You just had a contract renewal last November covering the next two years with the Florida Orchestra. How long have you been with the Florida Orchestra now?
So, just last season, [I] completed my third season with them, and every year has just been amazing. I was just talking to our music director Michael Francis the other day, just saying, how coveted these positions are, for one, how few conducting positions are actually for top orchestras in the country, and then to end up at an orchestra that just first of all, is in a beautiful place with incredible musicians, a thriving trajectory. It's just such a gift.
Where are you from originally?
I was born in Texas, but my family, we say that we're from California.
Where do you live now?
Downtown St. Petersburg.
How did you come to conducting? Did you play an instrument before this?
So, people love to say that you come to conducting one of two ways. Either you're a musician and you see someone conducting and you think, “I can do that better.” Or you're a musician and somebody sees you and they think you could be a conductor.
I'm part of that latter group. During university, I had a teacher who thought I could do it, and, I knew so, so little at that time. My big goal in life was to be a math teacher. I loved music, of course, but I was also studying math. And he comes to me one day, and he goes, “Let's just talk about conducting, and you give it a shot on a concert.” And I was like, “Okay.”
I didn't even know how to read a score or anything. And it went well. And he's like, “Well, have you thought about doing this for grad school?” And I was like, “No, where would I even do that?” And he goes, “Well, how about Vienna?” And I go, “I've never been to Italy.” That's how little I knew.
So, he helped me find out how the exam would go at the Conservatory. And so, he said, “This is what you need to know.” And so, I got on YouTube. I learned German as fast as I could. I already played piano growing up, I learned how to score, read a piano as fast as I could, did the audition and got in. So, that's pretty much how the whole thing started.
It's so amazing to me. I kind of have chills, because, you know, when somebody believes in you, yeah, you may have no idea. You may have this amorphous idea of what something is, and they believe in you. That's so powerful.
It just kind of came out of nowhere. But, you know, the true originator of the idea that I could be a conductor, and probably the only reason I said yes to anything was because of my mom. When we were born, she went, “Conductor, lawyer, engineer, and we all ended up doing those things.”
My folks were amazing. They were never pushy. However, the only person that can corroborate the story is my dad, and he's heavily biased but my mom did plant that seed. So that might be why I was so willing to say yes.
I know things have changed over the years. But I think about Sabine Meyer (clarinetist) and how she was in the Berlin Philharmonic, and they didn't want her. She was the only woman, and this was like 1981 or something. She ended up becoming a solo artist. I think things have probably opened up since then. But what is it like to be a woman conductor?
You know, everyone expected it to be a little bit better by now. There are some conductors like Marin Alsop, Simone Young, JoAnn Falletta, Diane Wittry, who really laid a great foundation for this.
The League of American Orchestras did a study that over 50% of our conducting degree recipients in the country are women. But we are seeing this hard cut off when it comes to professional orchestras, especially our top-level orchestras, our top 25 orchestras, of which the Florida Orchestra is part of that usually.
Of those top 25 orchestras in the country, one of them is led by a woman, Natalie Stutzman of the Atlanta Symphony.
Let's say of our top 25 orchestras, there's music directors, and then there's one or two assistant associate resident positions. You're really talking about, like 50 to 65 positions in total. And that's not just for Americans to compete for. That's for the world to compete for. And then every woman conductor I've ever met, it has been fantastic.
ALSO READ: The Florida Orchestra partners with USF to elevate student experience, create 'lasting bonds'
I was looking on your website, and I thought, oh, I didn't know you're working with the USF Symphony?
Yes, so this season, we've announced a partnership. Both Michael Francis and I are artists in residence for the University of South Florida, and it's really cool.
We go there and rehearse the orchestra a bit and then perform with them. And it's really special. These young musicians are so talented, they're so eager, and it's been great because through our incredible marketing department, we've been able to supply them with plenty of opportunities to come to our concerts.
They're college students you know, have found ways to get to all of our variety of concerts to come have a good time, whether it's in St Petersburg or in Tampa, and they're just flourishing. I mean, the whole USF Music Department seems to be thriving. We’re both looking forward to learning more about it.
I know musicians and conductors travel all over the world and practice all over the world. What's coming up for you?
I just did a production of Carmen in Ohio with the Dayton Opera, Dayton Philharmonic, and Dayton Ballet. And then we [had] holiday shows here. And then in the new year, I'll go conduct Knoxville symphony, New Mexico Philharmonic.
Which school in Vienna did you go to for conducting the Vienna Conservatory. How did you take the steps to where you are back?
In America? There was an American conducting teacher who was doing a conducting class in Lithuania, and I went to that class. That teacher taught at University of Michigan, and I really liked how he taught, so I applied to do my Doctor of Musical Arts, my DMA at University of Michigan.
And then I had the opportunity, when I was finishing my degree at Michigan, to go work for the Detroit Symphony. And then Covid happened. Everything went away.
Obviously, it was horrible, but the first conductor at the Detroit Symphony for that season that I was working there was Michael Francis.
During the pandemic, [we] kind of stayed in touch via email, just because he had recommended a lot of different books to read about different things. And so, one day, I shot him an email saying, “Hey, I read those books. They were great, you know, do you have any other recommendations?” And then at one point he said,” Hey, just so you know, the Florida Orchestra is having an audition for an assistant.” I was like, “Oh, great.” And so I went, had quite a memorable audition, and, yeah, I won the job. So that's how I end up being back in America and then in Florida.
Chelsea, I just think it's so great that you're there and you're representing and, you know, little girls can see you and think, “Oh, that's a possibility.”
These jobs are so coveted and sometimes you end up in a position where, you know, you do your job, you do it well, and then you expire after a couple of years. And that's kind of how these positions are designed. You're not really in the fold operationally of what's going on in that organization.
Here at the Florida Orchestra, Michael has made sure that I am part of this leadership team. It's so rare. And the other thing that makes it special to be part of the leadership team is this is an organization that is thriving. It is exploding.
It's not being part of a leadership team that is, focused on just staying barely in the black or just out of the red. This is getting to participate and understand symphony orchestra at a level where this is called growth. This is an exciting time for the Florida Orchestra, and we're hosting audiences at such an unbelievable rate.
We're performing at such an unbelievable rate, bringing in world-class artists like so far this year, we've had Cynthia Erivo and Morgan Freeman, and we have Audra McDonald coming in February.
And along the way, we're performing some of the greatest music ever written, including some of the greatest music currently being written.
Later this season, with the Florida Orchestra, I'm doing the U.S. premiere of a triple trombone concerto (Thierry Caens’ “Tribones,” a concerto for three trombones that TFO co-commissioned with the French Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse) that had an unbelievable premiere in France with two of our trombonists, and it's going to bring the house down.
On that same program is Beethoven (Symphony No.) Seven, because this is an orchestra that can do everything really, they're just amazing.
So, I'm just unbelievably lucky to have this, this position with a music director like Michael (Francis).
