James Chambers Interview

[Sleepy]

James Chambers

Interview by Jeff Silberschlag

James Chambers, although still very active, has already assured his place
in the annnals of musical history through his signficant contributions as
musician, pedagogue, and orchestral manager.
The youngest of five children, James Chambers was born in Trenton, New
Jersey on December 15, 1920. His parents were amatuer musicians, and one
of his grandfathers was an organist, pianist, choral director, and
teacher. One of Mr.
Chambers' brothers is a trumpet player and music supervisor of a
California school system.
Mr. Chambers began to play the horn at age ten. He made his debut with the
Trenton Symphony Orchestra at age fifteen, two years before he began
formal study. Discarding his carly ambition to be a chemical engineer, he
accepted a scholarship for the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.
Mr. Chambers studied there from 1938 to 1941 with Anton Horner, solo horn
for The Philadelphia Orchestra. He received his first appointment to a
major orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony under Fritz Reiner, after his
graduation from Curtis in 1941. The next year he was engaged as solo horn
of the Philadelphia Orchestra where he remained for five years. In
November 1945 he appeared as soloist with the Orchestra under Eugene
Ormandy in Strauss' Horn Concerto; at Robin Hood Dell in 1946 he was heard
in the Mozart horn Concerto No. 3 under Dimitri Mitropoulus.
In the fall of 1946 James Chambers was engaged for his solo post with the
New York Philharmonic. In December he made his solo debut with the
Orchestra at a concert at the Hotel Plaza, again in he Mozart Concerto.
Mr. Chambers remained solo horn until 1969.
Among Mr. Chambers many notable recordings include: three recordings of
Mahler's fifih symphony: 1947 with Bruno Walter. another with Mitropoulos.
and the third with Leonard Bernstein. He also recorded Kindertoten Lieder
and Tchiakovsky fifth both with Leonard Bernstein.
In 1969. Mr. Chambers assumed his present position of orchestra personnel
manager for the New York Philharmonic where he has worked closely with
Leonard Bernstein. Pierre Boulez, and most recently Zubin Mehta.
The following interview took place on January 20. 1982 at Phlharmonic
Hall. Lincoln Center.

JS: What inspired you to play horn?
JC: I picked the horn because I felt there were fewer good horn players
than there were good violinists and pianists. It was a pragmatic decision
born out of hard economic times. I realized at ten that I might be picking
a vocation. The horn was the first instrument I tried. I began to play the
horn at age ten, but my formal studies began at age seventeen, with Anton
Horner.
JS: Tell me about Anton Horner.
JC: Maybe this story will give you an idea of what Horner was like. At the
break of my first rehearsal with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Mr. Ormandy
came over to me. He started to go over the whole solo from Tchaikovsky's
5th with me--"play a little longer her, louder here, shorter here, more
accent here etc." Anton Horner came over to Ormandy and he knocked him on
the shoulder. It was a way of punctuating his statements, and a gesture
his students knew very well. Horner said "Let the boy alone. I taught him
how to play this solo. If Rachmaninoff was playing a solo you would follow
him., wouldn't you?" Ormandy said, "Of course!" Then Horner said, "so
follow Chambers." Ormandy just shruRRed his shoulders and walked away. He
never bothered me again.
Horner was a pretty tough bird. When Toscanini came to the Philadelphia
Orchestra. one of the pieces he did was Death and Transfiguration. Horner
was nearing the end of his career and was playing fourth horn. There is a
fugue in the end that starts with the fourth horn and Toscanini wasn`t
happy with the way it was going. He started talking in Italian-"do this,
do that." Finally Horner stood up and said, while waving his horn, "Here.
play it yourself." He was kind of a crusty individual, but in the most
benevolent way. He was really very much interested in the teaching of his
students. Anything he did, even though it may have seemed gruff, was
always in the interest of his student.
JS: You are considered to be among the finest horn teachers in the world.
How is your philosophy of teaching different or similar to Horner's
method?
JC: It is certainly similar, in terms of stressing the lyric aspects of
the horn. I often say to my students we only have one thing to sell on the
horn. That is the unique and beautiful sound which is particularly the
horn. Anything else we try to do there are countless other instruments
that can do it more easily and more securely without the difficulties of
the horn.
So my philosophy is very similar to Horner's and for the most part I use
the same material. Although I have expanded on that material and we do go
on to more modern repertoire.
JS: Expanded the repertoire indeed. for it was Mr. Chambers who organized
and edited for International the Orchestral Exerpt books, including books
on Strauss and Wagner. Mr. Chambers also edited the Kling, Gallay (with
Cerminaro), Kopprasch, Grugel, Belloli, and the Mozart Concertos.
JC: Basically I am adding what I learned. my experiences
playing and teaching. to what I had learned from Horner.
JS: Do you also see your rapport with your students as simiilar to your
rapport with Horner? Are you an authoritative teacher, or a coach, a
friend?
JC: Sometimes that varies with the student. However, I think that after a
student has had several years with me he looks on me as I looked on
Horner. That is one who is above all interested in their progress, and
turning out a product that both
the student and the teacher can be proud of.
JS: What is the difference between your usagae of Bb and F horn. and what
someone else might adhere to?
JC: Many or most players that come to me at Juilliard are - primarily Bb
horn players.
JS: You mean something like 75% of the freshmen play Bb?
JC: It has more to do with the register. There are certain
registers in which everybody plays the Bb horn. That's fine,
because in the high register the Bb horn tends to be more
precise in response and intonation and the basic sound is not diminished
in any way in that register. I am constantly surprising students by
telling them. without looking,that they are playing Bb horn and that it
would really be better if
they would consider playing it on the F horn. My usual advice is dont'
discard the F horn so easily. People think the Bb horn is more secure but
my contention is that it isn't really. The danger is if you play the Bb
horn all the time the embouchure is not developed to the same extent as it
would be if you have been through a selection process. The process of
selection is a learning process in which you have to learn how to produce
pitches and make intervals. The player must refine the control of his
embouchure so that he is in total control of the situation and not
hampered by a lack of knowledge of the F horn. When you are playing
exclusively
on the Bb horn you are depriving yourself of a safety margin.
If you play something on the Bb horn that you would ordinarilly play on
the F horn and on a particular day you're tired or must play an especially
difficult piano entrance, that's the time to go to the Bb horn. Use the Bb
horn
as an insurance. I realize this is a highly individual
philosophy, but I really believe it, and of course coupled with
that is the belief that the F horn sound is preferable. Now, I
would be the first to add that even in what I consider basic F
horn territory there are many exceptions. Technical problems or jumping in
and out of a register may require you to play on the Bb or to mix the two.
What I am trying to express is flexibility. Try to have all the options at
your disposal.
JS: Is your hand position different or similar to other
players?
JC: Well it is similar in that the hand is in the bell, but the
similarity ends there with many schools of horn playing,
although certainly not with all. Basically my hand position
is a little more clockwise and a little more closed than that of
most people. One of my problems in teaching is that students
know that or learn that very quickly and you get exaggerated results. Then
I have to say no that is too closed. We want warmth and depth of sound but
we must have clarity
and that is not clear. You are muffling the sound. making
the instrument too closed causing too much resistance. So it
takes a long time before we get to a point for that player,
with his instrument, mouthpiece and size of his hand that
we've found the optimum position. Then, when we have
achieved this position you have to say immediately that the
hand changes position with regard to playing: loud or soft.
ascending or descending and to temper the intonation. The
hand is a wonderfully flexible part of horn playing. I often
say that 50% of horn playing is taking place where you can't
see it. The hand should not be an inanimate object inside the
bell.
JS: What type of material did you practice to keep yourself in shape?
JC: I would like to say I practiced regularly but unhappily this was not
the case. The jobs I found myself in were so demanding that there was a
limit to the amount of lip energy I could expend outside a normal
rehearsal and concert time.
So I realized early that I was going to limit my practice to what one
normally considers a warm-up period. There were exceptions of course. when
something especially difficult was on the agenda I found the time and
energy. Generally I think this is true of most busy wind players. They
tend to come in earlier than string players and warm up slowly
incorporating into their 20-25 minutes difficult passages that immediately
confront them.
JS: What type of equipment did you use?
JC: When I started at Curtis I had no instrument. The instrument that I
had played the audition on was an Alexander double horn owned by the high
school. I had to borrow a horn for the first six months at Curtis. The
scholarship I received, for graduating first in a class of twelve hundred,
specified that the money had to go directly to tuition. Here I was at a
school with no tuition, but no instrument. I had to convince the editor of
the local newspaper, which gave the scholarship, to allow me to use the
money for a horn. Finally after three visits to the editor, armed with
letters from Curtis and Joseph Hoffman he released the money to me. In the
meantime the local music store dealer ordered a Conn 8D for me. It is one
of the first run of 8D, you seldom see one with an earlier serial number.
I took that horn into a lesson with Horner and he played it for about five
minutes and then said, "It is about time they started making a fine horn
in this country." So that horn stayed with me all my playing years,
except for a short period of three years while I was developing a Chambers
Model Horn for Reynolds. The horn that was finally developed was a much
improved horn over what I started with and I actually used it in the
Orchestra. Unfortunately, that horn is no longer being produced. nor is my
name associated with it. So except that one short digresion, it was not
only Conn 8D, but the same horn. John Cerminaro now owns that horn.
JS: Your Orchestral Repertoire class is one of the most sought after
classes at Juilliard. Would you talk a little about the class?
JC: I select the repertoire, although I am open to suggestions.
There is a kind of scheme where I try to follow quickly on the heels of
Philharmonic programs.If we are doing a Bruckner symphony here, it is
likely to show up in my class. That thought is simply that students at
Juilliard sometimes avail themselves of the opportunity to attend a
Philharmonic rehearsal or concert and when a student hears a spectacular
passage, or something obviously difficult, they'll have some idea of
tempo, and phrasing. The student will know that they will have to seek out
the part. This makes for a learning experience. everything ties together.
JS: When you discuss a piece do you sometimes point out that a certain
piece may be interpreted differently?
JC: Very often. In fact sometimes I'll tell them that this section can be
done in two or four ... look out two bars before letter "T:' there may be
a ritard etc. Then we play the passages again. I don't tell them what I'm
going to do. I want them to stay on their toes and I hope they'll always
remember that this particular passage is tricky. So there is a tremendous
amount of passing on the things that can only be learned through years of
experience. The students in the class are all such marvelous young players
I never need to discuss anything about instruments. We only concern
ourselves with particular difficulties of a piece, balance, intonation,
and ensemble. The reason that I got involved in a class like this was
because of the knowledge I gained during my own studies in Marcel
Tabeteau's class at Curtis, and later Sol Caston's class for brass. There
is a very interesting story about a bassoonist who after completing my
class took a responsible summer position with a major symphony or
chestra. One of the last pieces we studied that year was the
Bartok Concerto for Orchestra and the first piece he faced
was the Bartok. He wrote me a wonderful letter thanking me
on how prepared he felt. This is the type of thing I try to ac
complish. I have great enthusiasm over this ciass. It is very
challenging simulating a conductor-differing the interpa
tions and pointing out the pit falls.
JS: You have pianists to simulate the string parts.
JC: Some of the pianists have been James Levine. James
Conlon, and Leonard Slotkin. People who really have a gift
for reading scores at the piano. They were aspiring conduc
tors interested in the repertoire.
JS: From your vantage point as personnel manager of the
New York Philharmonic and Retired Solo Horn. could you
comment on the state of the Orchestral job scene?
JC: Generally speaking, I feel the job prospects are brighter
today than when 1 entered the job market. There are more
jobs being filled and that means. from time to time. being
refilled. In the early years of my career there were fewer or
chestras and the major orchestras only worked eighteen
weeks. Later those same major orchestras were working
twenty-eight weeks. Now most orchestras work fifty-two
weeks and many orchestras are on a similar pay and benefit
parity to the major five orchestras. Jobs were not always
advertised in the International Musician, and jobs are more plentiful and
more desirable.
JS: Did you do any outside wqrk?
JC: Oh yes. I played with Mitch Miller and horns. There was a time Mitch
Miller always recorded with three or four horns.
I played on "Yellow Rose of Texas" for one.'I've worked with John Barrows,
Jimmy Buffington, Tony Miranda. Clark Terry and Bernie Glow to name a few.
Commercial recordings were something I enjoyed very much because it was
something that played off the severity of the Philharmonic. I would try to
get to a date first and put my horn on the fourth chair. I played on vocal
backgrounds for Sinatra on Capitol,
RCA and Colombia. I recorded for the Operatic field at the Manhattan
Center. The first recording session I played was for Fran Warren and the
arranger was Chuck Naylor. The part started with a Seigfreid style call up
to the high Eb and then the rest of the song was high sustained playing.
When I finished I thought this free-lance jingle music was really hard. I
later found out that they had concerns for the part and that was why they
had called me in the first place.
I have had. and still have a rich relationship with brass players
throughout the music community.
JS: Thank you Mr. Chambers for an inspiring session.
JC: Thank you.