THE DISTINGUISHED AMERICAN MAESTROS:
LEONARD SLATKIN CELEBRATES HIS 80TH BIRTHDAY
Conductor Leonard Slatkin has been a force in the American classical music scene for almost a half century, and this year he will celebrate his 80th birthday. Born into a distinguished musical family and trained at Aspen and Juilliard, Slatkin has been Music Director of the St. Louis Symphony (1979-1996), the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington (1996-2008), the BBC Symphony (2000-2004), the Detroit Symphony (2008-2018). and Orchestre National de Lyon (2011-2017). He has also served as Principal Guest Conductor of a variety of English and American orchestras, and holds honorary emeritus positions with the St. Louis, Detroit and Lyon orchestras. His recordings for Vox, Telarc, EMI, RCA, and Naxos number in the hundreds and he has won six Grammy awards with 35 nominations. All his Sony/RCA recordings will be re-issued this year as part of his birthday celebrations.
Slatkin has made the strongest contributions to perpetuating American music, and is one of the few American conductors to illuminate British music too. This interview traces the conductor’s development from his rich musical beginnings through his successive orchestral appointments and recording ventures. It reveals his assessment of key moments in the development of American classical music, plus the ingredients essential to keeping classical music healthy in the 21st century. It also celebrates Slatkin’s very first appearance with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, where he gave a distinguished concert of Richard Strauss and Mason Bates (review).
1. IT IS WELL KNOWN THAT YOU COME FROM AN ILLUSTRIOUS MUSICAL FAMILY, WITH YOUR FATHER FELIX SLATKIN AND YOUR MOTHER ELEANOR ALLER BOTH FOUNDING MEMBERS OF THE LEGENDARY HOLLYWOOD STRING QUARTET.
It is a rich family background and there are now four generations of musicians we know about. We don't look past my grandparents, who originally settled in St. Louis at the turn of the 20th century, as we just don't know what happened in Russia before that. Everybody on my mother's side was a cellist, and there was one important conductor named Modest Altschuler, who founded the Russian Symphony of New York around 1900. The Hollywood Quartet’s long-standing pianist associate Victor Aller was my uncle.
2. YOUR PARENTS HAD THEIR FOOTPRINT IN THE WORLDS OF BOTH CLASSICAL AND POPULAR MUSIC, I’VE HEARD THAT YOU HAD AN AMAZING VARIETY OF FAMOUS MUSICIANS AND COMPOSERS VISIT YOUR LOS ANGELES RESIDENCE WHERE YOU WERE YOUNG.
In addition to the string quartet, my dad was concertmaster of the 20th Century Fox Orchestra and my mom was Principal Cello at Warner Bros. Capitol Records was the linking force, since it recorded the Hollywood Quartet in classical repertoire alongside film scores and many of the most famous popular music stars. We were always entertaining artists from this label who would come over in preparation for recordings. Included were Stravinsky and Schoenberg, and the great film composers Korngold and Max Steiner. On the popular side, Nat King Cole, George Shearing and, in particular, Frank Sinatra, would become very close with my parents. Sinatra often chose my father to be first chair of the orchestra in his recordings, and he recorded a few albums with the quartet alone. I also remember the great Art Tatum at our home, working long hours. So, I grew up with all this music and artistry around me all the time. Of course, I was just a kid, absorbing things I could not understand, trying to absorb it anyway. But I certainly came away with the idea that there were no boundaries in music!
3. LOS ANGELES WAS SUCH A FASCINATING MIX IN THOSE DAYS. LEGENDARY MUSICIANS SUCH AS VIOLINIST JASCHA HEIFETZ AND CONDUCTOR BRUNO WALTER SETTLED THERE IN THE 1950S, YET THE LA PHILHARMONIC WAS SCARCELY VISIBLE. DID YOU EVER MEET HEIFETZ OR WALTER, GRANTING THAT THE FORMER WAS KNOWN TO BE SOMEWHAT RECLUSIVE AND DIFFICULT?
Heifetz was not the most pleasant man to be around, but he did have chamber sessions at his home with his long-standing associates. I was privileged to be able to go over and listen with my parents. I remember he was very fussy about having an exact schedule of events, specifying the precise time the rehearsal would begin, what time lunch would be, and when the playing would resume after lunch. And everyone had to bring their own lunch! My parents played some sessions under Bruno Walter as part of his pickup Columbia Symphony Orchestra, the orchestra that produced his last recordings. Apparently, musicians loved him.
The LA Philharmonic was not a distinguished ensemble. Even Walter’s Columbia Symphony was much better. Back then, it was probably as easy to assemble a very good orchestra from studio freelance musicians. The first potential breakthrough for the Philharmonic was the hiring of Georg Solti as Music Director in 1960, which seemed secure, but then fell apart at the final moment. Board chair Dorothy Chandler’s decision to appoint – without consultation – Zubin Mehta as Music Director in 1962 led slowly to an increase in the orchestra’s profile.
4. WITH ALL THIS BUZZ OF ACTIVITY, YOUR PARENTS MUST HAVE FOUND IT DIFFICULT TO FIND TIME TO GIVE YOU A MUSICAL EDUCATION DIRECTLY?
We didn't see them all that much. They were very busy Monday through Friday. They would come home from their respective studios at dinner time, and then the other two quartet members would arrive at 7:00 for rehearsal. There was no studio work on the weekend, only rehearsals, which left a little time for coaching us. I particularly recall Sundays, when my brother Fred and I, and our cousin Judith, would all get together. I would take a piano lesson with my uncle in the living room. My brother would take a cello lesson with our grandfather in one of the other rooms. And Judy would take a violin lesson with my dad. Then, after we finished, we would gather in the living room for piano trios. My father, my uncle, my grandfather and my mother would all sit together on this very long couch, waiting for our performance. Unfortunately, we seldom got more than two bars into the music without the four of them arguing with each other. One would say ‘The piano's too loud.’ The other would respond. ‘No, the piano's not too loud. You have to have more cello’, and so on. So, in reality we never got a lot of coaching. By osmosis, though, we probably did get insights about performance that influenced our thinking later on.
5. HOW DID THIS LEAD TO AN INTEREST IN CONDUCTING?
I actually slanted more towards jazz when I was young. Gradually I took up violin, then the piano, then composition, and then finally conducting. But the conducting really didn't happen until after my father passed away in 1963 at age 47. That sort of changed my life. I was then 19. One factor is that we were a very competitive household. I knew I wouldn't be a violinist because my father was too good. I knew I wouldn't be a cellist because my mother and brother were too good. And I knew I wouldn't be as good a pianist as my uncle. Perhaps the conducting actually does come back to my father, since at the time of his passing, he had started a successful career as a conductor, making many well-received popular music recordings with both the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and the pickup Concert Arts Orchestra. (The Hollywood Quartet ceased recording in 1959 when the Capitol Records was sold to EMI Angel.)
In any case, I eventually saw conducting as something I could feel good about doing, and so I spent four years studying at the Aspen Music School mentored by Walter Susskind and then at Juilliard under Jean Morel. In my last year, Susskind invited me to join him as assistant conductor when he became Music Director of the St. Louis Symphony. That was in 1968.
6. YOUR TENURE WITH THE ST. LOUIS SYMPHONY WAS A VERY LONG ONE AND POSSIBLY YOUR MOST SIGNIFICANT.
Counting my initial assistant and associate principal titles, it was 27 years total! I also had a brief stint as Music Director of the New Orleans Symphony before accepting the Principal Conductor position in 1979. It is actually very rare for a conductor to move from Assistant Conductor to Principal Conductor of the same orchestra. Bernstein did it with the New York Philharmonic, and I think Walter Hendl did it with Dallas, both before 1960. It has pluses and minuses. The pluses are that everybody knows you; the minuses are that everybody knows you.
7. YOU INCREASED THE PERFORMANCE STANDARDS AND PROFILE OF THE ENSEMBLE DRAMATICALLY AS SOON AS YOU TOOK OVER. HOW WOULD YOU EXPLAIN THIS?
The big factor was that I was blessed with a new executive director and artistic administrator, two people I thought were really perfect, and I could move forward with. So, we set out a five-year plan. We said here's where we are today, and here's where we want to be in five years, and that included being able to record, do some touring, build the audience at home, and work on the endowment. And every time we would accomplish one goal, we simply would add another one. We just kept working like that and it was a remarkable time.
There were already a lot of very fine players in the orchestra, and we also made new appointments, but the big thing was we had assembled an all-star wind section, which probably was the finest of any orchestra in America. That was one of the great pleasures of conducting the ensemble. I rarely had to say anything to these players; they just knew what to do. On many nights, I felt the orchestra could play with the very best. At the same time, we were the beneficiaries of an extraordinary period for recording in the United States. It was crazy: we were doing a total of five or six discs a year – for Vox, Telarc and EMI, then a massive amount for RCA later.
8. THE ORCHESTRA’S FOCUS ON MODERN AMERICAN MUSIC WAS ALSO DISTINCTIVE. THAT MUST HAVE BEEN A KEY PART OF THE PLAN.
An absolutely central part! Back in the 70s, there were still many music directors and orchestras that made the Austro-Germanic repertoire the dominant core of their programming, and programs started to look quite alike from orchestra to orchestra. Both American and Russian music were largely ignored. That's why you see a lot of American and Russian music on our discs, though we did play and record Brahms and Schubert and all the other ‘standards’. I would say that our annual trips to New York cemented the orchestra's reputation for new music because we would come in with pieces that nobody else was playing. Fortunately, we played to full houses and received a strong reception from the audience, as well as the press. For example, we might play William Bolcom’s ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’ as a core part of a concert. Our appearances turned out as an adventure, an ‘event’, for everyone.
9. I REMEMBER MANY OF YOUR EARLY RECORDINGS WITH THE ORCHESTRA, EVEN YOUR SET OF RACHMANINOFF SYMPHONIES FOR VOX FROM ABOUT 1980. OF THE EMI RELEASES, ONE OF YOUR MOST MEMORABLE WAS THE BARBER CONCERTO YOU DID WITH VIOLINIST ELMAR OLIVEIRA, COUPLED WITH HANSON’S SECOND SYMPHONY. I CERTAINLY REMEMBER THE CHARACTER OF THE WIND PLAYING, RIGHT FROM RESOLUTE LITTLE CLARINET MARCH IN THE OPENING MOVEMENT.
Yes, Oliveira was so good, and the clarinetist you refer to was George Silfies. And then there was the oboe in the slow movement – the story just goes on. They were all great wind players, and people would come from all over just to hear them play or study with them. For that EMI series, we did Gershwin, Copland, and Bernstein discs as well. Then, then RCA came into the picture and we did a huge American series with them. This extended all the way from Copland and Barber to Corigliano and Ives. That’s where I was able to cement the idea that we, along with Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony, were the two orchestras really committed to bringing historical American classical music to the public.
10. IN ASSESSING THIS HISTORY, WE CAN IDENTIFY THE IMPORTANT AMERICAN ‘TONAL’ COMPOSERS IN THE NEO-ROMANTIC AND NEOCLASSICAL TRADITIONS FROM THE 1930S TO THE 50S: BARBER, COPLAND, HANSON, HARRIS, DIAMOND, PISTON, MENNIN AND SCHUMAN. THEN, WE HAVE ALL THE VARIANTS OF THE ATONAL/MINIMALIST TRADITION, STARTING IN THE 50S, AND CONTINUING IN SOME FORM THROUGH SESSIONS AND CARTER. YET NOT LONG AFTER THAT, THE DOMINATING NAMES BECAME GLASS, CORIGLIANO, AND ADAMS – AND MUCH OF THE PREVIOUS HISTORY IS FORGOTTEN. WHERE DO YOU THINK THE BIG TURNING POINT WAS?
For me, the work that triggered the change was David del Tredici's ‘Final Alice’, which premiered with the Chicago Symphony under Georg Solti in 1976. I didn't know David's music, but the executive director said you just have to come up to Chicago and hear this piece. And I sat there at the concert: the work was a full 60 minutes long and it was amazing! Soprano Barbara Hendricks was unbelievable. At the end, the audience responded with a wonderful ovation. Usually, they don’t respond to contemporary pieces but here they were cheering and doing all kinds of stuff for a big new piece of music.
I think this was the revolutionary composition of the 20th century for American music. In many ways, it is a crazy, outlandish, almost-retro piece, yet it stands as a thoroughly individual modern work that is tonal in design, totally communicative, and fully accessible by an audience. While del Tredici was a committed serialist to begin, what he was essentially saying by this work is: ‘Here you go academic composers. Here you go Roger Sessions, Elliot Carter and company. You are out of the picture now. We have moved from atonal compositions back to tonal ones.’ And all the other composers I’ve talked to – John Corigliano, Christopher Rouse, Steve Stucky – said the same thing: that David paves the way for their music, because he showed that thoughtful, intellectual music could still reach an audience on first hearing. ‘Final Alice’ was the welcome mat for them: it said ‘You can come in now; you don’t have to be restricted by academic styles of writing.’ I have championed David’s music since the first day I heard it, and I have performed it many times in both St. Louis and Detroit. [David del Tredici died only a few months ago: on November 18, 2023, at the age of 86.]
11. HOW WOULD YOU ASSESS THE MUSIC OF LEONARD BERNSTEIN IN THIS DEVELOPMENT?
Bernstein had an individual voice from his earliest days, always identifiable no matter how much he borrowed from Copland, jazz and other things. You always know a piece is by Bernstein! Although I did not know him that well, I've always loved performing him and I don't see a time when his music will go out of favour. At the same time, I doubt that his musical style could invite others to follow. It is simply too personal: what Bernstein was doing was essentially writing his autobiography in music. You have to see all his ‘big pieces’ this way. You can't separate his life from his music.
12. YOUR SUBSEQUENT APPOINTMENTS WERE WITH THE NATIONAL SYMPHONY IN 1996 AND THE DETROIT SYMPHONY IN 2008. HOW DIFFERENT WERE THE EXPERIENCES?
I went to Washington to succeed Rostropovich. He was of course larger than life and it was a tough act to follow. I would say Rostropovich was probably not the best music director nor the best conductor but he was so powerful as a musician and had this incredible gift of being able to communicate in so many ways. My objective in Washington was to extend what I did in St. Louis – to give great prominence to American music. What better place to do this than the nation’s capital, I thought. I had an enjoyable and rewarding time over the 12 years building this orchestra, but the board of the Kennedy Center eventually got tired of the focus and wanted something more standard, so we had to go in different directions.
The Detroit Symphony was a very different animal because of its financial troubles. When I accepted the appointment in 2008, everybody warned me that there's probably going to be a strike in your third year. And, sure enough, there was a strike and it lasted 6 months. The year before that, I had a heart attack, so I didn't conduct very much. The year before that I was still guest conductor, so I only did five weeks. So, my role in Detroit really didn't start until my 4th year as a music director. At that point, the overriding concern was about finding ways to recover from the strike, and, most important, to reverse a dwindling attendance by increasing public accessibility to our concerts.
Our first innovation was to have all of the concerts livestreamed. The second was to give concerts in seven different suburban locations, since many patrons were reluctant to come to Orchestra Hall in downtown Detroit at night. The orchestra placed four concerts in each of these smaller venues, increasing subscription totals. Then, we initiated a way to get students into the hall by offering them a ‘sound card’ for just $25 for the full year. Suddenly, the audience started to look bigger and very different than before, younger and more diverse. I count this as a great success for Detroit, though I am not suggesting our strategy would work everywhere.
13. BUT DETROIT WAS A FANTASTIC PLACE FOR YOU TO RECORD WITH NAXOS?
Yes, it sure was. Naxos became my sort of home label in the 2000s. We had a good arrangement with them since we were able to make our recordings from live concerts. We recorded the Copland ballets and the Rachmaninoff symphonies, among many other things, including some of my own compositions. Earlier releases on this label, such as my Leroy Anderson series, date from the period just after I was Principal Conductor of the BBC Symphony. Later Naxos releases feature the Ravel series I did with the Orchestre National de Lyon, where I was Music Director from 2011 to 2017. That appointment really reignited my love for the French repertoire, and I also recorded Berlioz.
14. ONE THING THAT STANDS OUT ABOUT YOUR CAREER IS YOUR COMMITMENT TO THE ENGLISH REPERTOIRE, PLAYING ENGLISH WORKS CONSISTENTLY, AND RECORDING BOTH THE ELGAR SYMPHONIES AND A COMPLETE VAUGHAN WILLIAMS CYCLE FOR RCA IN THE 1990S. WAS THIS AN ACQUIRED TASTE, OR SOMETHING THAT HAD BEEN WITH YOU FOR A LONG TIME?
No, my love for this repertoire dates from the beginning. Even when I was 6 or 7 years old, I found myself very attracted to this music. I wasn't sure why back then – now I know. William Walton in fact came to our house in preparation for the Hollywood Quartet’s premiere recording of his String Quartet. Early on in my conducting career, I’d frequently program Vaughan Williams 6th Symphony, and I debuted in both Chicago and London with the work.
My most important inspiration for carrying on with British music was André Previn, who I regarded as a ‘ferocious young lion.’ I admired him tremendously – even going to his jazz club performances in LA when I was a kid. We became close friends, and shared the mission of showing that we Americans could conduct British music too. Not that we were trying to show the British how their music should be played – just give them a slightly different spin on it. The result is that almost every English orchestra that I worked with wanted me to come and do British music. I’ve been Principal Guest Conductor of both the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and spent 4 years as Principal Conductor of the BBC Symphony.
15. LET’S MOVE TO THE PRESENT. AFTER YOUR TENURES AS MUSIC DIRECTOR WITH MANY ORCHESTRAS, YOU ARE NOW ONLY DOING GUEST CONDUCTING APPEARANCES?
Six years ago, I decided that was enough. I didn't want to do administration anymore. The musical world has changed a lot in recent years and my way of running an orchestra doesn't really jibe with the way orchestras do business today. Quite different marketing and other strategies tend to govern things. So, I can now focus on some guest conducting, composing and writing books. My fourth book, Eight Symphonic Masterworks of the Twentieth Century: A Study Guide for Conductors will be published by Rowman and Littlefield this year. I still enjoy traveling, both to the places where I conduct and as a tourist, usually to exotic places. It might be Istanbul; it might be Tanzania; it might be the Galapagos – my wife and I just love seeing parts of the world. Why not do it now? There'll be a time when I can't do it anymore. Later this year, I will also return to conduct the St. Louis and Detroit orchestras, as well as the National Symphony in Washington, and make a trip to Japan. In March 2025, I will conduct the New York Philharmonic, featuring the New York premiere of John Corigliano's 'Triathlon'.
16. WHEN YOU GUEST CONDUCT, YOU MEET NEW AND DIFFERENT ORCHESTRAS. FOR EXAMPLE, YOU ARE NOW VISITING THE VANCOUVER SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA IN A PROGRAMME OF RICHARD STRAUSS AND MASON BATES, AND YOU HAVE NEVER CONDUCTED THE ORCHESTRA BEFORE. DOES THIS CHANGE YOUR APPROACH TO CONDUCTING?
A little bit for sure. The first rehearsal can only be a ‘get acquainted’ session. So, we’ll play through the Strauss and see how it goes. I won't say a word for 40 minutes. You kind of take a step back, leaving room to really listen to what the orchestra is doing, because often an orchestra will have their own collective idea about a particular passage or even a whole work. And sometimes their idea is better than yours! Then we'll begin to work. What usually happens is that the orchestra gets a good feeling for what I'm looking for and I get a good feeling of what they’re looking for, and we find a common ground. Hopefully, this synergy adds up to something distinctive by final rehearsal time and then in performance. The big point is that you have to feel out a situation more than imposing your will on it. I think that's got to be true for every conductor these days, even if that was not true for conductors of yesteryear.
17. IN YOUR PRIOR BOOK CLASSICAL CROSSROADS: THE PATH FORWARD FOR MUSIC IN THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU DISCUSS MANY PROBLEMS THAT MUST BE OVERCOME TO SUSTAIN CLASSICAL MUSIC FOR THE FUTURE. I KNOW IT’S A BROAD QUESTION, BUT WHAT DO YOU THINK ARE THE BIGGEST PROBLEMS TO SOLVE RIGHT NOW, AND THE BIGGEST DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CLASSICAL MUSIC PERFORMANCE/RECORDING TODAY AND, SAY, 30 YEARS AGO?
I wish I had a crystal ball mentality, but a very basic issue is: where are the audiences of the 21st century going to come from? After four decades of phasing out music education in schools in the US, we have lost a vital group of homegrown concertgoers that might replace the older current attendees. Those who have no familiarity with classical music when young, or have never played an instrument, will not generally be concertgoers later on. Fortunately, this has not been true over the same time period for Asian cultures or for Asian Americans, where most children do receive musical training whether they choose to go into music or not, and they have been very competitive achievers. With this educational input, just look the current proliferation of Asian soloists and orchestral players and the audience participation from this group – and we're now getting into the third generation of musicians from China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. So, increased participation of diverse cultures seems to be a critical part of the solution if advanced Western nations are not fully interested in preserving their own legacy.
Another issue concerns restoring a sense of ‘occasion’ to classical concerts. Decades ago, a symphony’s season might build to a much-awaited-for finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony or Mahler’s Second, but performing those works now seems commonplace. Even doing a Mahler symphony cycle seems routine, since so many conductors want to set these works down. So, there is much room for innovation in providing musical themes and concert designs that can build the momentum of an orchestra’s season and draw concertgoers in for the longer term.
Then, there is the issue of how well the media communicates classical music happenings to the public. For example, in Detroit, we had two fine newspapers and two of the best critics. They were wonderful. They were knowledgeable and wrote well, but both newspapers let their critics go more or less at the same time and have not replaced them. It's horrible, but there is nothing stopping this tendency now. It’s up to websites like your own to redress the balance and, fortunately, there seems to be increasing progress on this front.
A final concern is the immense gulf now between current performing traditions and those of the past. We often refer to the ‘legendary’ artists/recordings of the past as if their legacy is invincible. However, we are in a different time now. And what you and I might consider legendary, today's young really don't know very much about. Nor will they automatically find out about these wonderful contributions, given the bewildering mass of material on the web.
With respect to American classical music in particular, there also does not seem to be much historical interest from today's music directors – the world has now moved past that too. I can almost guarantee you will not hear a symphony by Walter Piston, William Schuman or David Diamond in next year’s concert seasons, as important and individual as their works are. These are now America’s ‘forgotten composers.’ I am currently trying to reverse this trend by introducing a number of projects under the banner of the ‘American Sound Initiative’, which will inspire more performances of these composers and bring forth more American conductors too.
18. AND THE RECORDING SIDE?
The CD is of course pretty close to being a dinosaur. It now serves more as a ‘business card’ for artists, and I think the idea of the preservation of an interpretation is really only about personal credentials or ego. With the hundreds of recordings already out there, no one really expects that a new CD of Beethoven’s Seventh will break new ground. I often have asked myself why I made particular recordings of certain repertoire pieces in the past, and not had a very good answer. For example, I wondered why I recorded Strauss’ Don Quixote earlier in my career when the wonderful Reiner recording already set standards for this work. A more interesting example is the Rachmaninoff symphony cycles I did originally for Vox and then 30 years later in Detroit. Another remastering of the Vox recording has just come out and I now ask myself why I bothered to re-record these works again in Detroit when the new remastering sounds absolutely incredible. I've been asked to do other pieces more recently, but declined. I'm not going to do the piece any better or worse than somebody else, so you why would you need it from me?
For many years, recording companies have faced another big constraint: that the costs of recording with the top US orchestras is prohibitive. Thus, we have not been able to have our top orchestral resources used. While some major US orchestras rightly issue their own live recordings now, the alternative seems to be to record with second-tier orchestras and explore more obscure repertoire, where the reduction in orchestra quality is potentially offset by the novelty of the material offered. There is no doubt that Naxos has mastered this sort of situation, much like Vox did in the earliest days, and the gain in recorded repertoire has been rewarding.
Live videos are doubtlessly invaluable for getting newcomers into classical music but they still do not duplicate the experience of actually sitting in a concert hall. I’m undecided on how far this will progress, but I am concerned with how enduring video reproduction can be. I certainly enjoy seeing an elegant soloist or conductor close up in any video for one sitting, but I typically find that I don’t want to return a second time.
19. SO, HOW HOPEFUL ARE YOU ABOUT CLASSICAL MUSIC’S FUTURE?
I am still very hopeful and, just like in other difficult periods for the arts, we must have faith in the many clever people in our society – and donors – to figure out inventive ways to keep classical music and its audiences going. There’s no doubt we're going to have to have new and different ways of communicating to audiences, and a different attitude from musicians too. Musicians now have to recognize that it's not just about playing their instruments, it's about how they communicate musical experiences to their listeners and interact with their community. These dictates are now part of our profession, and we have to do this.
For myself, I will continue to write books, teach, guest conduct, and visit music schools around the country. I always do two weeks at the Manhattan School in New York, and then visit two or three other schools, just because I want to get a feeling of where we are with our training of the musicians who are about to enter the professional workforce. A truly hopeful sign is the stunning amount of talent I observe every time. Our role is to ensure there is an audience for it.
© Geoffrey Newman 2024
Photo Credits: Cindy McTee, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin Photo Archive