Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend a screening of the short documentary, Conducting Life, about Roderick Cox, a man who grew up here in Macon, GA who went on to become an associate conductor for the Minnesota Orchestra. Now based in Berlin, he works internationally as a guest conductor.
The documentary recounts his pursuit of music from adverse conditions. He talks about coming home from school excited to practice only to find that his keyboard had been pawned to pay utility bills. He approached Zelma Redding, widow of Otis Redding, for money to buy a French horn for school.
What interested me most was the insight into the career arc toward becoming a conductor. I have often seen documentaries or fictionalized depictions of classical musicians competing for places in an orchestra, but I really don’t recall having seen much about conductors. There is footage of him being coached at the program at Northwestern University and by Robert Spano at the Aspen Music Festival. It was amusing to watch him get instructed to be a little more expressive in these classes and then see footage of him conducting in Minnesota and other places where he cranks it up to 11+ with such full body involvement that you hope he does yoga stretching before he gets on stage.
If anything I think the documentary didn’t go deeply enough into work he did to achieve his current position. While it does show him disappointed at not being hired at various orchestras, I can’t imagine he was only auditioning at some of the bigger name organizations like Atlanta, Cleveland, LA and Salt Lake City before ending up at Minnesota, though that might have been the case.
Admittedly, in the Q&A after the screening, Cox admitted he was a somewhat reluctant participant in the documentary. He thought it was only going to be a profile piece while he was at Aspen only to find that the director was interested enough in his story to follow him around for seven more years. So he may not have afforded the filmmakers with the access they needed to make a more detailed movie.
The Q&A afterward revealed a very humble, introspective and funny person. He gave a lot of credit to different people who helped him thus far in his career. He made it very clear that while the documentary shows Otis Redding Foundation helping him buy a French horn, the reality was that when he wanted to go to England, Spain, and France to learn to be a better conductor, the foundation helped him out each time. He also talked about a difficult experience familiar to a lot of people who pursue arts careers where he was auditioning for major classical music institutions and friends were sending him job listings for middle school band teachers. He was also very funny while being politic in answering about the additional challenges in conducting operas and the fact that people in his hometown can circumvent his management to contract him to conduct.
If you have the opportunity, check out the documentary at a festival or see Roderick Cox at an orchestra near you.
What a great story!
Thanks for sharing!