusual because such thefts more than often go unsolved.  Erica Morini's stolen violin is still out there somewhere.  Borok now plays a 1608 Amati violin which he purchased in 1976.  It is definitely one of the oldest violins being played on a concert stage today.  You can hear the magnificent (gorgeous) tone of this Amati in this YouTube video.  

Jaap van Zweden

Jaap van Zweden is a Dutch violinist and conductor born on December 12, 1960 (Perlman was 14 years old.) His father was one of his first teachers in Amsterdam. In the U.S., while still a teenager, he studied with Dorothy Delay at Juilliard. In 1979 (at age 19), he was appointed concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the youngest to ever hold that position. He left the Concertgebouw in 1995 and gradually moved toward a conducting career - Pierre Monteux, Charles Munch, Eugene Ormandy, Theodore Thomas, Alan Gilbert, and David Zinman were also highly accomplished violinists who became conductors. Van Zweden became a full-time conductor in 1997, his post with the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra being one of his first (1997-2000.) In 2005, he became the chief conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and will also lead the Dallas Symphony (from 2008) until 2012. In addition, he will simultaneously lead the Royal Flemish Orchestra (Belgium.) I do not know if he even still plays the violin. However, here is proof that he was indeed a virtuoso violinist at one time.