"The Wanderer/Runaround Sue." Assistant Conductor Mayhem! The chaotic audition season of 2014-2015

Hi everyone!

Welcome to the 'official' quasi-reopening of my blog, which I had eschewed the last few seasons in favor of my Facebook wall. Here, you'll find occasional stories & articles on music, the arts, and the 'biz. I enjoy bridging the divide between the Popular and Classical music worlds, and I have a particular knack for strategy and analysis. Just about every blog post will contain the title (or titles) of a popular song: today's selections are both by 50s/60s rocker Dion, who is still alive today!

My life/career has been (and continues to be) a crazy, twisty-path journey, so I'll also be sharing some of the interesting, unbelievable, and/or hilarious adventures that I've had over the years. Alas, there are many stories/topics/anecdotes that I *won't* be able to discuss on this public forum; those will have to wait for that proverbial book I'm gonna write in 15 years or so. Putting it simply: no secret/confidential/controversial stuff here, but plenty of perspectives shaped by that stuff. Lots more to say on the purpose/goal of this blog, but for now let's jump into today's topic:

Assistant Conductor Auditions 2014-2015!

Wow, was last year a doozy. I first started paying attention to the assistant conductor circuit during my grad work in conducting at IU, though I didn't start following it closely until I went to Juilliard. Without question, last season was the most chaotic audition scene since I started following it, with 19 (!!) positions open at 14 of America's top 20-ish orchestras. The kicker: I *predicted* this chaos just a few years ago (in the summer of 2011 to one person, and the fall of 2012 to another.)

First, a bit of background: American orchestral conducting pedagogy is a strange beast. There have been many shifts in focus, power, and approach over the years, but it still remains a bit scattered. One of the few constants has been Tanglewood, which (thanks to Bernstein, Ozawa, and others) has produced numerous fantastic and successful conductors throughout its history. A major power shift happened in 2000, with the founding of the conducting academy in Aspen. From 2001-2010, Aspen had control over a large portion of the American assistant conductor scene; in fact, when I won the Cincinnati Symphony position in 2008, I was one of the only assistants at a top 10 orchestra who had not been to Aspen.

I *did* attend Aspen in 2011, which was the first class of conductors selected by Robert Spano, the new (and now current) Music Director of the festival. I've got two book chapters-worth of material on the subject of Aspen, but this is what I can share here: I think Spano has been a huge plus to the festival, and his shift in focus was immediate. Not only was the mean & median age of the workshop conductors much higher that year**, but (in my opinion) that class was (by far) the strongest overall group of creative, music-making conductors that had been to Aspen since I started paying attention to the scene. In fact, 8 of those conductors won major professional auditions or competitions within 3 years of that summer, and 3 others won university jobs.  

 

  All 13 conductors in this pic are in the profession; 11 of them have 'major' jobs

(The gentleman in the top-right was our Concertmaster for the concert!)

(**: in the pre-Spano era, several older professional orchestral musicians who played under the previous music director would come to conduct for a summer. The mean/median does not include them.)

However, at the end of my 2011 summer in Aspen, the analyst/strategist in me led me to predict the assistant conductor 'chaos' that occurred last season. My prediction was even stronger after observing/hearing about the 2012 summer. While there's lots of minutiae that will need to wait for that proverbial book, the simple explanation is that the power (for various reasons) is no longer consolidated in the Rocky Mountains. Of the 19 position winners last season, only 4 attended Aspen...and many of the other 15 were rejected by Aspen several times. Heck, I was rejected several times! 

And this was not just a statistical anomaly that fell within expected standard deviations; until the next major power shift occurs, I predict another similarly crazy audition season within the next four years. We'll see :)

So, here's the full list of winners at top 20(ish) orchestras from last season, including name, country of origin (if mentioned in their bio), their studies (if in the US), and if they held a previous position. More than half are from overseas, and more than half had already held an American assistant position previously (highlighting the shift towards experience vs the Aspen years of the 2000s.) Of course, this created a massive domino effect at smaller orchestras, leading to dozens of auditions across the country. I decided to include the conducting fellows of San Diego and Seattle at my own discretion, as they essentially audition and serve as assistant conductors...they are also both very talented! There are so many insights one can draw from this list- I'll allow you to do so without any additional commentary from me.

I've got a follow-up post that takes a look at the assistant conducting scene from the moment I started following it...it will take a little while to put together, but it's a fascinating snapshot of the world of American orchestral conducting pedagogy. Stay tuned!

Boston

Moritz Gnann (Germany)

Cincinnati

Keitaro Harada ASSOCIATE (Japan). Mercer, U of Arizona. From Richmond Symphony

Gene Chang. Juilliard/Alan Gilbert

Colorado

Christopher Dragon ASSOCIATE (Australia)

Andres Lopera (Colombia). NEC.

Detroit Symphony

Michelle Merrill. SMU. From N.E. Pennsylvania Philharmonic

Indianapolis

Vince Lee ASSOCIATE. IU, Juilliard/James DePreist, Aspen. From Cincinnati Symphony

Los Angeles

Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla (Lithuania), from LA Phil fellowship

Milwaukee

Yaniv Dinur (Israel). Michigan

Minnesota

Roderick Cox. Northwestern, Aspen. From Alabama Symphony

New York

JD Gersen. Curtis, Aspen.

Pacific Symphony

Roger Kalia. IU, Aspen. From Charlotte Symphony

Pittsburgh

Francesco Lecce-Chong. Curtis. From Milwaukee Symphony.

Andrés Franco (Colombia). Texas Christian University. From Fort Worth Symphony

San Diego

Sameer Patel. Michigan. From Fort Wayne Philharmonic

*Kensho Watanabe. Curtis. "Conducting Fellow"

Seattle

Pablo Rus Broseta (Spain)

*Ruth Reinhardt (Germany). Juilliard/Alan Gilbert "Conducting Fellow"

Utah

Rei Hotoda (Japan). Peabody. From Dallas Symphony