[gentle music] - Norman Gilliland: Welcome to University Place Presents.

I'm Norman Gilliland.

Imagine you're standing on a stage with 85 musicians, and perhaps a chorus of as many as a hundred in front of you, and behind you, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 people paying close attention to what you're doing to make sure everything comes out just perfectly, and you have some idea of what it's like to be a conductor.

But what does it take to make a conductor?

What kind of leadership develops in the course of a career and musical sensitivity and taste?

We're going to find out from John DeMain, the longtime music director and conductor of the Madison Symphony, and also conductor of various world premieres and other major performances in this country and around the world.

And now, welcome to University Place Presents, John DeMain.

- John DeMain: Thank you, Norman, it's great to be here.

- Well, this is going to be a little bit, at times, like This is Your Life.

[both laugh] How did it all begin?

But let's begin at the beginning.

And you start out as some kind of a musician, instrumentalist, singer, before you become a conductor.

- Well, actually, when I was two years old, I realized I had a singing voice.

And so, I would go, we would go to the Italian church, and they had a ladies' choir, and I would go upstairs and sing the benediction, you know, "O Salutaris" and "Tantum ergo," you know, and so all that, and then by the time I was five, I was featured in a kindergarten Christmas show, where I sang "O Little Town of Bethlehem," and my picture was in the newspaper.

And then, at six, I started taking piano lessons, and I learned how to sight-read really quickly because I wanted to accompany myself singing, and my parents would go out and buy me the jumbo note versions of the popular songs of the time, you know, and, but-- And I learned how, for some reason, I learned how to sight-read very quickly.

And by the time I was nine years old, I could really play and I could sight-read.

So, at that particular point in time, the Youngstown Symphony, in a co-production with the Youngstown Playhouse, which was a very, to this day, a very big and popular community theater, did a co-production of Amahl and the Night Visitors, Gian Carlo Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors.

And that opened in 1953.

And I would have been, I was born in 1944, so that would have been very close after the premiere happened in New York, they were able to get it and do it, as I recall.

- Norman: Just the right age to play Amahl, also.

- John: Right, there were two of us, and the other boy was like 12 or 13, and he lost his voice, his voice changed.

So I did all the performances, and I had a beautiful boy soprano.

I don't know whatever happened after my voice changed, but I had, you know, high Cs and I had vibrato and I could sing all the Italian art songs, and you name it.

But, and at the same time, by the time I was in fourth grade, the person who founded the Youngstown Symphony, Michael Ficocelli, became, he used to be, so, in the 1940s, when the orchestra wasn't a professional orchestra, he was a timekeeper for Republic Steel.

I thought that was kind of interesting, you know, being a conductor.

- Norman: Yes.

- And he would conduct the musicians and everybody.

Everybody was involved with the war, I think, in Youngstown at the time, you know, the steel mills and everything.

And then, he got a job as the music director for all the parochial schools.

And unfortunately, the Catholic schools didn't have string programs, but they just had bands.

'Cause he was a violinist.

But he had a beautiful conducting technique, and so, he wanted me to be at the piano when he was conducting the band rehearsals in fourth grade.

And when he didn't show up, I actually conducted the rehearsals in fourth grade.

- Norman: Wow.

- And then there was an all-star band made up of the best players from all over the city, and I, and he, and they met on a Monday night, I remember, and he always wanted me to go sit at the piano with a full score and just watch him, you know, and maybe play a little bit, but watch him to see his stick technique, which was classic and beautiful, you know.

And so, that's how early it was that I was sort of playing and conducting.

And when I was in fourth grade, they sent me up to the eighth grade to play for the shows and musical things that was going on in the grade school.

And then, when I was in eighth grade, they sent me to the high school because I could sight-read to play for the big school shows at the high school.

And then, when I got into high school, I actually staged and conducted and did the shows.

So I was very active, and the theater was interesting to me when I was young, and there was a children's theater that I belonged to.

And I remember I played the grandfather in Heidi when I was six or seven years old, and then when I was sort of more 12 or 13, I played Edvard Grieg in the Song of Norway and played the piano concerto and tried to sing, you know, all that music.

But I also was doing just pure acting.

And then, around when I was 13, the Youngstown Playhouse started doing musicals, and the first one they did was Paint Your Wagon.

- Oh, sure.

- And they hired me to be a rehearsal pianist for the dancers because we had, it was with piano, and we had a wonderful woman, Lillian Butcher Stambaugh, who was the accompanist in Youngstown, Ohio.

And she was playing for that.

And so, I assisted her, and we got along famously.

But the next year, that musical was Brigadoon, and they could not, and Lillian was not available to do it.

And they asked me if I would do it.

And I was 14, and everybody in the show was old enough to be my grandparents, you know.

So I said, "Well, okay."

But I said, "Could I put an orchestra in the pit if I could put one together?"

And they said, "Yes."

So I got the concertmaster of the symphony, and I got my high school music teacher who played trumpet, you know, and I got all these different players, and I had a 14-piece orchestra, and I conducted and... And then, the union got wind of the fact that we weren't paying the musicians.

And so that came, that lasted for two years.

And then, that came to a flying stop.

But I was that early conducting, you know.

And so, that was sort of how I got the start.

- Did you continue your career as a classical pianist, too, then?

- Well, you know, I was always playing the piano.

You know, I mean, I was studying the piano and I was studying with this wonderful German teacher, Hermann Groos.

And he passed away, and I started studying with his wife.

But I was typical, you know, by the time I got in high school, I was in speech and debate, extemporaneous speaking, putting on shows at the Playhouse every night, playing for every chorus you could imagine.

Everything but practicing.

Until we got to my senior year and I entered... For some reason, I decided at the end of my junior year to practice and just take a shot at the piano competition that was presented by the Youngstown Symphony.

And of course, that would be the first time I would be with the Youngstown Symphony since I was nine years old, doing Amahl and the Night Visitors.

So I practiced, and it was the Beethoven First Piano Concerto.

I won.

- Norman: Congratulations.

- John: And the judges were Vronsky and Babin.

- Norman: Yeah, sure, famous piano duo.

- John: A rather well-known famous piano duet.

They were on the staff of Cleveland Institute of Music.

So they came-- On the faculty.

And so, they came down to be the judges, and they chose me.

And there were people at Juilliard competing.

So I beat them all.

And I made my debut in that January.

And, I mean, I have to say, that was sort of cathartic.

I mean, that, I know what it's like when these kids win Final Forte here, and they get to play with the Madison Symphony.

I-- Don't ask me what it is, but somehow playing with an orchestra, for someone who's, you know, playing a musical instrument, it's just magic.

And that sort of really fired me up.

And...

But I still didn't know what I wanted to do with my life.

- Hard to believe.

- Yeah, I know, because I had so many interests and I had a good grade average and, you know, and of course, you know, you're going to a Catholic school and they all think you should become, you know, a scientist or a priest or whatever, you know?

I mean, nobody's thinking you're gonna go on in the arts.

And so, I remember that it was March of my senior year, and I looked in the mirror and I said, "What do you do "when you don't have to do something like physics homework or English," you know?

- Good question.

- And I said, you're always, you're always doing theater or music, but it's usually always from a musical point of view, you know?

And so, why don't you-- And I've been doing everything on instinct, conducting on instinct.

Never had a real lesson in that sense, just through observation.

So why don't you go get an education about music?

And so, I thought, well, okay, well, you know, naive me, why not write to the best.

And so I wrote to Juilliard, you know, see if I could get an audition.

And one of the people that I beat in the competition, William Cessna, was studying with the great Adele Marcus.

And he said to me, you know, "You should study with her.

She's phenomenal."

And she had, you know, taught Byron Janis and Agustin Anievas, and she had studied with Josef Lhévinne and Schnabel and the whole thing.

- Great, great pianists, yes, very famous.

- And so he said, "Tell her, "call her and tell her you want to study with her "and tell her you beat me in the competition.

And that'll pique her interest."

[Norman chuckles] So I was a pretty mediocre pianist at that time.

But anyway, I took the audition, and at the end of the audition, she said, "Well, I will accept you on probation."

She said, "When I look at you, "I see that you're filled with music and you understand every note that you're playing."

But she said, "When I listen to what's coming out of the piano," she said, "I would just say that the piano, as an instrument, is totally foreign to you."

So... - Wow, okay, thanks a lot.

- So thanks a lot.

So, my freshman year, I remember we worked for about a month and she just liked to stimulate me.

And she said, "Try the phrase this way, try that."

And I was so pliable and I, you know, I think from conducting all that, you know, I was so eager to sort of do that.

But then, after about a month, she said, "Play a scale."

And I went up in unison and down in thirds, you know, and she said, "Do you mind if I tell you honestly?"

And I said-- And she said, "It stinks."

- Wow.

- So we started learning the Russian technique.

And at the end of my first year, I got an average grade and I played a very strategically easy program.

At the end of my second year, I got a scholarship because somebody said to me, you know, well, Bill Cessna, he said, "This is gonna be tough for you, "but don't make any decisions for two years.

And at the end of two years, see."

Well, at the end of two years, I played a difficult audition.

I got a scholarship, and at the same time, I was taking elective courses in conducting.

And my conducting teacher was Jorge Mester.

And so, and he was terrific with laying down the essentials of conducting.

How do you get from one point to the next, different kinds of beats, staccato beats, legato beats.

Not much with interpretation.

He left that sort of to ourselves.

But, and then, but it gave me, you know, a real foundation.

And then, in the summers, in order to make money to go back to Juilliard, because of my four years of being musical director at the Youngstown Playhouse, conducting all these shows, I got a job in summer theater as assistant conductor and eventually conducting.

So I started conducting professionally in the theater.

And that led to about my junior year, senior year, I started working for the Kenley Players.

And that, of course, was one of the great experiences of my life.

For 10 years, I was with the Kenley Players.

And so, basically, I was taking some elective courses in conducting and practicing the piano and teaching the piano and playing auditions and doing everything you could imagine in New York City.

And then, in the summer, I would go out and I'd conduct these shows with these big Hollywood and television and Broadway stars.

And including people like Ethel Merman.

And, you know, that's where all of this was happening.

And John Kenley, they actually, they did a musical on his life this summer at Goodspeed in Connecticut, you know.

Because he was kind of a legend in the theater.

He lived to be 103 years old, and when he passed away, the theaters, you know, flew lights at half and honored him in New York, you know.

He was an incredible, it was an incredible experience for me.

So, you know, that's where my dinner stories, the stories really start.

- Sure.

And so, you're a full-fledged conductor now of musicals, and you were also conducting symphony orchestras along the way?

- John: Not really.

I would say that, you know, I'm trying to, I was trying to rethink all of that.

So, when I graduated and I got my master's degree and I was out doing the Kenley Players that summer, I thought, you know, I really want to get into opera.

This is where I want to go, because I love the theater, I love chorus, I love singing, and of course, I love the orchestra.

And so, I thought, when I go back to the city, I'm just, if I even have to go to a pay-to-sing kind of company, you know, I'm gonna get involved in opera.

And I went to the, Juilliard was opening at Lincoln Center, and I went to an alumni concert featuring Leontyne Price, and I ran into Rhoda Levine, who I had worked with.

She was a great opera stage director.

And I had done some Luciano Berio avant-garde piece operas at Juilliard as an extracurricular activity.

And so, we knew each other, and she saw me at the intermission, and she came up and she said-- this is like a fluke.

She said, "Do you have any interest in getting into opera?"

And I said... - Well.

- I've been looking into a crystal ball all summer.

- How serendiptitious.

- You know.

So she said, "Peter Herman Adler is looking "for someone at the New York-- at the National Education Television Opera Project," which was...

So Peter Herman Adler had been music director of the Baltimore Symphony.

He now was, and he founded the NBC Television Opera in the 1950s, which brought people like Leontyne Price to the fore and all those guys.

- And I think that's where Amahl and the Night Visitors came from, too.

- Peter was involved with that.

- They were commissioned from NBC TV.

- Right, and so, then, when public television happened, that got transferred over to public television.

And so, Kirk Browning and Peter Adler created the National Education Television Opera Project.

So this is the days before Live from Lincoln Center, before all of that kind of on-site television.

So we would rehearse in New York, we'd go up to Boston, and the Boston Symphony would be the orchestra.

I was the assistant conductor.

I actually got into costume once because I was, had to do some conducting of the singers, and they were in positions where I was gonna have to be in with the crowd on stage.

So I got into costume, and there, the musicians of the Boston Symphony took a liking to me because, well, Peter Herman Adler was very hard to follow.

And when they would be doing orchestra readings, of course I would be in there even though I was gonna be in Studio A with the singers, and he would do something, and they would think it's a ritard, and I'd go and I'd whisper to them, "Straight time, that's not a ritard, just play straight time."

And so, they went and said I should go to Tanglewood, that I should be invited to Tanglewood as a conducting fellow.

And that's where it really started to happen.

I went to Tanglewood as a conducting fellow and associate fellow focused in opera.

But I got to conduct the big student orchestra, you know, and I thought that Leonard Bernstein was going to be the teacher that summer, but that summer, he wasn't because of his schedule.

But he did come for an extended weekend.

And that's my first time I got to meet Leonard Bernstein, who I later on went on to have a fantastic musical association with him.

- You conducted the debut of A Quiet Place.

- Of A Quiet Place, and so, that summer, I remember he came and he wanted to see all of us conduct.

And so, I ran into the music store and bought the Egmont overture, learned it overnight, and stood up the next day and conducted it.

And the next day, he gave us a master class.

I'll never forget.

He got to me.

He was clairvoyant, you know.

I mean, he was really, he was so smart.

And he got to me and he said, and of course, you know, I'd never, I think there were like eight flute players because it was the student orchestra, you know, in the shed at Tanglewood and, you know, and I never saw such a big orchestra.

And he said, "Have you ever conducted an orchestra of this size before?"

And I said, "No, most of my work has been in the pit.

A lot of theater work up until now."

He said, "Well, you remind me of myself when I started out.

He said, "I was Christ of the cross crucified.

"And Fritz Reiner would tap on the stand, "and he told me to sit down and he'd say, 'When you get over yourself, you can conduct again.'"

So, and of course, he still looked like that when he conducted.

But he told us all not to imitate him, because when he saw himself on television, he thought it was disgusting.

- Can be very humbling, I'm sure.

- John: Very humbling, so...

But he said, "You're filled with music."

And so that was great.

So, anyway, that started.

And after that, I, that summer, I learned that Julius Rudel, who was the general director of New York City Opera, was looking for the, a sequel to the Julius Rudel Award.

Christopher Keene, who was in that award, was been it for three years.

He was leaving, and there was a stipend for that award.

And so, he was looking for someone.

And so, they came to me and they said, "You should apply for that."

I said, "I don't have that kind of background to do that."

"Apply."

So, in the meantime, so I apply.

And in the meantime, I'm trying to save money to go to Germany to study German and begin my career in Europe.

- It's kind of necessary, isn't it.

- Yeah, well, I thought it was.

And then, so in January, there was a snowstorm in Buffalo, New York.

I had applied the previous July, heard nothing.

And then, all of a sudden, I get a call in Buffalo that Rudel is considering me for the Rudel Award.

And when I come in from this assignment from Studio Arena, you know, we'd like to consider me.

So I came there and he told me to make myself at home for a month, you know, carte blanche, see if it's a good fit and all of that.

In the meantime, I had booked a charter flight to Frankfurt to go to Berlitz for six months, hide.

'Cause on a previous trip to Europe with my dad, I actually took an audition for Christoph von Dohnányi.

- Another major conductor.

- Major conductor in Frankfurt.

And he told me, he said, "You're the best pianist we've heard.

"But if we, I'm hearing two more people, "and if they speak the language, we'll take them over you.

So go learn the language and come back."

And the agents said, "Go home, study German, come back.

We'll get you a job the day you get off the plane."

Well, I went back to New York and I enrolled in the New School of Social Research to take German.

It was three hours a week with a good bottle of Riesling.

- Just three hours a week, but you could do it?

- No, it wasn't, I realized it wasn't.

That's why I booked the charter flight, and I thought, "I've got to go total immersion, I'm gonna hide."

And that was February 28.

And on February 22, Rudel offered me the Rudel Award, which included a New York City Opera debut.

- Norman: Oh.

- Conducting.

And, you know, Domingo and Beverly Sills and all those people were the stars at the time at City Opera.

It was a really successful company at that time.

So do I go to Europe?

Well, it was kind of glamorous, the idea of going to work at Lincoln Center.

So I thought, "I'm gonna take this."

In the meantime, one of my roommates, Dennis Russell Davies, becomes the music director and star of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.

But prior to that, he was in Norwalk, Connecticut, working with the community orchestra.

So when he went to St. Paul, he asked me if I would fill in for him and prepare the orchestral concerts for him.

And that's where I really started conducting symphonic music.

I would prepare the concerts for him.

I had one of my own.

I remember I did scenes from Boris Godunov with Giorgio Tozzi, and so, then I'm one year in the New York City Opera thing, and I went to Rudel and I said, you know, "This is supposed to include a debut."

And he said, "Well, September, next September, you come, you can do Tales of Hoffmann. "

It was his production.

Now, that meant that you got to work with your cast in a rehearsal room, but no rehearsal with the orchestra.

Foom, you just go in, New York Times is there.

You bomb it, it's over.

So you got to have guts.

- No pressure.

- No pressure.

Terrible, right?

In the meantime, right after that, I run into Dennis Russell Davies on the steps of Lincoln Center.

And he said, "You know, this thing in St. Paul, "the chamber orchestra is really taking off.

We're going full time."

I think the Ford Foundation pumped a lot of money, like it was putting a lot of money into a lot of cities to have full-time orchestras and all that.

And he said, "I need a full-time resident conductor "to take the orchestra on tour and do all kinds of things, "and I'm flying some people out, and if you're interested, I'll fly you out."

Well, I said, "When are you doing it?"

And I remember he said it was, like, a Tuesday.

And I said, "I cannot do that when Rudel's in town "'cause it'll smack of ingratitude.

So I've got to come to you when he's not around."

Well, he was gonna be out of town that following Friday.

So I flew out to St. Paul.

Dennis said, "We know each other, so I'm not voting, you know."

And I had 20 minutes in front of the orchestra.

He says, "Between you and the orchestra."

It was my first time to take an orchestral audition.

And I, they applauded at the end of the audition.

- Great.

- And he offered me the job.

And then I thought, "How do I get out of my contract at City Opera?"

So I went back to him, to Julius Rudel, who was kind of a tyrant, you know.

It was, he sort of suffered from a von Karajan complex.

- Some of them are, aren't they?

Not pointing any fingers, John.

[both laugh] - Well, we may think we are, but the union straightens us out, you know.

So, anyway.

I thought, "I'm gonna have him play my grandfather.

I'm gonna treat him like he's my grandfather."

And so I told him what I did.

I sneaked out of town when he was there, and they offered me the job, and he looked at me and said, "What would your duties be?"

And I said, "Well, I'd have my own subscription series.

"I'd have my own chamber ensemble "of 12 baroque musicians.

"I would play chamber pieces with the orchestra and I would take the orchestra on tour."

He looked at me and said, "I would have killed "for a chance to do something like that when I was your age.

If you want it, I won't stand in your way."

I said, "Well, what about my debut in the fall in Tales of Hoffman?"

And he said, he looked at me and he said, "I want more dividends from you for that."

I guess he wanted-- I wasn't smart enough to realize I should have called up Dennis Russell Davies and said, "I can take this job "if you give Julius a guest engagement with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra."

But I didn't, so, but anyway.

That performance never happened because they went on strike.

The City Opera went on strike.

They would have given me something else.

But anyway, I went out to Saint Paul.

For two years it was, I think, one of the most joyous experiences of my life, because it was just pure music, with a great group of musicians who were so serious and so deeply into it.

And I got a chance to do a lot of Stravinsky and Haydn, John Cage, you know, you name it.

And then, so this is how it sort of all got launched.

So I'm doing, so that position with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra was paid for by the National Endowment for the Arts, Exxon Affiliate Artists conducting project for young, for American conductors, because the big orchestras did not know there were any American conductors unless your name was Jimmy Levine or something like that.

- Norman: Even then, really.

- Oh, terrible, terrible.

I mean, you would look at the summer schedule in Wolf Trap for the National Symphony, and they were either Asian or European.

There was not one American.

And those were the summer concerts.

Those weren't the big, you know, Kennedy Center concerts.

- Right.

- So I thought, "This is not right."

So I came up with the idea that the six of us that were in this pilot project.

It was Pittsburgh Symphony, San Diego Symphony, National Symphony, you know, all these different orchestras, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, that we should do an exchange program between... - A really good idea.

- ...you know, the different orchestras so that people would get to know us.

So, they went for that.

And my exchange was with the Pittsburgh Symphony.

So, and William Steinberg was the conductor and he was just leaving.

And they were, they had just hired Andre Prévin to be the music director, so anyway, I went there, and I'll never forget because I started conducting, and they played a full quarter note behind the beat.

So if you wanted them to go "Boom," they would go... "Boom," for that fourth beat.

I mean, that was how far behind Steinberg they were playing.

So after about eight bars, I stopped and I said, "Ladies and gentlemen, would you please, please play with my beat?"

'Cause I don't know how to do that.

You know, I wasn't trained that way.

And there was much shuffling feet, you know, and they did.

They played maybe.

And so that concert, so the night of the concert, the first violinist came up to me and she said, "You know, we're really enjoying playing with you."

But she said, "I just thought you would like to know, "it took André Previn two weeks to ask us to play with his beat, "not behind the beat.

It took you eight bars."

And I looked at her and I said, "Yeah, but he got the job."

So that was such a hit for me.

And I got these reviews that your grandmother could only write, you know.

In fact, the critic called me the next day, he said, "You're the first conductor to get this orchestra to play Mozart in six years."

He said, "That Mozart 29, was incredible."

- 29?

- Yeah.

- Isn't one of the big, big ones that you think of.

- That's one of the big ones.

Well, I did, you know, I didn't-- The other conductors with the big symphony orchestras, they were doing Rite of Spring and Firebird and all that.

Well, not Rite of Spring, but Firebird and the big pieces, you know.

A lot of different big, big orchestral pieces.

That I decided to do an introspective program 'cause that's what I would be comfortable with.

So I did all Mozart first half, and then I did Schumann's Spring Symphony.

And so, so the next day, the Affiliate Artists people meet with me and they say, "You know, we don't know what to do with you.

"There's nothing out there right now.

"The only thing we know of "is David Gockley just started this touring company "for Houston Grand Opera called Texas Opera Theater, "and he's looking for a music director.

If you want, we'll put you together with him in New York."

So I went to New York and met with him.

But the Texas Opera Theater, and it was like Peace Corps work, you know.

I mean, it was like going out to the boonies and bringing opera to people who would not normally have a chance to see opera.

But I met with David in New York, and he said, "Look, I'm not happy with the situation in my parent company.

"You show what you can do, and I'll absorb you into the parent company."

Because when he was 32 years old, he went from being business manager to general director of Houston Grand Opera at age 32.

- 32, that's 'cause it's quite a job.

- Yeah, and so he was a wunderkind.

And so I did, I went down there.

It was a shock to go to this pickup orchestra that was what was left in Houston.

I mean, I remember after the whole year, we did an outdoor series.

And I had this fabulous orchestra.

But they'd all come back in from Juilliard and Curtis and all of that, so.

So, but the first year, I mean, it was, coming from the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, I mean, it was a huge adjustment.

But around February that first year, we had a little hiatus, and I came off.

And I was in Houston again off the road.

And they ran up to me and they said, "Did you know that Houston Grand Opera is planning on doing Porgy and Bess?"

- Oh, that's so, one close to your heart, isn't it?

- Yeah, I mean, well, you know, I mean, I'd learned about Porgy and Bess and Gershwin, of course, as a child growing up, I loved his songs.

And there was a woman who guest, Ella Gerber, who guest directed at the Youngstown Playhouse, and she had the exclusive rights to Porgy and Bess in the world.

And so, and when I'm in my freshman year, I went to see a performance of it at City Center with Julius Rudel conducting and Cab Calloway playing Sportin' Life.

- Oh, cool.

- And so, and I was just, I mean, that was me, you know?

I mean, I did all those Broadway shows.

I did all this classical music.

There was that fusion, and I thought, I'm...

So I did the classic thing.

I went to David Gockley.

I threw open his office door unannounced, and I said to David, I said, "I hear you're doing Porgy and Bess."

He said, "That's right."

I said, "Do you have a conductor yet?"

"No."

I said, "Well, you should hire me."

And he said, "Why?"

I said, "Well, "I'm the best musical-comedy conductor in the business, "but I don't want anybody to know it because I'm pursuing a classical career."

"And can you do jazz?"

"Oh, sure," you know.

So he takes me back to the coaching room and he puts on-- so, Lorin Maazel had just recorded the first urtext recording of Porgy and Bess the year before, 1975, which won the Grammy for the best opera recording.

And he takes me back, and he puts the needle on Florence Quivar singing "My Man's Gone Now."

And he pokes me in the shoulder.

He says, "Can you do better than that?"

But you had to know David Gockley, who was kind of a unique person.

So I said, "Well, "I don't know that I could do better than that, but I wouldn't do it that way because--" I said, "I don't hear any of the jazz that's informing the piece from Maazel."

- So easy to lose that, isn't it?

Even in something like, you know, Rhapsody in Blue, it's easy to lose track of what it really sounded like in Gershwin's time.

- John: Yeah, exactly.

And so he hired me.

Then I went to New York.

I was guest conducting at the Juilliard, and I was working with this director, Jack O'Brien, who this past year won Lifetime Achievement award from the Tony Awards for his hit shows on Broadway.

But anyway, I sort of launched his Broadway career because he, we hired him to direct it.

And I remember I took him out to dinner and I said, "What would you do if you had a chance to direct Porgy and Bess?"

And without losing a beat, he said, "Give it back to the people it was written for."

And that's what it had, it had strayed from that.

- Because Gershwin had immersed himself when he wrote it.

Went down to Folly Island in South Carolina and just, like, spent much of a summer just immersed in the music.

- And it was very important to him with that all-Black cast in 1935, that he get it right.

Back in 1935, Rouben Mamoulian, who was the original stage director, realized that he didn't, he knew nothing about Black culture, but he went and he studied too, and he threw out all of his direction, and he made it so that the cast was really proud of representing themselves and their culture on that stage.

And George, I mean, that was what he was all about.

So Jack and I, you know, we, there was, I mean, I don't like to put the other stage director down, but there was only one person.

The problem is that Porgy was in the hands of one stage director in the world, 'cause the Gershwins kept such a, you know.

They didn't let that movie out for a long time.

They kept such a tight rein on everything.

- They did, yeah.

- So the significance of this production, for the bicentennial of the country, because that's the reason why we were doing it.

The Metropolitan Opera turned it down because they already had a full-time chorus, so they would have had to hire a second 60-voice chorus.

So they said, "No."

We didn't have those kinds of restrictions.

So David Gockley said, "Yes."

So we did it, and it was the bicentennial.

And we hired a Black choreographer who had her own dance company, Mabel Robinson.

We hired an African-American production stage manager.

And then when we, and we, we did it first as an equity company so, because you, now opera companies can do Porgy and Bess in whatever town they wanna do it because it seems to be a good resource of Black singers to create choruses and all of that.

But we went out on an equity thing, and we heard, like, 500 singers in New York, and there was a number of singers who would come up who had currently been in the famous production that Leontyne Price and William Warfield went to Russia with.

And they were angry about the production because they felt it did not represent their culture.

That it was being-- - Norman: Even Leontyne Price?

- Yeah.

- Mm-hmm.

- And so, I remember Earl Baker, this bass, tall bass came up and he said, "Is that woman directing?"

We said, "No, we're having a new stage director."

"All right, I'll sing."

[Norman chuckles] That's, and so...

But I remember that first day of rehearsal.

I walked into that room.

And there was 38 African American singers in front of me.

There was not a smile on anyone's face.

- Norman: There's our cast here, by the way, posing in Washington.

- John: Yeah, that's them.

And, that's them, and we were getting ready to do Wolf Trap.

And so I remember that day.

And I started conducting.

And at the end of the first break, it was like a love affair.

They saw that I understood the music, that I wanted their spirit and soul to come through in this music.

And that's, and Jack, the same thing when he directed.

And shortly after that, we recorded it.

- Norman: Here we are, here you are at the RCA Studios in New York.

- John: RCA Studios in New York.

- Norman: In 1978.

- John: Right, and that was really exciting.

You know, when you look at that picture, you see how spread out we were.

- Look where the percussion is.

- Norman: Yeah.

- John: Look at where the cast is way in the back.

And, you know, because in those days, that's what they needed to do to separate sound for post-production.

- Norman: To have the channels that well defined.

- John: Exactly, and it was great.

So we were doing that in the afternoon, and then we performed at night, and then that spring, I won the Grammy for the second year in a row for the best opera recording of the year, and everybody recognized that Lorin Maazel's, you know, the great playing of the Cleveland Orchestra.

And it was a beautiful cast.

And he gave us the first urtex recording.

But they all said that my recording, you heard the American idiom in it, you know, that it was so American.

And that's what it needed to be, the great American opera.

And so, and that sort of launched my career.

I mean, in a way.

I mean, I was really overwhelmed by the response to the piece, and we were the toast of Broadway, and then all the opera houses, all the tours and all the performances.

I didn't know any better to have an assistant conductor.

And that's when I really wrecked my shoulders because I was doing eight three-hour performances a week of this thing.

And it's a huge piece, very emotional.

- Norman: Yes, sure.

- But that...

So I went, the thing about that is I went from those two years at St. Paul conducting orchestral repertoire to starting to do opera repertoire.

And then my reward for Porgy was David did absorb me into the parent, and for the, his parent company, and then for the next 17 years, I had another year with Texas Opera Theater and then 16 years at the helm of Houston Grand Opera.

I was doing mostly orchestra, but occasional guest stints with symphony orchestras.

- And that remained pretty much the case that you, while conducting, for example, the Madison Symphony, also conduct operas around the country.

- John: Right.

And it was the opposite in Houston.

But it was getting more and more difficult.

I mean, the more I had success in opera and doing those world premieres and everything else, the more, you know, I always said, in this country, we get typed.

You're either an opera conductor or a symphony conductor, and very rarely can you cross both bridges, unlike Europe, because in Europe, it's all under one opera house, right?

The symphony orchestra is also the orchestra for the opera.

And if a conductor has a success in one, they want to see what he can do in the other.

Here, we have separate boards of directors who are trying to raise money.

So if you want to see Sergiu Comissiona, you go to the Houston Symphony.

If you want to see John DeMain, you go to the Houston Grand Opera.

I mean, it's just, I mean, each person trying to carve out their uniqueness that will make you want to contribute money to them.

- Sure.

So the result of that is we got typecast, and if you don't do symphony, if you spend your life-- I mean, if you don't do opera and you spend your life doing symphony and you've never been on a stage, or you've never worked with actors or been in the theater, you won't know how to do opera.

And if you only do opera and you don't learn the repertoire and you don't learn how to rehearse a big orchestra in symphonic repertoire, it won't work.

And it also won't work, because in opera, there's always that slight hesitation of waiting because of the distance with the singers.

And when you do symphony, bang!

- They're right there.

- You don't come down when that first chord of the Emperor Concerto comes down, then the whole world is gonna hear a cachunk, you know.

So it's different.

- Well, speaking of opera and the complexity of opera, you have a story about that most complex, perhaps, opera of all.

And that's Aida.

- John: Oh, my God.

So, after I had, I started out in 1976 at Houston Grand Opera.

So I think from 1980 to 1990, I became music director of Opera Omaha at the same time I was at Houston Grand Opera.

And we were heading into a 25th anniversary celebration of Opera Omaha, and the general director at the time, Mary Roberts, wanted to do a big production of Aida, but she wanted to do it-- so in Omaha, there's a racetrack called Ak-Sar-Ben, which is Nebraska spelled backwards.

[Norman laughs] And there's this huge racetrack.

And on the one side of it, sort of like the Bregenz Festspiele, in the same way, there is an indoor... ...amphitheater in the round.

It's like an oval with seats going way up.

And so we would do it indoors, of course.

And so we had, the one end of the oval, we had built this set.

And then behind the set there was a, this was a huge space.

There was a hole in the wall.

And back in there, we put the Omaha Symphony with me.

And of course, we had to use mics because it was huge, the space, and not conducive to, you know, natural acoustics.

And so, I was back there with a television camera on me.

The cast was here, and it was open out to the amphitheater.

Well, to sell tickets, she announced that she was going to do the biggest menagerie.

The biggest triumphal procession that you've ever seen with a real menagerie of animals.

So she had two circus elephants, one, 20 years old, and one, a year old brought up from Florida with their trainers.

She had a cheetah, which rode on the top of the 1-year-old elephant.

She had llamas, camels, falcons.

I'm telling you, just a huge array of, you know, animals.

And at the end, Radamès arrived on the actual chariot they used in the film Ben-Hur.

- Wow.

- Pulled by four white horses.

So it was pretty spectacular.

- Somewhere in there, there might be some singers even.

- I think there were some singers.

[both laugh] There were a few, like, 200 supers and some great singers.

And so, it was our time to finally, you know, we'd rehearse in a rehearsal room.

But now it was time to go out to Ak-Sar-Ben, actually be on the set, and add the elements, like the animals, to the thing.

So I remember that we had our first rehearsal out there, and the sound was totally inadequate, and we had some rock-and-roll sound guy who didn't really know how to do opera.

So I put a singer up there with him with a score, you know.

And then, so the next night I thought, "We've got to add mics and I've got to, I've got to come out and hear it."

And so I told Dale Johnson, who was the pianist who went on to become artistic director of Minnesota Opera for quite a few years.

He was playing the piano.

And I said, "I know this is gonna drive you crazy "'cause there's gonna be no conductor, "but you just plow through this rehearsal the best you can, 'cause I gotta go out there and see what's going on."

So I am fussing over these ensembles, you know, within the act, one act, scene two, and before the triumphal scene.

And finally, the stage director comes up to me and said, "You know, it's November and it's cold outside, "and the animals are lined up to do the triumphal scene, and they're gonna get restless if we don't do it."

I said, "Okay, let's just skip to it."

So we skip to it.

And we do it, and they come through.

And it's really quite stunning.

And, but it's not, it didn't quite time out perfectly.

So we said, "Well, let's do it again."

So they do it again, and this time, it's perfect.

So now we're gonna go on with the opera.

So the animals are taken off stage.

And all of a sudden you hear-- [imitates elephant trumpeting] You hear this, this horrific scream from an elephant.

And then you see people rushing out from, onto the thing.

And all I could think of is,"That cheetah's loose, and we're standing here vulnerable."

You know, where are we gonna go?

- Nothing but a baton to defend yourself with.

[both laugh] - Very good, and nowhere to go, because we're gonna go scrambling up, but the cat can go scrambling up the steps too, you know.

Well, the cheetah doesn't come out, but the 1-year-old elephant comes roaring out and goes to the other end of the arena and stops.

And then all of a sudden, we hear, among all these supernumeraries, "Is there a doctor," you know, "among all of you," you know?

And so somebody rushes backstage.

And so, what happened was that apparently a 20-year-old elephant is unpredictable.

So he got back there and he started picking a fight with the 1-year-old, and they had just gotten the cheetah off the 1-year-old elephant into the cage.

So the cheetah was in the cage, but there was a child on top of that 20-year-old elephant, and the trainer went up to get that child off.

And then the elephant took the trainer in his trunk and slammed him against the cheetah cage, actually bending the bars of the cheetah cage.

- We have no pictures of this, alas.

[both chuckle] - I don't think anybody wanted any pictures of it or there'd have been no show, you know.

So he broke his collar bone, but he wasn't killed.

So anyway.

So the general director said, "None of this can go in the newspapers.

We have sold out two performances, 14,000 seats."

They held 7,000, "On this menagerie.

And we have to deliver this."

So the next night, we had the final dress rehearsal.

It was fine, but they decided that there was not good enough communication between the stage management and the front of the house should anything go wrong.

So they needed to create, you know, some communication and hang some wires and all that.

So they did that.

So opening night, I'm in my hole back there conducting.

And I mean, I've got this headset on and I can hear the singers go, [inhales] "Che..." you know, I could hear really, really well.

And I put a live conductor out there so that he could give cues.

And, so, it's going really well, and I get to the end of the first act and people come up to me and they say, "Boy, are you cool under pressure."

And I said, "What do you mean?"

And they said, "Well, when the triumphal march started, "the 1-year-old elephant with the cheetah on top, "they hung a wire to communicate with the stage manager too low, "and it got caught in the cheetah's neck.

"And he fell off the elephant.

The elephant got spooked and ran out into the audience."

It's packed, of course.

And he heads straight for the people in wheelchairs.

And he's a circus elephant, though.

And they bumped up the lights and he saw all the people, and he stopped in his tracks and bowed.

[Norman laughs] So, and I don't know anything.

I don't know any of this is going on.

So I just keep conducting.

And then, and that's why they said, "Boy, are you cool under pressure."

And so, and the show went on.

And on the Sunday performance, CBS covered that performance, and we brought the lights up so that there'd be no spooking of the animals.

And so we survived.

But that's the story of-- I think ever since that production, you do not see many, if any productions of Aida with live animals anymore.

- Because that, of course, that was kind of the traditional way to do it, going all the way back to Cairo in 1871.

- John: Oh, absolutely.

- And so they were kind of necessary.

But as you say, unpredictable.

- John: It's dangerous.

- Particularly the 1-year-olds.

- [laughs] Yeah, right.

- True of 1-year-olds in any audience, I suppose.

- Exactly, well, that was quite a memory.

[laughs] - Now, you...

I wish we had time for more of those wonderful stories, but I know that an important part of your career was working with Leonard Bernstein.

- Right, well, you know, we had a series of...

So David Gockley was very committed to doing new works.

And so, we had world premieres by Carlisle Floyd that I did.

We had John Adams' Nixon in China, and that was a real baptism for me to get involved with.

And Philip Glass to get involved with minimalist music.

So I did the American premiere of Akhnaten of Philip Glass, and then the world premiere of Nixon in China.

And, but what happened was, Lenny came to see my Porgy on Broadway, and that would have been the first time that we ever had any face-to-face contact since that master class, you know, in 1971, in Tanglewood.

And now it's 1976, and he comes backstage and he says, [As Leonard Bernstein] "I waited 40 years "to hear this piece done this way.

"You've done it.

I don't have to."

So he liked me.

So then, I think, what happened after that was a major revival of West Side Story with all the original creators, Steve Sondheim, Arthur Laurents, Jerome Robbins, and Lenny.

And Debbie Allen won the Tony in that production.

I was the musical director.

He asked me if I would be musical director, and Houston Grand Opera gave me 15 weeks, five, five, and five to do the show, and do the first five weeks of the run on Broadway.

So that's what I worked, started working really closely with Lenny, and a lot of insights.

I mean, that's what I got to go to the Dakotas.

And so, when I saw the film this year, Lenny, you know, the Maestro film, and they went into the Dakotas.

And I remember that's exactly how that apartment looked.

You know, and... - In New York.

- In New York, that where John Lennon was killed in front, you know, where Yoko Ono lived.

And Lauren Bacall lived in that building.

- Norman: A lot of famous people lived there once.

- And Lenny had a huge apartment.

I remember there was a couple harpsichords and a grand piano and a gorgeous library and was really quite wonderful.

And so, I mean, I won't get into all the stuff, but my favorite part of all of that was...

The, it was, all those creators had become now big stars in their own time.

Jerome Robbins, Sondheim, you know, at this point, you know, they're all having big, big careers, big successes.

So now they all have to go back to 1957, you know?

And Lenny was always the bull in the china closet.

Lenny would give notes on stuff that was none of his-- costumes, makeup, everything, you know.

So we'd be, we were out of town in Miami previewing the show, getting ready to come to Broadway, and...

So Lenny and I were walking home one night and he said... Well, actually, Jerome Robbins stopped taking his notes, had the assistant director take it.

The assistant director stopped taking his notes.

Had the gofer take it.

- Too much to keep up with.

- So everybody was walking out on Lenny, you know.

And so he looked at me and he said, "You think I don't see that they don't wanna take my notes at the end of these previews and they all leave?"

He said, "You know why?

They're jealous."

I said, "What do you mean, jealous?"

He said, "Think about it.

"Next week, when we open, on Wednesday, "on Thursday morning, "what's that newspaper gonna say?

"'Last night, Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story .'

"So when's the last time you went to the Met "and they were reviving Aida, "and the next day, the newspaper said, 'Last night, Ghislanzoni's Aida was revived at the Met?'"

He said, "It's all about the composer."

So that was that.

- Well, yeah, he had a point.

- Then the next thing.

So then, we would go every year to Sondheim to ask him if he would give us an opera, but he said he didn't write operas.

That he couldn't be on, he couldn't have just two dress rehearsals and open.

He needed a month in Boston to get all the jokes right.

But Lenny accepted a commission to write A Quiet Place.

And so, there were three workshops in New York which we attended but didn't participate in.

And Lenny got nervous that I didn't participate.

Well, we didn't even have the music yet.

I'm gonna make myself important and talk about something I don't even know?

But we observed, and he actually, and Stephen Wadsworth, who's the librettist, they made their own changes.

They didn't really come to us and say, "What did you think?"

They wanted it for themselves.

And we just observed.

So anyway, David Gockley, Lenny was-- I remember we were at Tanglewood when he came out that summer, and I think we were doing the Missa solemnis, and he wasn't happy with us singing in the chorus.

And the two and a half hours of the rehearsal was over.

And he said, "Well, I'm not done yet.

"Just bring donuts and coffee for the entire orchestra and chorus."

I mean, like the Red Seas parted him, whatever he wanted.

So all we could imagine that he was gonna come down here at Houston Grand Opera and bankrupt us.

So David Gockley said to me, "Why don't you talk to him "and see if you could get him to agree "that we'll give him an half an hour overtime?

We'll make every rehearsal a three-hour rehearsal."

And that's two different operas, Trouble in Tahiti and A Quiet Place, right?

'Cause Trouble in Tahiti was-- - Norman: Two short ones.

- The short one, and A Quiet Place is a sequel to Trouble in Tahiti.

So I learned something about Lenny.

So I called him on the phone and we started making arrangements, and he said, "So when's the first day of rehearsal?"

I said, "Well, you know, like May 2 or something like that."

And he said, "Well-..." I said, "No, no, no.

I don't want you to come for a week."

I said, "If you come, you're gonna do those rehearsals, "and I will stand on the side and watch you.

"And I will never own the piece.

"So I'm gonna do the music rehearsals for a week, and then you come and you tell us anything you want."

"So you want me to wait a week?"

And he said to his secretary, "Jim, make it for May 8.

We fly out to Houston."

And I said, "And then, "as far as the orchestra rehearsals are concerned, "we'll give you three hours for every orchestra rehearsal, but not one second more."

"I could have three hours for every rehearsal?"

"Yes, but not one second more."

"Deal."

He would always say, "Deal."

[Norman chuckles] "Deal."

So he comes out.

And we have staged, this is that photo, we have staged the first act of A Quiet Place or first scene, 'cause there was three giant scenes, and there was the funeral of Dinah, who was the person in Trouble in Tahiti, you know.

And she's now, these people, these two characters are fashioned after Lenny's parents.

- Oh, that's right, I remember that.

- You know, and so-- - Yeah, in Trouble in Tahita.

- So she's there at the funeral, and the kids are 1980s neurotic messes, you know, and...

So, anyway, we're doing it, and Lenny's watching it.

And he's, [snorts] he's crying and snorting.

and he's, "Gefi'l.

[muttering] You're all so wonderful, I say..." [sobbing, snorting] Fine, I said, "Well, Lenny, it's 8:30 "and we have another hour.

"So we thought we would do, "we would sing for you the second scene that we're about to stage."

So we sing and he, [snorts, cries] he's crying and he's "gefi'l"ing and all that, and he's just so overcome with emotion.

He had two tiny notes.

Now it's 9:30.

There's another hour left to the rehearsal.

So I turned to the stage director and said, "It's yours."

Well, the stage director was not about to do initial staging in front of the librettist and the composer.

So they go sit in a bench on the side, Lenny and Steve.

And Peter Schifter, who was directing, goes out to the center of this warehouse in Chinatown where we were rehearsing this piece, and, in Houston, and he whispers, [whispering] "So how do you feel about your character?"

You know, he's whispering through this and he's talking like this.

So after 20 minutes, Lenny gets up, goes around, and the general director's over there on the side, David Gockley.

And he goes, and he says, "David.

"We should fire Peter Schifter and hire Stephen Wadsworth to direct."

And Schifter's directing Trouble in Tahiti as well, of course, you know.

And David turns as white as a ghost.

He calls me over and he says, "Lenny wants to fire Peter."

And I don't know, you know.

Moments like that, I'm pretty fast.

I said to, and I always would never talk back to David.

But David did not like confrontation.

So I said to him, "You stay out of this.

I'll handle it."

So after the rehearsal is over and all the notes are given and we're sitting there.

Lenny says, "So about, you know, the director.

"You know, where I come from, "all the direction is written down in the book, "and all he has to do is block it.

"And so it's clear he doesn't know the score, and he should..." So I looked at him.

I said, "Lenny... "We did the first scene memorized "and fully staged, and you wept.

Were you lying?"

"Oh, no, I loved it."

So I said, "Yeah, so Wednesday, you come back and we will perform for you."

No, "Saturday you'll come back, "we'll perform for you act two.

And then Wednesday, we'll do act three."

"Saturday, act two?"

"Yes."

"Deal."

I saved that director's job because Lenny was jumping off, you know, and Steven was driving him crazy because Steven wished he was directing.

And he's a great director, so it was really difficult.

So anyway.

We opened, opening night, it was a great, it was, you know, I mean, my personal experience with Lenny, I will just finish by saying, the first day the Houston Symphony sat to read the music, he came in, and he came in with Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal, who were the original arrangers of West Side Story.

And he came in with them 'cause they were helping him notate the orchestration.

And he was still writing the interludes at that point.

And I start.

And I put the baton down, he jumped up.

And I turned to Lenny, and I said, "Me first, then you."

He sat down.

And I said, "You know, there's an alto clef missing in the viola part that should be in E-flat."

And I'm going through all this stuff.

"Lenny."

So then he gets up and gives whatever little note he wants to say, you know.

But I ran the rehearsal.

So at the intermission, he takes me and he puts me in a hold like this and hugs me.

You know, and then we, then comes the second half of the rehearsal.

There's a really difficult Stravinsky-like "Sam's Aria," which I got the Houston Symphony to play.

At the end of that rehearsal, he called me over and he said, "You're the real thing."

He said, "You're a real conductor."

He said, "You know my piece.

"You know how to rehearse.

"I can't believe how fast you got that orchestra to play 'Sam's Aria.'"

He said, "I just wanna tell you I love you."

[Norman chuckles] And so, but he worked on such positive energy always.

He made everybody be better than himself, you know?

And people tease me all the time because I always talk about metronome markings.

But, so we were getting this show on its feet.

And he said to me one day, "When can I come in "and just go through the whole score and say anything I want with the singers?"

And I said, "Well, we have to get out of the theater for a Houston Symphony concert."

So he shows up with a metronome, and we go through the whole score and he says to us, he says, "You know, you're all doing such a wonderful job.

"But Maria Callas said "you should be able to close your eyes and hear all the acting in the throat."

And so we started.

And then he started checking the metronome markings.

And we had gotten so facile with the piece that everything was faster than he wrote.

So then he said, "Do you mind trying it, what I wrote?"

And then he'd say, "It's what I wrote."

I said, "You got it."

So he was someone who was a stickler for that.

So that was my Lenny experience.

- Norman: Well...

I'd like to hear more.

[John laughs] But for a future occasion.

And thank you very much for sharing just a little bit of John DeMain with us, and your long and very rich and varied career.

- Oh, well, thank you, my pleasure.

- I'm Norman Gilliland, and I hope you can join me next time around for University Place Presents.

[gentle music]