Carl St. Clair
Music Director of Pacific Symphony
01:33:47
Subscribe and listen on…
Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Amazon Music | PocketCasts | iHeartRadio | Player.FM Podcasts
Watch Full Interview
Show Notes
Carl St. Clair, longtime Music Director of Pacific Symphony, provides insights into conducting world-class musicians, mentoring and paying it forward, and how research for a music performance mirrors a lawyer's preparation for court. For those interested in classical music – as well as leading teams, building community, and encouraging collaboration – this episode is for you.
Relevant episode links:
About Carl St. Clair:
Music Director for Pacific Symphony
William J. Gillespie Music Director Chair
The 2023-24 season marks Music Director Carl St. Clair’s 34th year leading Pacific Symphony. St. Clair is one of the longest-tenured conductors of the major American orchestras. St. Clair’s lengthy history solidifies the strong relationship he has forged with the musicians and community. His continuing role also lends stability to the organization and continuity to his vision for the Symphony’s future. Few orchestras can claim such rapid artistic development as Pacific Symphony—the largest-budgeted orchestra formed in the United States in the last 50 years, due in large part to St. Clair’s leadership.
During his tenure, St. Clair has become widely recognized for his musically distinguished performances, his commitment to building outstanding educational programs, and his innovative approaches to programming. In April 2018, St. Clair led Pacific Symphony in its sold-out Carnegie Hall debut, as the finale to the Carnegie’s yearlong celebration of preeminent composer Philip Glass’ 80th birthday, ending in a standing ovation with The New York Times calling the Symphony “a major ensemble!” He led Pacific Symphony on its first tour to China in May 2018, the orchestra’s first international tour since touring Europe in 2006. The orchestra made its national PBS debut in June 2018 on Great Performances with Peter Boyer’s Ellis Island: The Dream of America, conducted by St. Clair. Among St. Clair’s many creative endeavors are the highly acclaimed American Composers Festival, which began in 2000, and the opera initiative, “Symphonic Voices,” which has included concert-opera productions of Madama Butterfly, The Magic Flute, Aida, Turandot, Carmen, La Traviata, Tosca, and Rigoletto in previous seasons.
St. Clair’s commitment to the development and performance of new works by composers is evident in the wealth of commissions and recordings by the Symphony. The 2016-17 season featured commissions by pianist/ composer Conrad Tao and composer-in-residence Narong Prangcharoen, a follow-up to the slate of recordings of works commissioned and performed by the Symphony in recent years. Other commissions include John Wineglass’ Alone Together (2021), William Bolcom’s Songs of Lorca and Prometheus (2015-16), Elliot Goldenthal’s Symphony in G-sharp Minor (2014-15), Richard Danielpour’s Toward a Season of Peace (2013-14), Philip Glass’ The Passion of Ramakrishna (2012-13), and Michael Daugherty’s Mount Rushmore, and The Gospel According to Sister Aimee (2012-13). St. Clair has led the orchestra in other critically acclaimed albums including two piano concertos of Lukas Foss, Danielpour’s An American Requiem, and Goldenthal’s Fire Water Paper: A Vietnam Oratorio with cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Other commissioned composers include James Newton Howard, Zhou Long, Tobias Picker, Frank Ticheli, Sir James MacMillan, Chen Yi, Curt Cacioppo, Stephen Scott, Jim Self (Pacific Symphony’s Principal Tubist), and Christopher Theofanidis.
In 2006-07, St. Clair led the orchestra’s historic move into its home at the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall at Segerstrom Center for the Arts. The move came on the heels of the landmark 2005-06 season that included St. Clair leading the Symphony on its first European tour—nine cities in three countries playing before capacity houses and receiving extraordinary responses and reviews. From 2008-10, St. Clair was general music director for the Komische Oper in Berlin. He also served as general music director and chief conductor of the German National Theater and Staatskapelle (GNTS) in Weimar, Germany, where he led Wagner’s Ring Cycle to critical acclaim. He was the first non-European to hold his position at the GNTS; the role also gave him the distinction of simultaneously leading one of the newest orchestras in America and one of the oldest in Europe.
In 2014, St. Clair became the music director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Costa Rica. His international career also has him conducting abroad several months a year, and he has appeared with orchestras throughout the world. St. Clair has led the Boston Symphony Orchestra (where he served as assistant conductor for several years), New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the San Francisco, Seattle, Detroit, Atlanta, Houston, Indianapolis, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver symphonies, among many.
Carl St. Clair is a strong advocate of music education for all ages and is internationally recognized for his distinguished career as a master teacher. He has been essential to the creation and implementation of the Symphony’s education and community engagement programs including Pacific Symphony Youth Ensembles, Heartstrings, Sunday Matinees, OC Can You Play With Us?, arts-X-press, and Class Act. In addition to his professional conducting career, St. Clair has worked with most major music schools across the country. In 2018, Chapman University President Danielle Struppa appointed St. Clair as a Presidential Fellow, working closely with the students of the College of the Performing Arts at Chapman University. St. Clair has been named “Distinguished Alumni in Residence” at the University of Texas Butler School of Music beginning 2019. And, for over 25 years, he has had a continuing relationship with the USC Thornton School of Music where he is artistic leader and principal conductor of the orchestral program.
Transcript
Introduction
I'm excited to have joined the show the Music Director of Pacific Symphony in Orange County, California, Carl St. Clair. I'm excited for you to share your experience as a conductor and what you can teach us or maybe share with us about what that's like to lead a team in that particular role. Welcome.
MC, it's great to be with you. As we were talking before we started, I'm not anything. I'm the furthest thing from a lawyer or a counselor. I'm going to be standing on the stage at the John Alexander Koroloff, and there will probably be somewhere around 220 people. I'm around a lot of people that I have to “lead” and guide, but lawyering is not one of them. I'll respond to the questions from a music director, a conductor, and a musician's standpoint.
As Music Director And Conductor
I guess that's the first question, in a way, which was how would you describe what you do in your role as music director and conductor?
Conductors get a lot of credit for things even when the reviews are bad. I am the last one on the stage and the first one off the stage. I'm the only one on the stage who doesn't make a sound, and I have my back to the audience. Often, people say, “What do you do? What are your hand gesturing? Do they look at you? Do they follow you? Does it matter what you do?” The answer is yes, it does.
I could conduct in a way where it wouldn't matter, but when I get personally and emotionally involved in a piece of music, it does influence especially the great players who can sensitize what you're thinking, what you're feeling, how deep is the sound, how soft is it, where is the direction of the phrase, what is the architecture of the piece, they can sense that and they don't have to look straight at you. I don't like orchestras that look right at you.
There's a difference between eyes that look and eyes that listen. If you're telling me how to get to the store and I'm not looking at you in a certain way. It is because I'm imagining what you're saying, “Go down the hall, go to the right, go out the door.” I'm using eyes that listen rather than eyes that are looking and orchestras tend to be maybe more precise and how they come in.
There's a difference between eyes that look and eyes that listen.
It was the great cellist, Mstislav Rostropovich, who said, “Eyeing the orchestra is not the way to go.” Music is an oral thing, so it has to be much more. If you think of all the great artists in every genre, pop, jazz, whatever, when they come on stage, they're inside themselves and then they come out. They don't go, “Hi, audience. I'm here. Let me play something for you.” No, whatever you're about to hear comes from inside and then they release it to you. They share it with you, but it started somewhere completely different. Sometimes I do this. If you take a Beethoven symphony or a Brahms symphony and you listen to the same orchestra with 3 or 4 different conductors who have recorded that particular symphony with them, the same orchestra, sometimes the same music, sometimes playing from the same parts.
It's different. The conductor brings out different things.
Exactly. There are different things that one can hear. It does make a difference. Very often, when I give master classes to non-musicians on what a conductor does, and I move my hands in different ways, and I have them sing something, it does make a difference, even for someone who's not a trained artist or a trained musician.
It does make a difference. I will say that when you're standing in front of musicians like those of the Pacific Symphony or any orchestra or chorus in America, I'm standing in front of the Pacific Chorale, we're doing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, of all things, they know the piece. What they bring to the rehearsal and into the music-making process is already a profound understanding of the piece and the text. They know the meaning of the music. You start with a very high level of discussion when you talk about a lot of those things. I remember when we have open rehearsals and people come in and I stop and say 1 or 2 small things, which makes a huge difference. We start our conversation with mutual knowledge, which is quite in-depth and quite learned.
That makes a lot of sense because I've been in some of those working rehearsals and it's fascinating to see various adjustments and how responsive the musicians are to them, and then what a difference something that sounds like it's a small adjustment makes to the overall sound. It's interesting to see the process.
When you have, let's say, 16 first violins and 14 second violins all doing the same thing, a small, minute change in the bow stroke or where it's played on the bow from 16 different people can make a huge difference in the sound and in color, because very often, we always talk about tempo as being the most important thing.
Of course, tempo is crucial, but sometimes those little fine things are not changing the channel. They're changing the hue. They're changing where you play. Is it at the tip of the bow, in the middle or very close to where your right hand is? All of those things can make a huge difference, especially for professional players.
This might be interesting for your readers. There is a difference between a teaching conductor and just a conductor. All my mentors were not only great conductors, but they were also great teachers. I was so privileged to be under the mentorship of Leonard Bernstein for the last six years of his life. I was the assistant to Seiji Ozawa, who passed away on February 6, 2024, at the age of 88. He was my last living mentor, teacher, and friend.
Kurt Mazur, Music Director of the New York Philharmonic and Leipzig Gewandhaus, were great teachers. They weren't just great conductors. They were great teachers. With a professional orchestra, you say what it is that you're hoping for them to do. You paint the picture for them and then they know technically exactly what to do.
With the student orchestra or with orchestras that are maybe less mature and at a different stage in their development, I not only have to give them the musical goal or aim, but I also have to tell them how to get there. If I do too much of that with the professional orchestra, it is useless. They would say, “You don't have to tell me how to play the trumpet or the violin or the flute. I know that. Tell me what it is you want. You don't have to tell me how to get there.” It gets on their nerves. It gets under their skin a little bit.
Impact Of Teaching On Conducting
Don't you think your teaching impacts how you conduct the professional orchestra? You enjoy teaching as well.
I do. I've always been a teacher since I was 23 years old. The thing is, is how you do it. It's in which manner. All of that pays respect to the professional musicians. It lets them know that you don't have to tell them and you know that, but it gives them the picture that they want to paint or that they should be aiming for, the musical goal, without telling them how to do it because they know that.
With students, if you don't add that little extra instruction, very often, it sounds the same. You can paint the same picture, but until you tell them what they were doing and what they should be doing, which would make a difference, it often doesn't change. That's the delineation between conducting professional and student orchestras.
I would think in an office, it would be the same. If you think about it and see what I have between a professional musician and me, it is the space between the two of us. How I handle that space, what I do in that space, whether it's an intensity, an allowing, an assuring, or a space which says, “Take it away. I know that you know how to do it,” this is the same dynamic that goes on in every office all day long.
What I hope to do is to appeal highest level of intelligence and accomplishment of every player, and not immediately go to the lowest level to instill and inspire them to think at a very high level so that they are not only the music makers, they are the music. They take from me, but they are the music makers. They are the dreamer of dreams and they're what makes the music sound beautiful, not me.
That's interesting that you're conscious of that because I see that with the musicians, when they have a different conductor, you've given them that gift to move between conductors and to have this deeper understanding and initiative to take in response to whatever request or suggestion the conductor is making of them. It allows them to grow and, as you say, go to their highest level in all scenarios. It's a gift to them that they can take with them wherever they play.
I don't want to have an orchestra sitting there waiting for me to tell them what to do. That's the worst thing in the world. I would think the same thing is in an office. I want them to know that I trust their decision-making. I hired them. Most of the people in the orchestra now, I've engaged during my tenure and I have to place my trust in them because it was my and a committee's decision to invite them into the Pacific Symphony family.
Having them sitting there as a professional and then giving them the sense that they don't do anything until I tell you what to do will be awful and painful for them because they need to contribute and offer their music. I often think that nothing I would have said or could have said would have made that particular solo sound as great as you played it.
In other words, what I received from their imaginative, creative musician music-making was something much better and that's my whole adage. I would rather have a great idea that somebody else came up with than the mediocre idea that I had and do exactly what I said. It gets everybody wanting to participate. That's the whole job.
Honestly, when I work with young conductors or conductors, I ask them what the most important thing a conductor can do. Often, the list is quite long. You got to know the score, have a good clear technique, know the instruments, and know the music. I say all of that's true, but that's not the most important thing. The most important thing, and this is what the greats do, is they control the atmosphere.
By their presence, the atmosphere, think of a botanical garden. The gardener there has to control the atmosphere for all of those beautiful plants to live, thrive, bloom, and grow. This one needs a little more sun, that one needs a little more water, that one needs less water, that one needs a different temperature, and I have to know that. I have to know all of those.
Controlling the atmosphere of a room, a rehearsal room or a concert room, is crucial. When I say control it, I don't mean control in some devious way. I mean you have to be able to have the atmosphere where music is made. Be the same kind of atmosphere where that music needs to live. If it's a Beethoven Ninth Symphony, that requires a certain atmosphere. If it's a Rossini joyous overture, a Bernstein Candide Overture, a Brook Mass, or a Mozart Requiem, that's a different atmosphere.
That atmosphere is not always stagnant. It's not always the same. It has to fit. Sometimes it has to be alive and bubbling and fresh and effervescent and sometimes it needs to be serious. We rehearsed two completely different pieces. One is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which is based on Schiller's 1785 Ode to Joy, you know, this whole thing.
Deine zauber, bindet vida, and everybody has to become brothers. We rehearsed Morten Lorentzen's Lux Eterna, Eternal Light, which is very solemn and very beautiful with a beautiful text and all legato. That atmosphere had to be completely different. My demeanor changed, and the way I spoke changed. It's a smaller orchestra. My dynamics of who I was speaking and how I was speaking all fluctuated. By the way, if you do this in a way that sounds like it's been choreographed or thought about, it isn’t going to happen.
That's what I was going to say. It seems like when you were talking about the newer conductors, they were talking about tactics and techniques. Those are some of the tools that you use, but you're talking about something more holistic about what you're trying to create.
You put your finger right on it, and it is one of those things that has to be natural because, very often, what you see is a conductor or a leader, and it could be in an office. This is not about conductors, this is about executives and various people, they are like, “How are you doing? Good morning, let's have a cup of coffee.” They then stand on the podium, and the orchestra immediately says, “Wait a minute. Which person are you?”
“The person that I greeted who seemed very natural and open and conversive, are you this person?” That's how I have armor, I'm now a conductor and I'm now in a position of authority and I have to look, act, and seem different. That already questions honesty. Who are you? A few years back I wrote and asked 50 professional musicians, friends, and people that I know around the country in various orchestras and I said, “I need three words that define a good conductor.”
I would venture to say that these three words are also the same words that would apply to any executive. There is one word that everybody put down in the top three, and that word was honesty. I would go so far as to say, in the conducting music-making world, honesty of purpose. In other words, why am I there and not someone else?
If I know why I'm there and what my marching orders are. It sounds a little strict. In other words, if I know why I have been put in this leadership position, I have a better chance of accomplishing that and creating an atmosphere so that everyone around me knows their purpose. It's interesting; there's one thing I've never had in my years of being Music Director of the Pacific Symphony. Do you know what it is? An office.
I don't want an office. My job isn't to sit behind a desk. My job isn't to be in an office space where I'm looming around, walking and people get nervous. I'm looking over someone's shoulder, this, that, and the other. No, my job is sitting at my study desk with the score of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony because there's going to come a moment where I'm standing on that podium in front of that audience of 2000 people and those 200 musicians where I have a job to do and only I can do it.
No computer programming, no help, no assistant, and no secretary. No anybody is going to help me. At that moment, it's only me. Me, Beethoven, and how I commune, interact, and react to those wonderful musicians. What I need to do is to protect myself so that I can do my job. Ninety percent of the time, you don't see what I do.
You only see me 10% of the time when I'm on the podium. The rest of that time, I'm studying, thinking, and contemplating Beethoven's Ninth Symphony so that whenever that 10% of that time when I'm in a rehearsal or a concert, it can be the most efficient possible. It can be the most profound music-making possible.
If I had been at a desk for hours and hours long and perhaps needling into other people's business, perhaps even giving them the impression that I don't trust what they do or I don't like what they do, in my general philosophy is, “If there's a job that somebody else can do and would like to do, then they should and I shouldn't.”
I think that's a good reminder to prioritize things because sometimes there are so many different demands on your schedule, and you think of all of these things that you need to do. Sometimes, people have a hard time letting go of those things, having somebody else do them, delegate them, and say, “I don't need to micromanage these things.”
I think it's important to ask that question that you said, which is, “Look at this thing. This is the core thing I'm here to do. It is to conduct the orchestra and how I show up when I do that. I need to do certain stuff to be prepared for that, and only I can do those things. I can't delegate those. Those are the things I'm going to prioritize.” Trying to discern what that is can be hard sometimes, I think, for people, but in your case, you've got a good handle on that and knew that this is what I'm here to do and I need to be able to create that space to do it right.
I know even my words might sound a little uppity, I don't mean them to be that way, but after many years of being the leader, the artistic creator, and the music director of the Pacific Symphony, in a way, I have become a musical conscience for an organization. Everything I do, every decision I make, and how I deliver these decisions somehow reflects the heart, the soul of our organization.
When I first arrived with Pacific Symphony, the idea of hugging everybody in a room didn't exist. Handshakes were sometimes even a little too much because there wasn't a familial bond. There wasn't a family sensitivity to one another. I started using the word, “Family” a long time ago, early on in my tenure, because it's crucial because we're all working together for a single purpose.
We have different opportunities, obligations, and responsibilities, but we have one goal at the top that we're all working towards. Everyone in our office, on our staff, and in our boardroom has an obligation, a responsibility, and a mission to make sure that that organization called Civic Symphony can accomplish its goal.
This is to share great music, enrich our community, be respected by our community, and educate in a way that offers opportunities, especially for young people, to have a vision of what classical music or popular music is from an orchestral standpoint. Our main mission is to have uplifting experiences that literally can change people's lives. If everybody works hard together, we can make that happen.
I think that touches on the topic when we think about your leadership as music director. We've been focusing on the actual music, the core of the work as a conductor, but you also have many other constituencies or other groups that are involved beyond the musicians. Whether it's the board, whether it's the audience, whether it's the community at large or the various things that the symphony does, those are a lot of different folks to interact with and to be conscious of what the symphony's providing for each of them and the relationships with that.
I know some of our general counsels who've appeared on the show have talked about that. They say, “We have our board, we have the employees, we have our people who take the services or use the products of our company and all of those.” If you're publicly traded, there's something beyond that you have to focus on, but there's all of these different things you have to think about in the role as general counsel. I think that that is true in your music director role as well because the symphony plays so many different roles.
You're right. We talked about the importance of public speaking before we started recording this episode. The most important thing about speaking to people is that you don't talk to them, you communicate with them. As a music director, I need to clearly understand our mission and why an orchestra exists in our community.
The most important thing about speaking to people is that you don't talk at them, you communicate with them.
As long as that's clear, my heart is clear and I speak honestly, it comes out like a conversation rather than a lecture. Whenever I'm speaking to the board, I know who's in the room, I know the dynamics of the room, I feel the atmosphere of the room, and I need to be transformative to have flexibility in who I am and how I speak because you were a member of our board. Sometimes, on our board, I speak very passionately, and other times, I am very pragmatic. It's dollars and cents, it's budgets and planning, the nuts and bolts. Other times, it's very almost artistic flowery in a way because I'm speaking about something else. If I'm speaking to the education board, it's a different thing.
It's all about what we need to do to be good at educating and sharing what we do in a way that's informative, instructive, and very helpful to mold and shape young lives. If I'm talking to the orchestra, it's different if I'm talking to one person in the orchestra, Principal Oboe, Principal Trumpet, Principal Tempany. It's different than if I'm talking to sixteen first violins, if I'm talking to the woodwind section versus a single player. How you speak, the dynamic intensity.
If I'm speaking to a principal player, it's almost like in public calling somebody into your office in private, but you have to realize everybody's listening and watching how you deal with that person and it's going to affect you. It's almost positive that everything we do is in public because it ensures that everything is done in a professional, not a personal way and that everyone is treated with due respect.
I had the opportunity to pay homage and to talk about a good friend, John Alexander, who was the Music Director of Pacific Chorale for 45 years. He's sitting right there and so is a whole room of gala attendees. A lot of speakers were there. I said to the audience, “You've all been talking about John and he's sitting right there. Please allow me to talk to John because I know that what I'm going to be saying are things that are on your mind and in your heart, and you wish to be able to share these with him as well.”
I had a conversation with John in front of the whole room. That was how I chose to do it, which was a little different dynamic than the other speakers talking about his accolades and all the things he had accomplished, which were perfectly fine, very articulate, and lauding. It was a beautiful servant. You have to be able to read the room, so to speak.
Read the room and know. I had thought about what I might want to say. As I heard everybody else talk, I knew that I had to change. I can't do that. I erased all of the comments. Of course, I included many of the thoughts that I'd had, but I put them in a completely different context. When I watch movies that have lawyers and they're presenting the final statements to the jury and all that, I find those intense.
I find those intense and for all practical purposes, in my small little way, that's what I'm doing. I'm trying to convince musicians that my impressions and my interpretations of a piece are what they should follow. Sometimes, it's an open discussion, like, “What do you think? Should we do this? Should we do that? Can we try this? Can we try that?” Other times, I come up with a specific image of a work.
Everybody comes to the rehearsal with their image of those works. The last time I played, it was at a different tempo. The last time I played this, it was a long note. Now you want it short. How do I go about it? I come back to the word honesty. As Linda Bernstein used to say, “As effervescent and as Hollywoodish and Broadwayish that he looked on the podium, he did his homework.”
Time and time again, we would be in class or you'd be in a master class and he said, “You got to do your homework, boys.” He was right. That's what I need to do. I need to do my homework. For instance, this morning, I've already studied for two hours because now it's in my head. I'm studying in my head. I'm thinking about what is the sound. What is the architecture? What are we trying to project? What are we trying to instill in the listeners when we have this communal experience together called a concert? What do I want people to walk away with? That's a quarter note, that's an eighth note, that's a quarter rest, that's a long note, that's a short note, a loud note. It's so far beyond that. That's what the audience members don't need to know. They need to enjoy.
Yes, but as Bernstein said, “You need that foundation to be able to get to that point.” You need to put in all the hard work so all of the fundamentals are there, and then you can think about and work on other things. I have the same experience in my work as a lawyer. I wish that the fun part of the performance and the oral argument or talking to the judges could happen without all the hard work, but it never does. It's only good if you put in all the hard work and the prep in advance, and then you can have fun in the 20 or 30 minutes that you’re up before the court, but it doesn't happen without the work.
If you look at an orchestra, at one point in my career, I took lessons on every instrument in the orchestra. Was it my intent to become proficient as a clarinet player or bassoon player? No, but it was to understand what a bassoon, a flute, a clarinet, a trombone, a trumpet, a harp, or a violin player. I took years of violin. I never became very good, but I was proficient in a couple of instruments, but violin and cello were not the instruments.
I needed to understand what it was that they were doing and how difficult it was. What kinds of things can I say so that when I speak to a string player or a woodwind player, I'm neither of those, or percussionist or to a harpist that I can speak to them in a language which is, number one, sound, solid, makes sense, understandable and is founded in a real understanding of the instrument.
I never became proficient in any of those, but I know how to speak to them, and I know the sensitivities of those players. A perfect example is we had a long rehearsal. It was five hours of rehearsal, and it's now close to 10:30 at night. The principal oboist in Beethoven's Night. It's so taxing to play Beethoven's Night Symphony, especially for woodwind players, but for everybody, including the conductor.
It's taxing. It requires all of your energy and concentration, but also physical, to put an oboe reed in your mouth for five hours and play. Around close to the end of the rehearsal, he said, “I can't hold out that note. Thank you very much.” I said, “When your principal oboist says, I can't hold that note out, it's time to go home. Let's go home.”
It's understandable, but she's a fantastic player. I could have said, “What do you mean you can't? That's what your job is. We have fifteen more minutes left.” No, you have to understand. I'm tired, by the way, so was I. We were all exhausted, which shows that the orchestra was giving everything they had from the very first minute to the very last minute. What more could a conductor or a fellow musician ask of a colleague or of themselves?
Championing New Composers
You have also championed some new composers and debuted some new works. How does that work? What do you think about that? How do you either select the composers or think about that as part of the symphony's mission?
Well, the Pacific Symphony is about 44 or 45 years old. We're about to change. We're an orchestra that's going to spend most of its life in the 21st century. We see ourselves as cultural, artistic, and creative leaders and not an orchestra that follows the traditions, the great traditions of the past. To be a leade means we have to be at the forefront of the creation of new music.
To be a leader, that means we have to be on the forefront of the creation of new music.
We have to be performing the music of composers who are alive, who can be with us, the same way that Bernstein did with Aaron Copeland, Kuzminski or Ormandy did with Shostakovich and Rachmaninoff. These friendships that I have forged with living composers and our guest conductors have with living composers is a vital part of staying in front so that we're not breathing the fumes of other orchestras that have gone before us because we are a young orchestra.
We're the largest orchestra formed in America in the last half-century. That's a huge thing to be able to say because if you think about it, 1993 in California was a big 2000, 2006, 2008, and pandemic. We have all the reasons and we have jumped over all of those hurdles. Despite those hindrances, we have grown, and we have flourished.
This speaks so well of our community, our board, and the dedication of our musicians. The creative process is indeed much different than the recreative process. For instance, I feel myself as a recreative artist. When I was doing Beethoven's ninth, I didn't create Beethoven's Ninth, I'm recreating Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
In a way, I'm doing the same thing that lawyers do. You're interpreting something. You're interpreting the law. Rick Geiger was the President of the board of the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra in Ithaca. He was also the dean of admissions at the Cornell Law School for 28 years. He said to me right away, “If someone comes in with an application to our law school that has a musical background or who was a music major or who played a musical instrument, immediately, a different attention is given to those applicants.”
It is because of what it takes to be a great musician, many of the same things are true. You have to look at something which is not a word. You have to interpret what it says. Like notes, they don't tell you words in a law book or case studies. You have to interpret, I mean, I'm assuming you do. There's a lot of interpretive action that has to happen.
With a conductor, with an orchestra, very often, I'm the recreator. For instance, in my first year here, I engaged Frank Ticheli, who has retired as Professor Emeritus from the Thornton School of Music at USC. I've known Frank since he was a doctoral student at the University of Michigan when I taught there and he was going to school there. I needed a creative partner so that we could join together and he's written us six pieces. Through my years here, we've befriended and had composers in residence, sometimes on a three-year basis, sometimes on a one-year basis. We now have Viet Quang.
I love his works. He's amazing.
My job is to recreate what he created. Our job as musicians and interpreters is to find the essence of what he wrote for us and bring that to the public. Also, it keeps every musician. Our orchestra is filled with young artists and young musicians, and they need to experience new things, not the things of the past.
My work with living composers has informed me so much about how to interpret the music of composers who are no longer with us. In other words, I don't know what it was like the first time to conduct Beethoven's Fifth, but in my work with living composers, I know what parameters, what flexibility, what things they're likely to give way on, to give leeway on. My work with living composers has helped me have a better relationship with composers who I can no longer talk to because I'm talking to living composers.
Collaboration With Composers
That's what I was going to ask about. Was it different to do that and to have access to the composer to ask questions and to talk to them about the piece?
Absolutely. Philip Glass is one of America's greatest. He went to Carnegie Hall with a large work with a chorus and five soloists, vocal soloists, and the passion of Ramakrishna. This was a piece he wrote for us, Pacific Symphony, to open our Renée and Henry Segerstrom concert hall back in 2006. When we did it in 2018 at Carnegie Hall, he hadn't had an experience with the piece, and he said, “Did I write that? It's so beautiful.” When he first came to California back in 2006 to hear the rehearsal, he said, “Carl, what have you done?” I got nervous. He says, “This sounds fantastic.” I said, “Philip, I changed a few dynamics. I changed a few tempo markings.” He said, “I love it.”
I didn't do exactly what was in the score because it's a process. He's sitting in his studio writing something in an open space and now it's on the stage in the hands of living, breathing, sentient beings and we're bringing it to life and sometimes things have to be adjusted. That flexibility that I've learned is acceptable to most composers. They love that interpretive interaction. “What did you do?” This is almost without exception, every composer.
There's one thing: to compose it in the studio and then have it come out in a full orchestra. There are things that I would think you'd say, “Maybe we need to adjust that a little bit.” I could see where that's a fun experience for them, too. Yes, that sounds great. That was a nice adjustment. That's interesting in terms of it providing some intuitive sense of parameters. What elements are considered acceptable by modern composers, providing insight into their unique styles and the variety of adaptations possible for composers who may no longer be able to directly communicate their preferences?
I remember Bernstein being at Tanglewood when I was a conducting fellow back in the mid-‘80s and he would say things like, “I had a discussion with Gustav Mahler about this.” Sometimes I do think Gustav Mahler was a great conductor, much more known as a conductor than as a composer during his lifetime. Sometimes, I wonder what he would think if I did this or if I did that. I wonder what his reaction would be.
Very often, I call upon composers' reactions that I've had the chance to talk to because there's a piece that was written for me called The Radiant Voices by Frank Ticheli. There's this one place I felt that I needed to hold this note a little bit longer and make a big Rolentondo. It's not written. He loved it. He thought that was great. I said, “Should I put it in the score?” He said, “No, that's how you feel and I love it when you do it, but if someone else did the same thing, I might not like it.” That discussion and flexibility make the creative process exciting.
That's an interesting comment, “Don't put it in the score.” I like that. I hadn't thought about that, but I thought, “The way you do it, I'm comfortable with that, but maybe I wouldn't be with somebody else.”
He wrote another work called There Will Be Rest. It was an acapella choral work. He made a string version of it that I asked him to arrange. I think my timing is at least two minutes longer than everybody else. It's only a 6 or 7-minute piece. It's not like it's an hour-long piece, but a minute-and-a-half variation is quite a bit in a 6-minute or 7-minute piece. At first, when he heard it, he thought it was too slow.
One morning, I got a call. It's like 8:00. It's from Frank Ticheli and he said, “Carl, I got off the treadmill.” I guess he was on his gym treadmill and he had his earphones on and he was listening to my performance of There Will Be Rest, or in the string version, it's called Rest. He said, “Carl, I can't imagine it any other way. It's so profound the way you do this. I'm sure most people couldn't do that.”
Barber Adagio for String is a piece that a lot of people know from all walks of life because it was used in Platoon and the movie, and it's been used in a lot of movies. Bernstein's performance with the LA Philharmonic is at least two minutes longer than everybody else's. Only Leonard Bernstein could do that. I would fail miserably if I tried to emulate that or imitate that tempo in the least, and most people would. Nobody that I know does because they know that fact.
Toward the end of Mr. Bernstein's life, everybody's Mr. Bernstein, Leonard Bernstein is all on everybody's mind because of Bradley Cooper's movie Maestro. I'm asking because people know that I was close to Bernstein, “How did he do? How did you like it?” Toward the end of Mr. B's life, things got very slow. His Pathetique, the sixth symphony of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, which Tchaikovsky premiered six days before he passed on in 1893, was incredibly slow, very heartfelt, and very passionate. I asked him because the musicians of the Boston Symphony said, “Carl, can you ask him why things and everything are so slow?” After rehearsal, we were hanging out and I said, “Mr. B, why are things getting so slow?” He said something very interesting to me.
He said, “If you knew that this was very likely the last time you would ever conduct Tchaikovsky's Pathetique symphony in your life, wouldn't you want to hold on to every note as long as you could and go to the next note with only reluctance because you might never experience that particular note again?” How prophetic was that not long after Mr. B, at the age of 72, passed on? I was stunned by that response. Of course, he was such a brilliant man.
I, too, think about that sometimes. When's the next time I'm going to conduct a Mahler ninth symphony? If this was my last time, wouldn't I want to savor every note as long as I possibly could? Isn't it the same with relationships? If this was the last time we would see one another, I'm getting on a plane or going somewhere, wouldn't you do something a little differently? Wouldn't you say, “Child, see you later?”
That's why, in certain cultures, people have a hard time saying goodbye. “Bye, see you later. Hope to see you.” It doesn't want to end. Some composers are like that. Richard Strauss, it's a hard time saying goodbye. He does. He's an Austrian, but he's from Munich, and he's a German composer. He has a hard time in his music saying goodbye. I can feel it. It ends and then it ends.
Tchaikovsky sometimes is like that. Sometimes, the tempo and how long you hold something are affected by your body clock. For instance, when I lived in Berlin, I flew back and forth from Orange County to Berlin 10 or 11 times a year. I would fly there and conduct an entire opera. I got into timing my performances. If I did the first act of Die Walkure, an opera by Richard Wagner, I would ask what the timing was.
Sometimes, I was jet-lagged and didn't trust my body clock or I would come here and say, “What's the timing of this symphony? What's the timing of that?” Do you know those dreams where you feel like you're running fast, but you can't go anywhere, you're stuck, spinning your wheels? Sometimes, when you are a little jet-lagged and a little off, you're sick, sad, and elated. Your body clock and your temples are affected, which is sometimes not good.
You're describing it as this. You're saying your job is to recreate the creations, but it sounds like it's much more intertwined. As you're saying, the life of the conductor impacts how you're conducting a particular piece of where you are in life, the discussions with the other composers. Understanding where those composers were coming from and what was going on in their lives at the time all made it much more of a personal endeavor. I think the individual creator has a role in how something comes out at different points.
We sometimes say interpretation is one thing, but a compelling interpretation with artistic integrity isn't about what I think. It's a combination of objective information that I've learned, that I've studied, that I've researched. My musical experiences, my interpretive skills, my creative juices, if you will, and I put them together in a balance, they become the interpretation.
There's a promise in this. We keep talking about Tchaikovsky's Pathetique because it's so profound, and he composed it at the end of his life. Those were the last notes of his music that he conducted, the last notes of his music that he heard. It's a great sampling or an understanding of the powers, beauty, influences, and essences of sound and composers' notes, and music is what they are.
For instance, you have to know two things. Number one, before he wrote the Sixth Symphony, he had two miserable failures. One was an opera called Iolanta and the second one was a little-known ballet that nobody's ever seen The Nutcracker, which was harshly criticized. He went into this with very little confidence in himself. He was also very frail. He wasn't that old, 50-something years old.
There's this beautiful theme that is the second theme of the first movement and maybe people have heard it. It's so beautiful and so heartfelt and everybody says, “It's a love theme.” There are some other things he writes with mutes. In other words, the sound of the violins has to be veiled and muted. He writes Con Teneramente with tenderness.
At one point, he writes the word incalzando, which doesn't mean to go faster. It means I want something in a heated manner. Maybe this isn't a love theme. If you read about his horrific personal life and the amount of personal criticism and scorn that he had to withstand in Moscow because of his sexual orientation, all of these things, and his failed marriage, all of a sudden, you realize this isn't a love theme, this is about love that was never realized. Maybe it's love that he wanted, that he's pining for, that he's yearning for. Maybe that's why it's muted. It’s because it's not real. It's something that had been so shielded and so covered in darkness and veiled, that it's something that he always wanted to have.
If you put all of these things in the score, some are in a letter when he writes, when he was on a train, he was listening to his mind and writing these notes down, and he was crying. All of that information is in the notes themselves, including my feelings about Tchaikovsky and all my experiences from Tchaikovsky's performances, from the violin concerto to other symphonies to the piano concerto.
All of a sudden, there begins to be this cauldron of both subjective and objective information that's going to become the interpretation. It's not what I think. That's dangerous. That's what Bernstein would say, “You’ve got to do your homework.” Very often, I don't read what other people write about Tchaikovsky. I read what Tchaikovsky wrote because he was a prolific letter writer. He wrote thousands of letters.
You can read a letter that he wrote every day when he arrived in Moscow on October 18, 1865, the day after the first rehearsal and the first performance. You can literally read his understanding and what he felt from his pen. We talk about interpretation; it's much more of a balance between objectivity and subjectivity, passion and reason, and reason and passion.
It sounds very similar to what I do when I'm researching for a case, especially at the Supreme Court level where there's policymaking and we're trying to figure out why is the law this way and why should it be either the same or something else. Why should we make a change or not make a change? I do the same thing. I follow the cases from the earliest time to the latest because the cases and the judges talk to each other too over time.
You say, “What was happening?” Maybe there's an interpretation later from a later decision, but that is like a misapprehension or they took a left turn from what was originally meant in the original framework of the law. Is that right? Is that something we want to continue? What is going on? I think of that as cases and judges talking to each other over time and where the law develops around that.
It's through that, but also around it, and then there's a feeling from all of the cases and the decisions about where things are going. I think of it as like a river or a stream. It's flowing in a certain way, and it's naturally going a certain way. Do we want to keep going that way and what does that mean? How do we extend it? It's a very similar combination of the very objective and subjective. You get the feeling that you get from the law itself, but I think that's only because we spent lots of years studying the law, same as yours, lots of years studying music, and you can see when things change.
The notes that Beethoven wrote are the same notes that he wrote on May 7, 1824. It’s been 200-plus years since Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The notes have changed. The words from Schiller or his adaptation of Schiller's Ode to Joy or Schiller's words haven't changed, but I think how they're heard has changed. The times we live in are much different than the times he lived in.
Certain things remain constant. I'm sure the words of the law do change from time to time, but the words very often are the same words that were written. I don't know enough about it to say, but back in the day. The point is that how we hear them has changed, as has how loud they are. Musical instruments are much more advanced and much louder than they used to be. Bass instruments and timpels are sometimes faster or slower.
Orchestras are much bigger than they used to be. Tchaikovsky's piano concerto was premiered in Boston and there were like 6 or 7 first violins. Nowadays, we wouldn't think of doing a Tchaikovsky piano concerto with less than at least 10 or 12 violins. There are so many changes. The oral experience, the listener has become much more, the audiences are bigger, and concert halls are bigger.
A lot of Mozart's symphonies were premiered in very small, almost salons, like a private castle or some private estate. Many things have changed. The program premiered on December 22, 1808, in a church, in a theater. Number one, there was no light. Everything had to be done by candlelight. There was no heat. Can you imagine Vienna on December 22, 1808? It's got to be cold.
What's going on? Do you think that played a role in how somebody can play the violin, or the trumpet, or the trombone? The fact that there was the fifth symphony, the sixth symphony, an aria, three parts of the mass, the fourth piano concerto, the last time Beethoven ever played, the choral fantasy, and what everybody came to hear was Beethoven's improvisation on the piano. All that was done in one rehearsal day.
Can you imagine how that must have sounded? There are recountings of that concert where the orchestra lost, and they had to start over. The point of that is that's how those pieces were born. That's how those pieces came to life in those circumstances. Next season, we're doing a piece by Hector Berlioz, a French composer. It's called Symphony Fantastique. It's about an hour long and requires huge forces, harps, timpani, and everything.
The first rehearsal had to be canceled because they didn't have enough chairs or candles. When we think about performances now and we're in an exquisite concert hall with heating, it's this and that and the other. It's hard to compare historically. Also, music is a time. It exists only because time exists. It's flowing through time.
Part of the experience that people get from hearing music is that music can adjust and can somehow warp or influence your experience of time passing. That's why rallentando's in moments where you want a specific climactic note that comes a little bit later, and it goes, “Wow.” It's because the interpreter or the performer had set up a moment to happen at a specific instant, and then it didn't. I'm meandering and I'm wondering. I'm starting to ramble.
No, that's interesting about the time. I think about that; obviously, people who are mathematicians, engineers, and all of that are often quite good at music, and I'm thinking of that because the time, the timing, and the role of music in that regard are quite precise. It's very important to have that skill down.
At one point in my life, I was quite good at math. I'm sure I've lost everything, but I think there is something because math is a symbolic language. Music is a symbol language. It's not verbal or written. It's done in symbols and numbers, which, for a mathematician, makes perfect sense. For those of us mere mortals, it doesn't. Same with music. I look at a score, and I can hear things, but maybe someone else wouldn't be able to.
Path To Conducting
I remember my dad would say that zero is a very important number. I don't think about things symbolically in that way. You can't do a lot of things without zero. You can't get past nine. You can't do a lot of things without that. It's an important number, but that's someone who's looking at the symbols and seeing the value of them. Different minds work differently. Same thing with reading music. How did you decide or know that you wanted to be a conductor? How did you come to that path?
I think everyone has their journey in the realm of music. Mine is certainly unique to me and I don't try to imitate others because I've been given a life and I've followed this life. I didn't grow up walking up the steps of the Juilliard Prep School with a violin case and things of this nature. I grew up on a farm in South Texas in a town or a community of 36 people. I didn't hear a symphony orchestra until I was a senior in high school.
My life has already started completely differently in a different manner than most musicians now or at least the ones that I know of. I wouldn't trade my life for anything. I felt like I gleaned so much from having grown up on a farm that I use to this day and most of it has to do with work ethic. It has to do with understanding the importance of dedication and hard work.
Personally, I'd never thought about being a conductor. I was going to be a professional trumpet player and that's what I was. I went to the University of Texas at Austin, where I played some time in the Austin Symphony. I was a professional brass quintet. I was teaching trumpet lessons, and I was going to take auditions and do things of this nature.
When I went to graduate school, I needed an assistantship to afford going to graduate school and there was only one opening and that was to be the assistant to the conductor of the orchestra and the opera. His name is Dr. Walter DeClue, who taught at USC for many years. He was the assistant to Arturo Toscanini before Toscanini came to this country to be the music director of the NBC Symphony.
He was brought here as his assistant. He got a PhD in Munich and studied in Vienna and saw Richard Strauss and Wilhelm Furtwangler, all these wonderful people, conducting. He had a wonderful background, 19th-century romantic. I was very fortunate, but I needed an assistantship. One day, I was handed this score and said, “You're going to conduct this when Dr. DeClue comes into the room.” I had 20 minutes to look at the score.
Dr. DeClue came in and I started conducting. I had elementary conducting classes but I wasn't thinking about being a conductor necessarily. It was only three minutes. “That's enough. Thank you very much.” Then he left the room and I was summoned to his office and he said, “You will be my assistant.” I said, “Dr. DeClue, it was only three minutes. How could you tell?” He says, “I didn't need three minutes. My audition for Felix Weingartner, who was the great German-Austrian conductor at the Vienna Academy, was one minute.”
When you see someone who has, for lack of a better word, a knack or a natural ability for doing a role as a conductor, it doesn't take a long time. Of course, I was under his tutelage for the two years I spent there as a graduate student, and I learned so much. That's how I thought about becoming a conductor, which wasn't part of my mindset before that.
Frankly, I'm not sure I knew I had a knack for conducting because I hadn't done that much. in the elementary one and elementary two classes, and it seems to have been a fit, but I will say that around 1983, I'll go back two steps. Every year, from Thanksgiving to Thanksgiving, I contemplate a single question for a whole year and I love Thanksgiving. I love the thought of it, I love the idea, I love the word.
Every year, I think of one question and that year was, “What, who and how do I have the feeling that I have the right to stand in front?” At that time, I was a professor at the University of Michigan School of Music, the Moore School of Music and I was very young. Who gave me the right to stand on a podium and be responsible for teaching, instructing, and helping the development of all these young musicians who are paying such high prices?
Who is it? Who gave me this and do I? For a whole year, I thought about it and I communicated with other teachers, with students who had played for me that had gone on. They had become professional musicians, and some of them had become teachers. I did a lot of thinking, research, paneling, and polling of people who had been under my toolage.
I wanted something honest, not, “It was great.” No, “Can you be more specific?” “What wasn't good?” “What was good?” “Just hit me with it, let's hear it.” At the end of that year, I felt that I was probably doing something that I was supposed to be doing and that I had been called to do it. That it wasn't something that I had sought and so I continued doing it, but if I had the answer came back, “Carl, it wasn't all that good and you turned me off to music and I never played my clarinet again ever because I was under your orchestra.”
Had that come up, I probably would have reconsidered my life choices. As long as I stay honest, I have four basic tenets. One is to work hard and this is something I learned on the farm. You have to work hard. Living on a farm, you don't work. That's your life. That's everything. I'm not afraid of it. I love doing it. I'm impassioned by it. I'm enlivened by it. I'm motivated by it. Working hard.
Number two is this word I mentioned several times during this interview, which is honesty. It's be honest. Be honest to yourself and be honest to your purpose. The third thing is to be thankful. I don't know how I got the talents I seem to have, but I can tell you, Hochheim, Texas, 36 people is not a pavement for developing musical talent, it isn't. It's one of those places that had a church, a store, a cotton gin and our house. That was it. Somehow or another, music found me there.
If you have an open heart, it can find you about anywhere. That's also as a listener and not as the musician ourselves. The last tenet is to be humble. Not only to be thankful for all that you've attained or been given or garnered or been offered, but be humble about it because in our world, especially because we're in the performing arts, being humbled sometimes is a little more difficult than it might be in other walks of life.
If you have an open heart, music can find you just about anywhere.
If you're not humble, that belies all the other things you claim to be. If you're not humble about what you've been given or what you're thankful for, then the word honesty comes into question yet again. your sense of purpose, “Is that why you're working so hard? Is it so that you can be better than everyone, flaunt that, and talk about it?”
Those are my four tenets, work hard, be honest, be thankful, and be humble. They haven't steered me wrong yet and they're pretty powerful words. I always say to young people that those four things don't require capital letters or even punctuation. They're very simple phrases that everybody can remember. You don't need to write them down.
That's true. I like that practice of contemplating one particular issue or one particular question at Thanksgiving. I think that's neat.
I don't usually tell people what they are and if it is not a true or false, yes or no question. These are very often unanswerable questions. Very often, they're things that, from time to time through the whole year, I ponder, “Why?” We've spoken about Leonard Bernstein. I will divulge the question that happened in Thanksgiving 1990.
I won't say all the questions, but this one was particular because, on October 14th, 1990, the great Leonard Bernstein passed away. He died. As I've said before, he was a very powerful mentor, trusted friend, advisor, counselor, and my North Star. He was so powerful as a person and as a musician. He is so brilliant, intelligent, giving, loving, and everything.
He was everything. Anything you see in the movie, anybody that watched the movie, anything that you saw, it paled by what reality. It was good and well done. Thank you, Mr. Cooper, but if you happen to be in his presence, there was something that unmistakably talked about controlling an atmosphere. On August 19th, 1990, that summer at Tanglewood, before his 72nd birthday, he conducted what was ultimately the last concert of his life.
He was very ill that week and I was his assistant during that time because I was assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony. When Mr. Bernstein was around, I was always his assistant at his request and always there whenever and for whatever he needed. Come that Sunday afternoon, there was a young boy from Texas who was on the podium instead of Mr. Bernstein conducting his last work called Arias and Barcarolles with the Boston Symphony. He was too ill and not able to get enough air and oxygen to do this 35-minute song cycle, very difficult. It had a lot of different complexities.
The question in 1990 at Thanksgiving is, “Why me? How did I go from that town of 36 people to standing on a podium in front of the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood conducting instead of the composer and the great Leonard Bernstein, the premier of his work? What in my life led me to that moment to be that person?” What had I done to have deserved that? It's a mind-boggling question to go back and try to link because you can't make a dotted line to that from where I grew up.
That's all about trust. That's all about following and listening. It is not about feeling deserved, wanting, and pushing. It's all about having a life of trust that I'm here for a purpose, and that purpose is going to present itself to me as long as I work hard and prepare for the next step. It was an interesting year to ponder that. By the way, I still ponder it.
In the second half of the concert, when he was conducting Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, I was sitting, holding hands with his 93-year-old mother, who happened to be at the concert and she knew something was wrong. At one point, she grabbed and firmly grasped my hand and said, “Is Len going to be okay?” That's her son. She called him Len. I said, “Yes, Ms. Berns. He's going to be fine. He's going to make it.” She knew something wasn't right.
That Thanksgiving, I was summoned to her Brookline apartment outside of Boston because she wanted to know, as a mother, what was going on. She wasn't going to have that be hidden from her. “I deserve to know what was going on.” For about three hours, we laughed, we cried, we shared stories. What a beautiful person.
I'm happy that you like the practice. Sometimes it's difficult to come up with the question. Most of the questions I pose are much more philosophical. That one had a bit of a philosophical nature, but it was more of why, how, and what could I do to take that moment forward. My last phone conversation with Mr. B a few days before he died.
It was a very profound conversation, very short. He was already very ill, but basically, he was teaching, still teaching. His pet name for me was Cowboy, only because I'm from Texas. That has nothing to do with the fact that I looked like a cowboy, I wore a hat or boots or buckle or any of that stuff, but that was his association that I was a Texan, so I had to be a cowboy.
He simply said, “It's your turn to fly the flag.” When Mr. B talked about flying the flag, he didn't mean go out and have a career. He meant teaching. He meant, “I've invested in you. It's your turn to give back.” You keep this flag flying. You give back. I gave it to you. You give back. That's been an inspiration for me to continue teaching.
Even though I've had a professional career in Germany, in Central America, throughout America, and now in Asia, I've never not taught. For 30 years, I've had a relationship with USC and the Thornton School of Music when I was in Boston, New England Conservatory, here in Orange County with Chapman University, and the University of Texas, where I'm a distinguished alumnus.
Teaching is an important part of who I am. I think in the latter part of his life, even though he wasn't that old, being with the student orchestra at Tanglewood, being with the students, the budding professionals at the Schleswig-Holstein in North Germany or with Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, this kept him alive. It is where he thrived, being around these young musicians and young composers and conductors. This is what gave him because he still kept on teaching.
I could see that model of his combination of things in what you've carried forward. It's interesting to know that that was something specific that he asked you to do in a way that would carry it forward. That is so much that the only thing we can do to thank people who have mentored us and helped us along the way is to pay it forward to the next person and be that for someone else.
Just one little twist on what you said, MC, is that when Beethoven says in his mighty Ninth Symphony, “Alle menschen werden brüder.” All mankind should become brothers. It's not a request and it's not even a statement. In many ways, it's a warning because if you don't, then you could fill in the blank. The blanks are being filled in all over our world now.
Unfortunately, this is not the case with some of the findings that we would hope for in mankind. With Bernstein when he says, “You have to give back.” It wasn't a request and it wasn't a statement. He didn't say it any more firmly, but I realized this was something that wasn't an option. He didn't have the strength to couch it in those terms, but this is what you need to do and this is what you must do.
That's a good thing you had the interpretive skills, “Yes, that’s it. I know what you mean.” It was important enough for him to tell you that in that timeframe as well, it must have been something important for him to tell you.
I think he realized very early on that his legacy wasn't necessarily going to be in his recordings. It was going to be in the people who lived on after. It was going to be a living memory. I was at the Indiana Jacob School of Music, and I was talking so fervently about Bernstein, and then I realized there was nobody in this room who was even alive when he was still alive.
Yet we talk about him and look at the Bradley Cooper’s Maestro movie. He's still so present in everybody's life as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, American musicians, pianist, composer, conductor, poet, and writer. His presence is still alive, by the way. Don't you realize he died more than 30 years ago? You’ll say, “What?” He died in 1990, we're in 2024. It stops me in my tracks to even think because he's such a vital part of who I am and what I profess.
That’s an interesting word of thinking about living on through other people, the legacy being the next generation. He continues to live on in that way.
It's a living memory rather than something that is a recorded memory. It's interesting that we were on a tour together, with three young conductors and Mr. Bernstein with the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra. We started our tour in Leningrad, which meant that before Leningrad became St. Petersburg, That was before the wall came down. The discussion was, there were three guys, Mark Springer,
Agie Euwe and me, and he would say, “Boys, the question of the day is, would you rather be loved or respected?” This was a huge thing for Mr. B. As I think everybody could see in that movie Maestro, I mean, I think you could pretty much predict where Mr. B came down, on what side Mr. B came down. We would talk about certain people, historically, and some still living, most of them who had passed on.
Was he loved, was he respected or do you think he's now been loved or beloved? Is he still respected or would he have changed his ways? For Mr. Bernstein, he needed love. He needed to share his love of things and he needed to feel the love of others. to be respected without love for him would leave him completely and void of one of the most important and maybe the only human emotions that other beings don't possess.
Legacy With The Symphony
What do you think about your legacy with the symphony, particularly or in general, with music? Do you think it's similar or different?
Maybe that's going to be my next Thanksgiving question because I'm not sure I can answer that like right on this spot. I don't know if it's going to be a legacy because the orchestra is too young. I do know that when I arrived in 1990, the orchestra's budget and the orchestra's philosophy, the way it interacted with itself as a family, and the way it had molded.
At that time, it was only ten years old. The relationship with the community was different. I think what we have established with community, with one another as a family, and as a respected aspect of our beautiful life down here in Orange County has changed. I would say that perhaps our education and community engagement programs might be at the top of the list.
Yes, there is a beautiful musical garden now called Pacific Symphony. In 2025, when I become music director laureate, there will be someone else who will be entrusted to tend this garden. Seiji Ozawa says it beautifully when he was asked after he was with the Boston Symphony for 27 years or something of this nature. “What is your legacy?” He thinks of it a little differently because he was given the great Boston Symphony and his job was basically to keep the garden blooming.
Fresh and to keep the weeds out and to make sure it was groomed. It wasn't necessarily to create a great orchestra. It was a great orchestra. In my relationship with Pacific Symphony, I do think that we have grown a lot in creating the garden, if you will, if that metaphor can match, to create the garden that now exists, but there's a lot more to do. As the orchestra approaches its 50th anniversary year in 4 or 5 seasons, that'll be a major milestone.
My goal has always been to be locally acclaimed and be locally respected by the community that supports us, from the community we serve. If we can do that, then we can get other accolades like Carnegie Hall, the China tour we took, the PBS show, and the European tour we took. Those things are after we become a local treasure, a gift to our community, cherished by our community, respected by our community, and held high and high esteem so that we are the beacon of artistic achievement in Orange County.
That's certainly been the journey. The county's grown up and the symphony's grown up together in that way. We didn't have concert halls. All of those things came along as the symphony grew as well. It's a neat joint growing up, the symphony, Orange County itself, and the arts community here. Also, that sense of community, being part of the community and providing opportunities for young students to be the next generation of musicians, whether here or elsewhere, was a great legacy as well.
I think it's a unique relationship, as you pointed out. We got to know one another in middle school, and then we became high school sweethearts. We went to the same college, and gradually, we grew together. When communities get in trouble, very often when the orchestra is at this level, the community and their relationship with the community is here.
It's like someone saying, I want to marry you, and the other person saying, we haven't even said I love you yet or the other way around where the city and artistic growth development are down here. When there's this discrepancy in development, we've had a chance to grow together. I think this has kept arts organizations in a very healthy relationship with our community.
It's a unique time and time of growth artistically for the county over the last several decades. It's beautiful to see it blossoming in so many ways, not just the symphony but other places as well, which makes them great partnerships for the symphony to work with.
Also, we have to include the universities that we have here in Orange County, California. The music departments of UCI, Irvine, and Chabon University. Now, we have a performing arts high school. We have Orange County music and dance. We have all kinds of artistic endeavors blooming, blossoming, and helping. As you said, it's been very inspiring to see all of the arts flourishing and growing together.
Lightning Round Questions
It's neat. It has reached a nice crescendo at this point. Typically, I ask a few lightning round questions of everyone at the end. Fasten your seat belts.
Hit me with it.
Which talent would you most like to have but don't?
I would like to be a composer, but I'm not. I tried early on. I'd look at some of the early pieces that I wrote when I was a teenager and in college. Not very good. Not memorable.
To each their own, I always say it's important. In my case, I can't do any visual arts, not a great artist, but I can appreciate it. You need an artist and you need an appreciator. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself and what trait do you most deplore in others?
Deplore myself. You know what I don't like? When I grew up on a farm, I could do anything. I could take the engine out of my car. I could put it back in. I could fix it. I could drive a tractor. I could hammer a nail. I could build this. I'd lost all that. Somehow or another, in this musical life, I whack my hand, and Susan, my wife, doesn't let me get close to a saw or a knife or a hammer because she knows I'm going to bludgeon myself.
I've lost all that innate talent and ability that I had growing up on a farm. I used to do everything. I can't do anything anymore. I don't know what's gone on with me. I keep thinking that if I retire at some point in my life, when I'm 90 or something, I could go back and regain all those talents that I used to have. I don't and I get angry at myself and I get frustrated when I can't fix something. I used to be able to fix things like that, see what the problem was, and analyze it. I can't do it anymore.
I guess dishonesty would be something that I don't like hanging around people that I can't trust. It is because everyone who's ever helped me was somebody that I could trust. If they said something to me, I knew the motive. I knew there wasn't an ulterior motive. It was for me, and it was on my behalf. This idea of honesty and trust. Trusting someone, my 30 years of partnership with my wife, if we didn't have trust, if we didn't have that honesty, it wouldn't be a relationship. Trusting.
Who is your hero in real life?
Can it be more than one person? We celebrated Memorial Day. I come from a family, and my in-laws were all people who served our country. I think Memorial Day is the only day of the year that I pull out my trumpet and play Taps at 03:00 PM like many people around the United States do. I don't get much applause, but it's something that I do out of homage. I would say, everyone who's served our country, those are my heroes.
You've done some beautiful things through the symphony for veterans too and their families.
We certainly have. It's my brother, my father, my two uncles, and my grandfather. We have St. Clair relationships back to the American Revolution all the way through. I didn't serve personally. It's my responsibility to honor those who did.
For what in life do you feel most grateful?
You said lightning round. These are not lightning-round questions. These are questions that need pondering. This is not a pop quiz. I've had great models in my life. My parents, my grandparents, and people that have invested in me that I've had. If my ship is not sailing correctly on the right path, it's my fault because I've had so many great people, relatives, and mentors who have taught me how to be right, if that's an all-inclusive word. If I'm not, then it's my fault and I've had great models in my life. My teachers, my relatives, my God, my religion, and my faith. I have great North stars all over. If I'm a stray, it's my fault.
That is a lovely thing to say because some people do lack models and they're still able to make it through sometimes, but it's a lot more muddling around and a lot harder.
I heard not long ago that there will always be a teacher there when you need one and there will not be a teacher there when you don't need one. In other words, when the teacher has done their job, then you have a teacher. I still call people Mister and Doctor and Mrs. because I need those people in my life.
Even as I'm about to turn 72 years old, I need those people that I still revere and still look up to, whether they're alive or dead; it doesn't matter to me. I need those because I've had models, but that doesn't mean that I still don't need models and that I don't still have the ones who are no longer with me because their teachings are with me. In many ways, they're with me as well.
We always need something like that to be aspirational. Something greater, the next level. If you stop growing or think there's nothing else to aspire to or do, you lose the vitality. We need that. We need something to continue.
There was a great conductor whose name was Bruno Walter. Bruno Walter was a good friend of my conducting teachers, Walter DeClue, and also when the great Leonard Bernstein, I think you’ll see this in the movie again, filled in for someone in Carnegie Hall and that was Bruno Walter. It's that on his 80th birthday, they had an interview with him, and they said, “Dr. Walter, what will you be doing now that you've turned 80?” He says, “Keep unlearning.”
Unlearning, that's what we all have to do. I think that this idea of teaching curiosity and the desire to know is waning. It's getting overshadowed by knowing at your fingertips. That's your knowledge now, and you do not have it inside of you. This idea of curiosity and this unquenching need for knowledge and learning. The process of learning is what a lesson is.
My daughter, Sienna, started piano when she was five, and I said, “There's one discussion we're never going to have. You're going to play the piano until you're 18, that's it.” I don't care. There's no discussion because there's one sentence I've never heard anyone say, “I'm so glad I quit piano.” Nobody's ever said that.
They're always saying, “I wish I stuck with piano or the violin. I wish I would have never stopped.” I said, “There's something you're going to have as a lesson, and every piano lesson, there's something you're going to learn. Even if you didn't practice that week and you walk into a lesson unprepared, you're going to know how it feels to be unprepared, what the repercussions are when your teacher is disappointed, and how you deal with that disappointment.”
It's also going to be a lesson where the teacher's talking about things where you're going to try to attain something that's not tangible, a sound, a phrase, a musical expression which you can't change the channel on or push a button on. All of these things are life lessons. They're not music lessons. When one takes a music lesson, it's not about music, it's a life lesson. How do you deal with disappointment or the fact that you can't make a beautiful tone on a violin? There are also trial and error. All of these things are lessons. They're life lessons.
When one takes a music lesson, it's not just about music. It's a life lesson. You learn how to deal with disappointment or the fact that you can't make a beautiful tone on a violin and also the trial and error.
That's true. I hadn't thought of it that way, but that's true. Music education is such an important aspect of overall education and that's one aspect of it.
It's a proven fact, data, statistical fact, that people who play musical instruments score better; they have all of those SAT, IQ tests, and all that stuff. I didn't make it up. I don't know the exact facts, but I know it's true.
Yes, but you're also talking about something else that comes from it in terms of managing the unforeseen, handling emotions or stress, and figuring out how to have that emotional IQ to things from having that experience with music.
Right brain. Left brain. Balancing.
Yes, exactly. The last two questions. Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you invite as a dinner guest to a party? It could be more than one person and they could be with us on earth or not.
There are some obvious choices. To be a part of The Last Supper would be an amazing moment in one's life, if I could even fathom that. I had a chance to meet Carl Sagan a couple of times because when I was music director of the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra in Ithaca, he was also at Cornell University. I tell you what, to talk to this man is something. I would leave the room and have conducted a Haydn Mass or a Beethoven Symphony.
I think that's minuscule compared to what this man has experienced, what he knows, and the expansiveness of his imagination and knowledge. I said that would be very interesting and I think I would also like to have dinner with Jonathan Winters. Remember his show where he used to go up to people and say give me something out of their purse and it would be a toothbrush or whatever and he would come up with all these things.
If I could get Dana Carvey, Jonathan Winters, and Robin Williams on the same evening, I think my gut would hurt. First of all, you wouldn't have a chance to have one single bite because you would be laughing the whole time. Wouldn't that make a trio? Of course, other comedians because when it comes to comedians and magicians, I'm the biggest fan, but to have Dana Carvey and maybe Chris Rock, those four. There are others, Red Skelton. I'm also an incredible fan of Don Knotts. I got to meet his daughter. Andy of Mayberry and Don Knotts. I love him. I love everything he did. You think it's so off the cuff. When I talked to his daughter, he would practice every line hundreds and hundreds of times. It's not improvisation.
That gets back to doing the work. I think that's true at any level of excellence in any field.
I had a minute with Kathy Bates, a famous actress, as you know, Oscar winner for the movie she did, Misery with James Caan. We were doing a work called The Diary of Anne Frank, composed by Michael Tilson Thomas. It was with some of the words that Anne Frank had put in her diary. I wanted to have someone who had lived as though she would have lived.
I'd asked Jessica Tandy to do it because I love her as an actress. I remember I presented this to her and she liked the idea. This is Anne Frank as though she had lived on and was enjoying the latter years of her life. I used to call Ms. Tandy and I would hear Mr. Cronyn say, “Jessie.” It is because they lived in some midtown apartment deal there in Manhattan.
“Jesse.” “I'm coming.” This kind of thing. We would talk for a few minutes and then, in one of my final conversations with her, she said, “I'm fighting cancer and it could be that I'm not able to do this.” That's the case. It turned out that she was too frail and didn't feel comfortable performing. I don't know how we ended up with Kathy Bates, but I think Jessica Tandy called in a favor because they had done that movie together, Fried Green Tomatoes.
I'm sitting on the floor with Kathy Bates and she is nervous. I said, “Kathy, you're an Oscar winner. Millions of people have seen your movies. Why are you so nervous?” The text that she was quoting started with, “Dear Kitty,” which is the way each of her entries started. She would go, “Dear Kitty.” “No, no, Dear Kitty.”
She said it 60 times and I said, “Kathy, it's Dear Kitty.” “No, it's not. You have to understand.” I said, “Why?” She said, “You don't realize it. When you're on a movie set, there's no audience. When I say these first two words, there are going to be people sitting ten feet from me that are going to react.” That's why when actors want to hone their skills, they go back to Broadway. They go back to the stage.
I remember how many times. Of course, when it came to the performance, she was a little nervous because there was a live audience there, but what she delivered was so profound, but it took 50 times. Who knows how many times after that? It's true, it's the timing, it's the work, it's doing whatever that old idiom is, “Ten thousand hours and talent will get you this, that, and the other.” It's true.
Last question. What is your motto if you have one?
I think I've already stated it. I will add to that family, faith, and friends. Those are three things that can get you through some of your darkest, most difficult, and challenging times. If you've got those three things if you've got a family around you, and if you've got faith, I know my faith is, I'm a devout Catholic, so that's my faith, but other people have their own beliefs and faiths. If you've got family and faith, and if you've got friends, you're a wealthy person. That would be my motto in addition to the four tenets that I said.
If you've got family, faith, and friends, you're a wealthy person.
Conclusion
I think that's a great way to close. I appreciate your having this discussion, being on the show and being such an amazing contributor you are to music, Orange County, and the arts here. Thank you so much, Carl St. Clair. Thank you for being a part of the show.
MC, thank you for having me. By the way, for all of you readers, you have to know something about MC. When she sits in the boardroom of Pacific Symphony, when she speaks, people listen. When she says something, it's a nugget of knowledge. It's something very influential and very important. She loves Pacific Symphony, but she loves music.
As she said earlier, we need not only musicians and composers but we need those who appreciate, respect, and receive what we do with an open heart with the understanding that what they're getting through music, classical music, symphonic music, and all music is something you can't find anywhere else. Thank you, MC, and thanks for having me.
Absolutely. Thank you so much.