The Rise of Watson
Don’t confuse Samuel Watson with the speed climbing champion of the same name, a teenager who holds the U.S. records and international gold medals in the new Olympic sport, although Sam Watson the Music Academy fellow has also made a meteoric rise.
The 20-year-old contrabassoonist can’t scale an indoor wall in five seconds, but his ascent on his instrument – from first taking up the bassoon in the sixth grade to securing a position as the youngest member of the prestigious Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) – has come at a near-record pace.
Watson first picked up an instrument entering middle school on the advice of his older brother who told him playing in the school band was the ticket to the best field trips. He chose the bassoon because the band director said his long fingers were perfect for the lengthy reed instrument.
“I figured, I’m quirky. I’ll love that,” recalled Watson, who, coincidentally actually rock climbs as a hobby.
He took to the bassoon immediately but stepped up his game in high school at a magnet school in Florida where he had a starring role because all the bassoonists had just graduated.
From there the pace only quickened.
While working toward a degree during his first year at the Cleveland Institute of Music, he also studied privately with Barrick Stees and Jonathan Sherwin, bassoonists with the city’s famous orchestra. He ambitiously aimed for taking auditions after his freshman year just to get in some practice, still using the school’s contrabassoon. The first audition was for the third chair at the Toledo Symphony that summer.
“By some miracle, I won it,” Watson said.
The same thing happened a year later when Watson, following Sherwin’s advice, auditioned for the Fort Worth Symphony. And then late this spring, he landed the BSO in his third-ever audition, unheard of in the classical world.
Watson himself was shocked.
“Every time they told me that I had advanced to the next round of auditions, I was just ecstatic, because we’re told how difficult it is to win a job at all and this is a major orchestra. I was just so happy that I could let my teachers and family know – including my grandmother who was very upset when I told her I was dropping out of school – that it’s all been worthwhile.”
Having already secured the BSO job, Watson did have second thoughts about shuffling off to Santa Barbara for a summer at the Music Academy rather than joining the orchestra in Tanglewood.
“But I realized that with the incredible faculty and fellows here, it would be an excellent opportunity to experience some of what I did not get the chance to learn while I was at university,” Watson said.
Watson has performed on all of the orchestral concerts as well as at several picnic concerts, master classes, and X2 events, where he got to play some cherished pieces and unfamiliar works.
“It was incredible to play chamber music alongside some of the world’s great musicians,” he said.
Watson will also be featured with the other bassoonist fellows in the final master class on August 3 when he’ll play Joseph Bodin de Boismortier’s “Sonata G Minor, Op. 26, No. 5,” as part of an all-baroque afternoon.
Now that the Academy season is coming to a close, Watson has no regrets.
“I learned a lot and formed some great relationships,” he said.
Watson will debut with the BSO during the opening night of its new season on October 5 in a program featuring works by Beethoven, Mozart, Arturs Maskats, and Richard Strauss. It’s the first performance of what may, like his BSO predecessor, turn out to be three decades with the organization.
Fortunately, his affection for the contrabassoon, like his career, just keeps going up.
“There’s a sweetness and color to the sound, and there are many love arias and operas where I get to assume the melody with the tenor,” he said. “And it’s a very funny instrument, the so-called clown of the orchestra. I get to do all of those silly moments.”
Upcoming @ MA
The end isn’t just near – it’s here. It’s the final weekend for the Music Academy’s Summer Festival, with all the teaching artists, fellows, and faculty packing up and heading elsewhere as soon as Sunday. But fortunately, there’s still time to catch at least one iteration of just about every type of public event the Academy offers, including master classes, chamber music concerts, a competition, and full symphony performance.
Thursday, August 3: Four studios have their final master classes of the festival today, including bassoon with Benjamin Kamins – and Sam Watson, the fellow who is the newly-appointed contrabassoonist for the Boston Symphony Orchestra (see above) – at 1:30 pm in Weinman Hall, which competes with visiting violinist Elena Urioste of chamber music and The Jukebox Album fame, at Lehmann. At 3:30 there’s the choice between clarinet with Richie Hawley (Hahn Hall) and trumpet with Paul Merkelo (Weinman), both longtime faculty favorites who have also spent some non-summer time in Santa Barbara – the latter most recently in April for a club gig at SOhO with our own acoustic guitar wizard Chris Fossek. All seats $10… Tonight is also the final X2 concert, the series that mixes fellows with faculty artists for chamber music performances, giving the young musicians the chance to perform as peers with the professionals and pedagogs. It’s a fascinating slate, too, launching with “Mere Mortals” by Ahmed Al Abaca, a Black, non-binary composer from San Bernardino, who certainly meets the criteria for inclusionary programming, featuring faculty flutist Tim Day and harp fellow Kaitlin Miller. Pulitzer Prize and multi-Grammy winner John Corigliano’s “Voyage” follows, injecting double bass faculty artist Nico Abondolo as the anchor for fellows Tessa Vermeulen (flute), Harin Kang (violin), Aaron You-Xin Li (violin), Vincenzo Keawe Calcagno (viola), and Hamzah Zaidi (cello). Next up is “Here and Gone”by Jake Heggie (Dead Man Walking opera), aka “the world’s most popular 21st century opera and art song composer,” with guest artist Sibbi Bernhardsson (violin) and vocal coach Maureen Zoltek (piano) joining fellow singers Cole McIlquham (tenor) and Hans Grunwald (baritone) and instrumentalists Zitian Lyu (viola) and Jiho Seo (cello). X2 then crosses off the season with Brahms’ “Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 34,” featuring three faculty members and frequent performing partners – Glenn Dicterow (violin), Karen Dreyfus (viola), and David Geber (cello) – with fellows Sarah Beth Overcash (violin) and Paul Williamson (piano).
Friday, August 4: The list of folks who have claimed first place in the Marilyn Horne Vocal Competition, named for the legendary soprano who is retired to emeritus status at the Academy after decades of service, includes some very big names, not least Sasha Cooke, the two-time Grammy winning mezzo who is the new co-director of the Lehrer Vocal Institute at the Music Academy, succeeding Ms. Horne. We don’t yet know what awaits in the long term for the singer who shines the brightest at the annual competition this afternoon and evening, when all of the vocalists – and vocal pianists – get a chance to strut their stuff for adjudicators, include soprano Elaine Alvarez, pianist Myra Huang, and composer Joel Thompson. But we do know the winners’ package includes a significant cash prize, recital opportunities anchored by a concert back at Hahn Hall next year, and a commissioned piece by Thompson, the Atlanta-based composer, conductor, pianist, and educator best known for the choral work “Seven Last Words of the Unarmed.” Competition aside, it’s recital heaven for the audience. (11 am-5 pm; Hahn Hall; $40)
Saturday, August 5: The Music Academy finishes up with – sorry, I can’t help myself – a Finnish conductor, actually the second one of the season (Osmo Vänskä led the fellows last month), which is definitely a new record for the Academy. But neither one of them is conducting music from Finland. Tonight, Hannu Lintu, the European veteran who rarely comes stateside – in fact, he’d only been to California once prior to coming to town to helm the Academy Festival Orchestra last summer – instead leads the AFO in a couple of masterworks: Strauss’ “Ein Heldenleben”and Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet. (7:30 pm; Granada; $55) Find out more from Lintu himself via the pre-concert Meet-the-Conductor talk and Q&A session around the corner. (6 pm; Sullivan Goss; $25)
