Yep, It’s Time For Conductor Finishing School

Holly Mulcahy published the first in a series of articles today entitled “How To Alienate Your Audience In 10 Easy Steps.” Although written from a satirical point of view, the article does an excellent job at identifying some of the fundamental problems that turn good conductors into not-so-good conductors, all of which leads to alienating the audience for classical music. The article reminded me of my time with the post-graduate orchestral conducting students at Arizona State University (ASU) in 2007 when we had a frank discussion about pitfalls that ensnare many conductors…

Holly touches on nearly every one of those issues and more in an entertaining and enlightening fashion but the article made me reconsider whether or not the business could benefit from a sort of “finishing school” for conductors. Based on the fact that a portion of the problems that produce alienated audiences can be traced back to conductors falling victim to one of Holly’s ten steps, it would be worthwhile to develop my informal talk with the ASU conducting students into something more structured. But go read Holly’s article before putting too much contemplation into the topic and then come back and weigh-in with your thoughts.