COTTAGE GROVE – It looks like Alex Prior is everything he was cracked up to be.
As the Eugene Symphony performed “The Liberty Bell” on Monday night at Bohemia Park, Cottage Grove Mayor Candace Solesbee took the conductor’s stage, while Prior played the bell.
Prior thought it was the mayor’s conducting debut. He thought wrong.
“Oh, it’s not her first rodeo,” he said. “Where’s my hat?
“I’m worried about being exposed here. I’ll do my best playing the bell.”
As the Eugene Symphony enters its 60th season, Prior’s arrival has created quite a buzz around town. Although he doesn’t officially take over as music director until September, he enjoyed having a little fun in the sun with outdoor shows in Eugene and Cottage Grove.
“It was huge fun. Terrific fun. I love it. Not every aspect of being an artist is fun, but every performance is. It’s a privilege, too,” Prior said. “You get to share music you love – people think that listening to a concert is passive, but they’re giving their energy, too. So I get to share with them giving their energy and their input and my colleagues doing so.
“It’s amazing every time. I never get tired of performing.”
Prior is so animated, so demonstrative while conducting, that it’s almost more fun to watch than to hear.
“There’s no planning to it – it’s not an illustrative art,” Prior said. “Conducting is a reactive art – it’s different every time. Energies change, you have to do what the sound dictates.”
He also likes to play around with his audience.
“I always say, don’t take yourself seriously, but do take your art seriously,” he said. “Have fun and be chill and connect, and then play at top quality. It’s not about us being pompous, it’s about us presenting the music and providing connections so the music speaks at the deepest level possible for people.”
He offered up closer connections to some songs by explaining their context or background.
“I guess I have a thing for the letter E, as in the city of Edmonton, Alberta,” Prior said. “It’s a land of beautiful mountains and greenery and fabulous, kind people, just quite a bit colder – by about 50 degrees. I thought we’d salute Ian Tyson, the late and great Albertan country singer, by playing Four Strong Winds, which he wrote in New York. He was missing Alberta and the mountains, and the days of his youth working in the mountains as a ranchhand, and he wrote this ode that’s very dear to me. I asked my friends in Canada if we could play it and borrow it, but we absolutely must give it back.”
While introducing the “Jurassic Park Theme,” Prior said “this next piece will be dyno-mite.”
“This officially is the end of our program,” Prior said. “There’s a chance if you clap sufficiently after this piece, we might return. I can’t guarantee it but also I can.”
The fans obviously love having Prior onboard. They will be back for an encore. That’s a guarantee.
