Blaise Déjardin: “I tried to enjoy doing less. I didn’t.” Marco Borggreve photograph
Cellist Blaise Déjardin won auditions for the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s principal chair in 2018—completing against 200 applicants. He became the first new principal cellist at the BSO in more than half a century. The fact that he came from the BSO ranks to win an international audition—he had joined the cello section ten years earlier—made his success even more heartwarming.
The Strasbourg-born cellist, now living in Jamaica Plain with a new Tanglewood-area getaway in Lee as well—had already impressed his BSO stage-mates with a decade of insightful, attentive musicianship. The appointment thrilled his colleagues.
Offstage Déjardin is equally accomplished. In 2013 he started Opus Cello, an online music publisher (opuscello.com) that features his own popular arrangements. He helped found the Boston Cello Society, the string ensemble A Far Cry, and the Boston Cello Quartet. He’s writing a book on cello pedagogy.
All that, especially the extensive work that goes behind his publishing company, engages Déjardin night and day.
But now it’s all stopped. Busy people don’t like being stopped.
“I had been on vacation technically,” he says, when the pandemic closed down most of society. “I had taken some weeks off to prepare the Shostakovich (which he did perform with the Melrose Symphony March 7) and the Saint-Saens concertos (an April BSO performance that never occurred). So I was already in quarantine when it started.”
That didn’t make the shutdown any easier. Déjardin was more fortunate than most—he had just bought a house in Lee, to be near Tanglewood for the summers. He left his Jamaica Plain residence once he could, and he’s in the Berkshires now—“here with my cat,” he says—waiting for concerts to begin again.
If they begin again. Tanglewood was canceled—at least the live performances. A substitute Tanglewood Online (bso.org) has been created, but for the musicians, livestream ain’t the same as live.
“Online playing—that’s not my job,” he says. “My job is to play live. I miss the audience. I miss my colleagues, and the sound of the orchestra.”
The BSO has been formulating guidelines for a return, and as of this date, an improbable September opening to the Symphony Hall season stays on the calendar. But with cancellations already announced in New York—Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center shuttered until January at least, and Boston venues like Jordan Hall closed through the spring—almost nobody thinks the BSO will be performing that soon.
“I don’t think my job is dead,” he says, when confronting the worst-case scenario. “It’s not up to me. It’s up to the BSO, and management. I’m sure it will happen again someday. It’s a game of patience.”
For now, that means some baking in his new kitchen—“I finally have it all set up”—and playing golf with BSO colleagues. It’s not all leisure—Déjardin is doing some online cello camps, his cello book—“it’s technical, mostly about how orchestra auditions work; it should be useful to students”—takes some time, as well as the continuing publishing work for Opus Cello.
“I was sort of burnt out,” he admits about the time leading up to the shutdown. “I had a lot of extra work. It was nice to have some time for self-reflexion, and I won’t have that time again.
“But frankly, I tried to enjoy doing less,” he says emphatically. “But I don’t. I enjoy doing things.”
Those things won’t happen until many pandemic-related restrictions—and public reservations—get resolved.
“It’s a very personal decision,” Déjardin says about performing again. “I can’t predict. The BSO won’t force us. And it doesn’t just involve us, it involves so many great soloists. We’ll see what happens.”
Keith Powers covers music and the arts for Gannett New England, Opera News and Leonore Overture. Follow @PowersKeith; email to keithmichaelpowers@gmail.com.