By Vida-Wynne GriffinPhoto by Michael Salerno
It’s a little bit rushed here,” suggested Rod MacDonald as David Kim rapidly made notations on his musical score. “And am I too loud? Is the trumpet overwhelming the strings?”
The dress was casual, and the mood friendly but intense as MacDonald met with Kim and five other musicians to rehearse Albinoni’s Concerto “San Marco” for trumpet and strings late on a Friday afternoon in the empty Fine Arts Center concert hall.
The following evening, Saturday, July 23, the concert hall would be filled to capacity as the piece had its Kingston Chamber Music Festival premiere.
A packed concert hall is not unusual for this festival, but this particular evening would be special—for the first time a URI graduate, John Roderick MacDonald ’86, would take the stage with the other world class musicians that Festival artistic director David Kim brings to Kingston every year.
Although he was a gifted young musician who played trumpet in the band at Ponagansett High School and in the Rhode Island Youth Orchestra, MacDonald, a graduate of the College of Engineering, initially chose the profession of mechanical engineering.
Three years after graduation, knowing he had a fall back profession if a music career didn’t pan out, MacDonald enrolled in the master’s program at the New England Conservatory of Music. Degree in hand, in 1989 he auditioned for Kurt Masur who chose him for the position of principal trumpet with the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig.
MacDonald’s career has flourished in Germany. He completed conducting studies at the Leipzig Conservatory in 1994 and has since compiled a long list of international performing and conducting credits.
For professional musicians, every performance presents its own challenges. “I have a couple of ideas,” said MacDonald at one point during rehersal. “How about a trill for the harpsichord right here? It would actually have more clarity. And I’d like to stretch this note out on the trumpet, so even if I’m slowing down, don’t go with me.”
He worried that he was standing too far back; was the sound better if he stood sideways and to the front of the stage? The consensus over the change was no, he was overriding the strings, so he moved back to his original rear stage position facing the audience. There were some frustrations. “This instrument won’t go any higher,” MacDonald remarked of the corno da caccia (an 18th century Italian name for the hunting horn) that he chose for the Albinoni. “It’s a temperature and humidity thing.”
The work intensified until the musicians had fine tuned their performance and adjusted to one another and to the idiosyncrasies of the concert hall, cooled by an air conditioner that Kim pointed out, “creates constant white noise.”
“Beautiful,” commented MacDonald, as rehearsal drew to a close and he packed up his trumpet. “I hope they like it.”
