Maestro Robert W. Butts
Dr. Robert W. Butts is a conductor/composer and educator who resides in the state of New Jersey. In 1996 he formed The Baroque Orchestra of New Jersey, which encompasses professional musicians as well as local community players. The orchestra had originally performed only period music from the baroque era, but has since expanded their repertoire to the classical period, the romantic period, opera music and contemporary music of today. As Maestro Butts explains, "All of my concerts have something familiar and something that's a discovery." Some of the guest musicians who have collaborated with the orchestra include: Robert Watt (French horn), Dominika Zamara (opera soprano singer), Stanley Alexandrowicz (classical guitar) and many others.
Maestro Butts teaches at Montclair State University and Drew University, and is well respected in the tri-state area. He has led orchestras in Italy and has had his original compositions performed in London. Recently a Scarlatti opera score from 1693 was discovered at The National Park Service Museum in Morristown New Jersey. Mr. Butts did his Doctoral Dissertation on this historic piece. He edited the music and had the first performance of masterpiece in over 300 years. There will be a documentary of this process coming out shortly. Dr. Butts also has a degree in Musicology and has presented major scholarly papers at session of The American Musicological Society, The Sonneck Society, and The Country Music Conference. He has received many prestigious awards for his work in music and the local community. I recently had the opportunity to talk to the maestro about his career.
R.V.B. - Dr. Butts? Robert von Bernewitz from Long Island How are you?
R.B. - I'm well. Thank you very much.
R.V.B. - The service that you are doing for the state of New Jersey - and the tri-state area - is amazing. You are keeping the arts alive and you should be proud of your efforts.
R.B. - Thank you very much. I appreciate it greatly.
R.V.B. - How did you get started with music? Did you come from a musical family?
R.B. - No. I've always been interested in it. It's always affected me in one way or another. I learned to play the guitar when I was around 10 or 11. I've also always been interested in writing and composing. I've always been interested in words. For a long time I was interested in songwriting and I have been writing songs since I was about 14 years old. Then I got into music history and musicology. About 21 years ago I wanted to create an orchestra. I was playing a lot of early music with the lute and the harpsichord. I felt that there wasn't anything being done for the orchestral music. I started The Baroque Orchestra of New Jersey to perform the music of Bach, Handel, Vivaldi and other music from the 17th/18th centuries. In the course of time, I developed a greater interest in conducting and I gained more experience. I studied conducting with Vincent La Selva at Juilliard. Artists wanted to work with me. The orchestra expanded and now plays more concerts. We do a lot of outreach concerts. We collaborate with opera companies... with dance companies... with choruses. We work with the National park system in Morristown. We do more 17th/18th century music than anyone locally and we also do a lot of world premieres. We do anything from the 17th century to the 21st century.
R.V.B. - That's a nice overview. You had mentioned that you started with the guitar, Were you influenced by the folk revival?
R.B. - I actually started with The Beatles. I would sing Peter, Paul and Mary. I would sing songs about nature. It was the influence of The Beatles that got me into songwriting and composing. I did a lot of performing. I was in the country music world for a while. I toured with a country rock band for a year.
R.V.B. - What was the name of the band?
R.B. - It was called "The Quality Coal Company." My band was called "Phantom Canyon."
R.V.B. - Where did your travels bring you?
R.B. - With The Quality Coal Company, we toured Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Montana... that region. Phantom Canyon led me to Nashville. I lived in Nashville for three years.
I opened for Johnny Cash once. That was very exciting. It's almost 30 years ago.
R.V.B. - That's a pretty big gig.
R.B. - Yes it was. Then I realized it was time to make a living and time to settle down. I wanted to explore other kinds of music.
R.V.B. - When you went to college, is that when your musicology interest kicked in?
R.B. - Yes. When I went to do my graduate work, I really got interested in early music. Being a guitar player, it was very simple and logical to switch from guitar to lute. A lot of folk music really originated in 17th century England and Ireland. The Scotch Irish music that came over here... the jigs... the reels... the ballads. It wasn't far removed from doing folk music and country music, to doing John Dowland or Henry Purcell. I found lute music to lay under my fingers better. I played classical guitar for a while but I never really developed a knack for it. As soon as I played the lute, I really fell in love with the instrument.
R.V.B. - Musicology is a good starting point to branch out into the performing aspect.
R.B. - One of the recent exciting things that I did was, there was a baroque manuscript from 1693 that was discovered in Morristown, New Jersey. My Doctoral dissertation was this Scarlatti opera. I edited it and we did a performance of it last year. Everybody said "This is a major work and a major discovery. Somebody should make a documentary about it." The film is almost done. We're working on the final touches.
R.V.B. - How did you come across the score?
R.B. - It's part of an archive in the National Park Service Museum in Morristown. The person in charge of the archives discovered it. He sent me an email saying that "He found it, and would I be interested in looking at it?" I saw it was a genuine and it had the Scarlatti dedicatory letter. It was an incredible discovery. Jude Pfister is the one who found them. He and I worked together to help edit the manuscript. Then I got some musicians, and singers together and we did the first performance of it in 300 years. It was very exciting.
R.V.B. - That's fantastic. When you decided to start the orchestra, I gather you pulled the talent from people that you know from your local music community.
R.B. - About half the people, I had already been working with. I had done a little bit of random conducting with various ensembles. Some of them were participating. I put out a notice and a few press releases in the papers. I had several local musicians who were already playing in orchestras but they wanted to play baroque music... which very few orchestras do. I attracted a number of people who love Bach... who love Handel... who love Telemann, Purcell and Monteverdi. They helped with putting the orchestra together. They helped with picking out music... making sure the concerts worked and the orchestra stayed together.
R.V.B. - I noticed the great chemistry as I was watching the YouTube videos. When a conductor has to work with a major orchestra like the New York Philharmonic or the Boston Symphony orchestra, there are certain work regulations that restrict rehearsal time. I gather you don't have that issue.
R.B. - The orchestra is 45% professional musicians. There is another 20 to 25% high quality musicians that don't pursue making a living with music. The other 30% are very high quality community players. We have not run into any situations like that... thankfully.
R.V.B. - Everyone is involved for the pleasure of making great music.
R.B. - Yes. It gives me freedom to explore music that not a lot of other orchestras are doing. The last concert, we did a 19th piece by a composer that nobody else had ever heard of... Heinrich Hübler. It was for 4 French horns and orchestra. We did it because this very famous horn player Robert Watt, liked me and liked working with the orchestra, said "I'd like to play this Hübler piece." I have an incredible Board of Directors. All of these circumstances enabled me to say "Hey, Let's try this piece!" It's the same with a lot of the baroque pieces that we do. Even with the well known composers... it may one that is not done very often.
R.V.B. - That's good. Most people do not want to hear the same pieces performed over and over again. It's refreshing to hear the unusual or neglected works.
R.B. - I agree. It's refreshing for me to conduct it. I think for the musicians, it's refreshing to do something new. At the same concert where they did the Hübler piece, they also did a piece by Richard Strauss. Now a lot of orchestras play Strauss. The piece I did was called "Symphonic Fantasy" and not a single musician in my orchestra had ever played this piece. Even though it's a famous, well performed composer, they were excited to explore a piece of music that they had never done. We'll still mix some standard work in like the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto and the Mendelssohn Italian Symphony. All of my concerts have something familiar and something that's a discovery.
R.V.B. - You've had some master classes in conducting for both orchestra and opera.
R.B. - More orchestra than opera. Opera is daunting. Opera is the most complex art imaginable. It's the most expensive art form ever created. It involves so many people. There's so many factors involved. The singers have to memorize their part. You have to have costumes... sets. The orchestra has to perform in the pit. There are so many elements to opera that it's not easy to get a master class together. About 13 years ago, I did a master class on conducting Verdi operas in Constanta, Romania. It was great. It was a place where I had never been to before. It was a resort area on the Black Sea. I spent four weeks working with chorus... working with orchestra... working with soloists, on Rigoletto... Il Trovatore... just learning and doing at the same time. It was a great experience in a wonderful environment.
R.V.B. - That's hitting the source... on that side of the world. You mentioned that you studied with Vincent La Selva. What did you take from him that stays with your music of today.
R.B. - Mostly what I learned from his was technique... how to work with the orchestra. A lot about balance. He taught me the importance of the parts that are not necessarily heard by the audience. In other words, instead of worrying about the melody - everybody knows the melody - what really makes the music come alive is maybe the viola part... or maybe the second bassoon part. He taught me how to look at inner parts of a score... the depth. He taught me how to analyze the score from the inside out rather than from the top down. I took from these courses, the new understanding on how the orchestra works and how to bring the music to life in a greater depth.
R.V.B. - You did some work over in Europe recently?
R.B. - Two years ago I made a trek to Italy and I made a trek to England. I went to Italy to conduct an opera called "La Serva Padrona", that featured the soprano Dominika Zamara. I going back to Italy in October to conduct a performance that she's starring in of an early Mozart opera. I went to Italy in March to conduct a small baroque opera and a string piece that I composed. In September I went to London because guitarist Stanley Alexandrowicz premiered my guitar suite composition. I met Dominika and Stanley and have been given many opportunities through my association with wonderful pianist Lynn Czae and The New York Classical Music Society.
R.V.B. - When you went to Italy, was it the first time that you worked with this orchestra? If so, was it transparent?
R.B. - Yes. It all felt very natural. They were excellent musicians. They were also very nice people. We got along immediately. I'm still in touch with four of them. From day one, it was just a positive experience.
R.V.B. - How long was the process from the practice sessions to the performance?
R.B. - I had two vocal rehearsals... two rehearsals with the orchestra and then the performance. Everything was done in six days. It was an unforgettable experience.
R.V.B. - I'm sure it was. Especially doing it in the land of such great opera history.
R.B. - That made it special. It was performed in a theatre where the building was originally part of a monastery that was built in the 14th century. To be walking in these 14th century halls, in a medieval city and conducting a baroque opera... it was like magic.
R.V.B. - As a musicologist, why do you think that opera is still so popular in Italy?
R.B. - I think that it's so much a part of the language. We in America, look at the Verdi, Puccini and the Mozart Italian operas as an art form. There, it's a part of their life. The melodies spring out of their musical traditions. I'm working on La Boheme now. I'm asking the singers not to listen to recordings of La Boheme, but to listen to the recordings of Come Back to Sorrento, O Sole Mio and Santa Lucia - the classic Italian songs - and bring that same feeling to Puccini. Puccini's melodies grow out of culture and out of the songs of the culture. I think that's the heart of it.
R.V.B. - You've moved the orchestra's repertoire to other areas beyond baroque music and added material from the classical period, the romantic era and even some from the modern era. Was that a natural progressions that had to happen for diversification?
R.B. - It wasn't planned. It just kind of happened. For instance, I knew a woman who was a voice teacher. She asked if some of her students could sing an aria with my orchestra, because it would be a good opportunity for them. That led to doing Nozze di Figaro... which was the first opera. That led to doing more operas. The more operas that we did, the more I found that I liked it. I have a real knack with it. I work well with singers. Even though I was a pop singer and not an opera singer, I was still a singer. So the issues of breathing and approaching the melody... maybe that helped? A local pianist named Paul Zeigler came to me around 2003. He is a wonderful pianist and he just finished doing all 32 Beethoven sonatas. He and I both lived in Madison. He suggested we do the Beethoven piano concertos. So the logical thing to do was "Why don't we do a Beethoven symphony?" That took us into the 19th century. Because it went well, I had other soloists come up and say "Bob, I'd like to do the Mendelssohn violin concerto." That brought us into the romantic era. I teach at Montclair State University as well as Drew University. Montclair music program is more performance oriented. I got to know some of the faculty members there. They liked working together with me. A pianist named Ron Levy who worked there said " I'd like to do the Poulenc double piano concerto." I didn't even know Poulenc wrote a double piano concerto but I said "Sure." It grew by natural progression.
R.V.B. - You write your own compositions, for example Symphony No. 1, The Joshua Symphony. What was the inspiration for writing this work?
R.B. - It was commissioned. One of my board members - Ann Plaut - her son had died in an accident. They asked me if I could write a piece of music in his honor. This was a chance for me to try and write a symphony. I had written concertos... I had written some musical theatre pieces, and it felt right to write something more weighty... more serious. The reason for writing it was there. I talked to Ann and her husband John. I talked to Joshua's brothers... read about him. I looked at pictures and went for walks. Gradually it just came about. One complete movement came to me when I was meeting a friend in a restaurant in New York. It was a very stormy night and I was 45 minutes early. The restaurant was on the 30th floor in midtown. I was sitting up there looking out over the city with thunderstorms going on. I ordered a drink. I always carry paper with me just in case. The movement just came about. The inspiration for the various theme's came from everywhere. The only thing I knew from the beginning was I wanted to include two voices. They enter in the 3rd movement. They also return in the finale. I knew from the beginning that I didn't want them to be singing any words. I wanted them to be part of the orchestra. I wanted to experiment with using the human voice as an orchestral instrument. I think I wrote the 3rd movement first. That's what I wanted to be the center of the piece.
R.V.B. - Fascinating. As I stated in the beginning, you're doing a great service to the state of New Jersey and you have been rewarded with a few awards for your work. How do you feel about getting the recognition for this and what are you proud of in your place in music?
R.B. - Those are not easy questions. Of course the recognition is incredibly valuable. I'm really proud of the fact that many of the awards that have come, have been from my work... not just the musical accomplishments but the accomplishments as part of the community. I'm proud of sharing the passion, the excitement... the discovery. I'm always excited when I do a concert or a lecture, and present a piece of music that nobody else knew before. Then somebody says "You know Bob? I was so inspired that I went out and bought the CD. You made me look the composer up." I invite a lot of my students to come to my concerts. What really makes me feel good is when I have 18/19 year olds who never knew what an orchestra was, and through taking my class at Montclair - or at Drew - coming to see one of my concerts and coming up to me and say. "You inspired me to pursue this further." One of the most meaningful things to me was, I had a performance and I went out to dinner with some of the musicians. When the bill came the manager said "Your dinner is paid for." It turned out that the waitress had been my student at Montclair, and she was so grateful that she discovered this music through me, she paid for my dinner that night. Those are things that make me feel proud.
R.V.B. - You do have a lot to be proud of. Your music is wonderful. Your orchestra is fantastic. There is more good things ahead for you in the future I am sure. I appreciate you taking this time to share your story with me.
R.B. - Thank you.
Interview conducted by Robert von Bernewitz
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For more information on Dr. Robert W. Butts or The New Jersey Baroque Orchestra, visit these sites. www.robertbutts.com www.baroqueorchestra.org
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