Continuing on with the theme of young artists forging places for themselves, I was recently reading about a young conductor, Alondra de la Parra and couldn’t help being impressed. The interview I read was in the Arts Presenters’ magazine, Inside Arts. I don’t know what the general consensus of her abilities is in the orchestra world, but that hardly prevents her bootstrapping efforts from being inspirational to other young artists and administrators.

Apparently the transitional moment in her career came when the Mexican consulate asked her to put on a concert and she ended up as a one person “manager, press agent, producer, presenter, fund raiser and conductor” for the event. She describes the experience as a nightmare and had decided to go back to school. However, so many people saw the event as a success and told her she had to continue on. That is how she ended up founding the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas which describes its mission as “a laboratory for artistic expression, embracing our responsibility to support promising young performers, composers, instrumentalists, conductors and all kind of diverse artists from Latin America and beyond.”

Watch the video here to learn more about their philosophy and the way they are involving school children in composing music for the orchestra.

One of the benefits of having had gone through that initial trial by fire is that Alondra feels “it makes me relate to almost every person that goes into a symphony orchestra, from the PR director, to the stagehands to the librarian.” Reading Adaptistration all these years, this is apparently a rare quality among musical directors. She says as much in detail in a 2008 NYT article. (2nd page, 3rd column)

At the end of the Inside Arts piece, she is asked what she would like presenters to know about orchestras. She makes the oft mentioned points about demystifying the music so that people don’t feel they need to know every detail about the piece and the composer–and of course the appropriate time to clap–to enjoy the performance. At the end she comments, (my emphasis) “When you go to a rock concert, nobody is going to ask you do you know who the band is and do you really know their first album in ’82. Nobody cares as long as you yell and jump and enjoy it. The next time, you’ll know the song. You’ll sing the song.”

I would like to think that there is a chance for orchestras if more leaders like her start emerging. There is a lot of excitement surrounding Gustavo Dudamel leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic. El Sistema has come to the US and will perhaps manage to transform the lives of young people here as it has in Venezula. (Is it my imagination, or does Latin America seem poised to save classical music?)

As I read about the Honolulu Symphony facing bankruptcy, and the problems other orchestras are facing it seems that the excitement generating can come none to soon.