. . . Winter 2003
No one can say exactly what makes an orchestral conductor great. But someone has to recognize the potential of greatness in aspiring conductors and know how to nurture it. At Michigan's School of Music, that someone is Kenneth Kiesler. "Nobody has all of the qualities a conductor can possess, not even the greats," says Kiesler, director of the orchestral conducting department. "They have a blend of strengths. Some areas are teachable and some are unteachable. I look to see that our students of conducting are strong in the unteachable areas, because if they are weak there, no one can help them." Kiesler says the unteachable skills are "receptivity to music, openness to be moved by it. Conducting is not simply a game of analysis and intellectual discussion. Sure, you need theory, musicology and composition. Those are all teachable. But mostly conductors are performers. Conductors need self-awareness, conviction and belief in themselves. You need to lead, but not to assume it's a god-given right to do so. The worst thing to do is believe only your positive reviews. I also look for people who can work well with others and who can be noncompetitive while they are here." Being competitive away from the academy is another matter. Last year, one of Kiesler's former students, Bundit Ungrangsee, 32, was one of two winners of $45,000 top prizes in the Maazel/Vilar Conductors' Competition in New York's Carnegie Hall. The 20-month competition, the first of its kind, drew 362 young conductors who competed against each other in round after round on five continents, till eight were left in New York. One of the other finalists is still at the School of Music. Joana Carneiro, 25, a current doctoral student with Kiesler, did so well that the judges asked her to conduct a special short program during the winners' ceremonies. And Thomas Hilbish, professor emeritus of choral conducting, discovered the co-winner who split the prize with Ungrangsee, Xian Zhang, 29. Hilbish discovered Zhang in his conducting class at the Central Conservatory in Beijing, arranged for her US visa and hoped she'd enroll at Michigan, but financial aid technicalities resulted in her attending the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. Kiesler, who is in his eighth year at Michigan, works intensely with his students on the podium, developing their skills in the "practical technical areas of gestural and verbal communication of their musical ideas." Another key part of the regimen is score study. "What a conductor does is open a score and ask questions about it," he says. "Those questions have to be right, because the answers determine the performance. When I ask a student, 'What does this passage in the score tell you?' one might say, 'Here, the violins are playing in the background, the chorus is singing loudly and the tempo is fast.' A second student might say, 'Bach wrote this in 1745. He lived in Leipzig then. It's sacred music, and they're singing about the Day of Judgment. The melody he uses here grew out of the Gregorian chants.' Of the two of them, whose performance would you like to hear?" Few are chosenThe School of Music's Conducting Programwhich includes choral, directed by Jerry O. Blackstone, and band, directed by Michael L. Haithcock, as well as orchestralearned top spot in the nation in the most recent US News & World Report survey of music schools (1997). "In the orchestral program we usually have six to eight students at a time, studying for master's or doctoral degrees," Kiesler says. "Of more than a hundred who send video tapes and scholarly papers, we invite about 30 to campus each February for several rounds of aural and written examinations, conducting auditions and interviews. Then we admit two or three. What you really look for are people who embody the spirit as well as the letter of music. Out of thousands of conductors, perhaps only a handful will allow the spirit of the music to flow through them, as a conduit to the orchestra, and also receive from the orchestra and enable all of this to be communicated to the audience." Kiesler sees his students' Michigan careers as an enriching lull between the storms of rivalry in the admissions process and in the profession. "They'll have competition enough when they leave school," he says. "Conducting is a strange business. Often people doing the hiring are not musicians at all. They are looking for attributes in conductors that have nothing to do with music. I understand that this is inevitable, that executive directors and board members will consider other factors because those factors are important, but, still, fundamentally, a conductor has to conduct. I hear professors in other departments talk of being evaluated by their peers. We conductors are never evaluated by our peers. We're evaluated by lawyers, doctors, CEOs and their wives, who often do important volunteer work in support of symphony orchestras, but rarely by colleagues. We don't have peer review." Bundit Ungrangsee says the political aspects of the competition among professional conductors almost dissuaded him from entering the Maazel/Vilar musical tournament. "You either have to be very very good or you need to be the child of a top conductor to succeed in this business," says Ungrangsee, who grew up in Bangkok in a Chinese-Thai family (see accompanying story). Feeling "low and disappointed" because it seemed politics had deprived him of victories in competitions he should have won, he had "more or less decided not to enter any more." But Ungrangsee's wife, Mary Jane, would not let him retire from the fray. She got the application for the Maazel/Vilar competition and made sure he fulfilled all the entry requirements before the deadline. Ungrangsee's ultimate victory also won him the chance to assist maestro Lorin Maazel with the New York Philharmonic, complementing the young maestro's duties as associate conductor of the Charleston (South Carolina) Symphony Orchestra.
Doctoral student Joana Carneiro, meanwhile, is flying between Ann Arbor, Lisbon and Los Angeles. She occasionally conducts the Metropolitan Orchestra in Lisbon, her hometown, and is music director of the Debut Orchestra in Los Angeles, one of the country's three top youth orchestras. "Michael Tilson Thomas and Andre Previn had that LA job," Kiesler says. "Bundit had it. Now Joana does. It's one of the launching pads for the top conductors. And two other Michigan students are at the other top youth-orchestra positionsMei-Ann Chen at the Portland [Oregon] Youth Philharmonic and Allen Tinkham with the Chicago Youth Symphony."
Job requirement : tirelessness
Indefatigability is another unteachable prerequisite for conductors. Kiesler guest-teaches regularly, and now, during his sabbatical, he is teaching at the Royal Academy of Music in London and at the Manhattan School. He'll do some more teaching at Oxford and conduct in London and Sofia, Bulgaria, and for the New Hampshire Symphony, of which he is musical director. Then he'll record an opera by David Schiff and conduct the All-Eastern Orchestra in Providence, an ensemble selected from 13 all-state high school orchestras from Maine to Florida. That's a partial list of his projects.
Young conductors learn early on that their pace can never slow. To prepare a new piece, they must devote many hours over a period of weeks, beyond their regular duties, to study the score. But even maestros, whose normal regimen is far more intense, put in only slightly less study time "I once asked Zubin Mehta, who has a quite demanding schedule, if he still has time to study," Kiesler recalls. "He said, 'I study from one to five or two to six in the morning.' We never have the privilege of resting. We have to look at new music and re-examine the old." The toll on conductors' energies inspired Kiesler to found the Conductors Retreat at Medomak, a summer camp in Maine for conductors old and young. "We're away from the city and pretense," Kiesler says. "We're in the woods living in cabins we share with other conductors, with no amenities, no TV, no radio. We just focus on improving ourselves and our understanding of music. An older conductor may say, 'My ear is not as good as it was' a younger one, 'My grasp of Beethoven is not firm' or another, 'My technique is weak.' And they work on those things. All can share their insights in a safe environment. Younger conductors have an infectious curiosity and enthusiasm that can benefit their elders. Older conductors offer the young their experience and knowledge." An 18-year Old Guitarist Finds His Calling>>
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