The string master
Florida Orchestra concertmaster Jeff Multer must be both a fine violinist and a diplomat.
By JOHN FLEMING
Published April 6, 2007
ST. PETERSBURG -- When the Florida Orchestra rehearses, violinist Jeff Multer will often rise from his chair to play a few notes for music director Stefan Sanderling, standing a few feet away on the podium. As Multer dashes off the musical phrase, the other orchestra members, especially the violinists, listen and take mental notes.
This little episode is repeated countless times over the course of a season as Multer mediates between how the conductor wants the music to sound and how the musicians perform it. The process can be painstaking when the orchestra is preparing something as massive, and relatively unfamiliar, as the Bruckner Symphony No. 8 that was on the program in early February.
"There's just so much stuff in this Bruckner, there's so much stuff that's not on the page, so much stuff we have to feel together," Multer said over lunch at a Thai restaurant, between rehearsals of the symphony at the Mahaffey Theater in St. Petersburg. "Stefan's interpretation is such that there will be a lot of things that he does that are not exactly spelled out in black and white on the music.
"Basically it's about us understanding what he wants. Especially when it involves the strings, or the violins in particular, if I don't know how to do it, or if I don't quite understand, then I've got to play a little something for him. Sometimes we can do it without playing, but a lot of times it's easier to use the violin."
To most audience members, Multer, the Florida Orchestra's concertmaster, is best known as the violinist who walks out at the beginning of a concert to signal the orchestra to tune up before the conductor comes on.
Seated in the first violin chair to the left of the podium, his playing is featured in many orchestral works, such as the prominent solos in Scheherezade and Ein Heldenleben both on the schedule in 2007-08.
But just as important as his talent as a violin player is the concertmaster's role as the liaison between the conductor and the violins, the largest section of a symphony orchestra. Multer also is a leader for the rest of the orchestra.
"He sets the tone, and we follow his lead," said Sarah Shellman, acting principal second violin.
Multer, 41, is in his first full season as concertmaster. He was appointed about a year ago after playing with the orchestra during parts of two seasons. In 2005, when Amy Schwartz Moretti, the previous concertmaster, had left for the Oregon Symphony, the orchestra planned to fill the vacancy with its associate concertmaster, Stewart Kitts. But Kitts succumbed to drug abuse and was let go, eventually landing in jail for possession of crack cocaine.
Sanderling met Multer at the summer Eastern Music Festival in North Carolina, where the violinist has been concertmaster since 1997. Sanderling asked him to fill in as concertmaster in Florida from time to time, and then to audition for the job.
"About the quality of his playing there is no doubt," Sanderling said. "But you know there are other people where there is no doubt about their playing. Very often someone can play perfectly in tune. So what? A computer can play in tune."
Sanderling found something more intangible in Multer.
"I liked the way he demanded things," he said. "Jeff has broader knowledge than just musical knowledge, and that makes for a good musician.
"Music is about something. Music asks: Why? I need to have somebody who has an answer to that question."
Long musical lineage
Multer seemed destined to become a musician. His grandparents met at the Juilliard School, the nation's pre-eminent music conservatory. His father, who also went to Juilliard, is a pianist who taught in the State University of New York system. His mother, a nurse, also plays piano.
"To this day, I'll hear something like an obscure Mozart piano sonata, and I'll realize my dad played it when I was, like, 3," Multer said. "It's one of those Proustian things."
The eldest of three children, Multer played in three student and community orchestras in the Rochester, N.Y., area and soaked up recordings of master violinists such as Jascha Heifetz, Isaac Stern and David Oistrakh.
Multer was the seventh person in his family to attend Juilliard, where he studied five years under violin legends like Felix Galimir. He was a classmate of future violin stars Midori, Gil Shaham and Anne Akiko Meyers. Multer stood somewhat apart for his eclectic tastes.
"Everybody at Juilliard hated orchestra music except me and a few others," said Multer, who played under conductors such as Leonard Bernstein and Zubin Mehta with the Juilliard symphony orchestra. "I didn't go in the direction of being exclusively a soloist or a chamber musician or an orchestra player. I wanted to do everything."
After finishing at Juilliard in 1989, Multer gravitated toward chamber music, studying with eminent violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi of the Vermeer Quartet and Arnold Steinhardt of the Guarneri Quartet. Based in New York City, he was a member of the Oxford Quartet and Elements Quartet.
"The more I played in a quartet, the better I got as a leader, but it's so hard to make a living in a quartet," said Multer, who also played as a freelancer in Orpheus, the conductorless orchestra, and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. He taught in Juilliard's precollege division.
Greatness on loan
Multer's chamber music activity led to his acquiring a major asset: his violin, a 19th century French instrument made by J.B. Villaume that was played by the New York Philharmonic's longtime concertmaster, John Corigliano Sr. It is owned by the violinist's son, composer John Corigliano, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his Second Symphony and an Academy Award for his score to The Red Violin.
Corigliano met Multer when he played his Violin Sonata at the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival. "He played it extraordinarily well," Corigliano said. "He was such a terrific violinist and he didn't have a good violin. I had my father's Villaume and some wonderful bows, and I decided Jeff was the kind of guy who should have that violin."
The Villaume is not a priceless instrument like an Italian Stradivarius or Guarnerius violin, but Corigliano Sr. preferred it over the Strad he also owned. "It was my father's favorite," Corigliano said. "It's a player's violin. It's not expensive because so many Villaumes were made, but there are great ones, and this happens to be a great one. My father played it probably 80 percent of the time and the Strad 20 percent of the time."
Multer has had the Villaume on loan for 10 years. "Violinists are at the mercy of benefactors in terms of instruments, and I've been very lucky to have this violin for a long time," he said. "It knows all the notes, that's what I like to say. It can be a little ornery. It doesn't like Florida, but no violin in its right mind would because of the humidity. Everything sounds like it's underwater here."
In an informal arrangement with Corigliano, Multer pays insurance on the instrument, which has an estimated value of $150,000 to $200,000. He sometimes helps the composer with a violin passage.
"When I was writing my Violin Concerto, Jeff would be the person I would call up to sort of try out things on," Corigliano said. "I would say, 'This is the chord and it's going to this chord, and here are the notes from the bottom up,' and he would take the violin out and play it for me over the phone. Or for really tricky stuff, I would see him and have him play through it. I'm very grateful to him for that concerto because he was really helpful with it."
A leader and diplomat
Multer has an animated playing style - what even he calls "bobbing and weaving" - that is partly a function of his height (he is 6-1) and partly a necessity to communicate with up to 25 other violins.
"You've got to move so the violins at the back of the section can see where to play," said Multer, who essentially leads the section with his back and shoulders.
When he is a soloist, as in superb performances this season of a pair of Mozart works, the Violin Concerto No. 5 and the Sinfonia Concertante (with violist Scott Yoo), Multer is a stiller figure, but he always seems to throw himself into the music.
The orchestra's violins have been sounding good under his leadership. Shellman, who describes Multer's playing as "very elegant, very refined," has found him to be a different kind of concertmaster than his predecessor, Moretti.
"What comes across to me is that Jeff analyzes everything that he does," Shellman said. "Amy seemed to play more on instinct. I just get the feeling that's the way his mind works. He's a problem solver. He'll identify a problem and fix it."
The concertmaster also has to be a diplomat par excellence as he serves as go-between for his artistic colleagues and the conductor. "I prefer to be nice and easygoing as opposed to edgy," Multer said. "But some days I'll just say, 'I'm being a pill, I'm sorry, but we have to play that softer or that note shorter or we have to vibrate more.' "
Traditionally, the concertmaster is an orchestra's highest-paid musician. Multer's compensation is not disclosed by the orchestra or him. Moretti made nearly $76,000 in the 2003-04 season, according to the orchestra's tax return.
Multer did note, "Unfortunately, because we are the lowest paid orchestra, nobody can say, 'Oh, yeah, I'll stay here forever.' If a more lucrative offer comes my way, I'd have to think about it." But he said he wasn't troubled by the orchestra's vagabond schedule, which has it moving among three principal venues. He piles up the miles on his dusty Acura.
"It never feels like a grind to me," he said. "Compared to being in a string quartet, it's a vacation."
Multer, who is single, gave up his New York apartment and has been house hunting in the Tampa Bay area. In the meantime, he rents a garage apartment from an orchestra trustee near St. Petersburg's Crescent Lake Park, where he enjoys taking walks with Blitz, his black-and-white border collie. He's a long-distance runner and has done marathons.
He has found that Florida takes some getting used to. "It's so flat, and everything seems to look like that," he said one afternoon at a Cuban restaurant in Tampa, pointing out the window at a run-down stretch of Florida Avenue.
"And it's a shock to me that a state as big and prosperous and important as Florida doesn't have a major symphony orchestra in it. I really hope that we can become that."
John Fleming can be reached at (727) 893-8716 or fleming@sptimes.com.
PREVIEW: Debussy up next
The Florida Orchestra's next series of concerts will feature Debussy's La Mer, with Susan Haig conducting. Performances are at 8 p.m. April 13, Ferguson Hall at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, Tampa; 8 p.m. April 14, Mahaffey Theater, St. Petersburg; and 7:30 p.m. April 15, Ruth Eckerd Hall, Clearwater. Tickets are $17-$52. Call (813) 286-2403 or toll-free 1-800-662-7286, or go to www.floridaorchestra.org.