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When this Juilliard grad takes the podium at the May Festival, he will become the longest-serving musical director in its 136-year history. That’s something to sing about.

By Kathleen Doane

Photograph by Michael Kelley

When musicians and singers gathered on the stage of Music Hall for the first May Festival in 1873, no one could have imagined that 136 years later the tradition would be as much a part of spring in Cincinnati as daffodils and Opening Day. And when conductor James Conlon took over as music director in 1979 at age 29, he assumed he’d stay a couple of years, then move on to bigger things. Three decades on, the New York native still wields the May Festival baton, even while building an impressive résumé—guest conducting all over the world and serving as music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Opera, Chicago’s prestigious Ravinia Festival, and as principal conductor of the Paris National Opera. Still, neither geography nor job changes have kept Conlon from returning to Music Hall each May.

Congratulations on your 30th anniversary. Tell me how you got this gig in the first place. You can hardly call it a gig, after 30 years. That’s like saying, “How did that marriage gig come about?”

OK, I was kidding. It came about because of James Levine, to whom I am still very, very grateful.

He was the music director before you, wasn’t he? Yes, that’s right. He had decided to move on, and he recommended me to then–Executive Director Steve Monder. Steve said that Levine told him, “I can give you a list of names but the first 12 are all James Conlon.” Some board members came to see me conduct in Miami, and I got the job. Honestly, I thought I would stay two years and then move on myself. I never imagined I would stay 30.

Why have you? In my life, I do everything for love. If you love choral music like I do, there’s nothing else like it in the United States. The city of Cincinnati should be rightly proud of its choral tradition, which should go on forever.

When you were putting together this season, were you mindful that it was a real milestone for you? First of all, I’m very cognizant of the fact that in the world of orchestras, it’s very rare for any conductor/organization relationship to go on for all these years. I think of people like Eugene Ormandy [who conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra for 44 years], but it doesn’t happen anymore.

What about the music you’ve chosen this year—are you highlighting any pieces that have special meaning for you? Really, it’s always about presenting the best we can bring to the audience. This year Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, the Symphony of a Thousand, is certainly one of the most magnificent works that we’ve done. We generally do it on important anniversaries. I think we did it on my 25th. It’s a wonderful piece to show off the great orchestra, the chorus, and invited choruses, which include the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus this year, also directed by May Festival Chorus Director Bob Porco.

And this year you have Patti LuPone in Kurt Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins. Patti and I went to school together. We go all the way back to Juilliard. We didn’t perform together back then, but we knew each other very well because I was such a devotee of the drama department.

So you must have known Kevin Kline, too. Yes, we all graduated together. They were in the first graduating class of Juilliard’s drama department. It was a great time. It was the beginning of my career, too, when I conducted a production of La Bohème at Juilliard.

Have you performed with Patti before? We did a DVD and recorded Weill’s The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. It’s up for two Grammys this year, so we’ll see. [The album won Grammys for Best Classical Album and Best Opera Recording.] Kurt Weill is one of the many composers who I am devoted to in the context of keeping alive the works of composers who suffered under the Nazis.

You’ve conducted a series of concerts and operas by those composers at Los Angeles Opera as part of your Recovered Voices project, haven’t you? It’s not a project, it’s a mission that I won’t live to see the end of. It will take years and at least a generation before it even gets in the air.

Do you have a family connection to the Holocaust that makes this particularly meaningful to you? None whatsoever.

How did it start? It was born purely on artistic grounds more than 15 years ago and grew as I became aware of the enormous volume of music that was suppressed by Nazi Germany. I’m talking two generations of composers born between 1880 and 1925 whose music is of great quality, and had their voices not been stifled, would be just as well known to us as Mahler or Bach or Mozart.

Give me some names. Viktor Ullmann, Franz Schreker, Pavel Haas, Walter Braunfels—composers whose music is unknown to even the most devoted classical music lovers. After all of these years, it’s still a victory for the Nazis. That has to be turned around. It’s the moral thing to do.

Are any of these composers still living? None.

It must be difficult to find their music. Well, yes and no. It’s all there, and many people are devoted to finding it. [But] a manuscript sitting in a library somewhere doesn’t constitute music. I feel obligated to perform their music, not as a tip of the hat, but because it is great music.

Are you primarily talking about German composers? Mostly German, but Italian, Swiss, everywhere the Nazis reached.

I assume the music took all forms. Yes, orchestral, opera, songs, solo works—all coming from a great variety of personalities with very different styles.

What is it about music that threatens tyrants like Hitler? I don’t think he was afraid of it. They were all Jewish. It was nothing more than anti-Semitism.

That’s just one of so many musical activities you’re involved in. It must take a lot of discipline to lead the kind of work life you do, conducting all over the world and simultaneously rehearsing, performing, and studying musical scores. I believe in discipline. My mother was someone who instilled a work ethic in the family. She was half German and had that Teutonic sense of discipline and the seriousness of work.

Was there a moment when music took hold? Oh yes. It was born like a stroke of lightning when I was 11. Actually, it was apparent to everyone else in the family that I was musical. My mother says that when I was very young and there was classical music on radio, I would just sit and stare and listen to it.

What was the music that sparked the lightning bolt? La Traviata, but it could have been any opera. Within several months my whole life changed. I wanted to go to concerts and study piano. It’s all I could think about. That passion has never changed.

So your work never seems like work. I can’t imagine any greater gift than being able to pursue your passion. People ask me if I ever get bored. Not for one second. I can’t even conceive of it. I am sure on my last day if I’m awake and aware, I will be thinking about music.

To get back to the stage at Music Hall, are there any May Festival performances that stand out in the past 30 years? You know, there have been so many great ones and great artists, I can’t really single one out.

Well, let’s go for numbers. What’s the largest number of musicians you’ve ever assembled on the stage? Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder in 2000. The orchestra was around 130 and there were at least 200 in the chorus.

How do you get such a mass of people to pay attention to you? You’re a pretty short guy. I don’t want to sound immodest when I say that many of the great conductors—Bernstein, Ormandy, Toscanini—were short. And to answer your question, it never occurred to me that being short was a problem, so it hasn’t been.

Only when reaching things on the top shelf? That’s an entirely different matter.

Originally published in the May 2009 issue.