PRESS RELEASE For Immediate Release
Seattle P-I article on Marcus Tsutakawa
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/274365_tsutakawa17.html
Applause for Garfield's popular
orchestra conductor
Students, alumni, fans take time
to laud Tsutakawa
Saturday, June 17, 2006
By R.M. CAMPBELL
P-I MUSIC CRITIC
In a day when classical music programs are routinely cut or marginalized
across the country, the one at Garfield High School is thriving. Marcus
Tsutakawa is the reason why.
He has become famous in the city for the breadth and depth of his work,
but he carries the weight of his reputation without undue pride or
self-consciousness. Rather than take credit, he gestures, in thanks, to his
students, their parents and Seattle Public Schools.
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Karen Ducey / P-I |
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Marcus Tsutakawa, director of the
Garfield High School orchestra, rehearses with his students June 7.
Current and former students and others are planning a tribute to
him. |
For those who know and treasure him as conductor of the Garfield
Orchestra, inspiring hundreds of student musicians over two decades, his
modesty is typical of the man -- quietly confident, passionate about what he
does, always working to make the orchestra better.
He is inspirational, said Gerard Schwarz, music director of the Seattle
Symphony, who has created multiple ventures between his orchestra and
Tsutakawa and his program. "His orchestra is one of the best in the country.
He is a champion of arts education who gets everyone involved. As for the
kids, I am not sure how Marcus inspires them, but he does. They respond to
him."
Under his leadership, the Garfield Orchestra is seemingly ubiquitous in
Seattle: Benaroya Hall and Meany Hall to Ballard High School, Seattle First
Baptist Church and Washington Middle School to the Northwest Folklife
Festival. And there are multiple tours outside Seattle -- to North American
cities, to Europe, to Asia.
Next season, the orchestra makes its debut at Orchestra Hall in Boston
and the following year returns to Japan. For more than a decade, the
orchestra has been winning top awards and honors and competitions locally,
regionally, nationally, even internationally. Most of the standard-bearers
of the Western classical music canon are represented in the orchestra's
repertory, as well as Strauss waltzes, a specialty of Garfield. The
orchestra also has a list of corporate sponsors that would make any arts
organization happy.
Little wonder St. Demetrios Hall in Montlake will be packed Sunday night
with alumni of the orchestra -- including many scattered across the country
-- their parents and friends, teachers, all joining together in celebration,
and a little roasting, of the man and what he has achieved.
"Marcus is amazing because he can bring out the best in any student,"
said Zartouhi Dombourian-Eby, who knows something about music and teaching
music. The piccolo player is one of the Seattle Symphony's most accomplished
musicians and a parent of two who played in the Garfield Orchestra and
currently are music majors at prestigious colleges.
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Karen Ducey / P-I |
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Marcus Tsutakawa began at Garfield
High School with the intention of making the orchestra "fun" and
interesting for students. |
"Now, he gets a lot of great students who seek out the orchestra," she
said. "It is relatively easy working with kids who have talent but not so
easy with those who have less. Marcus can work with all ranges and inspire
them to do their best. He does it very quietly, not by force of personality.
He has these standards, and the kids don't want to disappoint him. They want
to do their best. I have seen kids start at a rather elementary level and
zoom upward with Marcus. That is what sets him apart."
Niles Gunderson, principal cellist with the Garfield Orchestra, sums up
his feelings simply, calling Tsutakawa "great."
"Working with him is a constant pleasure. He is affable, with a quiet
kind of charisma, who has a very critical ear and knows how to fix problems.
But he does it in a very tactful way that doesn't embarrass people. Not only
does the orchestra offer tremendous exposure to the repertory, it is such a
supportive environment."
A senior, Gunderson is on his way to New York this fall to study at the
Manhattan School of Music.
Aase Cohen-Kiel, who occupies the principal oboe chair, echoes
Gunderson's sentiments, calling Tsutakawa "amazing," adding he is "really
good at personal relationships. You don't get nervous with him, he is so
laid-back and easy. I look forward to playing with him every day. He is
positive, helpful and doesn't get mad, although he can be stressed out
before a concert."
When Cohen-Kiel, a junior, leaves Garfield, she plans to study chemistry.
Garfield High School has long been known as one of the city's most
diverse and intellectually challenging public schools, with well-established
jazz and band programs. Its orchestra division was once barely alive. When
Tsutakawa arrived, in 1985, there were only a handful of students, not
enough to make even a small chamber orchestra.
From that modest beginning, there are now three orchestras in the
program, all under Tsutakawa's direction: Chamber Orchestra, Concert
Orchestra, Symphony Orchestra, comprising a total of about 160 students.
There are also several wind ensembles and string quartets. With its constant
stream of concerts outside the corridors of Garfield, recordings and radio
appearances, the 75-member Symphony Orchestra is the public face of the
program.
A Seattle product, Tsutakawa grew up in a cultivated household. His
father was the well-known sculptor George Tsutakawa. His siblings all became
professionally involved in the arts: sister Miyumi as a writer and brothers
Deems as a pianist and Gerard as a sculptor.
"My main instrument was the string bass," he said. His teachers included
members of the SSO double bass section. From high school, he went to the
University of Oregon, then University of Washington as a music major with an
emphasis in composition, graduating in 1979. Looking frankly at his future,
he decided to get a teaching certificate just in case nothing else worked
out. He got jobs right away in Seattle schools, but then they would
evaporate with budget cuts -- the last hired being the first laid off. He
began to work on his master's degree and, in the fall of 1985, he started at
Garfield.
"The soil at Garfield was rich but had not been cultivated," he said. And
so Tsutakawa got to work to make the orchestra "fun," to use his word, and
interesting and compelling, so students would sign up. And they did.
"I didn't have a game plan in 1985. This was my new job. I didn't have
any expectations because the program was so small, but I learned a lot from
the kids. They were so receptive. We dug in and got to work, playing the
literature, not school arrangements of the literature. And the kids began to
have fun. The repertory went from there to encompass Mahler, Tchaikovsky,
Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Dvorak."
Tsutakawa's connection with the Seattle Symphony, including sitting on
its board of trustees, has provided the whole of the Garfield orchestral
program impetus: joint concerts to tutoring to associations with
professional musicians they would not have otherwise.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Tsutakawa said, all Seattle schools had vibrant
music programs. Then with a series of levy defeats, funds diminished and
arts programs began to get cut. Now, many schools have little or no music in
the classroom. Among the best ones, in the upper grades, beside Garfield, he
said, are Roosevelt High School and Newport High School in Bellevue.
"I am grateful that Garfield has such a tremendous program. I wish all
schools had something similar."
Even with all of its many successes, the orchestra is not rich. The
school district provides only about $500 to $1,000 annually to the program.
The rest comes from donations -- parents, friends of the orchestra,
corporate sponsors -- and fundraising projects that can range from selling
greeting cards, doughnuts and poinsettias to the usual car washes, as well
as giving benefit concerts. Its waltz concerts are particularly popular. The
extra money is used buy music and instruments and provide help to students
whose parents cannot afford to pay for trips. The orchestra is currently
raising money to buy a harp at $12,000 and contrabassoon at $10,000. The
last tour to Japan, he said, cost $200,000, of which the parent group raised
$100,000. Next year's trip to Boston will cost $75,000.
The goal, Tsutakawa said, is to leave no student at home, regardless of
financial circumstances. Only 50 to 60 percent of the parents can pay for
their children's travel expenses.
P-I music critic R.M. Campbell can be reached at 206-448-8396 or
rmcampbell@seattlepi.com.
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