36 minute read
NORTHEAST WASHINGTON’S TOURISM PLANS
from Inlander 12/16/2021
by The Inlander
NEWS | DEVELOPMENT Thoughtful Invitations
Northeast Washington to plan for tourism as state tries to replicate success of other PNW communities
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BY SAMANTHA WOHLFEIL
During the pandemic, while some out-of-the-way outdoor recreation areas saw visitation plummet (such as Denali National Park in Alaska), many other parks saw an influx of new and returning visitors anxious to get out of the house.
Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area in northeastern Washington, for example, got 160,585 more visitors than in 2019, with a near record 1.5 million total visitors in 2020, according to parks data that goes back to the 1940s.
With campsites and trails in the area also proving popular, Pend Oreille, Ferry and Stevens counties got a taste of how tourism can benefit surrounding towns.
“We have hundreds of lakes and huge waterways, and we know that those activities are well used,” says Shelly Stevens, who runs regional marketing for the Tri County Economic Development District, which covers all three counties. “One of the results of the pandemic has been this huge influx of people that maybe weren’t outdoor enthusiasts prior.”
However, not every community has been able to manage the flow. Moab, Utah, once a uranium mining community, successfully rebranded in recent decades as a massively popular outdoor destination for hiking and biking. But with nearby Arches National Park so popular that it’s full all the time, vacation rentals driving up the cost of living, and illegal camping and dumping of human waste in the area causing issues, NPR reported this summer that the city is now trying to pump the brakes on tourism.
Luckily, there are ways to plan ahead and design destinations that are welcoming to visitors while limiting their impact. From offering free shuttles to avoid overflow parking on busy roads to designing trail systems that provide great views while discouraging people from trekking through wilderness areas, many communities have designed creative workarounds for the problems that can arise.
Now, Stevens, Ferry and Pend Oreille will start planning for the future in hopes of avoiding the pitfalls other regions have seen, as the first region in the state to receive a rural tourism support grant from the nonprofit Washington Tourism Alliance.
“The timing of this project is great because we want to get ahead of that increase in tourism to the area,” Stevens says, “so that we don’t turn into a Moab or Jackson Hole or something where all of a sudden the locals can’t afford to live here.”
When Washington became the only state in the country to close its tourism office in 2011 (amid ongoing budget concerns following the recession), the Washington Tourism Alliance stepped in to maintain some of the efforts to attract people to the state. After the state reopened the office a few years ago, the alliance became a contractor for the state, continuing its work to encourage visitors while making sure impacts are managed responsibly.
“We want to not only provide marketing for the state, but also try to build infrastructure and create tourism ecosystems that are not only great for visitors, but also for residents,” says Mike Moe, director of tourism development and strategic partnership for the alliance. “We hired a consultant who helped Oregon put their program together and we’re very excited to pilot this in northeast Washington. We have so many amazing assets up there.”
The three heavily forested counties are sparsely populated: There are only seven people per square mile, and it’s hard to throw a rock and not hit a piece of land owned by a public government agency or tribal government. Stevens County is 62 percent privately owned, Pend Oreille County is 34 percent privately owned, and Ferry County is just 18 percent privately owned, according to GIS data from the Tri County Economic Development District.
“Outdoor recreation is an asset that’s, for the most part, sitting there and is available,” Stevens says. “One of the exciting things about this program is that it’s very much based on public outreach and participation, and people coming to the table and helping decide what they want tourism to look like in a decade.”
Consultant Kristin Dahl, who runs private company Crosscurrent Collective, formerly worked for Travel Oregon, where she created a process for developing tourist destinations and addressing issues in areas that are already visited regularly.
“The Oregon tourism folks have it figured out,” Stevens says. “They have done a fabulous job especially with outdoor rec and mountain biking.”
For example, when communities along the Columbia River Gorge went through the process, they were able to create car-free travel itineraries, launch an express shuttle for visitors, open a new trail segment and park, and more.
Dahl says other communities that went through a similar process developed things like food tours, expanded trail systems, or maps of local points of interest.
“It runs the gamut,” Dahl says. “Sometimes what our communities will do is also look at their heritage, whether that’s Indigenous or industrial heritage, and look at a way to bring that history to the forefront.”
Through a series of workshops, Dahl asks communities what they want to look like in 10 years, with a “steering committee” of local leaders picking the starting points for those conversations.
The public workshops in northeastern Washington could start in March. The region has already established its committee with representatives from the Kalispel Tribe of Indians, Spokane Indian Tribe and Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, as well as regional business leaders and recreation-oriented experts. As the process wraps up, that group is meant to be the backbone that ensures projects actually come to fruition, Dahl says.
Through the process, community members will also be asked to address any tensions around tourism that already exist or that may come up in the future.
“You can’t stop the flow, unfortunately, but you can manage it and use tools to up-play or downplay when you want visitors to come,” Dahl says. “How do you continue to develop visitation in places that aren’t seeing as much so you can kind of spread the love?”
Stevens says it will be great to get the process going and to continue building the relationships that have already started to take shape in recent years in the region.
“We want to be thoughtful about the growth and what that’s going to look like,” Stevens says. “The most important thing to remember is to make improvements for the people that are already here, and enhance their quality of life, and by virtue of that others will enjoy it, too.” n
Stevens, Ferry and Pend Oreille counties want to avoid the pitfalls of uncontrolled tourism. TRI COUNTY ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT DISTRICT PHOTO
Airway Heights tried treating contamination in its water, but they say this filtration system isn’t a long-term solution. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO
Well, Where to Get Water Now?
Airway Heights asks to move its water rights from contaminated West Plains to the Spokane aquifer
BY SAMANTHA WOHLFEIL
More than fours years after Airway Heights learned its wells are contaminated, the city has proposed what it hopes is a long-term solution to provide safe drinking water to its residents.
Rather than try to treat the water that’s contaminated with chemicals once used to fight fuel fires at Fairchild Air Force Base, the city’s pitch is to shutter its West Plains wells and drill new ones in the Spokane Valley Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer. But the state first needs to approve what Airway is calling a “transfer” of water rights there.
The contamination in question involves a family of chemicals called PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), which are man-made substances that can build up in the environment and in people over time. They may cause fertility issues, interfere with hormones or immune response, or make people more likely to get certain types of cancer, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
They’ve been used in everything from furniture stain guards to grease-resistant fast-food wrappers, and the most common compounds would be found in the blood of nearly every person in the United States. But Airway Heights residents who participated in a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study in 2019 had PFAS blood levels that were six to 60 times the national average.
Early on, Airway Heights looked into the possibility of treating the contamination. The Air Force paid more than $1 million to install a filtration system in 2018 on one of the city’s wells LETTERS Send comments to editor@inlander.com. to test the method. But the outdoor system can only run in warmer months, and while it’s somewhat effective, it’s not clear that the system would be able to filter the water to human health and safety limits that are being developed for PFAS at the state and federal levels, says Albert Tripp, Airway Heights city manager.
“As a community, we don’t want to be responsible for long-term treatment of a water supply for something we didn’t create,” Tripp says. “At a fundamental level, water is as basic to a community as anything. … That’s why we’ve been charting a path out, back to a level of wholeness.”
People shouldn’t have to wonder, “Is my water safe to drink?” Tripp says.
With all that in mind, the city has worked with engineers to draft a new solution: Airway Heights wants to stop using its contaminated aquifers altogether and instead draw water from the Spokane Valley Rathdrum
Prairie Aquifer. The massive underground water store, stretching from Spokane through North Idaho, supplies a huge swath of the Inland Northwest.
Since the contamination in Airway Heights was discovered, the city has been using water from the Spokane aquifer on an emergency basis through two interties connecting to the City of Spokane’s supply.
Drilling wells to that same water source elsewhere, rather than continuing to pay Spokane, would save Airway Heights residents more than $30 million over the next 40 years, Tripp says.
“This entire ordeal has had a significant financial impact on the Airway Heights community,” Tripp says. “We’re talking about an area of about 10,000 people who’ve paid well over $7 million to $8 million since this happened in 2017, for something they didn’t start and they didn’t contribute to.”
But not everyone is convinced that allowing the city to draw from that aquifer, which connects with the Spokane River, is a good idea.
To get permission for new wells, the city has applied for water rights along the Spokane River on the Spokane Valley Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer. It is currently undergoing a State Environmental Protection Act, or SEPA, process for that application, which includes several opportunities for the public to weigh in.
Because of issues with the Spokane River getting so low at times that it can’t stay cool enough for fish to stay healthy or protect the rights of existing users, the state Department of Ecology adopted a minimum instream flow rule in 2015.
“New water rights cannot impair existing users,” says Jaime Short, manager of water resources for Ecology’s Spokane office. “Any rights we issue would be conditioned to that flow and would have to stop when flows drop.”
But municipal water rights can’t just be forced to stop, since people rely on water for health and safety, she says.
So in order to be treated like other senior water rights holders, Airway Heights has to make its case that it can mitigate the usage on the Spokane aquifer by “transferring” its existing water rights.
“The only way this package works is because of the mitigation they can bring to the table,” Short says.
For the application, hydrologists and engineers modeled how the city’s West Plains aquifers flow through an underground paleochannel and ultimately recharge the Spokane Valley Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer. A 125-page “Alternative Groundwater Supply Assessment” estimates it takes four to 15 years for water from the city’s current sources to reach the larger aquifer.
But Spokane Riverkeeper Jerry White thinks the city should be required to do a full environmental study to further explore “that supposed connection” and ensure the West Plains water would truly make up for the new wells, since the Spokane aquifer and the Spokane River are interconnected.
“I don’t want to come off as unsympathetic to the fact that the city of Airway Heights has PFAS in their drinking water — that’s a cruel, twisted fate that they were dealt,” White says. “But I also think we’ve got a river in trouble. It often doesn’t meet its instream flow in the summer anymore.”
Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward and City Council President Breean Beggs also wrote a letter calling on Airway Heights to do a full study of environmental impacts. They question if a 1:1 water rights transfer is allowed under state policy.
The river is tracked in water years that run from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30. For water year 2020 (October 2019 through September 2020), the Spokane River had 12 days below the minimum instream flow, says Patrick Cabbage, a senior hydrogeologist for Ecology. For water year 2021, there were 66 days below that minimum flow.
While that may sound like a lot, Cabbage says it’s not unusual for the river to see 50, 60 or even 100-plus days under that minimum flow every five to 10 years. While the instream flow rule has only been in place since 2015, water data going back to the late 1800s shows many examples of years in that range, he says.
“The aquifers that Airway Heights has been drawing from are all tributary to the Spokane Valley Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer. They’ve been using that water for decades,” Cabbage says. “There’s kind of the temptation to look at this as a new water use, but this is a mitigated water right. They have the authority to use this water already, we’re basically just moving the location where they’re drawing it from.”
Airway Heights’ city engineer Dennis Fuller says he doesn’t think it would be appropriate to conduct a full environmental study as White suggests.
“I think it’s reasonable for the city to rely on the mitigation plan in the determination that there’s no impact to the aquifer or the river,” Fuller says. “Frankly, I don’t know that whatever we do would provide any more information than we currently have.”
If the water rights application is approved, and another SEPA process for the infrastructure moves forward, the city would drill new wells and build about six miles of water pipes and pumps. That infrastructure would stretch from a spot near Seven Mile Road to connect with the city’s northernmost existing water infrastructure near Deno Road, Tripp says.
The cost will likely run $22 million to $24 million, Tripp says, with much of that already funded with money from the Washington State Legislature, and federal assistance also on the way.
Paying Spokane for water over the next 40 years, on the other hand, would cost about $53 million.
But more important than the cost considerations, Tripp says, is a sense of safety for residents, who should have confidence in their water supply.
“We want to set this community up to not have to continue to contend with chemicals affecting the water supply,” Tripp says. n samanthaw@inlander.com
HOME OF THE SPOKANE SYMPHONY THE FOX THEATER
THIS WEEKEND!
Spokane Symphony HOLIDAY POPS WITH THE SWEEPLINGS Morihiko Nakahara, conductor Sat., December 18, 8pm • Sun., December 19, 2pm Artistry in Motion: CHRISTMAS NIGHTS, CITY LIGHTS Tues., December 21, 7pm • Wed., December 22, 7pm Spokane Symphony NEW YEAR’S EVE: BEETHOVEN’S NINTH James Lowe, conductor Fri., Dec. 31, 7:30pm Spokane Symphony Masterworks ECKART RETURNS Eckart Preu, conductor Sat., January 15, 8pm • Sun., January 16, 3pm Fox Presents NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC LIVE: THE SECRET LIFE OF BEARS Wed., January 26, 7pm Spokane Symphony Pops PINK MARTINI Sat., January 29, 8pm Spokane Youth Symphony REJOICE IN CREATIVITY Sun., January 30, 4pm Spokane Symphony Masterworks PICTURED WITHIN James Lowe, conductor Sat., February 5, 8pm • Sun., February 6, 3pm
FRI., JUNE 24, 2022 8PM
Box Office 624-1200
An Extra Sprinkle of Special
The Sweeplings will put their own stamp on Christmas classics when they headline Spokane Symphony’s Holiday Pops
By E.J. Iannelli
Based on discography alone, Cami Bradley and Whitney Dean were almost destined to be Holiday Pops guest artists from the moment they began working together as the Sweeplings.
There was the folk-pop duo’s early single “Snow May Be Falling,” with its imagery of carolers, sleigh bells and brisk winter weather, released almost immediately after their eponymous EP debuted in late 2014 — not long, incidentally, after Bradley’s star turn on America’s Got Talent. Then came the four-song Winter’s Call in 2016, which featured their renditions of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and “Carol of the Bells.” A year later, a mix of seasonally inspired originals and standards like “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” and “Deck the Halls” followed as the Merrier Days EP.
Even bands with decades under their belt can rarely point to such a rich Christmas repertoire. But more than that, the Sweeplings have never been content with straightforward covers of well-known standards.
“A lot of Christmas songs actually have a lot of depth in them,” Bradley says. “We hear the jingling bells, so we tend to hear them as happy or jolly. What we do is we really try to dig deep into the songs and figure out what the writer meant and how you could use that.”
“Our approach is to take a song for its general intent and find out what else it could be used for,” adds Dean. “So, for example, ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’ ... ours is like, what if it was like, ‘I’ll be home for Christmas, but this is going to be the last one?’ So we put a spin on everything where you can be more appreciative.”
The Sweeplings’ slow, sparse, haunting take on that particular Christmas classic might sound worlds apart from the Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra versions that dominate holiday playlists, but neither Bradley nor Dean is out to reinterpret beloved tunes simply for the sake of it.
“Christmas music is sacred to a lot of people,” not least because they find comfort in the familiarity, she says. “And I totally get that, because I am-slash-was one of those people. So we try really hard to take the melody, the structure, the lyrical content of each song, and ... keep a lot of the portions that are sacred, so that when people listen to it, they can connect and they don’t feel like they’ve lost a piece of their tradition.”
Over the past few months, the Sweeplings have been reapproaching their own Christmas compositions and arrangements in anticipation of their appearance with the Spokane Symphony for the Holiday Pops concerts on Dec. 18-19. From their respective homes here in Spokane and near Huntsville, Alabama, Bradley and Dean have been collaborating with David Armstrong, the symphony’s assistant principal second violin, to augment their songs with the full instrumental range now at their disposal.
As part of the back-and-forth creative process, they’ve been sending Armstrong tracks with digital orchestration inserted via software. He then fleshes out the charts based on his own experience developing arrangements with groups like the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies. The result goes back to the Sweeplings for review and refinement.
“It really is a collaboration of both parties trying to create something special and unique and different. He has a really good idea of what instrumentation they use and which sections could be fuller than what we gave him,” Bradley says. “And we’ve given him some freedom, too, to create and arrange in a way that will feature the songs we’ve given them but will also do what the symphony does best.
“We’re just bringing our pieces with open hands and are super excited because we feel like it’s a special opportunity that not very many people get. To be able to play these songs live with a symphony as your backing track is pretty extraordinary.”
The final setlist will include around a dozen songs, including “O Holy Night,” “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” “White Christmas,” “Let It Snow” and “Winter Wonderland.” Roughly half will be performed alongside the Spokane Symphony under Morihiko Nakahara’s baton, with the rest performed by The Sweeplings alone.
“We’ll be doing a bunch of classics redone and rearranged, a couple of standbys and then a few of our versions of what Christmas feels like in song form,” Dean says. “It won’t be exactly how you’ve ever heard ‘O Holy Night,’ but it’ll be our version of it.”
As befits the season, there’s an element of surprise in all this. Although Bradley recently visited Dean in Alabama for one last session of one-on-one in-person collaboration, the all-hands rehearsals in the 48 hours just before the concert will be the first time that either of them will have heard the final versions of their orchestrally backed songs.
“For us as well as the audience, it’s going to be an experience,” Dean says. “It’s not just going to be where you walk in and hear the Christmas songs as you’ve always heard them. With this scenario, it’s going to be a little bit broader. You’re going to get a Broadway show meets a folk-pop concert.”
“You know that feeling you have of being really satisfied after you ate something you liked? Or had a really good conversation with a friend? Or got something you wanted for a long time? Where you have that sigh — a little bit of relief, a little bit of joy, a little bit of hope? That’s what I want people to walk away from this show feeling,” Bradley says.
“We’ve done Christmas shows off and on for the last eight to 10 years that we’ve been doing music, and there always is just an extra sprinkle of something special during the holiday season.” n
Holiday Pops 2021 with The Sweeplings • Sat, Dec. 18 at 7:30 pm; Sun, Dec. 19 at 2 pm • $43-$92 • Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox • 1001 W. Sprague Ave. • spokanesymphony. org • 509-624-1200
Sing Along with Mike
Mike Cantlon’s one-time favor became a 30-year gig as the Holiday Pops Santa Claus
By E.J. Iannelli
“I’m going to tell you the truth,” Mike Cantlon says, as if there’s a murky, confidential reason why he’s been appearing as Santa Claus at the Spokane Symphony’s Holiday Pops concert for over three decades.
“I did this gig for Mitch Miller.”
Miller, who died in 2010, was known to a certain generation of Americans for his ripe-for-parody Sing Along with Mitch albums and TV series, as well as his more contentious dismissal of rock music as “musical baby food” and the “worship of mediocrity.”
“He was doing the Holiday Pops concert, and he wanted a Santa,” Cantlon explains. “He said, ‘I’m going to give you a cue, and then I want you to walk up the aisle and throw candy canes to people. Then come up to the stage, and you can hand me a candy cane.’”
But the cue never came. And Cantlon, perhaps true to form, erred on the side of overzealousness.
“I was handing these little candy canes out to the audience, and instead of throwing them into the air and letting them float down over the people, I was really chucking them out there. People were afraid they’d get hit by one,” Cantlon says. Miller, also true to form, was a “kind of a curmudgeon” about the whole thing.
Despite the force of his throwing arm, Cantlon was still in the running when the same opportunity arose again the following year. During one of her volunteer shifts, Cantlon’s wife, Barb, an oboist and English horn player in the symphony, overheard that the organization needed someone to play Santa.
“She volunteered me, you see. When I married Barb, I married the Spokane Symphony. That’s just the way it was. So she came home and she said, ‘Guess what you’re going to be doing for the Holiday Pops this year?’ I said, ‘No way! There’s no way I’m going to be Santa again!’ Because I’d had this bad experience. And then she said, ‘By the way, and Miss Spokane will be your elf,’ and I said, ‘Oh, OK, that will be fine. I think I can probably do that.’”
Accompanied by the newly elected Miss Spokane, Brenda Grizzle, Cantlon did some off-the-cuff “schticky stuff” to amuse the Holiday Pops audience. That year, Randi Von Ellefson, now a professor of music and choral director at Oklahoma City University, was conducting.
“At one point, as part of this schtick,” Cantlon says, “I walked up to him and I wanted to conduct the orchestra. He stood me on the podium and helped me do ‘Sleigh Ride.’ From that time on, I’ve been conducting ‘Sleigh
Mike Cantlon's new children's book Nym's Sleigh Ride, inspired by his work as Santa, is available at the Fox and Auntie's. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO
Ride” every year.”
He was allowed — nay, encouraged — to continue that annual tradition even after his candy cane baton flew out of his hand, hitting percussionist (and Cantlon’s good friend) Bryan Bogue.
“Afterwards he handed it back to me very formally, like a weapon. It was terrifying, but that, to me, was one of the most enjoyable and memorable moments. And the audience absolutely loved it.”
More recently, Cantlon has distilled the cumulative events of those 30 years of Holiday Pops shows into a children’s book titled Nym’s Sleigh Ride. The retired educator and founder of Spokane Public Schools’ Odyssey program for gifted learners worked with illustrator Emily Powell Gilliam, one of his former students, to realize the “whimsical, musical journey” of a North Pole elf who takes a spontaneous trip south and ends up co-conducting an orchestra alongside Santa. To a standing ovation, of course.
“It gives me real joy to do this,” says Cantlon, describing the experience of performing with the Spokane Symphony in front of him and the audience at his back in terms that are nothing less than transcendental.
“But I have to tell you, every time before I go onstage, my stomach gets all tightened up and I get really nervous. And I’ll say to Barb, ‘I just don’t want to screw up.’ And she’ll say, ‘You can’t. You’re Santa.’” n
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DON HAMILTON PHOTO
Beethoven had been almost completely deaf for nearly a decade when his Ninth Symphony debuted in Vienna in 1824. It was the famously tormented composer’s last finished symphony, now regarded as a milestone in humankind’s long history of music, but not a note of the performance — nor, for that matter, a single handclap of the audience’s rapturous applause — ever reached his ears.
And yet, with Friedrich Schiller’s poem “Ode to Joy” on their lips, a multitude of singers and soloists celebrate life, hope and brotherhood in the symphony’s rousing choral finale. Though he had more than his share of reasons to wallow in bitterness and self-pity, Beethoven chose to end his masterpiece with an outpouring of affirmation and aspiration.
“It’s a wonderful choice of music to perform at this time of year because it ends with this astonishing message of hope and unity. It’s not just about this hope for a great future. It’s also a piece that talks about when we all unite together, we can really experience joy and move humanity forward. And I think it’s a message we all need reminding of on an annual basis,” says James Lowe, the Spokane Symphony’s music director.
In Spokane, performing Beethoven’s Ninth as one year yields to the next is a tradition that dates back to the arrival of Lowe’s predecessor, Eckart Preu, who himself imported the tradition from his native Germany. There, as well as in Japan, New Year’s Eve performances of the Ninth Symphony have been common since around the time of World War I, largely because of the work’s sense of uplift and renewal rather than its ease of execution.
“Although it’s kind of a standard repertoire piece, it’s not an easy piece at all. There’s a lot of moving parts. With the last movement, it’s not so much that there’s a few tricky corners but that it’s all corner. That said, it’s the best piece to close out an old year and start a new one. It sets up all the best intentions.”
But as with any tradition, every iteration has to tread the fine line between evoking the past and avoiding the staleness of overfamiliarity. And while Lowe has led orchestras in this work seven or eight times by his own recollection, this is his first time conducting the New Year’s Eve Ninth in Spokane since he assumed his current role in 2019. That naturally creates its own set of challenges and opportunities.
“I had coffee with Eckart recently, and he said, laughingly, ‘Good luck.’ Every conductor has their own thoughts and angles on this piece, so I’m interested to see how that comes across. What does the orchestra want to do naturally, and how does that differ from my own interpretation? Any time an orchestra has a repertoire piece that they’ve played a lot, you always come across this feeling that they have baked-in instincts about how certain corners work.”
Rather than being an irreconcilable source of friction, that creative push and pull could end up striking the crucial sweet spot between novelty and legacy.
“I don’t like to go into any orchestra with really fixed ideas of how it’s going to be and have them bend to my will. I like to make music with any orchestra that I work with,” Lowe says, contrasting that collaborative sentiment with the infamous anecdotes of “Toscanini screaming at his double bassist.”
“So, for me, that’s the approach. We’ll mold this piece together, and the message that it ends with is so appropriate for that. I think making music through love and enjoyment gets far better results.”
Whatever might be different under Lowe’s baton, one aspect that remains decidedly unchanged is that the Ninth Symphony is alone on the program. Unlike standard Masterworks concerts, there are no supplemental or juxtapositional pieces. The event begins with the symphony’s “pretty tragic” first movement and ends with the effusive fourth.
“This does stand on its own two feet so well,” Lowe says. “It’s not as long as a normal concert would be, but it’s still a good hour’s worth of music, so you feel full afterwards,” with the added bonus that “the performance ends at a time when you can still go out and party and do what you want.”
Within that relatively short amount of time, says Lowe, it’s possible to unplug from the distractions of modern life and experience the transformative effects of great music.
“This is a piece that starts out with real darkness and despair. But ... the whole point of the last movement is dismissing all of this darkness and saying, ‘No, let’s unite together and experience the joy of hope.’ You’ll go in one person and come out another, and that’s such a great gift to give yourself and others at the end of a year. And I have to say, this particular year has been a bit of a humdinger.” n
Darkness and Light
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is a humdinger of music to close out a humdinger of a year
By E.J. Iannelli
Music Director James Lowe (left) and composer Ludwig van Beethoven
New Year’s Eve: Beethoven’s Ninth • Fri, Dec. 31 at 7:30 pm • $25–$62 • Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox • 1001 W. Sprague Ave. • spokanesymphony.org • 509-624-1200
Sacred Dates
Sometimes Santa steals conductor Morihiko Nakahara's spotlight.
COURTESY PHOTO
Over nearly two decades, Morihiko Nakahara has conducted the majority of Holiday Pops concerts — with some being more memorable than others
Morihiko Nakahara can’t remember exactly when he started conducting the Spokane Symphony’s annual Holiday Pops concert. It was likely in 2003, his first year with the organization. And by his own estimate, he’s led 13 or 14 of the orchestra’s Holiday Pops programs in the almost two decades since, having ceded a handful of occasions to the music directors at the time or headlining guest artists traveling with their own conductors.
“It was sort of in my job description, even though there really wasn’t a job description in a traditional sense,” he says. “It’s almost like I can count on being in Spokane the first weekend after Thanksgiving for The Nutcracker and then a couple weekends later for Holiday Pops. Those were usually sacred dates in my calendar.” With the ever-accelerating passage of time, it’s understandable that the specifics may have started to meld and blur by now. On top of his regular appearances with
By E.J. Iannelli
the Spokane Symphony, Nakahara took up the music directorship of the South Carolina Philharmonic in 2008 and was hired four years ago to teach orchestral studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, which has led to constant bouncing between coasts and regions to fulfill his professional gigs.
But there are still Holiday Pops shows, for better or worse, that bubble to the top of the stew of memories.
Like the one in 2005. Or was it 2006? Either way, it was still early in his tenure and long before smartphones and all their attendant technology. In a last-minute frisson of holiday spirit, the symphony’s then-director of marketing, Annie Matlow (today a major promoter of the Northwest BachFest), had urged him to pick up a Santa costume from a rental shop somewhere in Spokane Valley. After a few wrong turns down unfamiliar streets, Nakahara thought he’d found it.
“This place, it looks like they sell tractors. But, I guess, during the cold months they do other things — including, apparently, renting out Santa costumes? So I go into this place, and the only size they have is extra large. It was literally the only one they had left. And I’m like, well, it’s just going to have to do.”
Out of a sense of necessity, expediency and duty, he suited up in the oversized outfit as best he could and took his position center stage.
“I’m wearing this thing at the concert, and obviously I’m swimming in it. It was way bigger than the size I needed. But I’m not going to do the entire concert in it, right? Usually, when you do the costume stuff, you do a piece or two and then you can change back out into your normal concert attire,” he says.
“So I’m conducting — and when I conduct, I’m pretty active. And I’m starting to feel that sensation when things are kind of coming loose. It’s one of those wardrobe malfunctions where you can’t really stop and put your hands down and pull up your pants. Eventually, you know, I just gave up. I’m like, I’ve got a job to do here, so I’m just going to let gravity take its course.”
Although he was spared some of the more acute embarrassment by the fact that he was wearing his tuxedo pants under the gargantuan Santa trousers, Nakahara nevertheless refers to the incident as the “infamous striptease.” And it had an upside: “Annie never asked me to wear any kind of costume after that.” Dressed safely in standard tailored formalwear, Nahakara will lead the Spokane Symphony at the Fox Theater once again for this year’s Holiday Pops performance. “I’m looking forward to being part of this collaboration with the Sweeplings. The orchestra is going to have their usual dazzling display of virtuosity with standalone pieces between these original arrangements we’re doing with the band. I’m very eager to see how it will all come together with the big orchestral backup,” he says.
“But more than anything, I’m just looking forward to being back at the Fox. There’s something magical about the Fox, especially during the month of December. And it’s the first Holiday Pops in two years, so this one in particular is going to have a special meaning. It has a bit of a homecoming element. I can’t wait to be back there.” n
Morihiko Nakahara
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Nakahara’s Notes
With selections for each of the 12 days of Christmas, the longtime Spokane Symphony guest conductor compiles some of his favorite holiday music
By Morihiko Nakahara
Tchaikovsky score with the Spokane Symphony and the State Street Ballet. The Fox is a truly magical setting for this annual tradition. Incidentally, I first heard this particular selection from the ballet in a Japanese car commercial.
2ELLINGTON: PEANUT BRITTLE BRIGADE (AFTER “MARCH” FROM THE NUTCRACKER) Speaking of the Nutcracker, I love Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s take on the Tchaikovsky, as evidenced here.
3BEETHOVEN: SYMPHONY NO. 9 IN D MINOR, “CHORAL” Another Spokane Symphony holiday tradition that also dates back to my childhood. There is a long tradition of performing Beethoven’s Ninth in December in Japan. The messages of joy, struggles and ultimate triumph over them, and universal humanhood will be especially powerful when James Lowe conducts this piece on New Year’s Eve.
1TCHAIKOVSKY: “WALTZ OF THE FLOWERS” FROM THE NUTCRACKER I look forward to conducting the Nutcracker ballet every year. I’ve been so fortunate to conduct so many performances of this lush and exciting
24 INLANDER DECEMBER 16, 2021
4CORELLI: CONCERTO GROSSO OP. 6, NO. 8 IN G MINOR (“THE CHRISTMAS CONCERTO”) My mom started building a basic classical CD library when I was in fifth or sixth grade, and one of the albums was called something like Classical Christmas, which featured this piece among many others.
5HANDEL: “AND THE GLORY OF THE LORD” FROM THE MESSIAH Fun fact: This particular chorus from Handel’s annual holiday favorite was the very first piece of music I ever conducted. In my junior high school in Japan, there was a tradition of each classroom singing one of the choruses from the Messiah at the semi-annual Parent’s Weekend, conducted by one of the students. So it happened in the first semester of my seventh grade year. I was fairly terrible, but somehow I now get to do this for a living.
6VIVALDI (RECOMPOSED BY MAX RICHTER): “WINTER” FROM THE FOUR SEASONS (MVMT. I) AND ASTOR PIAZZOLLA: “INVIERNO PORTEÑO” FROM FOUR SEASONS IN BUENOS AIRES Two of my favorites, built around or inspired by Vivaldi’s popular “Winter” from The Four Seasons.
7BÉLA FLECK AND THE FLECKTONES: “TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS” I first had the privilege of working with Béla in 2008 when the SSO worked with Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. I worked with them again a few years later in South Carolina, followed by performances of two of his banjo concertos in South Carolina, one of which we co-commissioned. Aside from the consummate virtuosity, I’m always inspired by Béla’s (and in this case the Flecktones’) incredible sense of groove. I don’t usually listen to a lot of “holiday” albums (partly because I find it difficult to separate work and leisure in this line of work), but this album is a sheer delight for me to listen to every year.
8THE SWEEPLINGS: “WINTER WONDERLAND” I’m very much looking forward to working with Cami and Whitney and am eager to see how the new orchestral arrangements (made by SSO’s own David Armstrong) will bring us all together. I think there’s something in their voice and their style that speaks to our hearts.
9SHE & HIM: “I’LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS” In addition to the aforementioned Flecktones album, I’ve listened to this album on multiple occasions during the long December flights and drives.
10 YUMI MATSUTOYA: “KOIBITO GA SANTA CLAUS” Along with Wham’s “Last Christmas,” this was one of the popular “pop” songs all over the radio in Japan during the ’80s.
11 MIKI NAKASHIMA: “YUKI NO HANA” I’m not sure what it says about me (if anything), but I’ve always enjoyed these “sappy” Japanese ballads.
12 PINK MARTINI: “AULD LANG SYNE” Another holiday album favorite. Final fun fact: “Auld Lang Syne” in Japan is associated with graduations, and therefore I always had a bittersweet association with the song, which makes Pink Martini’s samba-infused rendition even more striking. n
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