Who will take the baton from
Edward Cumming?
Audiences can see HSO music director finalists perform and offer input online
By Doug Maine

The recession has affected the Hartford Symphony Orchestra as it 
has almost every arts institution. 
So the upcoming departure of Edward Cumming – the HSO’s highly regarded music director since 2002 – at the end 
of the 2010-11 season might be expected to occasion more feelings of doom 
and gloom.

It hasn’t worked out that way. 
Cumming will be greatly missed, but the search for his successor is generating excitement as each of the seven finalists for the position comes to Hartford for a week of interviews, meetings, receptions and rehearsals, culminating in four performances of a concert in the HSO’s Masterworks series.

The first candidate was here this past October; the last will audition in December. The HSO expects to announce its selection in January 2011.

“The search for a conductor, particularly for a small regional orchestra like we are, tends to be a long process because we want the audience to hear each candidate 
perform in person,” 
said Kristen Phillips, the 
symphony’s executive director.

In a streamlined process, “we reached out to individuals we were interested in, rather than putting out an ad and getting hundreds of applications,” she said.

Members of a search committee, chaired by Michael Yaffe, associate dean of the Yale School of Music and a member of the symphony’s board of directors, reviewed about 60 resumes and press packets, in some cases watching DVDs of candidates’ performances.

Though that sounds like a lot of work, “it was really interesting, actually,” Yaffe said. “All of us on the search committee are excited about this, so it’s kind of like being a kid in a candy shop, getting to look at all these candidates.”

“If you look at the makeup of the finalist pool, it’s a bit of a younger group, with four of the seven in their late 20s or early 30s,” Phillips said. “We are not requiring previous experience as a music director; we are willing to take a chance.

“One of the reasons we are looking at youth is that we believe our orchestra could be a training ground for someone to hone their skills and (then) move up in the world to one of the internationally known orchestras.” The excitement around such a conductor would be good for the Hartford Symphony, she said.

Now that it’s down to seven, the public is getting opportunities not only to see the finalists conduct the orchestra, but hear them interviewed on the radio and shake their hands. After the Saturday evening performances, concert-goers can stop at Vito’s By the Park restaurant and meet the candidates.

Audience members are also invited to post comments on the symphony’s web site. Though the audience will not pick the next music director in the way that viewers vote on American Idol, Phillips said, “we look at the trends, [whether] there are emerging themes.”

People’s passion for the orchestra is strongly expressed in their comments, said Yaffe.

Ultimately, the selection of the next music director will come down to the music. “The most important thing for the music director of the Hartford Symphony, and of any symphony for that matter, is that they are great musical leaders,” he said.

“In a lot of ways, the music director of the Hartford Symphony is the de facto classical music leader of our region,” he added.

Being able to take that mantle requires great communication and organizational skills in working with the administrative staff and about 80 musicians.

Cumming is credited with reaching out to the diverse residents of Hartford and elsewhere who had not typically attended symphony 
concerts. He has not said what he plans to do next.

“It’s a tricky thing to know the best time to move on, but conductors are all about the anticipation business,” he said. “The sound an orchestra makes comes after the conductor has already moved on to the next moment. And so it is with my time here.”

Besides meeting after each finalist departs to share his or her views, members of the search committee are “staying in touch with each of the candidates to try and maintain their enthusiasm,” Yaffe said.

The orchestra’s musicians complete detailed and highly structured surveys regarding each finalist. “The whole process is feedback and consensus driven,” Phillips explained.

Finding out what each finalist would be interested in continuing or initiating is “part of the conversations we’re having with each of the candidates,” Yaffe said. Recognizing that each has his or her own strengths, “we’re not saying you have to do only Beethoven [or] only contemporary works. We are asking them what they would like to do,” he said.

While conductors are sometimes imagined to be Type-A personalities, with strong ideas about how the music will be played, the finalists who have auditioned thus far have been collaborative and not at all autocratic, and they’ve all been open to doing pre-concert talks, Yaffe said.

“It’s an interesting balance because it is the conductor’s responsibility to shape the orchestra’s sound,” he said – and doing that may mean cajoling or sometimes saying, “This is how it’s going to be.”

As the vetting process continues, the symphony’s search committee members are ever-mindful of the current economic conditions, and what the new director’s impact on the organization might be.

HSO has been on a mission to right-size and cut programs, Phillips said, and for the past couple of years, the symphony’s focus has been on its core series, the Masterworks and Pops concerts and the Talcott Mountain Music Festival.

“Even with this economy, we’re on a positive trajectory with our audience and our donor base, but the symphony needs to solidify and grow,” Phillips said.

And the finalists are…

Constantine Kitsopoulos conducted the Hartford Symphony Orchestra in performances of Brahms Requiem in November.

He currently is serving his third season as music director of the Queens Symphony Orchestra in New York City and is the general director of the Chatham Opera in Chatham, N.J., which he founded in 2005.

Kitsopoulos has conducted the Tony-nominated musicals A Catered Affair and Coram Boy on Broadway.

He also served as music director and principal conductor of director Baz Luhrmann’s Broadway production of Puccini’s La Bohème.

Kitsopoulos’ November performance in Hartford was not his first. During the 2007-08 season, he conducted the HSO’s performance of music from The Wizard of Oz as part of its Pops series.

Maryland native Andrew Grams conducted the HSO in performances of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony and works by Smetana and Sibelius in early December.

Considered one of America’s most promising and talented young conductors, he began conducting at the age 
of 17.

He received a Bachelor of Music degree in violin performance from the Juilliard School in 1999 and has a conducting degree from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he studied with Otto Werner Mueller.

Grams was the resident conductor of the Florida Orchestra. He has also served as assistant conductor of the esteemed Cleveland Orchestra and made appearances with orchestras all over the world, including the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra and Orchestra of Santa Cecilia, Rome.

Tito Muñoz conducted the HSO’s first concerts of 2010. The January performances featured Strauss’ On the Beautiful Blue Danube waltzes, Mendelssohn’s Third “Scottish” Symphony, Chopin’s Variations on La ci darem la mano for piano and orchestra, and Christopher Theofanidis’ 2006 Piano Concerto, as performed by pianist Donald Berman.

Praised by the Cincinnati press for his “natural facility and convincing musicianship on the podium,” Muñoz, 27, is seen by many as one of the most gifted conductors of his generation. He is currently in his final year as assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, having previously served as assistant conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony.

Muñoz, born in New York City, began his musical training on the violin in the Juilliard School’s Music Advancement Program at age 13.

Tania Miller, music director of the Victoria Symphony Orchestra in Victoria, British Columbia, led the HSO in performances of Antonín Dvorák’s Symphony No. 9 in March at The Bushnell.

The first woman to serve as music director 
of a major Canadian symphony orchestra, 
she is in her seventh 
season in Victoria.

Miller, 30, completed doctoral studies in opera and orchestral conducting in 2000 under Robert Reynolds and Kenneth Keisler. She previously conducted the HSO in February 2008 performances of Brahms’ 4th Symphony and called it “one of my most musically satisfying experiences. They have shown me that they are capable of full and soulful commitment to the music. They have wonderful attitudes about music and life and care very deeply about their orchestra.”

Kevin Rhodes began his professional conducting career at 16 and now is in his ninth season as music director of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra in Massachusetts and the Traverse Symphony Orchestra in Michigan. This season he was also conducting three productions at the Paris Ballet, the Holland Symfonia with the Dutch National Ballet and a production of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet at Milan’s famed La Scala opera house.

Rhodes received his B.M. in piano performance from Michigan State University and his M.M. in orchestral conducting at the University of Illinois under Paul Vermel. He worked in Europe for 10 years with 20 different orchestras, including the Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Berlin Staatskappelle and the Symphony Orchestra of Madrid.

Marcelo Lehninger, born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, received his bachelor’s degree from the Brazilian Conservatory of Music and master’s degree from the Conductors Institute at Bard College. Currently associate conductor of the Minas Gerais Philharmonic Orchestra in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, he guest conducted numerous Brazilian orchestras. He has led the Conductors Institute Orchestra, Fairfax Symphony Orchestra in Virginia and Jacksonville Orchestra in Florida.

Lehninger also serves as cover conductor for the National Symphony Orchestra’s subscription concerts at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. In 2008, he was part of the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Scholarship, traveling in Europe and the U.S. as legendary conductor Kurt Masur’s assistant.

Carolyn Kuan most recently served as associate conductor of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. Previously, Kuan held positions as artist in residence with the New York City Ballet, assistant conductor of the Baltimore Opera Company and assistant conductor of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, the last of which she still holds. Guest conducting appearances include the Baltimore, Detroit and San Francisco symphonies.

Kuan was the first woman to be awarded the Herbert von Karajan Conducting Fellowship and also received the first Taki Concordia Fellowship. She graduated cum laude from Smith College and received a master of music from the University of Illinois and a performance diploma from the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. HM

The finalists have been scheduled to perform 
on the following dates:

Constantine Kitsopoulos
November 12-15, 2009

Andrew Grams
December 3-6, 2009

Tito Muñoz
January 7-10, 2010

Tania Miller
March 18-21, 2010

Kevin Rhodes
October 14-17, 2010

Marcelo Lehninger November 4-7, 2010 

Carolyn Kuan
December 2-5, 2010

Music Director Inaugural Performance
March 17-20, 2011

Edward Cumming’s
Finale
June 4, 2011

Want more Hartford Magazine? Subscribe today.