When Maestro Roger Kalia announced his decision to step down as the music director of Symphony New Hampshire at the end of the 2024-25 season, Executive Director Deanna Hoying assembled a search committee comprised of board members, musicians, and community leaders to identify his successor.
Five finalists were chosen and over the next season each finalist will curate and conduct a concert while participating in meet-and-greet events across New Hampshire. Audience members will have the opportunity to provide feedback for the individual concerts through surveys after each concert.
The first of the finalists is Taiwanese cellist and conductor Tiffany Chang. She will perform Unexpected Stories: Music of Sibelius, de Falla, and Donizetti at the Keefe Center in Nashua, Saturday, Sept. 27 at 7:30 p.m. with a pre-concert conversation at 6:30 p.m.
NHPR’s Joe Boehnlein sat down to talk with Chang about her upcoming show and leadership philosophy.
Transcript
You are one of five candidates that the organization has selected to be their next music director. And you have on your website this statement: ”Did you know that job satisfaction rates for orchestral musicians ranked below that of prison guards.” That statement struck me. Could you expand on that a little bit?
Yeah, absolutely. You know, this is a study that was done in like the 90s to mid-90s. So this is a while ago. And I think that we have advanced a lot as a society and as an industry. And I think that that is one of the lingering challenges that we experience as an industry is one of job satisfaction for the musicians who were actually doing the work. And as I experienced more as a conductor in the industry, I've realized that there is often this us versus them that's very much part of the hierarchical structure of orchestras. And that's no one's fault. I think that's just the system being the way that it is. And I think that in a lot of times the older leadership, the older management models, start with focusing on like the financial health of the organization and like the business and then like, if it has space and like mental space, then it thinks, oh, what can we do for people? How can we take care of people? And I think that in the last like 50 years or so, in the larger leadership space, there has been a paradigm shift of kind of turning that on its head.
So what would you do to put the musicians first?
Yeah. So I really think of the musicians as my primary customers. And so I think of them as the ones whom I’m serving. And on a larger scale, I do feel like that my job as a conductor is to be an artistic leader, and the people who are making the music are in my care. So I am in charge of taking care of them. And so that for me comes to how I am a trustee of their time. They're giving the music their time — their rehearsal time, their practice time, their commute time. And so how can I be responsible about their time? How can I ensure that when they are in the room spending time with me, that their experience is meaningful, productive, satisfying, enjoyable and overall positive? So I try to really design their experience from when they first engage with me to the last time that they engage with me. How can I get their buy in on what the story that I'm trying to tell with the pieces that I'm conducting? And how can I get them to engage in co-creating the experience for the audience together? And then ultimately, the byproduct is the audience is satisfied because the musicians are satisfied.
So for your program on [Sept. 27] at the Keefe Center, you've chosen three composers. Why? Why these composers and pieces?
One of the first things that I thought about in thinking about the program is that I made the choice to not include any what I'm going to call quote unquote diversity pieces. There has been a lot of emphasis on diversity and inclusion and belonging, which is, of course, really great steps forward. And at the same time, I feel like I am sick of being the token for female centric or Asian centric repertoire. And I've done tons of that in the last five years, and I'm only called to do those things. And so I was intentional in choosing this program to stay away from what I imagined as a superficial approach to sort of innovative, diverse programing. And so what I was hoping is to select a program with sort of traditional, quote unquote, traditional composers in a traditional framework of overture, concerto and symphony and try to be creative and innovative and diverse in how I present this program. So I decided on these pieces because I think that each of these pieces are are weird in its own way, like they are misfits. They don't really fit in, even within the traditional realm of the classical canon.
You know, the Sibelius Symphony is not a one that's played very often, and it's one that is his first departure from his neo-romantic first and second symphony. So it sounds very different. And the de Falla is the “Night in the Spanish Gardens” is a it's often built as a piano concerto, but it's really not a piano concerto. And for the Donizetti, my original plan for the concert did not include a Donizetti. So Donizetti was kind of like a second pick for me for that spot. But I love the opening of the Donizetti because it gives you something and you think it's going to be this grand huzzah of an overture, and then it quickly changes its tone, and then you're left thinking what just happened and what is going to happen next. So I am also thinking about how do I create an experience for the musicians who are playing it. And I'm hoping that as I work with the musicians, I am going to get their buy in in telling the story, this three piece story, and hoping that that will translate to the experience of the audience.
