Our “Other” Conductor

When you think of the Minnesota Orchestra, you presumably think first and foremost of Osmo Vänskä, who has done so much to mold our distinctive sound and boost our international profile over the past seven years. Or if you come to a lot of pops and/or Inside the Classics shows, maybe you think of Sarah, whose own local profile has gone from zero to sixty in seemingly no time at all. (Deservedly so, of course!)

Probably very few of even our most devoted fans, though, would immediately associate the words “Minnesota Orchestra” with the name Courtney Lewis. Many of you have probably never even seen Courtney, despite the fact that we’ll play more concerts under his baton this season (a whopping 46 performances of more than a dozen different programs!) than under any other conductor we employ. (Osmo’s number is 45, by my count.)

Courtney, who is all of 26, is that most overworked and undervalued of figures in the orchestra business – the staff conductor. Officially our Associate Conductor (a title he inherited from Sarah when she moved into her current role last year,) Courtney’s job in Minneapolis is frequently invisible, but terribly taxing. He conducts every single Young People’s Concert and Target Free Family Concert we play all season long, plus a handful of pops concerts, “runout” performances in far-flung Minnesota towns, and other assorted corporate gigs the orchestra gets hired to play. He won’t get more than one rehearsal for a single one of those concerts, no matter how much music is on the program, and since the vast majority of audience members who will attend his shows are still in elementary and middle school, he’ll have to be utterly on the ball for most of his performances at 10am, an hour when most musicians are still bleary-eyed and waiting for the coffee to kick in.

On the weeks when we’re playing classical subscription concerts with Osmo or a guest conductor, Courtney is still frequently required to be at Orchestra Hall, working as a “cover conductor.” This is basically like being the Vice President of the United States – it’s a near certainty that you’re not going to be given anything important to do, but if the boss goes down, you’re stepping in at a moment’s notice, so you’d better be ready. In other words, Courtney spends these weeks studying the heck out of a stack of scores that he’s almost certainly not going to get to conduct.

Oh, and on top of that, Courtney just so happens to be a rising star in Boston, where the Discovery Ensemble that he co-founded is suddenly looking like a player in a city already crawling with orchestras and chamber ensembles. And did I mention… 26? In a profession where 50-year-olds are regularly described as “young?” Yeah. He’s an ambitious fellow, Courtney.

And that’s pretty much what every young conductor with any hope of landing a big job has to be: ambitious, insanely hard-working, humble (especially humble – orchestras are notorious for chewing up and spitting out young conductors with noticeable egos,) and above all, patient. It’s a stew of personality traits that seemingly contradict each other, and that almost no instrumental musician I’ve met is possessed of. And that’s all before you even get to the meat-and-potatoes job requirements of reading wildly complex scores, running efficient rehearsals, and, you know, conducting.

Every now and then, you’ll read an article somewhere in which someone gets all indignant about the (admittedly lofty) salaries hauled in by the top conductors in the orchestra biz. Sometimes these articles are even by orchestra musicians, who can’t believe that the dolt on the podium, who isn’t even making a sound, is earning nine or ten times what we are. But here’s the thing: before Alan Gilbert was Alan Gilbert, or Gustavo Dudamel was The Dude…

…they were Courtney. Probably for a good, long, poorly paid, underappreciated time, too. And for every one of those Courtneys who made the big time, there are hundreds more who never came close. It’s a lonely, unforgiving business, conducting, and if you want to stand out in the crowd, your moves, and your work ethic, had better be convincing.

Courtney’s pretty darned convincing, by the way. And if you’re not someone who attends a lot of children’s concerts, word on the street is that you’ll get your first chance to see him lead us in a full-length subscription concert sometime next season. I’d recommend checking that out. I mean, I don’t know whether Courtney’s going to be one of the next generation of world-beating conductors or not, but having known him for a little over a year now, I’ll say this with confidence: no one, but no one, is gonna work harder at getting there.