Want More Diverse Conductors? Orchestras Should Look to Assistants

[lennygoran]

Want More Diverse Conductors? Orchestras Should Look to Assistants.

At top American ensembles, young assistant conductors are a far more varied group than the reigning music directors. How can the next generation come to power?














By Zachary Woolfe
June 4, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET

It is one of the indelible star-is-born moments in music history: Leonard Bernstein, the 25-year-old assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic, fills in at short notice for an ailing maestro and leads the orchestra in a concert broadcast live over the radio, causing a sensation.

“It’s a good American success story,” The New York Times wrote in an editorial, following a front-page review of the 1943 coup. “The warm, friendly triumph of it filled Carnegie Hall and spread over the airwaves.”

Fifteen years later, Bernstein was the Philharmonic’s music director. And the dream of ascending from the assistantship of a major American orchestra to its leadership — like rising up a corporate ladder — was cemented in the popular imagination.

There are still assistant conductors, bright, talented 20- and 30-somethings hired by orchestras for stints of a few years. Indeed, there are more of them than ever, and they go by a variety of titles: assistant, associate, fellow, resident. Almost every major orchestra has at least one, and they still fill the traditional duties of Bernstein’s time: sitting in the concert hall during rehearsals to check balances and mark up scores; conducting offstage groups of musicians for certain pieces; and, of course, being ready to take the podium in case of emergency. But it is rare to see them ascend to the top jobs.

And that may be a missed opportunity. When Marin Alsop steps down from the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra this summer, it will leave the top tier of American ensembles as it was before she took the post in 2007: without a single female music director. There has never been a Black music director in this group, and just a handful of leaders have been Latino or of Asian descent.


“It’s been a paternalistic industry to some degree for a long time,” Kim Noltemy, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s chief executive, said in an interview. “In the last 20 years it’s changed quite a bit, but there’s lag time for the top-level leadership, whether it’s management or conductors.”

But it is a very different story when you look at the country’s assistants, a far more diverse group in which women and musicians of color have found success in recent years.

Now there is a chance for those assistant conductors to become more than just another set of ears in a darkened auditorium. They provide an opportunity to fast-track greater diversity at historically slow-evolving institutions. The question now is how soon they will enter the topmost ranks — and whether, as major orchestras search for music directors in the coming years, they will look toward the crowd right under their noses.

“It’s great to have a BIPOC assistant conductor,” said Jonathan Rush, the assistant conductor in Baltimore, who is Black, referring to the acronym for Black, Indigenous and people of color. “To have that in place is awesome. But there are still not many opportunities for you to be that person that a younger musician can look up to. Yes, I get education concerts, they’re awesome, but we would have greater impact if we were music directors.”

As community engagement and outreach efforts have broadened nationwide, and become more central for leading orchestras, many assistants have added those activities to their portfolios, too. And during the coronavirus pandemic, when many artists abroad were grounded, some assistants took on new prominence. Vinay Parameswaran, the Cleveland Orchestra’s associate conductor, who had spent a few years mainly doing family concerts and leading the ensemble’s youth orchestra, unexpectedly found himself conducting multiple major programs on Cleveland’s subscription streaming platform.


The differences between the assistant ranks of the top 25 American orchestras and those orchestras’ music directors can hardly be overstated. The Dallas Symphony, for example, has had three assistants since 2013, all women; one of them, Karina Canellakis, is now the chief conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic. Both of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s conducting apprentices since 2015 have been women. In that period, the Minnesota Orchestra’s assistants have been Roderick Cox, one of the few Black conductors appearing with leading orchestras and major opera houses, and Akiko Fujimoto, who became the music director of the small Mid-Texas Symphony in 2019.

Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, who was a conducting fellow and then an assistant conductor with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, has become a star, leading the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in England and making recordings for Deutsche Grammophon. Gemma New, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s resident conductor until last year, is now principal guest conductor in Dallas and led the New York Philharmonic’s Memorial Day concert at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

But there are still pervasive, sometimes pernicious assumptions about what a music director must look and act like — who can hobnob with donors, who can help sell tickets. And, Bernstein’s model aside, there is no clear pipeline from assistantships to directorships at top American orchestras, the way there are at many corporations.

Of the current music directors in the top tier, only a handful started as assistants at the kind of orchestra they now lead. (And, in a sign of how insular this world is, two of that handful, Michael Stern, now in Kansas City, and Ken-David Masur, in Milwaukee, are the sons of musical royalty, the violinist Isaac Stern and the conductor Kurt Masur.)

Andrés Orozco-Estrada, now the Houston Symphony’s music director, is the rare conductor to live the Bernstein dream, but he didn’t do it in the United States: He was an assistant at the Tonkünstler Orchestra in Vienna in the early 2000s, then rose a few years later to become its principal conductor. (European orchestras have trailed American ones in codifying assistant programs; the traditional conductor career path in Europe, especially German-speaking countries, goes through opera houses, not symphonies.)


The experience paradox is part of the problem. Top orchestras demand their conductors be seasoned, particularly if they’re going to appear on prestigious subscription series. But if you don’t already have that experience, it’s hard to get it.

“There are some people who are professional assistants, basically, or just they go from assistantship to assistantship,” Stephanie Childress, the St. Louis Symphony’s current assistant, said, pointing to the sense that some talented artists just cycle within those ranks without rising further.

But orchestra officials insist that things are changing, accelerated by the jolt of the pandemic and the calls over the past year for greater racial and ethnic diversity.

“The way it’s always been is all being rethought now,” Noltemy said, adding that resistance has been wearing down among players and listeners. “‘The orchestra won’t accept it; the audience won’t accept it’ — that has been completely deconstructed.”

There are ways of increasing the chances of today’s assistants becoming tomorrow’s music directors. Orchestras could deepen their investments in their assistant programs, adding positions to broaden the pool of talent getting experience and exposure. There should be a greater commitment to giving assistants slots on subscription programs as part of their contracts; this is one Covid necessity that could fruitfully outlive the pandemic.

Ensembles should make a point of looking to other organizations’ assistants when hiring for gigs. That does happen sometimes: Yue Bao, currently the conducting fellow at the Houston Symphony and a major presence in that orchestra’s streaming over the past year, will make her debut with the Chicago Symphony at the Ravinia Festival this summer.

Matías Tarnopolsky, the chief executive of the Philadelphia Orchestra, said he would like to see a kind of consortium program that could rotate assistants among several top institutions, giving them broader experience. “Could a conducting fellowship be multiensemble,” Tarnopolsky said, “either within the U.S. or around the world, bridging symphony and new-music ensemble? Then you really expand the learning.”


And if a young conductor has a success, let it snowball. In Baltimore, Rush appeared just before the pandemic as part of the orchestra’s Symphony in the City series, and was then asked to join its next assistant conductor audition, planned for June 2020.

That audition was canceled as the virus spread, but in July, Rush got another call. “Hey, listen,” he recalled the orchestra saying, “the musicians keep raving about your work in February, and we would like to invite you to be assistant conductor for the 2020-21 season.”

“It’s definitely been different,” Rush added of assisting during the pandemic, which has included regular work with the orchestra’s streaming programs. “But I wouldn’t have gotten as much podium time. I’ve gotten to conduct the orchestra every single week. ”

Ensembles should have a plan for continuing relationships with their assistants as those young conductors move on. Marie-Hélène Bernard, the chief executive of the St. Louis Symphony, said the organization had made a commitment to invite Gemma New every season as a guest conductor now that her resident contract is over.

“For her, we have a trusted relationship,” Bernard said. “She can step outside of her comfort level and take musical risks she might not take with other orchestras she hasn’t yet visited. Nurturing is not just for the time she’s here with us.”


This is the work that can help turn the encouragingly diverse landscape of assistant conductors into the future of the country’s top music directorships. “Getting a replacement for Marin isn’t even a tipping point,” Noltemy said, referring to Alsop’s departure from Baltimore. “The tipping point would be a significant number of women in positions in the top orchestras in the U.S.”

But the field will not get there without taking risks. Ruth Reinhardt had just started as an assistant in Dallas in 2016 when she was tapped to jump in for a subscription program, replacing a veteran conductor who’d suffered a stroke. Scott Cantrell, the Dallas Morning News critic, raved: “Few artistic experiences are as exciting as witnessing a brilliant debut by a young musician.”

It worked for Bernstein; we’ll see if it works for this new generation. “When I started conducting 15 years ago or so,” Reinhardt said, “people would openly tell you that you couldn’t do this as a woman. And things are changing. The jobs are more available. Hopefully as we get older, we’ll move up the ranks.”


https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/04/arts ... rsity.html

[maestrob]

I wish them all luck!

As music education becomes more diverse, the chances of a non-white male or female having a career certainly improve. Even when i was studying at Juilliard more than 20 years ago now, there were many women in my class, although not so many minority candidates. One of them was a fine pianist who played for me in my first production of Copland's "Tender Land," who went on to conduct with New York City Opera. I made her a judge in my competition, and once invited her to preview some rare piano works for the left hand by Czerny in a Carnegie hall concert that she had prepared for a lecture on that composer.

[Lance]

And I wish them luck right along side you! Given the circumstances of the pandemic for over a year now, I think it is going to be a long time before things get back to what we call "normal." It's not the orchestral members or conductors I'm concerned about, but instead, the concert-going public who have adapted to other ways of getting their music. While there is nothing like a live concert or recital, from what I've observed, attendance has yet to come anywhere near what it used to be. I'm not pessimistic about it just a realist. People who love movies, for example, don't go to theaters any longer (I'm one of them!) We have access to DVDs, TV, and the comfort of our own homes. It is going to take a lot of "push" to get people back into all these grooves. Where I do see a big change, however, is restaurant-going. Around here, the restaurants are packed, mostly those without wearing masks. As the Three Stooges used to say: "We shall see what we shall see!"

[stickles]

As assistant conductors, they rarely get a chance to lead their own orchestras in subscription programs. If there is a cancellation, with far enough notice, top tier orchestras will typically call in a guest conductor instead of utilizing the assistant. Part of this could be due to the lack of a subscriber base, as a well known or a more "qualified" conductor may sell more last minutes tickets. Orchestra should have confidence to assign at least one program per season to them.

[Modernistfan]

If the assistant, associate, or whatever conductor happens to be Black, that conductor will almost always be limited to pops concerts and the obligatory Martin Luther King Day concert. Even on the rare occasions that such a conductor gets a chance to conduct a subscription concert and makes an extremely strong impression, that conductor will rarely get a second shot at conducting a subscription concert and is still unlikely to get significant guest-conducting gigs in the United States. An outstanding example is Jonathon Heyward, who had a spectacular debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic a few years ago but never had another chance to conduct that orchestra in a subscription concert again and got very few if any other engagements with major American orchestras. He is now music director of the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, a significant post in Germany that has been held by such worthies as Hermann Scherchen, Werner Andreas Albert, Alun Francis, Michail Jurowski, and Andris Nelsons (now music director in Boston). It seems that he will wind up making his career largely in Europe as most Black American conductors in the past have wound up doing. It will take a major change in attitude in American orchestras, not mere profession of "wokeness," for this to change.

[barney]

I suspect this is true. In Australia the cultural cringe operated this way, and still does to an extent. Australian musicians have to forge careers overseas. Sometimes, of course, they are just too good to be confined to Australia - Joan Sutherland, Barry Tuckwell, Charles Mackerras, Simone Young. I'd like to think we were getting past that, but probably not.

So the problem here is not racism, nor even sexism, but it operates in much the same way.

[Modernistfan]

I do think that there is still a reluctance in the United States to appoint Americans to music director positions. I used to say that any random Vice-Kapellmeister of the Kleinmachnow Philharmoniker had an advantage over any American candidate for a music director position. (Yes, I know that Kleinmachnow, a small town not far from Berlin, doesn't actually have its own orchestra, but you get my point.) Notwithstanding that factor, however, I think that racism still enters into it for music directors of American orchestras. Many board members of these orchestras continue to belong to segregated clubs and have virtually no contact with educated or successful Black people. They cannot possibly picture having a Black music director

[maestrob]

I do think that there is still a reluctance in the United States to appoint Americans to music director positions. I used to say that any random Vice-Kapellmeister of the Kleinmachnow Philharmoniker had an advantage over any American candidate for a music director position. (Yes, I know that Kleinmachnow, a small town not far from Berlin, doesn't actually have its own orchestra, but you get my point.) Notwithstanding that factor, however, I think that racism still enters into it for music directors of American orchestras. Many board members of these orchestras continue to belong to segregated clubs and have virtually no contact with educated or successful Black people. They cannot possibly picture having a Black music director

Actually, only smaller clubs, those with less than 400 members, are still permitted by law to be male-only clubs now in America, and many have wisely changed their admissions policy anyway. In 1984, New York City passed a law that made it illegal for larger clubs to discriminate, and then sued the New York Athletic Club (and others) for its male-only policy. The club resisted and fought the law all the way up the ladder, but by June of 1988, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled against them, so women were finally admitted, as Latino and Jewish men had been for some time previous. Since the club could easily read the handwriting on the wall, it began quietly admitting Black members of both sexes soon after. Being the largest private club in America, with 11,000 members, the decision had a major impact around the country, and most clubs, except for a few smaller ones in the South, soon changed their policies as well.

When the former guy acquired his Mar-A-Lago club in Florida in the middle 1990's, he wisely decided to admit members without regard to race, color or creed, in order to avoid such controversy, not out of any goodness of heart as has been depicted in Right Wing media.

LATER: Here's an article I found on the subject:

https://www.csmonitor.com/1988/0621/acurt.html

[Modernistfan]

Yes, some of these clubs, but not all, may have integrated, but many members of the boards of the symphonies and opera companies still have the same blinkered attitudes toward race and the role of women that they had decades ago. We shall see what happens when Marin Alsop leaves Baltimore. (If Andris Nelsons can take the music director posts at Boston and at the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Heyward could take the music director posts at Baltimore and at the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie.)

[maestrob]

Yes, some of these clubs, but not all, may have integrated, but many members of the boards of the symphonies and opera companies still have the same blinkered attitudes toward race and the role of women that they had decades ago. We shall see what happens when Marin Alsop leaves Baltimore. (If Andris Nelsons can take the music director posts at Boston and at the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Heyward could take the music director posts at Baltimore and at the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie.)

Once an assistant, always an assistant.

AFAIK, William Smith, Ormandy's Assistant Conductor in Philadelphia, made only a couple of records during the 1950's, and none of them instereo. He led the orchestra only during some of their Summer concerts in the Robin Hood Dell, but not on regularly scheduled events in the Academy of Music.

Greg Buchalter, who was a judge in my vocal competition in Carnegie Hall for eight years, and who is the MET's Maestro di Banda, has had a distinguished career during the Summer season conducting in European productions at various festivals, but has never led a single scheduled performance at the MET.

[barney]

Once an assistant, always an assistant.

I hope that's not true. You have to start somewhere as a conductor. Think Leonard Bernstein. But many conductors have to form their own musical organisations, from amateur to highly professional, to work as they want.

[maestrob]

Once an assistant, always an assistant.

I hope that's not true. You have to start somewhere as a conductor. Think Leonard Bernstein. But many conductors have to form their own musical organisations, from amateur to highly professional, to work as they want.

What you say is certainly true, Barney! Even the greatest maestros have formed their own orchestras. I'm thinking, of course, of Toscanini's NBC Orchestra, but then there's Abbado's Lucerne Orchestra, Bruno Walter and Stravinsky with the "Columbia Symphony," Paul Kletzki's Philharmonia, Barbirolli's Halle, Thomas Beecham's Royal and London Philharmonic, and innumerable HIP bands led by Gardiner, Immerseel etc., as well as Sir Neville's Academy of St. Martin in the Field, not strictly an HIP band. All of these are still going. Even the NBC has morphed over the years into the orchestra that now plays for Leo Botstein here in Carnegie Hall with his concert productions of obscure but fascinating repertoire.

If I had had enough time and better health, I probably would have gone the same route, but it was not fated to be.

[barney]

No, alas. It was nearly fated to be, with your Carnegie Hall competitions, but cruelly cut short.

[Len_Z]

No, I don't want more diverse conductors. I do, however, want more talented, interesting, fascinating conductors and I don't care what their skin color or gender may be.

[maestrob]

No, alas. It was nearly fated to be, with your Carnegie Hall competitions, but cruelly cut short.

Yes, well, that's true, but by now I have become content with my lot and am grateful for the many experiences I've had and the knowledge I was able to acquire. Frankly, it's quite peaceful where I am now in life and that leaves me content. Many far more famous than I lead lives of quiet desperation, so I'm relieved not to be in those shoes, at least.