Q & A with the conductors
Ken Selden (Fall Concert, November 10, 2007)
Q: What has been your most exhilarating conducting experience?
Maybe it was my work in the opera pit a few years ago in New York. I just remember intense activity on the stage and tremendous energy from the musicians in the pit. There was such momentum that it really felt like a roller coaster ride.
Q: What cd do you have in your stereo right now?
I have a Spanish Gypsy band singing to the poetry of Lorca, some Middle Eastern rock and a bit of street music from New Orleans.
Q: Who was your most influential teacher and why?
I've learned most from some of the composers I've worked with. John Harbison once said that during the process of composition, a great composer is subconsciously reinterpreting or realigning the history of music so that its evolution leads to the new composition being created. Great composers past and present understand something profound about the creative process.
Q: What is the most important piece of advice you would give to a young musician?
I try to encourage young musicians to develop not just instrumental technique, but also musical and artistic intelligence and sensitivity. The best musicians I've worked with weren't those who spent all day in the practice room.
Q: What do you do in your free time?
My daughter just turned two. She takes up all my free time!
Q: What prompted you to first think you wanted to conduct?
I never thought about it consciously. It was a part of my musical training and a way to expand from the solo violin and chamber music repertoire. Many of the composers and instrumentalists with whom I studied were also active as conductors.
Q: What is the last book you read?
The most interesting books I've been reading are the Ficciones by Jose Luis Borges, the New York Trilogy by Paul Auster and the Hard-Boiled Wonderland by Haruki Murakami.
Q: If you were not a conductor, what would you most like to be?
I have no idea! — but I've noticed that desire and talent are rarely proportionate.
Q: What were your thoughts behind the programming you selected for your PYP concert?
I wanted to put together a program of the most powerful and brilliant music for orchestra. As I started thinking about what repertoire would be exciting for PYP musicians, I gradually built the program around the concept of reflection. Read Ken's bio • Top
Mei-Ann Chen (Concert-at-Christmas, Decemeber 26, 2007)
Q: What has been your most exhilarating conducting experience?
Conducting Rite of Spring with PYP in Carnegie Hall.
Q: What cd do you have in your stereo right now?
La Bohème by Puccini – I am preparing it for the opening program at Atlanta in September.
Q: Who was your most influential teacher and why?
I have to name two: Mr. B (Frank Battisti in the Wind Ensemble Wrold) who was the first person that helped me step into the world of conducting and was an amazing example of how organized and passinate a conductor should be for his work; and Mr. Kenneth Kiesler who knows how to dig inside a score no one else can and gives me the exact advice I need in every stage of my musical development.
Q: What is the most important piece of advice you would give to a young musician?
The love and passion for your art are the most important gifts one can ever have; never give up your dream; and with hard work and determination – anything is possible!
Q: What do you do in your free time?
Detective stories: both real and fictional.
Q: What prompted you to first think you wanted to conduct?
When I played in the orchestra as a young violinist at the age of 10, conducting for me became the most fascinating skill to make the "loudest" music and it was also the most powerful way to communicate with so many people at one time.
Q: What is the last book you read?
The Art of Possibility by Benjamin Zander.
Q: If you were not a conductor, what would you most like to be?
Definitely a detective or a professor.
Q: What were your thoughts behind the programming you selected for your PYP concert?
The Spanish theme in the Concert-at-Christmas is to follow through the outreach work PYP did with the Latino community through the collaboration with the Sphnix winner. Read Mei-Ann's bio • Top
Alastair Willis (Winter Concert, March 1, 2008)
Q: What has been your most exhilarating conducting experience?
I've had too many! Conducting itself is exhilarating! Of course, standing in front of some of the world's greatest orchestras (Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco) is an amazing feeling.
Q: What cd do you have in your stereo right now?
Carmina Burana, Mahler 5, and salsa music.
Q: Who was your most influential teacher and why?
I've studied with too many fabulous conductors to single out any. If I had to, there's Adrian Brown - my very first conducting teacher in England, and Larry Rachleff at Rice, but really I've learned from every conductor I've ever observed!
Q: What is the most important piece of advice you would give to a young musician?
Three words: practice, practice, practice!
Q: What do you do in your free time?
Study scores, travel, run, read.
Q: What prompted you to first think you wanted to conduct?
When I got bored playing in orchestras for less-than-inspiring conductors.
Q: What is the last book you read?
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Q: If you were not a conductor, what would you most like to be?
A principal dancer with the Bolshoi or Kirov Ballets.
Q: What were your thoughts behind the programming you selected for your PYP concert?
I played Mahler 5 when I was in a Youth Orchestra, and it, more than any other piece a that time, changed my life! There's every possibility it could do the same for PYP in March. Read Alastair's bio • Top
Huw Edwards (Spring Concert, May 3, 2008)
Q: What has been your most exhilarating conducting experience?
There are many but Bruckner Symphony No. 8 with PYP at St. Mary's Cathedral in May 2002 stands out; I have always adored that work and to eventually have the chance to conduct it-who would have ever thought-was a dream come true. That combined with the opulent and appropriately-Brucknerian acoustic of the Cathedral was magical, and of course, it was a very emotional time being my last concert in Portland with the PYP. Beethoven's Eroica a couple of years ago was also exhilarating, what an intense work, as well as the Shostakovich Symphony No. 10 on tour-getting to know it more and going deeper into to every time.
Q: What cd do you have in your stereo right now?
Radu Lupu playing Schubert's Impromptus, simply ravishing, and Pink Martini's Little Tomato disc, great variety of styles and sonorities.
Q: Who was your most influential teacher and why?
There are two really: Simon Johnson, a chorus master in the UK, for his incredible sense of pulse and keeping the music alive in one's body; and Victor Yampolsky in Chicago for orchestral score study and having a picture or meaning for every phrase. Both also stated how hard it is to be a musician.
Q: What is the most important piece of advice you would give to a young musician?
Practice! Also understand learning an instrument and loving music is a life-long apprenticeship, there are no quick fixes, so you cannot cheat and you cannot cram. Pay attention to rhythm and articulation (not just tone and a bravura sound) as this will make you stand out at auditions in the future—be it with a youth symphony, college, or professional orchestra.
Q: What do you do in your free time?
I am a keen golfer, I only took it up in 1998, but I love it and it gives me something else to work at outside of music-the outdoors compared to the indoors. I like to walk-I used to run but my knees and back often suffer!-read poetry, visit with close friends, talk to my niece on the phone, try different foods, and I do enjoy red wine, so I go to monthly tastings and try and find out more about the whole wine-making process. In the fall and winter I like to follow football and I am a diehard Chicago Bears fan (so last winter was ultimately painful)!
Q: What prompted you to first think you wanted to conduct?
Because I was a mediocre violinist and trumpet player! Seeing Claudio Abbado conduct an opera at Royal Covent Garden in London when I was 11; I was sat on the side of the theater so I could see into the pit. I was totally mesmerized with this man with a white stick and even though he was not making any sounds, he was controlling the sounds and music. It obviously struck a nerve deep inside of me.
Q: What is the last book you read?
It was an absorbing collection of poems by Thomas Hardy. Although known as a very successful novelist he really wanted to be a poet, funny in way just like Haydn really wanted to be known at the end of his life as an opera composer!
Q: If you were not a conductor, what would you most like to be?
Geez, I have often thought about this as I get older and wonder should I really be doing something else! Maybe working on a vineyard at a winery, or I would love to give sports radio a go, being a host and chewing the gun with all these obsessed fans. A travel correspondent for a paper or magazine would be fun but travel, sadly, has lost its luster these past few years.
Q: What were your thoughts behind the programming you selected for your PYP concert?
Well, the PYP folks urged me to do some Bruckner as they know I like that stuff and it is not often done by youth orchestras. It seemed appropriate to do something British so along with the short work by Elgar-a composer I love inordinately-the Ben Britten made sense, as it is a 20th-century work to contrast with the romantic Bruckner, short, and has great parts for percussion, harp and piano. It is intense and I can see the fine young musicians of the PYP really getting into the marrow and soul of it. I am looking forward to it as it is a fun and rewarding mix of pieces. Read Huw's bio • Top
