Travelin’ Band

This past summer, the Met Orchestra embarked on its first-ever Asian concert tour, making stops in South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. For the ensemble and its galvanizing leader, Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, it was two weeks filled with music making, sightseeing, and sharing their artistry with a global audience. By Christopher Browner

At nearly 10PM inside Tokyo’s cavernous Suntory Hall (pictured above), after a stirring performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, the members of the Met Orchestra had long since left the stage. But with a handful of woodwind players hanging back to pack up their reed cases, the sold-out crowd continued to stand and applaud. Finally, the orchestra’s dynamic maestro, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, returned to the stage and joined the stragglers for one last bow. “We couldn’t believe it! They just kept clapping and clapping and clapping,” said principal second violinist Jeremías Sergiani-Velázquez. At Seoul’s Lotte Concert Hall, hundreds gathered in the lobby after a concert to laud the ensemble, while at the Hyogo Performing Arts Center outside Osaka, intrepid fans clutching umbrellas in one hand and glossy programs in the other waited in the rain for autographs and photographs with the musicians. Judging from the audience reaction, it’s safe to say that the Met Orchestra’s first tour to Asia was a resounding success.

Upon becoming the Met’s Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer Music Director in 2018, Nézet-Séguin made it a mission to return the company’s orchestra to international touring—a promise he fulfilled in 2023 when he led the ensemble in a series of concerts throughout Europe. The recent trip to Asia represented an even greater milestone. While the Met had made seven previous trips to Japan to present fully staged operas— including in 2011, just months after the nation suffered a devasting earthquake and tsunami—the orchestra had never headlined an Asian tour of its own, nor had it ever performed in South Korea or Taiwan. “Touring is an incredibly important part of the life of an orchestra. It allows us to both deepen our connection to the pieces that we are playing and deepen our relationship as musicians. And it allows us to play for audiences who usually only see us in movie theaters through the Live in HD series,” Nézet-Séguin says. “We have felt such love for classical music here, for opera and for symphonic music. It’s really a treasure to play for audiences that are so knowledgeable about this music and are so focused on our performance. You can feel a real intensity in their listening.”

Maestro Nézet-Séguin led the orchestra in nine performances across three countries.

The orchestra also relished the opportunity to sink their teeth into symphonic masterpieces—such as Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 and the Mahler symphony—that typically fall outside their day-to-day musical diet. But the programs still showcased the ensemble’s peerless artistry in music from the operatic canon, including Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle, featuring mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča and bass-baritone Christian Van Horn, a selection of Mozart and Gounod arias with soprano Lisette Oropesa, and a suite of orchestral music from Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande.

Van Horn, who’s been a mainstay at the Met for the last decade, saw the tour as both “a wild, head-spinning two weeks” and a chance to experience the orchestra’s mighty sound in an unusually direct and visceral way. “When we’re at the Met, we feel the orchestra’s power, but they’re below us in the pit. So to feel that power on stage with us in these concerts, it really lifts us,” he says. “This orchestra has a special ability to breathe with us, and that is filtered through Yannick. He elevates everyone to the level that he knows we’re capable of, even if we don’t always know we’re capable of it ourselves.” Oropesa agreed, explaining that the musicians “sing with their instruments” and declaring Nézet-Séguin “one of the most energetic human beings I’ve ever seen on the podium.”

In addition to performing in some of Asia’s most prestigious concert halls, the tour presented opportunities for memorable cultural immersion. In Seoul, musicians participated in a traditional hanbok experience, donning centuries-old Korean formalwear and touring the grounds of the imperial Gyeongbokgung Palace. In Tokyo, they visited the ornate Sensō-ji temple by day and the neon-bedecked Kabukichō district by night. And in Taipei, they braved sweltering heat to hike up Elephant Mountain and meander down the enticing, shop-and-restaurant-lined Yongkang Street. And then there was the food—what Nézet-Séguin affectionately calls “culinary tourism.” From gogi-gui and soju in Seoul to omakase and sake in Japan’s unofficial food capital, Osaka, to an array of tantalizing street food in Taiwanese night markets, each locale offered its own gastronomical delights.

In between the concerts and sightseeing, some members of the orchestra found time to reconnect with loved ones living overseas. Cellist Julia Bruskin and her husband enjoyed a “mini family reunion” with relatives in South Korea, while associate principal violist Shmuel Katz caught up with former students in all three countries. Others brought their families along for the ride. Trumpet player Matt Mead and his six- year-old son sampled uni and Kobe beef at Tokyo’s Tsukiji Outer Market, as associate concertmaster Nancy Wu and associate principal double bassist Leigh Mesh traveled with their two adult children, who still had fond memories of tagging along with their parents on Met tours in the early 2000s. And for concertmaster David Chan and violist En-Chi Cheng, who both have family roots in Taiwan, the warm welcome that the orchestra received at Taipei’s National Concert Hall (pictured above) was particularly meaningful.

When, after two weeks, nine concerts, five flights, and one swift ride on the Shinkansen bullet train, the musicians returned to American soil, the tightened bond among the orchestra members was palpable. “There’s nothing I love more than playing an opera and supporting the action on stage,” Bruskin reflected, “but there are so many phenomenal artists in this orchestra, and to see them up on stage and interacting so closely, and to push ourselves to the limit, has been an incredible experience.”