7 conductors you should know about

BY ZOE DOUGLAS-KINGHORN

Meet the women who are breaking new ground in the Australian conducting scene: the first ever female music director of an Aussie orchestra, the first ever Cybec Assistant Conductor, the first ever female Australian conductor of Messiah at the Sydney Opera House.

These musical leaders are not afraid to show the country what they’re made of.

Simone Young

Simone Young is a force to be reckoned with. When she conducted Elektra in 1997, she was eight months pregnant and told the Sydney Morning Herald: “I hope this puts a stop to those who say, ‘We can’t hire a woman because she might get pregnant’. And I’d like to say that my stomach is still smaller than some of my male colleagues”. Roasted!

Born and raised in Balgowlah, Simone would listen to classical music on the radio with her dad, and started playing piano at the age of five. After studying at the Conservatorium of New South Wales, in 1983 she joined the Australian Opera as a repetiteur where she assisted the conductors.

Two years later, she conducted her first opera. She went on to become a resident conductor with the company – the first woman and youngest person to do so at the age of 25. In 1986 she was named Australian of the Year for her services to the arts. Simone says: “You cannot waste emotional energy on worrying about being liked: you have to focus on the music”.

Alondra de la Parra

Having fittingly been described as “spellbinding”, you might be forgiven for mistaking Alondra de la Parra for Hermione Granger’s musical doppelganger. She looks a bit like she could be telling you: “It’s wingardium leviosaah” as she levitates the entire orchestra with her conductor’s baton. In fact, she’s magical in many ways: Alondra has come a long way since conducting the school orchestra at the age of 12. She currently waves the stick for the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, where in 2017 she became the first ever music director of an Australian orchestra to identify as female.

But there’s more. At the age of just 23, the conductor founded the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas. Her mission: to establish a platform for young musicians and music writers from South and Central America. As the official Cultural Ambassador for Mexico, she has developed education programs in public schools in New York and Mexico. She continues to work to showcase Latin American composers in orchestral repertoire.

Jessica Cottis

Read Jessica Cottis’ bio and try not to get a case of the tall poppies. In addition to first-class honours in organ, piano and musicology, she has also trained as a pilot and studied a law degree.

Jessica’s rehearsal technique is highly collaborative. She tells Koren Helbig in Frankie (Sept 2016 issue): “Although we may not have many words, it’s more a case of listening to what they [the musicians] bring. You can hear their ideas in the way they communicate musically”.

Jessica trained as an organ player, but when she suffered a wrist injury in 2006 she had to give up a performance career. Thankfully, she went on to enrol in conducting at the Royal Academy of Music. In 2016, she made her debut at the BBC Proms, returning in 2017 to conduct the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Since her salad days, Jessica has conducted the London Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony, Malaysian Philharmonic and many other orchestras, making her an in-demand conductor worldwide. She’s also smashing the glass ceiling– in April 2018, she conducted the premiere of The Gender Agenda by Philip Venables with the London Sinfonietta.

Tianyi Lu

Disclaimer: I have just the tiniest bit of a music crush on this conductor (but then, anyone who conducts/plays/in any way associates with Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 is instantaneously a music crush – amirite?!)

Tianyi Lu was born in Shanghai and moved to New Zealand as a child. She struggled to find female role models in the conducting field, but eventually picked up the baton when her old high school teacher invited her to conduct the school orchestra. She tells the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra of her first conducting experience: “I felt like I was home. I felt free, like I was flying”.

At the age of 28, the young Kiwi is the first ever Cybec Assistant Conductor for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Her repertoire spans the late romantic period, the German canon, and Russian composers such as Prokofiev, Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky.

Tianyi also has a passion for contemporary music – she’s been known to dabble in electronic music composition as well as study baroque flute, harpsichord, and even viola da gamba. She is a Dudamel Fellow with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, and Principal Conductor of the St. Woolos Sinfonia in the United Kingdom.

Could you find a more well-travelled and well-rounded conductor? I think not. (You can read more about her here!)

Jessica Gethin

Jessica Gethin wields power at the podium. As one of the Top 100 Most Influential Women listed by the Australian Financial Review, she is the Perth Symphony Orchestra’s chief conductor and one of the leading lights in the Australian music industry.

Starting out as a classical violinist, Jessica was the concertmaster of her conservatorium orchestra during her Bachelor of Music. But she grew intrigued by the conductor’s role, and soon fell under the spell of the baton. She undertook the Symphony Australia Conductor Development Program, which saw her win a scholarship to study under internationally renowned conductors.

Jessica has won accolades from the Winston Churchill Fellowship in 2015 to her 2016 nomination for Limelight Magazine’s Top 20 Australian Artists. In 2018, she was awarded the prestigious Bendat Award from the West Australian Opera.

Her schedule for 2018 involves crossing three continents from Australiasia to America to bring her musicianship to opera, rock ‘n’ roll, dance and film music. She tells CutCommon that incorporating repertoire study, stamina and communication is key to directing an orchestra.

Elizabeth Scott

IMHO, the best kind of conductor is the one that sings at you during the rehearsal (just to make sure you know your part). Elizabeth Scott may just do this: the renowned choral conductor has held positions with the Gondwana choirs, the Sydney Chamber Choir and Sydney Philharmonia Choirs.

She first studied flute at the Sydney Conservatorium in her undergraduate degree, and she was Student of the Year in 1995. This high achiever also won the Reuben F. Scarf Scholarship for academic and musical excellence. Elizabeth went on to train in the vocal department in Hungary and Germany. She returned to Australia in 2004, and in 2017 she was the first non-dude to conduct Handel’s Messiah at the Sydney Opera House (you can read more about it in CutCommon right here). She has also sung and recorded with Cantillation, Pinchgut Opera and The Song Company.

Elizabeth tells CutCommon: “Conductors are leaders, and there are still certainly more male leaders in the world than female. But the tide is turning, and I think we will see more and more females leading countries, and leading our orchestras in the future”.

Elena Schwarz

Elena Schwarz is taking the world by storm. At the age of just 33, she has established an international career between Australia and Europe where is a dual Swiss-Australian citizen.

Elena studied musicology and cello in her teenage years. In her orchestra rehearsals in the Swiss-Italian hometown of Lugano, she was inspired by conductor Alain Lombard, particularly surrounding the dialogue of conducting.

“What the audience sees in a performance is the tip of the iceberg,” Elena tells The Music Show on ABC. “If you compare [conducting] to learning an instrument, the technique is much less complex. It is personal – there’s a fusion between the conducting technique and communication process.”

In 2017, Elena became the first joint assistant to conduct both West Australian Symphony and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras. She is also the assistant to Mikko Franck at the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and was recently awarded the first ever special distinction from the Geneva University of Music.

Will you be next on this list?

Elena will direct the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra’s new Louise Crossley Conducting Workshop in Hobart on 12 August, 2018. Applications close on 18 June, so get in quick.

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