|
|
||||||||||
| Seasons with the SPO: |
2+, Music Director/Conductor |
| Educational Degree/Institution: | California Institute of the Arts, BFA in Conducting, 1975 MFA in Conducting, 1977 |
| Merits & Awards: | Grammy Award, Classical Producer of the Year, 1990 Drama Logue Award, Best Original Score, for incidental music composed for the Los Angeles Globe Theatre's production of Richard III, 1982 |
| Special Career Performances: | Seattle Symphony premieres of Vaughan Williams' Pastoral Symphony and Elgar's Symphony No. 2; West Coast premieres of Richard Danielpour's Sonnets to Orpheus, Book One, and Gerard Schurmann's Variants for Small Orchestra. |
| Ensemble work: | As a pianist, performances of Schubert's Trout Quintet, Copland's Vitebsk, and Milhaud's La Creation du Monde (piano quintet version) |
| Interests: | Voracious reader (in what little spare time I have). Favorite authors: Thomas Hardy, Faulkner, Poe, Orwell, and the great Romantic Russians (esp. Turgenev). Movie buff. At the top of my desert island list: Vertigo, Citizen Kane, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Blazing Saddles, The Red Shoes, All That Jazz, and the David Cronenberg remake of The Fly with Jeff Goldblum. |
| Memorable event: | I had started college as a flute major, intending on making my career as an orchestral flutist. I had always wanted to study conducting as a way of rounding out my education. I enrolled in CalArts' conducting class, which was under the direction of a wonderful teacher, Gerhard Samuel. After my first time on the podium, Gerhard took me aside, looked me in the eye, and said in the most serious tones: "You have just found yourself." Conducting became my musical focus from that moment on. |
| First memory of classical music: | As a child, I was constantly listening to music; I have it from my parents that I was "hooked" on it from the first, and was operating our stereo system at an early age. The first piece of music I fell madly in love with was Bolero; other favorites were Capriccio Espagnole, Petrouchka, Bartok's Fifth String Quartet, Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, and Ernst Toch's Symphony No. 3 (my parents were blessedly eclectic, and their music library showed it!). I am also told that, by age 2, I had developed the "cute" habit of correcting people's intonation if they would sing a classical theme in the wrong key. |
| Challenges in mastering a technique or a piece of music: | I believe in slow, meticulous practice. When I was asked to do the solo part in Rhapsody in Blue with the Seattle Symphony several years ago, I practiced it many times slower than it should go, so as to really make the connection with the keyboard and memorize where each finger should go and what every leap and stretch should feel like. Then, in the last few weeks of practice, I brought it up to speed. Having executed it slowly for so long made that final leap possible. |
| Favorite Composers: | I am an ardent Anglophile, and my favorite English composer (in fact, my favorite 20th century composer) is Ralph Vaughan Williams. The overwhelming feelings expressed in his compositions never cease to overwhelm me; their power and beauty are staggering. Plus, he was such a good human being, which quality is borne out in the music itself. |
| Goals in progress: | Never forgetting that as musicians, we are perpetual students and can never know enough. |
| Additional instruments: | I've studied several instruments in my life, including flute, clarinet, violin, horn, some percussion, and the sitar (!); but it is the piano that is my main instrument and the one I most enjoy playing. |
| Other comments: | The best thing in my life is watching the day-to-day growth of my children, Ella (10) and Oscar (8). Their questions, their solutions, their happiness, and even their mistakes and sorrows, keep me delighted and entertained and in a constant state of euphoria. |
