There are many things I love about my job as a conductor – working in a variety of environments and with a range of musical genres, working with and getting to know new people, and especially, travelling to new and unfamiliar destinations and discovering the local food and wine scene.
Alongside these aspects is my love of crafting and curating concert programs and designing memorable and meaningful performance experiences that I hope will resonate with both musicians and audiences.
Classical music itself and the profession more broadly has come under fire, particularly in recent years, for its perceived adherence to narrow Eurocentric and patriarchal constructs that exclude or undermine large portions of the world’s population, namely women and people of the global majority. Certainly, post-pandemic audiences seem to be seeking more of a reason to come to live orchestral performances rather than stay home in their jammies with a glass of wine and watch them livestreamed.
Gone are the days when one could count on season subscribers to renew, no matter what was programmed or who was playing, and the trusted formula of overture, concerto and symphony written by well-known Dead White Men is no longer guaranteed to attract audiences.
There are many ways to go about orchestral programming, and each conductor has their own personal preference and philosophy. Of course, the context in which the performance takes place, that is, the local community, venue, target audience, budget, need to sell tickets, and so on, are all relevant considerations.
As I have progressed on my conducting journey, programming has gradually become increasingly important as I reflect more on what I think people want to hear and how best to facilitate the connection between musicians and audience and the broader community.
The study of classical music often involves learning various conventions by which we are supposed to abide dutifully. Indeed, it has been so for centuries, with Mozart presumably receiving the same advice to avoid parallel fifths and octaves as I did during my student days, more than 200 years later! Within this conservative framework, and with the benefit of hindsight, we recognise the innovators as those who have bucked established protocols, done away with existing boundaries and thought outside the box to create anew. This can also apply to our approach to concert programming.
If we are open to modifying established programming protocols, creative performance concepts we would otherwise not have considered may present themselves. Let me give one example – the lead up to 2020, the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth. Before COVID hit, orchestras worldwide were planning festivals and symphony cycles to celebrate this auspicious occasion, and at the university where I was then based, I was asked whether we might be able to do something similar. I immediately agreed, then went about figuring which Beethoven piece(s) to program. However, the more I thought about this brief, the more of a challenge it became, because if it were to be a symphony, then which of the nine? If an overture, would that be enough recognition?
So perhaps more than one… although a Beethoven overture for every concert of the season seemed somehow formulaic and uninventive. It would also limit the potential scope of the remainder of the program. So, I racked my brains about what would be the best approach and a sufficiently appropriate tribute.
What I eventually came up with was a novel concept 05 and something of a hybrid – two ‘unheard’ Beethoven symphonies chronicling the composer’s evolution as a symphonist, featuring eight movements, one selected from each of the first eight symphonies and arranged in the traditional symphonic format. In doing that we presented our own unique version of a Beethoven Symphony Cycle as follows:
There is nothing to say that we, as conductors, should not program and perform individual symphony or concerto movements and indeed, when we think back to Beethoven’s day, it was not unusual for performances to include popular movements in isolation, possibly making this performance somewhat historically informed.
Another particularly effective programming strategy is putting together programs with an over-arching theme that resonates with a wide cross-section of the audience. A successful collaboration I curated was a concert promoting mental health and wellness resources in which Schumann’s Rhenish Symphony was the featured work, the composer’s battle with bipolar disorder of course being well documented.
We are fortunately now in a time and place where we talk more openly about mental health, so the theme resonated with many. In the lead-up to this performance, which was held in September, National Suicide Prevention Month in the U.S., and after the concert, I received messages from people who had never been to an orchestral concert before but who had wanted to come to an event in support of mental health awareness.
In a similar vein I presented a program centred on musical exoticism in which Scheherazade was the feature work. While it is a stunning example of colorful orchestration and vivid storytelling, Rimsky-Korsakov’s theme of femicide is inherently problematic for modern-day audiences.
The concert was scheduled for October, which happened to be Domestic Violence Awareness Month, so I brought in the local Women’s Resource Center, whose representative spoke to the audience about the prevalence of intimate partner violence and the resources available to those who might need them.
More recently I led a performance centred on climate change awareness, something I had been wanting to do for a number of years. With Britten’s Four Sea Interludes and Debussy’s La Mer on the program, we brought in climate scientists to highlight issues including rising sea levels and danger to coastal communities. Poetry inspired by the environment was read between pieces and movements, making it a broader inter-disciplinary event, and the stage was decorated with small trees, a nod to another work on the program, Iman Habibi’s Jeder Baum Spricht (Every Tree Speaks).
In this current season I will lead a family concert event that will include the traditional favorites of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf and Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals, along with the US premiere of Australian Matthew Hindson’s Dangerous Creatures. This event will be held in partnership with the local humane society and a local wildlife rescue organisation, for what could be more adorable than a sensory-friendly concert with puppies and some native furry friends (Note: no wolves will be involved.)
On reflection, some of my most cherished concert experiences have been those with world music centred performances, those that marry traditional folk ensembles with the symphony orchestra.
I have been fortunate to lead a number of performances featuring a range of non-western ensembles including a mariachi ensemble, a gamelan orchestra and Afro-Cuban groups such as Tiempo Libre. The audience at these performances included many for whom this was their first experience of hearing a live orchestra, a meaningful measure of success for any conductor.