Conductors Music

With the search for a new music director for the Pacific Symphony in full swing this season, orchestra members will be receiving a bounty of instruction from the parade of guest conductors trying out the podium. But one thing they won't hear from this week's candidate, British conductor Christopher Seaman, is any provisos to "play the music exactly as written."

On his first official day of rehearsal with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, amid an enthusiastic welcome from musicians and unprecedented media fanfare, Gustavo Dudamel wanted to make one thing perfectly clear: He's ready to get down to business. At 28, Dudamel is carrying the weight of his new title -- the L.A. Phil's music director -- as well as great expectations from the classical music world on his shoulders. But speaking Wednesday at a news conference at his new home, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Dudamel rejected frequent media speculation that the formidable demands of the prestigious post could prove too much for him. The Venezuelan conductor calls his English "terrible," but he had no problem putting his thoughts on this matter into words: "No -- really, no ," he said in answer to the question following the day's rehearsals.

Edward Cumming, resident conductor of the Florida Orchestra in Tampa, has been appointed assistant conductor of the Pacific Symphony and music director of the new Pacific Symphony Orchestral Institute at Cal State Fullerton. He succeeds Daniel Hege, who will become music director of the Chicago Youth Symphony in the fall. Cumming, 35, has been appointed to a two-year term and will assume his duties Aug. 1.

A Florida conductor was recovering at home Monday after falling 14 feet into the empty space below a movable orchestra pit on the opening night of an opera he had written. David Ott fell Friday after the premiere of "The Widow's Lantern," an original work written for the Pensacola Opera. Ott said he fractured nine vertebrae, dislocated his shoulder and may have broken an ankle. It happened when the lights were off and he went to retrieve his music, not realizing the Pensacola Orchestra pit had been raised to stage level.

Some people may be surprised to see Bobby McFerrin take the podium Saturday to lead the Pacific Chorale at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. They know him as a jazz pianist and a solo jazz singer who has 10 Grammy Awards and a host of recordings to his credit. Many could sing along to his 1988 chart-topping single, "Don't Worry, Be Happy." But McFerrin has been conducting orchestras for more than a decade too, and he's come by the classical post legitimately.

Orange County's close-knit classical music world was in mourning Tuesday over news that the toddler son of Pacific Symphony conductor Carl St.Clair drowned in a swimming pool while his mother was incapacitated by a seizure. Cole St.Clair, 18 months, apparently slipped into a neighbor's Laguna Beach swimming pool late Monday afternoon after Susan St.Clair suffered a diabetic seizure and lost consciousness in an adjacent hot tub, authorities said.

Symphony patrons embraced Carl St.Clair with a storm of applause Saturday night, as the music director stepped to the podium to conduct the Pacific Symphony Orchestra for the first time since the death of his only child. "I knew when the music started, I'd be a lot better," St.Clair said after the orchestra finished the inspirational song Olympic Fanfare by composer John Williams. The conductor's 18-month-old son, Cole, drowned in a neighbor's pool in July after his wife, Susan St.

Since 1992, an 80-foot painting of longtime Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra concertmaster Ralph Morrison, holding his Guarnerius violin, has looked down on Harbor Freeway commuters from its nine-story vista on a 7th Street parking structure. The portrait, part of a still-incomplete Kent Twitchell mural of the whole orchestra, is permanent, but as of last month, it became drastically out of date.

Gerard Schwarz is a workaholic. Luckily, he happens to be an immensely talented workaholic. Even luckier, he is young. As conductors go, 42 is still young. He also is strong and preposterously, not to mention disarmingly, enthusiastic. The public has embraced him proudly in the cultural capital of the Pacific Northwest. The admiration, he gushes without much prodding, is emphatically mutual. Watch him run. Watch him run upward.

A recent lawsuit between an Orange County conductor and some of his musicians has raised questions as to the role of a conductor: just what it is that a conductor does, and how much of a factor is a conductor in the way an ensemble makes a piece of music sound? This story continues an occasional series that will attempt to address these and other questions about conducting.

At any given moment, Gustavo Dudamel might be catching a red-eye flight to Sweden, rehearsing young musicians in Venezuela, blazing a path through Mahler's First in Los Angeles or brainstorming with the head of his record label in Germany.Then there are the endless hours spent memorizing brain-racking orchestral scores. And the countless weeks devoted to the type of social and educational programs that once helped catapult Dudamel from a working-class provincial Venezuelan boyhood to the top of the world's classical conducting ranks.

On Thursday night, for the first time in his career, Gustavo Dudamel conducted Verdi's grandly operatic 90-minute Requiem here with the Gothenburg Symphony. Afterward I visited the 28-year-old conductor in his modest dressing room in the Concert Hall, a Swedish functionalist auditorium that was built in 1935 and stands proudly as part of a sternly imposing arts complex at the end of the city's main avenue. He greeted me with a sheepish smile and blurted out, "Sorry." There had been unmistakable thrills and the occasional moment of sudden, stunning beauty, but Dudamel was thinking about the many mistakes.

Lucky enough to be going to Disney Hall the next couple of weeks to see wunderkind conductor Gustavo Dudamel back on the podium? If so, keep an eye on the young conductor's left hand. No, this isn't some weird fetish thing. It's a chance to focus on a key element of his technique, which is what makes him the real deal. A quick tutorial: At the most rudimentary level, conductors use their hands to accomplish specific tasks.

The next time an Academy Award winner's acceptance speech runs long, a new conductor will strike up the band to play them off. Michael Giacchino, whose credits include "Ratatouille" and "Lost," has been tapped as music director for the upcoming Oscar ceremony, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Monday. Giacchino, who's never conducted a live telecast before, said he's hoping to inject some Hollywood nostalgia into the ceremony when he leads the orchestra pit for the Feb. 22 ceremony at the Kodak Theatre.

South Korean conductor Shi-Yeon Sung will replace Edo de Waart tonight at the Hollywood Bowl leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic in an all-German program of Schumann, Wagner and Brahms. De Waart canceled because of an undisclosed illness. The Dutch conductor was also slated to lead Thursday night's Bowl program, titled "The Russian Soul." Miguel Harth-Bedoya, a former Philharmonic associate conductor, will step in, while violinist Augustin Hadelich replaces the ailing Julian Rachlin.

The lights dimmed, the sold-out hall grew hushed and out walked the conductor -- shiny, white and 4 feet, 3 inches tall. ASIMO, a robot designed by Honda Motor Co., met its latest challenge Tuesday evening: Conducting the Detroit Symphony in a performance of "The Impossible Dream" from "Man of La Mancha." "Hello, everyone," ASIMO said to the audience in a childlike voice, then waved to the orchestra. As it conducted, the robot perfectly mimicked the actions of a conductor, nodding its head at various sections and gesturing with one or both hands.

It is opening two months late, only two operatic productions have been scheduled and the state-of-the-art, computerized machinery for changing sets is not working properly--hardly an auspicious beginning for Paris' new opera house at the Place de la Bastille. Yet open it will, tonight, with Grace Bumbry singing the role of Cassandra in Hector Berlioz's "Les Troyens" (The Trojans).

When Pacific Symphony conductor Carl St.Clair steps onto an Irvine stage Saturday night, barely a month into mourning his 18-month-old son, he intends to project a welter of emotions, not least of them a sense of celebration. In part, his professional ethic guided his decision to lead the orchestra so early in his bereavement for Cole Carsan St.Clair, who drowned July 26. "If I could do it, I should do it," the orchestra's musical director said this week in an interview.

FLIP-FLOPS AND ARMANI COATTAILS -- they don't make the most natural fashion combination. But on Esa-Pekka Salonen, the dissonant attire somehow resolves itself into a harmonic whole. Deep down, the cerebral maestro is actually a devoted beach bum. "It's a real treat coming to the beach," says the Los Angeles Philharmonic's music director since 1992. "Whatever is bothering you, all of those thoughts disappear when you come out here. I like the idea of starting from zero, and this is the perfect way to do it."

Acclaimed conductor Franz Welser-Moest will not take the rostrum for two scheduled billings of a vampire-inspired staging of "Die Fledermaus" at the Zurich Opera, the Swiss opera house said Wednesday. Welser-Moest, the general director in Zurich and music director of the Cleveland Orchestra, will not conduct the Johann Strauss Jr. operetta either on May 17 or June 20 because of "artistic reasons," said spokeswoman Nadia Stefanizzi. Last month, the daily Neue Zuercher Zeitung reported that the 47-year-old Austrian was "unhappy" with the staging by his compatriot Michael Sturminger, who infused vampires and Dracula's castle into the 19th-century Viennese operetta.