Do you get anything out of conducting that you don’t get out of being a choreographer?
Exhausted!
What do you admire most in the conductors you admire?
Being able to get so much done in so little time with people you don’t necessarily know. Take maestro [James] Levine. His upbeat contains the whole of the piece. It’s not just good — it’s genius. It’s a communication thing.
Did you take conducting lessons?
Yes — definitely. First with Stefan Asbury at Tanglewood. He was the conducting coach. Then I worked with Craig Smith. When I was preparing Gloria, I would have a couple of short rehearsals with my very smart and wonderful players. Once I decided not to be scared, it got much easier. Craig would just say, “Go!” I would conduct and he would play the piano. We did mostly entrances — establishing tempos in advance. He was ruthless. He kept telling me to try that again, telling me I wasn’t showing what I wanted. I wasn’t sure if when I was conducting people would actually do what I wanted. But they were all pros. The sheer magnitude of their response was surprising. The first Dido was with Craig and Emmanuel Music — in Brussels, then in Boston. They were wonderful. The shows are dedicated to Craig.
Do you envision yourself as having a career as a conductor, apart from being a choreographer?
No.
Related:
Grand finales, Altar and ego, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, More 
- Grand finales
Jeffrey Rink has just ended his 18th and final season as music director of Chorus pro Musica. He’ll be missed.
- Altar and ego
Mark Morris’s Dido and Aeneas
- Lorraine Hunt Lieberson
We were very lucky, here in Boston, to have had so many chances to hear Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who died in Santa Fe last Monday at the age of 52.
- Double or nothing
The American premiere of Dido took place here in Boston, at the Majestic Theatre in June 1989.
- Dido's fate
Henry Purcell might not have approved Mark Morris’s contemporary take on Dido and Aeneas, but he probably would have recognized it for its formality and anti-naturalism.
- Love and loss
Boston’s biggest classical-music story this year was also its saddest.
- Measure for measure
“Great Ball at the Court of France,” which Ensemble Doulce Mémoire presented at the First Congregational Church in Cambridge last Friday, under the auspices of the Boston Early Music Festival, was a reminder that classical music used to be all about two popular forms, song and dance.
- The eyes of Osiris
Jules Massenet composed two operas about the relationship between a beautiful voluptuary and a man of the cloth, both of which take us from the high life of a cosmopolitan sin city to a desert where the heroine dies.
- Dancing across the city
The ICA’s Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater, with its sprung wood dance floor and wrap-around windows framing the harbor, is positioned to become Boston dance’s most significant venue.
- Musical time-travel
Powdered wigs may be fashion-forward, as Portland's State Street Church becomes a time machine, transporting the audience back to the early 1700s.
- Odds and endings
The classical-music season is winding up without winding down.
- Less
Topics:
Dance
, Entertainment, Craig Smith, Dance, More
, Entertainment, Craig Smith, Dance, Performing Arts, Mark Morris, Dance Reviews, Bradon McDonald, Henry Purcell, Less
