River City Brass conductor James Gourlay ready to make bold moves
James Gourlay sounds perfectly happy when he looks at life in Pittsburgh and says: "I like an adventure."
He would seem to have found that, taking over a brass band that survived a crisis its leaders feared could be its demise and has struggled with dropping attendance and fewer concerts.
"River City Brass seemed to be the place to go," says the native Scot, who is in his first season as the band's music director.
Gourlay, 54, and his wife, Lea, are living in a small house in the North Side right now, but as their belongings are shipped from Britain, they are thinking of where they want to buy a home.
His work is winning praise.
"When he came over, we all thought he'd be good. But now he seems like the perfect choice," says Carolyn Tuminella, associate director of the band.
Bernie Black, principal cornet and concertmaster of the band, says Gourlay's leadership is "making it pleasant to go to work. Rehearsals are difficult, grueling, but he has made the environment friendly and collegial."
"He's a risk-taker," says Rodney Newton, a composer and former music journalist who has known Gourlay for about 30 years.
"Pittsburgh seems like a good marriage." He pauses. "An ideal marriage."
Willing to take a chance
After Gourlay was chosen in April to lead the brass band, he had to leave the directorship of one of the world's top brass organizations, the Grimethorpe Colliery Band. He also ended an agreement with an orchestra in Rome that allowed him to choose the concerts in which he wanted to perform.
He was coming to a band that was delicately stepping away from a crisis in which the musicians agreed to six months of reduced pay to help the band get past a shrinking endowment and declining ticket sales.
Its music director, Denis Colwell, resigned at the end of that tense bit of negotiations.
Newton thinks the move here shows Gourlay's "adventurous, restless nature."
Gourlay's life seems full of such risks. He began playing tuba when he was 10 in his hometown of Methilhill, Scotland, and went to the Royal College of Music in London in 1974. He won a position with the City of Birmingham Orchestra in 1975.
He was there four years and followed that with about 10 more with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. From 1989 to '99, he was at the Opera Orchestra in Zurich, Switzerland, where he met his wife, a ballet dancer from Brazil.
Gourlay agrees symphony posts can be attractive ones. They are accompanied by benefits, such as health care and vacations. He says he was being treated "like a civil servant," but often was dissatisfied with the amount he was playing.
That led him to pay more attention to conducting as an art, which has helped shape his work as a brass-band director.
He started conducting the Williams Fairey Band, a British brass band, while he was in Zurich, but in 1999, decided to move his career toward freelance work and teaching.
He performed as a tuba soloist and chamber musician. He also spent time as the head of Wind and Percussion at the Royal Northern College of Music and as director of the School of Music at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.
He also did two stretches with the Grimethorpe band, from 2001 to '03 and then from 2007 to '09.
But when he got a call about a steady job in Pittsburgh, he listened.
"I was living an itinerant life," he says. "I was spending 200 days a year away from home."
Tackling the job
Tuminella says Gourlay seemed to understand the needs of the band as soon as he got here and is "doing all the right things" to achieve them. Besides working hard with the band itself, he is dealing with corporations and funding groups to attract more support, she says.
He has arranged for brass-band recordings to be played on WQED-FM and has worked out a live broadcast on that station of the band's Dec. 9 holiday concert.
Black seems to appreciate that effort.
"He is there doing the 9-to-5 thing," he says. "He's in the office, working."
Jim Cunningham, WQED-FM radio host, has been working with Gourlay in putting together the radio broadcasts and says he has been impressed with his "energy and enthusiasm."
Tuminella says Gourlay understands the important functions of the band director.
"The three big things are getting more services for the band, making River City Brass a household name and bringing in a balanced budget," she says.
Making money, naturally, has a great deal to do with the amount of work the band gets and ticket sales.
Band controller Joseph Zuback reports band attendance dropped 12 percent in the 2008-09 season and then 17 percent in 2009-10. This year, so far, it is up 2 percent, an increase that excites band leadership. Subscription renewal is at 86 percent.
Gourlay sees the band has having "some of the problems of all small businesses," he says. That means trying to accomplish all the jobs of a performance group, but with a small staff. To do that, touring and recording need to increase, he says.
In 2003-04, Zuback says, the band played 54 programs above and beyond its concert series here. By the 2009-10 season, that had dropped to 21 jobs.
Gourlay has arranged a tour of Switzerland for 2012 and wants to expand that to neighboring countries. He also sees a need to record more. The band's last CD was released in 2002.
"We need to stay balanced," Gourlay says. "We need to work together, or it will be disaster."
Need for a change
Composer Newton and Terry Webster, manager of the Grimethorpe band, think Gourlay is the right man for the Pittsburgh job. He knows how to do the job in a musical and business sense.
"He improved both sides," Webster says. "He knows how to get an audience on his side."
Gourlay works hard on winning an audience. At intermissions of each River City concert, he goes out into the audience, talking to listeners about the show and their expectations.
Newton says Gourlay is "forward-looking" and has tried hard to help brass bands escape being "hidebound by tradition."
One way he did that in Britain was through a Festival of Brass in which Grimethorpe was joined by other bands to play new compositions. Gourlay would like to do the same here as a way of finding a new audience.
Newton says that sort of thinking will make Gourlay a force in this area.
"James doesn't take people for granted, and he doesn't want people to take him for granted, either," he adds.
Holiday concerts
River City Brass' Christmas concerts are among the band's most popular events of the season.
Not only do the concerts include traditional holiday favorites, they often feature local high-school choirs, as they do this year.
This year's "Christmas Brasstacular" concerts will be:
• 8 p.m. Thursday, Gateway High School, Monroeville, featuring the Fox Chapel Area High School Choir;
• 8 p.m. Friday, Carson Middle School, McCandless, featuring that school's choir;
• 8 p.m. Saturday, Palace Theatre, Greensburg, featuring the Norwin Area High School Choir;
• 3 p.m. Dec. 5, Baldwin High School, featuring the school choir;
• 8 p.m. Dec. 7, Upper St. Clair Theater, featuring the school choir;
• 8 p.m. Dec. 9 at Carnegie Music Hall, Oakland, featuring Upper St. Clair High School Choir and the Pittsburgh Gospel Choir;
• 3 p.m. Dec. 12, Pasquerilla Performing Arts Center, Johnstown, featuring the Westmont Hilltop and Conemaugh Township high school choirs.
Prices vary. Details: 412-434-7222.
Additional Information:
James Gourlay
Born : 1956 in Methilhill, Scotland
Work : Music director of River City Brass and tuba soloist
Education : The Royal College of Music in England, with a master's degree from the University of Leeds and a doctorate from the University of Salford
Career highlights: He is proudest about performing with the Vienna Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta, winning the British Open Brass Band Championship in 1995, and coming here to join the River City Brass.
Family : Lives in the North Side with his wife, Lea
Quote: 'All musicians ought to spend some time in different jobs to see what a lucky position they are in.'
