It won’t be respected music department chair Jon Robertson
standing in front of the orchestra Tuesday night ““ it will be
three of his graduate students instead.
Traditionally, Robertson designates the first concert of the
Spring quarter specifically for his conducting students. This year
grad students Brian Alhadeff, John Carter and Ben Makino have the
opportunity to do everything from picking out the repertoire to
actually conducting the Philharmonia.
“It’s really one of the unique characteristics of
the conducting program here. This doesn’t happen at any other
university in California to the degree that it does here,”
Alhadeff said.
Young conductors are typically limited to conducting groups,
like youth orchestras, which don’t present a challenge to the
conductor. So, for students interested in pursuing a career in
conducting, UCLA is particularly appealing because it gives student
conductors the opportunity to spend so many hours in front of a
serious college orchestra of music majors.
“It’s a wonderful experience,” Carter said,
“UCLA is the ideal place for a young conductor to get
experience because you have good musicians who are pushing
themselves hard and are just about ready to go out into the work
force, but at the same time it’s a learning environment so it
gives me the time to get up in front of them.”
For students in the orchestra, the arrangement also provides
some benefits. Though students mostly like the opportunity to play
music in the ensemble, they acknowledge that playing under the
instruction of the grad conductors can also be beneficial in that
it exposes them to different styles of conducting.
“I’ve gotten a lot of experience out of playing the
music and playing first in an orchestra,” oboe performance
grad student Kendra Wittreich said, “It’s a good
experience for (the student conductors) to be up in front of the
groups often and it’s a good opportunity for musicians to
play with different conductors.”
When placed in the role that is typically filled by a conductor
who is much older than the orchestra, the student conductors are
challenged to establish themselves as leaders with an orchestra
composed primarily of their peers.
“When you’re the same age as the orchestra,
it’s a challenge because they don’t really see you as a
leader, they see you as a peer. You overcome it by really knowing
your material. The orchestras are smart, they know if you know what
you’re doing or not. You have to both challenge them and
treat them with respect,” Carter said.
However, the grad students have not been without Dr.
Robertson’s helpful overseeing during rehearsals. Robertson
has attended several of the practices and often offers advice to
both the orchestra and the grad conductors.
“(Robertson) has done a good job of providing feedback
while staying out of their way and letting them learn from their
mistakes,” Wittreich said.
The grad conductors have picked out music that they believe will
captivate any audience. The concert will open with the loud and
bombastic Dvorak Carnival Overture, followed by a 1930s
showpiece-sounding trumpet concerto featuring the winner of the
UCLA brass concerto competition, and will end with the lesser
known, but easy to follow Prokofiev Symphony No.7.
“Nothing in this concert is boring classical music,”
Alhadeff said, “It’s almost a pops concert to a certain
degree. It’s easy to listen to ““ this one is definitely
going to be a crowd pleaser.”