Kenneth Woods Conductor
May 27, 2005
Rose City Chamber Orchestra to host international conducting workshop
www.rosecityworkshop.org
The Rose City Chamber Orchestra, a player-run, professional chamber
orchestra based in Portland, OR will host a new, international training
institute for aspiring professional conductors this August 4th-7th in
Portland. Internationally renowned conductor, pedagogue and recording
artist Benjamin Zander joins the RCCO’s own Principal Guest Conductor,
Kenneth Woods and head of the conducting program at the Hartt School of
Music, Christopher Zimmerman as members of an internationally acknowledged
faculty. Applications are being accepted now through June 17th.
Young conductors from throughout the US and Europe will have the
opportunity to work intensively with the musicians of the orchestra and
the conducting faculty over a period of several days, culminating in a
final concert on August 7th, where all of the students will have the
chance to lead the orchestra in performance. Repertoire will include major
works by Beethoven, Mozart, Elgar and Debussy among others.
Workshop director and RCCO Principal Guest Conductor, Kenneth Woods, said
that finding opportunities for young conductors to work with expert
players in realistic situations is very difficult. “Most conductors start
by conducting their peers in music school, and, while they are usually
able to achieve exciting results, it is often the result of long periods
of rehearsal, lots of talking and the high standards of their fellow
students. Often, they get out into the real world, when time is precious
and players want to play, not listen to speeches, and they find out that
they’ve not developed a robust and sophisticated way of expressing
themselves through gesture and movement. Many others find themselves
working with youth and amateur orchestras, whose ability to respond to
gesture might be, shall we say, limited.”
“We’ve tried to take examples of many different types of challenges that
conductors face every day, from accompanying an operatic recitative, to
negotiating complex meters, to capturing subtle changes of atmosphere in a
set of miniatures, to starting Beethoven’s Fifth without a train wreck,
and to give them an opportunity to work through those challenges under the
guidance of someone whose been through it.”
Founded in 1998 by a small group of musicians who felt that their needs
were not being met in the greater Portland community, they decided to
venture out on their own and establish a small chamber orchestra together.
The goal of the musicians in the Rose City Chamber Orchestra was (and
continues to be) "to achieve the highest quality musical experience to be
enjoyed by both performers and community."
Benjamin Zander, Music Director of the Boston Philharmonic, has gained
international acclaim for his highly celebrated series of Mahler
symphonies with the Philharmonia orchestra on Telarc records. He has been
featured in CBS Sixty Minutes, and recently been the subject of an hour-
long biographical documentary on the BBC. In addition to his work on the
podium, he is one of the most sought-after conducting teachers in the
world, and his annual summer class at the Royal Academy of Music in London
has been among the most competitive to get into in Europe.
Zander joins Christopher Zimmerman, head of orchestral studies at the
Hartt School of Music, and former member of the conducting faculty at the
University of Cincinnati. Zimmerman has conducted numerous major
orchestras, including the Royal Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra,
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and the Slovak Philharmonic. A graduate of
the prestigious University of Michigan conducting program, he also studied
at Tanglewood under Seiji Ozawa and Gunther Schuller. Former Music
Director of the Bangor Symphony, he is currently Music Director of the
Symphony of Southeast Texas.
The workshop’s director is Kenneth Woods, who also serves as Music
Director of the Oregon East Symphony and a staff conductor for the BBC.
Woods served as an assistant on the staff of the Cincinnati Symphony, and
has also been a staff conductor for the National Symphony Orchestra in
Washington. He was a fellow in the inaugural class of the American Academy
of Conducting at Aspen, where he studied with David Zinman and Jorma
Panula, and a student of Leonard Slatkin at the National Conducting
Institute at the Kennedy Center. He was recently invited by the BBC to
offer a conducting masterclass with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales,
and in addition to regular broadcasts on the BBC, his debut in 2004 with
the State of Mexico Symphony, was filmed for Mexican national television.