Guest conductor begins collaboration with IAA Wylld Arts Chamber Orchestra
Last week the students of the Idyllwild Arts Academy’s Wylld Arts Chamber Orchestra began a collaboration with conductor Co Boi Nguyen, conductor of the University of Redlands Orchestra.
The group of 11 students works together as a conductorless ensemble and is arranging the third movement of Brahms’ Second Symphony for the Music Department Showcase on Saturday, Oct. 24. Nguyen will conduct them for that performance, and the members will also be integrated into her orchestra for three performances, two in Redlands, and one in Idyllwild.
Music Chair Kai Potts-Smith said she wanted to give the members of the chamber orchestra more experience with a conductor, and so started the collaboration with Nguyen. “Nguyen and I were connected through Samuel Fisher, who teaches violin at the University of Redlands and for our Summer Instrumental Artists Intensive here at IAA.”
Potts said that the group worked with the Mt. San Jacinto College orchestra last year, but this was a new partnership.
This was the first time Nguyen had worked with the ensemble. She spoke with the Town Crier after the rehearsal. Nguyen said she talked more than usual to the ensemble as she communicated her interpretation of the music and the technical requirements to realize it. They worked on the third and first movements of Brahms’ Second Symphony, a piece on the program for the Oct. 29 concert in Redlands.
She spoke of the waves of the music, growing stronger, then dying back, and the complexity of Brahms’ sound. “They responded really well. I was surprised. They haven’t had orchestra with a conductor in front of them for a long, long time. I was surprised, they worked well right away, they knew immediately what I wanted.”
Nguyen was also impressed with the acoustics of Lowman Hall, a building engineered by the same firm that did the Sydney Opera House. “I was surprised, most concert halls I conduct in are dry as hell or booming… this one is just right. It was really nice, a luxury. You can afford to be really soft, and then explore different kinds of color, and it is still audible and not lost.”
Nguyen is a native of Hanoi, Vietnam, and still returns there to perform and give master classes. In 2002 she became the first woman and the youngest conductor ever to lead the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra. She is a graduate of the conducting programs at the Curtis Institute of Music and The Juilliard School.
She noted that she had two Idyllwild Arts alumni as colleagues at Curtis: New York Philharmonic principal oboist Liang Wang, and Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie conductor Benjamin Schwartz, who was a flautist at the Academy.
Asked about music in Vietnam, Nguyen noted the influence of the French, who colonized the country and established a conservatory there briefly about a hundred years ago. The present National Academy of Music is celebrating its 70th anniversary.
Asked if there was some difference between playing this music in California and Vietnam, she said that “in Vietnam a lot of the musicians and teachers trained in Russia, the former Soviet Union.” Russian composers were more familiar than Germans.
Brahms, she said, is a “difficult composer to perform … his music would not be automatically played well. A Beethoven symphony, even if played poorly, you could still hear the music coming out. With Brahms you can’t do that. He has many layers, one layer fades out as the other comes in, if you don’t do that you lose the music.”
Idyllwild Arts Music Department Showcase, Saturday, Oct. 24, at 2:30 p.m., William M. Lowman Concert Hall.
Fall Concert, Thursday, Oct. 29, 7:30 p.m., University of Redlands, Glenn Wallichs Theater, 380 N. University St., Redlands.
Winter Concert, Wednesday, Dec. 2, at 7:30 p.m., Idyllwild Arts Campus, William M. Lowman Concert Hall
Spring Concert, Thursday, Feb. 11, at 7:30 p.m., University of Redlands, venue TBD.
