‘All I ever wanted to do was be a US music director’
OrchestrasThe last of this season’s Speaking Soundly features the music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
Jonathon Heyward is 31 and he has also taken on the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center.
As a former assistant conductor of the Halle Orchestra, he speaks with traces of a distinctive Manchester accent.
Listen here.
Cool guy, impressive conductor. But what’s with the British accent?? He grew up in South Carolina and originally studied in Boston. Is this a maestro affect, a la Leopold Stokowski?
I must say I was a little skeptical when the Baltimore SO hired Jonathan Heyward, due largely to his youth. But I’ve seen him 3-4 times now and the orchestra has always sounded terrific with him. And his programming looks very sharp. It’s looking like a good call.
Still wondering about that Manchester accent, though, which is more than a trace; he grew up in South Carolina.
This man is from South Carolina. His British accent is totally fake. He lives in England for what 7-8 years? After 20 years in the US? Let’s see how long it takes for him to lose this fake speak and take on a Baltimore accent. Laughable! Everyone go on YouTube and look for the episode of Friends where Ross fakes an English accent! Bingo!!
Would you prefer Ebonics? The orchestra musicians might need an interpreter during recordings.
He’s been the MD of the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie these last few years. A very good band in a pleasant medium-sized provincial town, Herford. Previous incumbents include Andris Nelsons, so it’s quite the springboard orchestra.
The Orchestre National du Capitole in Toulouse is rapidly going same way. Having established themselves as a worldwide reference for French orchestral music under Michel Plasson, they turned down Yannick N-S in favour of Tugan Sokhiev (freshly sacked from WNO), whom they’ve just replaced with a prepubescent narcissist whose agent will move him on in about five years maximum. My money’s on the NWD Philharmonie to make a more intelligent choice to replace JH.
To me, a conductor is not complete without opera experience, especially now that many symphony orchestras are starting to do opera.
I’ve always judged a symphony orchestra and players by their ability to sing.
Horowitz always said he tried to emulate great opera singers in his playing.
Ever heard of Eugene Ormandy, or Serge Koussevitzky, or Charles Munch? No opera house background.
I’m not sure I’ve ever heard orchestral musicians singing. Perhaps I go to the wrong concerts.
What’s with the gripes over his accent? New Yorkers still bray like donkeys after living on the West coast for decades. No Brit, Frenchman, Italian, or Finn I’ve come across drops his native accent no matter how long he’s been in the States.
But he’s not British. He’s an African American from the Deep South. The faux-English accent was acquired in his adult years when temporarily living in UK. It’s such a weird thing to have “picked up”. I presume a defense mechanism against the racists who comment on this site. But. He’s American not British.
Kids, this is what happens when you grow up listening to NPR instead of urban hits radio.
Oy!
As a dyed-in-the-wool Englishman, I don’t find his way of speaking particularly mannered. It’s not an English accent, more a sort of hybrid mid-atlantic, beloved of Edith Wharton adaptations and Blighty-themed Broadway musicals. As I imagine he’s also been learning German these last few years, he could have added to his repertoire of displaced vowels. Anyone who has spent any appreciable length of time abroad will know the pitfalls presented to the pronunciation of their mother tongue.
He doesn’t sound like actor WIlliam Powell (archetypal “mid-Atlantic” accent). He more sounds English.
I am also amused like many in this forum about his accent and unimpressed by his conducting… He was like a student who couldn’t follow some mix meters while conducting the CSO at Ravinia. How is he MD in Baltimore?!
I think it is perfectly normal to pick up an accent from the region where you live for more than few years. It is not fake it is just naturally acquired.
The accent is ludicrous. I attended the BSO concert with an actual British person last weekend, who had to stifle a giggle when Heyward spoke to the audience with his affected faux accent. It sounds not like Manchester but the kind of posh tone you hear on Downton Abbey and other shows of that ilk. Concert itself was a mixed bag. Alsop left the BSO pretty rough and ready in terms of playing, and Heyward has not yet put his own stamp on the sound.