Gemma New featured in SF Classical Voice for LA Phil return and Hollywood Bowl debut
Gemma New is making her Hollywood Bowl debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic August of 2021 (Photo credit: Anthony Chang)
Dudamel Offers a Step Up to the Podium
By Victoria Looseleaf
San Francisco Classical Voice
August 2, 2021
As Los Angeles begins to open performing-arts venues after a near 16-month shutdown because of the global pandemic, audiences are gratefully — and gleefully — returning to hear live music once again. And while indoor mask mandates have been reinstated in L.A. County, the beloved Hollywood Bowl, which celebrates its 100-year anniversary in 2022 and is the summer home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, is now operating at full capacity, its classical season already in high gear.
LA Phil Music and Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel is on track to conduct a series of concerts — five weeks’ worth, to be exact — with six former Dudamel Fellows also taking to the podium through September. (The Dudamel Fellowship Program was created by the conductor in conjunction with the Phil in 2009 in order to provide opportunities for promising young conductors from around the world. As Fellows, these musicians develop their craft through personal mentorship and participation in the orchestra’s education and community programs, as well as working alongside Dudamel.)
It goes without saying that making any debut with a world-class orchestra is exhilarating, if a bit nerve wracking, but being on the iconic Bowl stage, which has played host over the years to countless musical greats, including Jascha Heifetz, Igor Stravinsky, jazz artist Ella Fitzgerald, and yes, even The Beatles, who made appearances in 1964 and 1965, is decidedly a thrill. For New Zealand-born, San Diego-based Gemma New, who was named a Dudamel Fellow in 2014 and was to have graced the Bowl stage for the first time last year before the concert was cancelled because of COVID-19, it was a major stepping stone in her then burgeoning career.
“I was elated and excited to be named a Fellow,” New, 34, recalled, “because it’s such an amazing opportunity for a young conductor. The year before, in 2013, I got the call that Esa-Pekka Salonen needed an assistant conductor in Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, and I said, ‘Yes.’ I was [associate conductor] of the New Jersey Symphony at the time and they allowed me to take that week off. It was heavenly to hear the [L.A.] orchestra and play in Walt Disney Concert Hall.
“So to become a Dudamel Fellow the next year, I was enthralled, and throughout the three years, I assisted Dudamel for 18 programs, three months in total. They have so many great conductors and soloists come through, and all of the musicians in the orchestra are so sublime, it made me expand my horizons on what I thought an orchestra could do. I loved to listen to them play and also would be taking notes in my scores when Dudamel was conducting, because he has such great ideas.”
New, the recipient of the 2021 Solti Conducting Award, is currently music director of the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra in Ontario, Canada, as well as principal guest conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. She programmed her Bowl concert with Sarah Gibson’s 12-minute, warp & weft, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1, with soloist Behzod Abduraimov, and Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 3, “Rhenish.”
New said that she met Gibson, who, with Thomas Kotcheff, co-founded the piano duo Hocket, at Tanglewood in 2018. “There’s something for everyone in this piece that was inspired by [1970s feminist] artist Miriam Schapiro. Sarah’s a skillful writer and structurally it takes you on a creative journey. Warp and weft is a loom you use to weave and when you hear the work, you hear many styles.”
A commission from the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Gibson’s work premiered in 2019, with New an avid proponent of contemporary music. The conductor explained: “I always like to have music of our time on a program. I want audiences to relate to a composer living with us and have things that are relevant to our generation,” adding, “I have done this piece in Seattle recently and will take it to Atlanta at the end of the year.”
While rehearsal time at the Bowl is undeniably short — three hours — New, who began playing violin as a child and said she fell in love with playing in an orchestra at age 12, recalled that her first chance to conduct was in high school three years later. “I decided to be a conductor because I wanted to find a way to express music and I loved bringing everyone together with all the parts and what the music was telling me.”
It’s no surprise, then, that New feels that way still, no matter how abbreviated the rehearsal time. “I like to think of an orchestra as something so powerful and beautiful and captivating and it’s something we all need to do together, in harmony, to make it work. It’s the greatest example of a society that works well so that we can do great things.
“As a conductor,” New continued, “I see my role as being able to make decisions in order to unite and find the strongest interpretation and unify everyone’s experience and their talents, their strengths. That way we can find the best interpretation for that work. A conductor’s job is in the preparation before the first rehearsal.”
To that end, she explained that 90 percent of her time is spent reediting or “clarifying a set of parts, so that we’re on the same page from the very beginning. Whether it’s Schumann, Beethoven, or Mozart, we have a united front already and if we have a three-hour rehearsal, we can harness [the music] in a short period of time. I know how much the orchestra is used to this and I totally trust them. As a conductor, you want to make musicians feel inspired, free, and comfortable. It’s finding that balance and having everything in order.”
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