Gil Rose was to have celebrated the Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s 25th anniversary this season. “The anniversary may actually be better next year, or when we can do it.” Liz Linder photography
The latest Grammy nomination doesn’t even come up in conversation. Gil Rose, director and founder of both the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and of Odyssey Opera, has accomplished so much that yet another Grammy nomination—his sixth—simply gets added to the resume.
The Malden resident hasn’t performed since the spring, like most of his colleagues. BMOP’s last concert was in February. The Odyssey Opera season had to be canceled midway. Both ensembles are simply too large for any safe gatherings.
You’d expect that Rose would have time on his hands.
But with BMOP radio airing constantly, and his hyperactive label BMOPsound releasing a new recording almost every month, there’s plenty on his desk, even if he’s not waving the baton. And both groups are still drawing attention. Like that 2021 Grammy nomination, for Norman Della Joio’s “Trial at Rouen,” staged by Odyssey Opera and recorded for BMOPsound.
Rose’s workload has simply shifted. “My backlog of recordings was getting bigger, not smaller,” he says. “At one point I had sixteen CDs that I couldn’t edit. So in some ways the pandemic has been a plus—we’ve had time to catch up at BMOPsound. We get out one a month now, sometimes two. And the radio station uses everything we’ve recorded.”
Since 1995 BMOP has presented composer spotlights in concert, and then recorded most of those works for BMOPsound. BMOP isn’t the only ensemble dedicated to new music, but it has been the most consistent. Nobody has a comparable archive dedicated to contemporary composers.
It’s a legacy that led to the half-dozen Grammy noms: Harbison. Schuller. Yi. Picker. Spratlan. Stucky. Agócs. Ung. Norman. Ruehr. Wheeler. Davis. Babbitt. Berger. Vali. Bielawa. If you want a primer for contemporary music, start with the composers on BMOPsound.
The current season was supposed to have celebrated BMOP’s 25 years. “We had an anniversary planned, and special concerts for Symphony Hall and Carnegie Hall,” Rose says. “At least the pandemic has given me time, and now the anniversary may actually be better next year, or when we can do it. We’ve had a lot of partners over the years.”
Rose supports BMOP with an income balance from recording, radio, donated support and performance. Artistically, Rose presents challenging, mostly unknown works to the public. That equation should be the envy of the rest of the classical music industry—at least of the other orchestras.
BMOP concerts often draw modest audiences to Jordan Hall. But they feel like conservatory performances, where in-the-know music lovers flock to absorb intriguing new work. The notion that classical music might not be a shifting, breathing art-form stupefies Rose, and he’s unapologetic about what that implies for the rest of the performance world.
“I’m completely at a loss,” he says. “I’ve been pushing rep nobody has heard of for 25 years, and all that time I’ve been trying to explain not relying just on earned revenue. With the loss of the subscription model, it was already happening.
“I’m like the skunk at a wedding,” he says. “We have to stop making the public so stupid. What Covid might have done is give us a concentrated look at the future—eighteen months worth of bad news, rather than eighteen years. We have to diversify.
“Look at the over-reliance on ‘Nutcrackers,’ and with ‘Messiah.’ Think about what relying on these pieces does to the rest of a season. It forces you to dumb down your programming.
“And groups are more interested in the performer than the composer,” he says, a telling insight. “It’s about Jonas Kaufmann singing Wagner, not Wagner sung by Jonas Kaufmann. The performance becomes about his execution, not the music. It’s a debacle brought about by glib organizations, and it’s a by-product of the recording industry—of which I’m to blame as well. That expectation of high-level performance.”
Rose’s repertory choices with Odyssey Opera follow a similar model to BMOP—expanded beyond contemporary music, but still focusing on rarities. Completing the 2019–20 Tudor season—themed operas by Rosner, Rossini, Britten and others—was impossible, but Odyssey Opera will survive.
OO’s return might consist of “three big concert operas, and maybe one in a smaller venue,” he says, since opera performances will be slower to recover. Questions also remain about the ensemble’s regular venue, the Huntington Theatre, which is being renovated. “But we’ll come back.
“We’ve got a couple recordings for the spring—Gounod’s ‘Queen of Sheba,’ and Saint-Saëns’s ‘Henry VIII.’ Those are both important projects where we resurrected lost music. And around that time we’ll announce a commission as well.”
OO’s first commission will be “with a well-known composer, a really Boston-centric idea,” he says. “It won’t premiere until 2024, but it has a world-famous mezzo in the cast.” Rose won’t let slip any more details.
When performances do return, Rose doesn’t see much change likely in larger arts organizations.
“I think they’ll go back to where they were,” he says. “There might be some attrition, and I certainly don’t wish any organization to go under. But you have to be nimble and creative. This may be the reckoning moment.”
Keith Powers covers music and the arts for Gannett New England, Opera News and Leonore Overture. Follow @PowersKeith; email to keithmichaelpowers@gmail.com.