Stage

Indoor Neighborhood Animal Crossing: New Horizons provides a relaxing gaming respite.

BY COLE WILLIAMS

Courtesy Nintendo

Like all Animal Crossing games, New Horizons has you making an unassuming avatar and moving to a town full of cute talking animals.

Of the major games releasing in this time of self-isolation and quarantine, few could be as timely as Animal Crossing: New Horizons. The latest entry in Nintendo’s relaxing life-simulation series has all the laid-back gameplay people know and love while also bringing in much-needed tweaks and additions.

New Horizons, like all Animal Crossing games, has you making an unassuming avatar and moving to a town full of cute talking animals. There’s no world to save, just a life to live, each day providing new things to do as the in-game clock counts forward in real time, sunup to sundown. As in older titles, you’re free to wander your town, befriending your furry and scaly neighbors and pursuing pastimes like catching bugs, collecting fossils for the museum, and buying things to furnish your home with while also paying back local business owner and Realtor raccoon Tom Nook for your move by selling things like fish you catch or seashells you pick off the beach. Even after all these years, it’s still adorably chill, from the relaxed guitar background music to the kindness of your fellow islanders, the Switch’s graphical prowess making the animals fuzzier, the breeze gentler, and the vibe just even more relaxing.

What’s new to the series is that, instead of moving to an already established town, you and two random animals start on a deserted island. There are no houses and no shops, just roughing it in a tent or as rough as it gets in Animal Crossing. You can’t starve or freeze to death or anything, leaving you to collect sticks, stones, and other materials to craft tools like the shovels, axes, and fishing rods needed to turn your island from a weedinfested plot into a thriving village. In some ways, it feels like adding depth to the game by putting your starting point further back than in previous entries. However, with crafting comes customization, and being able to make your own home furnishings and paint them adds a deeper level of personalization. This goes even further, as you can now place furniture outside, allowing you to decorate the yard in Animal Crossing: New Horizons Available for Nintendo Switch Genre: Casual/Life Simulation Rated E

front of your home, as well as select where buildings like the museum go when they’re available. Later on, you’re even able to change the island’s layout, moving rivers and raising or lowering land.

There are smaller quality-of-life changes as well. Character creation is simpler, and the game gives you a large storage space when you get a house and the ability to more easily rearrange furniture in it. But the best addition may be the new multiplayer mode. Not only does it give you the ability to visit other towns, but now you and other gamers living in your town can play local couch co-op, allowing you to run around, craft things, find fossils, and reduce debt at the same time, which is perfect for friends and families stuck inside.

It’s unlikely to change the minds of those who see its low stakes and casual nature as a bore, and it has some drawbacks –– only one village is allowed not per game cartridge but per Switch console. But New Horizons refines the already great Animal Crossing formula and, perhaps most relevantly, provides a refreshing simulation of going outside with friends. l

Learning from

12 FORT WORTH WEEKLY APRIL 22-28, 2020 fwweekly.com SARS A trip to Southwest Asia nearly 20 years ago demonstrated more genuine leadership than what we have in America today. BY E.R. BILLS In 2003, my friend Dan and I explored Southeast Asia. The SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) epidemic was winding down, but, in the last few months, a new strain had emerged, characterized by fever, diarrhea, respiratory duress, and a high fatality rate. Several folks in remote Cambodian villages had succumbed to the affliction, perishing in fits of coughing, choking, and delirium. Locals were sacrificing pigs and chickens and standing up straw effigies to ward off evil spirits.

In Thailand, SARS was never mentioned. We never even saw anyone in surgical masks. We didn’t realize it was still lingering in the region until we attempted to enter Cambodia. At the Poi Pet crossing station, we flashed our passports and began the visa application process. We were the only visitors in the facility.

After we paid for our visas, we were accosted by three young machine gun-wielding representatives of a Cambodian militia. In broken English, the shortest one explained that, due to the SARS outbreak, we would be required to submit to a supervised quarantine. If we coughed or sneezed or exhibited any symptoms of pneumonic complication, we would be held pending further medical examination or turned away outright. Dan looked at me and shrugged.

The quarantine staging area was simply 20 grimy, plastic lawn chairs tucked under a tarp behind the station. We dropped our backpacks and grabbed a couple of seats. Two silent machine gun-wielding teenagers monitored our condition.

For the duration of the quarantine, Dan and I tried to remain solemn. Dan flashed hints of a smile a few times, and we both tried not to laugh. It can be exceedingly dangerous to scoff crude customs you encounter in the Third World. Especially when your immediate point of contact has a machine gun.

On the Cambodian side of the border lay typhoid, hepatitis, encephalitis, malaria, and six million land mines. It seemed ironic that the Cambodians might be concerned about two doughy Yanks bringing anything dangerous into their country, but the Vietnam War wasn’t that long ago — I’m surprised they let us in at all.

When our 20 minutes were up and we had neither coughed nor sneezed or even cleared our throats, the shortest soldier returned and smiled.

“Welcome to Cambodia,” he said.

I think about the experience a lot these days. Our president’s messaging regarding COVID-19, a cousin of SARS, seems politically skewed and opinion polldriven. Our governor’s efforts to “cure” abortion during this pandemic are nakedly partisan and evil, even for him. And some of our neighbors are beating up AsianAmericans, conscientiously stressing social distancing while they know immigrants are still crowded together into prisons on our border with no conscience whatsoever, and averting their gazes as our sons and daughters in the Navy see captains punished for simply having conscience and conviction. The primitivism Dan and I encountered at Poi Pet that day may have been laughable, but at least it was honest — which is more than I can say for what’s passing for leadership in the United States today.

APRIL 22-28, 2020 fwweekly.com Conducting Greatness This season finds soonto-be-former FWSO music director Miguel Harth-Bedoya working as hard as ever. BY EDWARD BROWN After returning to the States from an overseas conducting engagement in mid-March, Miguel Harth-Bedoya remembered being shocked that U.S. airports were not testing offboarding passengers for symptoms of COVID-19. After spending the better part of a day in a cramped airplane, the music director of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra promptly self-quarantined in the bedroom of his Fort Worth home.

Eight days later and showing no symptoms, he slowly resumed what has become his current homebound routine of leading livestreamed conducting webinars and helping our city ’s resident orchestra launch its new online community engagement program, The Music Lab.

Were it not for the pandemic, the end of Harth-Bedoya’s 20-year tenure with the FWSO would have been marked with a crescendo of live performances with the orchestra that has gained a worldclass reputation under his baton. His newest venture, the Summer Orchestral Conducting Institute, is led by several faculty members (of which I am one) who gather each summer to teach emerging conductors the wide range of skills that are needed to lead orchestras and large ensembles.

During a recent online interview, Harth-Bedoya didn’t lament what could have been. The conductor and educator was eager to talk about Fort Worth’s cultural future. What have you been up to since shelter-in-place was implemented? I launched free webinars. My goodness, hundreds of people are stranded and wanting to chat about stuff. Today, I’m talking about programming from the music director’s point of view. It’s one day at a time, and I’m glad that I can be of help.

These programs are part of my [Summer Orchestral Conducting Institute]. I will have a few guests, including [virtuoso violinist] Augustin Hadelich. We were able to make a donation fund from the free webinars. We raised nearly $2,000 for scholarships through $5 donations. Has the shelter-in-place situation changed your thoughts on programming your Conducting Institute? Now, the institute will no longer just be a summer program. We can offer online opportunities and satellite versions of what we do during the summer so people don’t have to travel. How are the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra musicians doing? What I am hearing is that everybody is healthy. I don’t want to intrude as they adjust. It’s not that they have nothing to do. We are going to organize an online rehearsal without rehearsing. We have never done an online meeting before. Hopefully, that will happen soon. What is FWSO doing at the moment? We are doing programs with schools, the young artist competition, and podcasts of recent performances. One program is called Happy Hour with Miguel. I’ll give a Facebook Live talk for amateur music lovers. People can ask me questions. STAGE Harth-Bedoya: “This may sound shocking, but I think the biggest challenge is watching YouTube instead of studying music and watching conductors in real settings.” Courtesy of Miguel Harth-Bedoya movies • video games • music & more © 2020 Universal Pictures All Rights Reserved. Rated R

The Gentlemen

© 2020 Universal Pictures All Rights Reserved. Rated PG-13

The Turning

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Are there still plans to hold Concerts in the Garden?

Everyone is waiting to see what happens. Those concerts [necessarily] have to do with the gathering of people. We all are waiting to see what the city’s recommendation will be. At the moment, it is going to happen.

Talk about your transition from FWSO music director to professor and Conducting Institute director.

I’m ending two tenures, one with [FWSO] and a seven-year position with the Norwegian Radio Orchestra. I had a feeling that it would be best to have a clean start. It was a gamble, but if I free myself up, there is room to accommodate something new. I wasn’t contemplating a full-time position that would make us move. The kids want to finish school here.

Now , I will be focusing on guest engagements and a faculty position [as director of Orchestral Studies at the University of Nebraska-Omaha]. It was providential. I will teach two semesters and will continue my guest engagements. People think I travel more than I do. I currently travel about one week a month. Those continuing engagements are important. Having a foot out in the field is important for educating our students.

One highlight of the University of Nebraska is they are interested in an undergraduate [program] in conducting. [Undergraduate conducting programs]

exist on paper in two institutions [in the United States], but there are no students enrolled at the moment.

The workload is Monday through Thursday. I’ll probably be home here more than before in a certain way. I haven’t had free weekends for 20 years. It’s exciting.

Why did you create the Conducting Institute?

It is a gateway. We are not trying to teach everything in three weeks. A gateway is the first step, a door you can knock on to see what conducting is about. All of the students are at the same level. There are classes, and I work with them individually. I would never call these masterclasses. This is not a one-time thing. Next year will be four weeks, which allows just enough time to show progress or to help someone who is stuck.

What challenges do young conductors face?

This may sound shocking, but I think the biggest challenge is watching YouTube instead of studying music and watching conductors in real settings. There is way too much passive information available. It’s a problem. Also, if a young conductor does not know the repertoire by graduation, they are already left behind. Conductors are on the front lines. It’s a very unforgiving profession.

What were your earliest learning moments as a conductor?

I did my undergrad at the Curtis Institute of Music and my master’s at the Julliard School. My first job was as music director of the New York Youth Symphony. We would rehearse once a week. I also became an assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic. In four years, I conducted twice. [Conductor] Kurt Masur said, “Your main job is to continue learning.” At first, I didn’t get the point. Looking back, my goodness, I saw so many rehearsals. I would say that that part is missing with young conductors today.

This story is not well known. I conducted all kinds of groups during that time. I conducted an all- girl high school orchestra when I was a student [at Curtis] in Philadelphia. I would start at 7:30 a.m. You had to do miracles. You could have one oboe and 10 saxophones, and you had to make music with that. Many of the young generations think [that kind of work is] not glamorous enough.

You know the first thing I conducted in my life? Many people think it was an orchestra. It wasn’t. I helped my mom, who is a freelance musician, with music for weddings, ceremonies, graduations, anything. It could be organ with a choir. It was a single-mom household. I would carry music stands when I was a teenager. One day, we had two bookings at one time. I was 16, so a member of the choir drove me. I was conducting 10 people at weddings. Those were my first conducting engagements. I learned that if you can have people react to you, then you are conducting somebody. If you are only waving your hands, nobody is conducting because they are not paying attention.

There is very little credit given to those kinds of opportunities, from a leadership point of view, these days. People would look down and say they are above that. You might expect me to say it’s how the orchestra sounds. Well, that’s the result of the answer. The answer is having created an integrated workplace for music-making. That takes time. There is satisfaction that comes from intense work and heavy work. If you make [working in an orchestra] the place you want to go to and work every day, then the orchestra sounds better. It doesn’t sound better because I tell them or order them.

My job was to motivate every human being in the orchestras who happens to have an instrument. People say I am hiring musicians. No, it’s a person who has a life and a family. You want that person to want to come make music with their chosen instrument. That takes time. If that works, the orchestra will play well and its members will do anything to play better. l

To follow the FWSO’s new online events, visit Fwsymphony.org/in-thecommunity. More information about the Conducting Institute is available at Conductinginstitute.com.

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