Chicago names new maestro
OrchestrasAfter coming to the end of 25 years with Carlos Kalmar, Chicago’s Grant Park Music Festival has named a successor for the next three summers.
He is Giancarlo Guerrero, who has just stepped down at the Nashville Symphony.
Guerrero, 56, is also taking over at the Sarasota Symphony.
Let the musical chairs resume.
I don’t understand this multiple jobs concept…is conducting really that easy????
You do understand that the Grant Park Music Festival presents orchestral concerts only during the summer months. The Sarasota Symphony has a 36 week season. It would seem that the two positions would not be in serious conflict for Guerrero.
Grant Park is during the summer, so holding a music director position with a 38-week (or so) orchestra in Sarasota, where he conducts perhaps 15-20 weeks a year, and a summer gig is understandable. Most of us who play for a seasonal full-time orchestra have to fill the summer months with other work. Also, to the author of the article, it’s the Sarasota Orchestra, not Symphony.
Flying business class, being chauffeured, and enjoying reading is part and parcel of the craft. If you can’t handle the grueling demands of frequent air travel, conducting isn’t for you. Carrying scores is taxing, not to mention the expenses of the baton itself (including its maintenance); some conductors ditched the baton long ago because of the constant fatigue brought on by the stick. Conductors need also carry musical ideas and share them with inspiring words and anecdotes. Have you noticed in the past, young conductors were seldom highlighted? They had not paid their due: it’s a Darwinian world at the conductor’s podium.
Some conductors were once musicians, others were singers.
It is not challenging to count in time and with gestures; what is challenging is to convince aged musicians that one’s interpretation is the nut in the cherry, the gin in the tonic, and the cream in the cannoli.
My father played under the best: Reiner, Szell, Ormandy, Bernstein, Smith, and Feltaman (in Hollywood), and he summarized: All these maestros have one thing in common: Two hands, Two feet, and Two Ideas.
Indeed, Why not two jobs?