For the orchestra, a wish list few can fill

By JOHN FLEMING

© St. Petersburg Times,
published September 16, 2001

Mary Poppins, where are you?

That's the question I had after talking with Brian Moorhead about the Florida Orchestra's music director search. Moorhead, longtime principal clarinet of the orchestra, is on the committee formed to find a successor to Jahja Ling, who is winding up 14 years as music director this season.

"This is not unlike a family searching for a nanny," Moorhead told me. "And the children do have a vote, and the children in this case have incredible discernment."

In other words, the choice of a new music director will be strongly influenced by musicians, who make up half the 12-member search committee. Others on the committee are from the board of trustees and management.

"We've got to make sure that the orchestra will be lifted by this person, lifted to a new level," said David Fischer, the former St. Petersburg mayor who was just elected chairman of the board.

But like the "practically perfect" nanny of Disney fame, the ideal music director may be a figure of fantasy. He or she is expected to be an inspiration on the podium, mastering repertoire from Haydn to Mahler to Stravinsky, as well as a celebrity who puts an appealing face and personality on the orchestra for marketing, fundraising and educational purposes.

"Communities want more than they can ever get from a single person," said Paul Judy, chairman of the Symphony Orchestra Institute, an Evanston, Ill., foundation that studies symphony orchestras. "They want a very good conductor. They also want somebody who goes out and gives speeches and raises money, but that just isn't in the cards. It's like they want a politician."

The search process enters a potentially decisive phase this week as musicians return from a summer off. Next weekend's season-opening program is led by Michael Christie, one of six guest conductors touted as a possible candidate to become music director.

Unfortunately, Christie is probably no longer in the mix, following the announcement this month that the 27-year-old wunderkind was named music director of the Queensland Orchestra in Australia. Christie, who just finished his first summer as head of the Colorado Music Festival, is returning after a well received engagement with the orchestra last season, but it's not likely he's in the market for another music directorship.

In fact, there's no guarantee any of the other guest conductors -- Maximiano Valdes, Pavel Kogan, Stefan Sanderling, Theo Alcantara and Dmitri Sitkovestsky -- will end up in the job. Of the five remaining possibilities, only Valdes has conducted the orchestra before.

"You never know who is going to emerge," said executive director Leonard Stone, who has been involved in several music director searches over a long career in orchestra management. "A lot depends on chemistry. The personal circumstances of a conductor may not be right."

The search for a new music director comes at a difficult time since the orchestra's perennial financial problems have been compounded by the worsening economy. Ominously, the musicians could enter the season without a labor contract, and a work stoppage of some kind is not out of the question.

Not only is Ling leaving at the end of the 2001-02 season, but so is the resident conductor, Thomas Wilkins, who is taking the same position with the Detroit Symphony. There are lessons to be learned from their dual departure, because, in some ways, the resident conductor will be mourned more than the music director.

Wilkins forged a close connection with the community, making his home in St. Petersburg and getting involved in local affairs. Some of his series, such as morning coffee concerts at Mahaffey Theater, were extremely popular. He led the orchestra's most innovative programming, a pair of concerts of rock legend Frank Zappa's orchestral music.

"The community identifies with him, and he reaches out," said Judi Lisi, president of Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. "No question, Tom is going to be a loss."

Ling, on the other hand, was increasingly seen as a commuter conductor, his attention divided between the Tampa Bay area and Cleveland, where he is resident conductor of the world renowned orchestra and artistic director of its summer Blossom Music Festival. Though he once had a house in Tampa, his principal residence was always Cleveland.

He also has a busy guest conducting schedule and was, until this season, music director of the Taiwan National Symphony.

"The orchestra felt a distancing in recent years with Jahja," Moorhead said. "It was disappointing, because I think our orchestra, which plays very well, could have played better if we sensed that our music director was more personally invested in us."

In the pressurized hierarchy of a symphony orchestra, relations between conductor and players inevitably grow frayed. That is especially true when the music director is paid what amounts to a princely sum (an estimated $240,000 a year for Ling) while musicians barely get by (union scale of $27,000 for orchestra members).

Ling deserves credit for sticking with the orchestra through hard times when it came close to going under. Nobody questions his talent on the podium, and he is often mentioned as a candidate for music director of a first-tier orchestra, such as the Indianapolis Symphony. But disenchantment has set in, and his perceived shortcomings will have an impact on the search.

"What we don't want is what we've had," said Lowell Adams, assistant principal cello and a search committee member. "We realize it was a mistake to have Ling for as many years as we've had him. Even though he's an excellent conductor, and there's no taking that away from him, it's clear he hasn't had a serious commitment to this group for a long time."

Perhaps the most frequent remark you hear from orchestra players, board and staff members and other interested parties is that the next music director should live in the bay area.

"I would like somebody who will establish his home here," Stone said. "Somebody who will have a presence, be seen at sporting events, be able to go to Rotary, be able to visit with the volunteers and guilds."

But what would be taken for granted in any other business is the exception among top-level conductors, many of whom lead the peripatetic lives of touring tennis pros. It's the rare American music director who has meaningful roots in his orchestra's community.

"For this orchestra, I think he should live here," Lisi said. "There's more to being a music director than picking the programs and then coming in and conducting six or seven times a year. It's his responsibility -- or her responsibility -- to become part of the fabric of the community. It makes it a lot easier to get support. You could bring Kurt Masur (music director of the New York Philharmonic) here, but unless he worked the community, I don't think they'd raise any more money."

Artistically, the next music director might be expected to take a different approach than Ling, whose strengths lie in the romantic repertoire.

"The programming has been pretty safe," said Ronald Jones, dean of fine arts at the University of South Florida. "If I could write the job description, I would be interested in more attention to contemporary music. It would be good for our students, it would be good for the community."

For the most part, candidates are conducting standard works -- Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff -- in order to demonstrate ability in the essential canon. Audience response will play a part in their evaluation, but only up to a point.

"Last season, Valdes conducted Bolero," Stone said. "Well, he's got that on his eyelids; he's Latino and it's his musical heritage. Naturally, the audience went bananas."

Other factors will be taken into account. "Is the orchestra having an off night or an on night?" Stone said. "Have they been worked to death the week before? Did the soloist contribute to the evening?"

Ultimately, the orchestra wants somebody to reinvigorate it. Artistic stagnation has been unavoidable as Ling phased out. Musicians themselves know better than anyone where the weaknesses are.

"We're looking for a music director who will bring out our best, recognize the strengths that we have and yet have the bravery and authority to make the corrections that are necessary," Moorhead said. "This is not a business where you can go on automatic pilot. I have too much that I still want to invest in the orchestra to let it go as just a gig."

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