Meet The New Maestro
The Andreas Delfs era officially begins for the Honolulu Symphony this weekend, continuing a tradition of great conductors for Hawaii’s orchestra
By Alice Keesing
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Del.icio.usNew York’s Finger Lakes region. He had to be called in from the garden where he was out getting his hands dirty.
“If you could see me now, I am sitting overlooking five acres of land that need to be taken care of,” he says. “There’s a big pond that needs to be restocked with fish, there’s wildlife surrounding me ... this is my hobby.”
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While he spends most of the year conducting in Milwaukee and making guest appearances around the world, during the summer he’s off in upstate New York trapping muskrats. (Which, he assures, he chauffeurs far out into the wild and releases. “My children would-n’t stand for me killing any of those animals.”)
This is how Delfs spends his summers with his family, wife and pianist Amy Tait and their four children.
The rest of the year is busy, busy, busy. It’s typical of his schedule that Delfs will continue his work with the Milwaukee Symphony while he joins Honolulu.
So now, summer break is over and the maestro is in town. Opening night of the symphony’s Masterworks season features Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, Wagner’s Prelude to the Meistersinger and violinist Sarah Chang playing Sibelius’ Violin Concerto in D Minor.
The schedule for this season was already in place when Delfs signed on to his three-year contract, so it’s the following 2008/2009 season when audiences will really start to see his stamp on the repertoire. Still, everyone expects that audiences will immediately see and hear a difference.
Farther down the road, audiences can expect Delfs to take the symphony on some exciting paths. This is the man, after all, who took the Milwaukee Symphony to perform in Cuba. He’s also not shy about venturing out with new technology, and helped the MSO become the first American orchestra to distribute live recordings online through iTunes.
One of Delfs’career signatures has been helping orchestras up to the next level. And these days, he and Gulick are talking about an expansive new future for Honolulu that will take the symphony to a new plateau.
“It’s like the old blues song - we’re at the crossroads,” Gulick says.
So there is talk of new repertoire and recording and touring options. There are plans to shore up financial fortunes, fill more seats and bring the power of music to more people in the Islands. The symphony will venture beyond the Blaisdell more often. It will foster the talents of local composers and celebrate Hawaiian music.
Delfs also is looking forward to building that unique psychological connection between himself, the conductor, and the orchestra. Music that comes from such a bond sounds like it flows from one mind, he says, rather than the 100 or so minds that make up an orchestra.
When he’s on the podium with the Milwaukee Symphony, Delfs merely lifts his left eyebrow or lowers his right pinkie, and the musicians know what he wants.
“When you reach that level of silent communication,” he says, “that is just glorious.”
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