Dog resting in front of the Temple of Olympian Zeus, Athens, Greece, July 3, 2006. You can't see him or her too well here, but this is one of the estimated 150,000 stray dogs that roam the streets of Athens. It can be startling to come across a pack of eight or nine dogs just casually crossing a city street or emerging from behind some rocks on the Acropolis. It's also fascinating to see an independent, self-organized pack of dogs like that, and to think that is how our own dogs would arrange themselves in an urban environment if left to their own devices.

It is a serious issue for Athenians, though, and I've read that the city council has put in place a plan for sterilizing strays rather than putting them down. I was puzzled that so many of these freely roaming dogs seemed to have collars (no tags though). Upon inquiring, I was told that prior to the 2004 Olympics, rumors spread that more draconian measures would be taken to reduce the stray population in time for the Games. Dog-loving Athenians then apparently went around putting collars on as many of the dogs as they could, the thought being that a dog with a collar would not immediately be assumed to be a stray, thus being spared a death sentence. If that was the plan, it seems to have worked to perfection.

A photo taken at last year's Chateau d'Ainay Music Festival: from left to right, Francis Gouton, me, Brian Lewis, Tereza Stanislav, Festival Director Frances DeBroff, Eric Ruske, Alex Klein. I'll be on hiatus from blogging for a few days as I return there this week for the 2006 Festival, another round of intensive rehearsals, concerts, and gorging myself on homecooked French meals washed down by an endless supply of Beaujolais. Some other returnees this year, like Alex, but also some new faces, including Chicago Symphony principal flutist Mathieu Dufour and the excellent John Ellis Quartet playing the Friday night jazz concert. Here is a link to last year's festival, they evidently decided not to do an updated one for this year (the whole scene is pretty laid-back as this photo might indicate) but it gives you an idea of the atmosphere. And for a link to the Chateau itself, go here...Ainay-le-Vieil, the tiny village surrounding the Chateau, is extremely close to the very geographic center point of France.

Gin, the old dog in residence at Chateau d'Ainay, in Ainay-le-Vieil, France, August 2005. Chateau d'Ainay is the site of an annual chamber music festival each August, but Gin never has been particularly interested.

You may or may not have read Jeffrey Day's comprehensive piece in last Sunday's "State" about the South Carolina Philharmonic's search for a new music director. (If you didn't see it, you'll have to fork over $2.95 to read it...contrary to their website's statements, The State frequently places articles in the fee-based archives immediately upon publication and sometimes before publication, not even allowing the free 7-day access that they claim normally exists. Such was the case with this article.)

But back to the article itself. According to Day, 232 people applied for the job, the field has been narrowed to 45, and anywhere from three to eight will be invited to guest conduct/audition in the 2007/08 season. I've heard from other sources that the number of invitees is likely to be closer to eight rather than three, which is good news. At the very least, that gives a few more young conductors a date with a professional orchestra.

You'll recall that MMM has weighed in on this topic before. One of the more interesting aspects of the article in the State is a comparison by the numbers of the orchestras within South Carolina. Charleston has the biggest budget, but they've also had their share of contractual disputes in recent years with their musicians. Day also spotlights a few new faces among area conductors: Sarah Ioannides in Spartanburg, Daniel Meyer in Asheville, Edward Tchivzhel in Greenville, and in a much larger market, Christof Perick in Charlotte. The common denominator among those four is that none of them lives in any of those cities. Perick has never even had an apartment in Charlotte, but only stays in hotels when he comes to town. For these conductors that's understandable from a career standpoint (many conductors hold more than one Artistic Director-ship), but it would be nice to find someone who might actually consider making Columbia their principal base of operations (Tchivzhel prefers to live in his other orchestra town, Fort Wayne, Indiana, over Greenville. Myself, I'd take Greenville anyday).

Why should it matter if our new conductor puts down some roots in Columbia? For one thing, it enables him or her to really come to know the town, to understand the market, and to conceptualize the role the orchestra can play in the cultural life of the community. That takes spending a lot of time in the city, aside from concert weeks. But trying to find someone willing to move to Columbia would almost certainly mean taking a chance on a young conductor with less "name" or experience but, one hopes, great talent and the potential for igniting the community's passion for its orchestra.  To find that person, it takes a search committee that will be able to pick talent out of a pile of resumes, videos, facts and figures. There are some good people on this committee, and MMM is optimistic that they are up to the task.

St. Bart's, French West Indies, January 2006. As a hopeless dog person, I often return from concert trips to find an alarming number of photos I've taken are of random dogs I've met on my travels. In honor of the Dog Days of Summer, this month we'll meet a few.