Masterclass in Motion: The Making of a Choral-Orchestral Conductor

“Mirrors and videos never lie,” says Chris Nemec, one of 16 Conducting Fellows who gathered in New York City in January to enhance their skills at Chorus America's Choral-Orchestral Conducting Masterclass, presented in partnership with the Mannes College of Music (part of the New School) and the Philadelphia Singers. The three-day event offered participants a variety of perspectives on their technique, including podium time under the guidance of master teachers and one-on-one coaching and video review sessions with a distinguished faculty of conductors.

Led by David Hayes, music director of the Philadelphia Singers and the Mannes Orchestra, and Jacques Lacombe, music director of the New Jersey Symphony and the Orchestre symphonique de Trois-Rivières, the weekend featured a range of professional career-building opportunities from podium time to private coaching to enrichment sessions to informal networking. Conducting Fellows ranged from graduate students to established professionals seeking more experience—each of whom had the opportunity to hone baton technique and explore the choral-orchestral repertoire. Additional faculty (see sidebar) provided coaching and video review for Fellows, as well as private lessons to another dozen conductors who observed as associates.

Bridging the Choral-Orchestral Divide

Conducting Masterclasses are a regular offering in Chorus America’s ongoing services to the choral field, with previous programs focusing on a cappella repertoire and children’s choruses. But the choral-orchestral repertoire in this Masterclass required greater resources to address a significant mission. “So often those who are trained in choral music don’t have an opportunity to get in front of an orchestra and those who are trained in orchestral music don’t have a chance to work with a chorus," says Chorus America president & CEO Ann Meier Baker. "Our Masterclass addresses this troubling gap in opportunities for conductors to hone their conducting skills with both choral and instrumental ensembles.”

Like many choral conductors, Chris Nemec’s career has been an artful assemblage of gigs as a chorister, pianist, organist, and music director of church, secular, and children’s choruses. But opportunities for mid-career learning, let alone conducting a large-scale work, are few. “I’ve done a lot of choral conducting and instrumental conducting but not choral and instrumental combined, which is a whole new beast,” he says.

“You need to be in front of an ensemble—that is how you develop your own vocabulary. You can be standing in front of a mirror all day long but you need this human interaction.” —Jacques Lacombe

The “beast” requires adaptations of technique. Although Hayes sees no fundamental difference between choral conducting and orchestral conducting (“There’s only good conducting and bad conducting,” he likes to say), he allows that there are nuances that differentiate the two. “You have a different way of approaching a musical idea with a voice than you might with a violin," he says. "The voice has a slightly smaller palette. The orchestra has a greater palette of articulations, certainly among the string players.” According to Lacombe, there are idiosyncrasies among conductors that must be addressed. “If they did not have the experience of singing with a choir, it takes them a long time to understand how to work with woodwinds and brass,” he says. “Someone who has conducted a choir will naturally breathe with them.”

Ultimately the bridge between genres is experience. Lacombe, who studied in Vienna and had weekly podium time to refine his technique, says podium time is essential to professional growth. “You need to be in front of an ensemble—that is how you develop your own vocabulary,” he says. “You can be standing in front of a mirror all day long but you need this human interaction.” 

Each Fellow was allotted 20 minutes of podium time per day, with Hayes and Lacombe observing from all sides. Though the two were acquainted, they had not worked together prior to the Masterclass. Nonetheless, the interplay was smooth. “The core of what we’re saying is essentially the same,” notes Hayes, “though there are occasionally moments where for a variety of reasons we might come at it from a different angle. Neither of us thinks there is only one way to look at things.” They each took turns offering comments and critiques: “Make sure that what you ask for is what you want!” “Influence them without stopping.” “Relax your shoulder.” And even a comic bark of “What the hell was that?” at an errant cue.

Learning the Language

“You can’t talk to an orchestra the same way you can talk to a chorus and get the same results,” says faculty member Miriam Burns. Not only is there jargon specific to instrumentalists, there are also often union regulations—the time clock is always ticking—that impose constraints that may not exist with a chorus that is avocational, as most symphonic choruses are. “You have to be extremely efficient in the rehearsal process,” says Burns. “Know what you want and how to ask for what you want.” 

That “asking,” Fellows learned, must come as much from the heart as the hand. “I spent my whole three years in graduate school making my beats clear,” says Beverly Shangkuan, who received her master’s in choral conducting at Yale and is now pursuing a doctorate at the University of Michigan. “I didn’t realize that I’m at the point where I have to trust that the musicians don’t need to have it clear like that. They are going to go with you if you’re with the music. You have to connect on a deeper level—through the music and not just through the beats.”

“As young emerging conductors we’re still trying to find what feels comfortable, what feels authentic for us,” says Matthew Otto, a Fellow who is associate conductor of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir and assistant conductor of the Toronto Children’s Chorus. For Otto, authenticity requires a connection between intention and motion, “making sure that what you want is what you are getting in your gesture and in your arms, making sure the intent of your face and gesture is congruent.”

In a candid session with professionals from the orchestra world other bits of advice were imparted. “Players in an orchestra smell unpreparedness,” said one instrumentalist. “If you blame someone it will never be forgotten,” said another. Make friends with the concertmaster. And never tell the brass section they are simply too loud. “Brass players expect us to be dynamically confrontational,” said one conductor. Try using words like "texture" and "transparency" to entice the sound you want.

“Players in an orchestra smell unpreparedness,” said one instrumentalist. “If you blame someone it will never be forgotten,” said another. Make friends with the concertmaster. And never tell the brass section they are simply too loud.

Seeing Yourself as Others See You

Musical resources for the Masterclass were enhanced in a stepwise function each day, from string quartet with soloists on day one, to a chamber orchestra with vocal ensemble on day two, to the full Mannes College Orchestra and the Philadelphia Singers on the final day. Repertoire for the weekend included selections from Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Brahms' Ein Deutsches Requiem, and Haydn's Die Schöpfung.

Each incremental addition of forces demanded more of the Conducting Fellow’s skill—and nerves. “It takes a certain courage for a conductor to go through such a public learning experience,” says faculty member Joshua Habermann. “You are expected as a conductor to be up in front of people and make yourself available to them emotionally,” he says. “It’s hard to do in a masterclass situation when you know you are being judged simultaneously.”

Marie Bucoy-Calavan, a doctoral student at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, agrees that letting one’s guard down can be a challenge. “We are taught to be in charge of the situation, to be the person in the room who knows the most about the music,” she says. “It’s always an odd situation to be amongst your peers and people you revere and not be the person in charge anymore.”

Immediately after their podium time each day the Fellows were joined by a faculty member who offered a private coaching session and analysis of the video recording, enhancing the pedagogy with perspective. “We can’t see ourselves as other people see us,” says Habermann. “You see yourself as others see you and sometimes it’s not what you think,” he says. Beverly Shangkuan says that the gap between intentions and reality can be startling. “I always cringe,” she says. Malcom Merriweather, the Bruno Walter assistant conductor of the New York Choral Society, records himself regularly in rehearsals and performances. “The iPhone is really handy,” he says. “I watch it and delete it.”

But as painful as video review can be, it is also highly instructive. Nemec saw flaws in his baton technique on day one and vowed “to burn the midnight oil” to improve it for the following day. Matt Travis, director of music at the Trinity-Pawling School, noticed “the absence of musical line” in his technique. “Not enough lyricism,” he says.

In addition to the master teachers and the coaches, participants learned from another cadre of esteemed conductors: each other. Many of the Fellows were well acquainted, having crossed paths in graduate school, conferences, or musical events. Because the Masterclasses are educational, rather than competitive, they welcome the opportunity to observe and be observed. “You get little things from them and try to incorporate that into your own gestures,” says Shangkuan. “You can see the mistakes and improvements on others when they’ve made corrections,” says Travis. “As I watch my colleagues," adds Nemec, "I think, ‘That’s exactly what I did and it didn’t work for them either.’ Or, ‘Look what they achieved by changing something and I didn’t get the same results so obviously I need to change something.' It’s like another mirror.”

Leveraging the Learning

Unfortunately, when the weekend ends the next opportunity to stand on a podium in from of a chorus and orchestra may not come soon. How can beginning and mid-career conductors find a path to choral-orchestral conducting? “I would be hard pressed to say ‘Here is the path,’ because there are so many paths," says Ann Meier Baker. “What we know about choral conductors is that they are very entrepreneurial,” and that can be an advantage. What opportunities they have to conduct choral-orchestral works are often improvised using various combinations of the resources they can muster. “As choral conductors we have to make our own opportunities,” says Matthew Otto, which can mean, he says, “calling in favors from instrumentalist friends.”

“It takes a certain courage for a conductor to go through such a public learning experience. You are expected as a conductor to be up in front of people and make yourself available to them emotionally. It’s hard to do in a masterclass situation when you know you are being judged simultaneously.” —Joshua Habermann

Even professional conductors are not immune from calling in favors. When the tenor soloist was called away on a family emergency in the middle of the third day of the Mannes Masterclass, Hayes himself stepped in to sing the tenor role, a gesture greeted with admiration and no little amusement by the Philadelphia Singers.

The total immersion of the Masterclass is designed to enhance skills—and the resume—but it was also a source of personal inspiration for several Fellows. “The whole experience reminded me of why I love music, why I love what I do,” says Matt Travis. A comment he got off the podium from faculty member Vance George went right to the heart. “You look so concerned up there,” George told him. “Just remember that musicmaking is a joy.”   

For Beverly Shangkuan the revelation came from the extraordinary opportunity to conduct a short passage of the Brahms Requiem. “I usually just listen to it and dream of conducting it one day,” she says, but concedes that day is not soon. The obstacle is not the logistics of assembling the necessary resources, but the artistic demands of leading a masterpiece of the choral-orchestral repertoire. “I don’t think I will feel confident conducting it until maybe 20 years from now,” she says. “A lot of it has to do with maturity. I just don’t think I’m there yet and I respect the work so much that I want to do justice to it. I’m glad I get to do this as a learning opportunity.”

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This article is adapted from The Voice, Spring 2012. The video was shot by Joseph Giacona and edited by Cory Davis.