Justin Han is amongst these competing within the Rising Conductors Live performance this weekend. (Picture by Lola Scott)
You would possibly name Justin Han a folks individual. A live performance pianist by commerce, he slowly discovered himself gravitating towards the communal side of singing in choirs — a lot in order that after receiving his undergraduate music diploma from the College of Georgia in 2017, he turned to a choral conducting diploma from Georgia State College.
“Being a live performance pianist is a really lonely route,” he mentioned.
Now his days are removed from solitary. Along with instructing biology at GSU Perimeter School, Han is a highschool refrain trainer, the director of music at Emory Presbyterian Church and the inventive director of the Athens Grasp Chorale. You may also discover him singing with the skilled choir Kinnara or doing musical issues like Sacred Harp-ifying the Sixteenth-century Thomas Tallis anthem “If Ye Love Me” on Instagram.
Han is also a self-described “ginormous jazz fan” who often frequents jam classes round city and has tried to get an Atlanta-based vocal jazz group off the bottom.
“I like baroque and jazz,” he mentioned. “They’ve an improvisatory side to each of them.”
Now he’s bringing his ardour for folks to orchestral conducting. Han is a part of the six-member cohort of conducting college students taking part within the new Georgia Pageant of Music’s conducting program. Led by conductor Michael Palmer, the GFM, now in its second 12 months, has chosen six conductors from a nationwide pool of twenty-two candidates by means of every week of rigorous research in conducting. After their classes with Palmer, college students “work by means of” the items with a stripped-down ensemble after which in three rehearsals with a full orchestra full of members of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Atlanta Opera Orchestra and different main organizations. In addition they obtain teaching within the enterprise side of music.
All of it culminates in a grand-finale live performance on Saturday evening at Saint Mark United Methodist Church. Every conductor will lead his or her personal musical section — bits of works by Haydn, Mozart and Dvorak — then orchestra members will assist organizers decide a winner.
This 12 months’s cohort features a vary of pros from conductors and academics simply stepping into the artwork type to extra established artists. The primary 12 months, solely two conductors carried out. Subsequent 12 months, Palmer hopes to develop the variety of conductors in addition to the variety of concert events main as much as the competitors. (This 12 months, the GFM additionally held a gap home live performance with soprano Greer Lyle and a conducting competitors kickoff present.)
Palmer has a protracted historical past in Atlanta. He first got here to the town as a 21-year-old on the behest of former ASO Music Director Robert Shaw. After 10 years within the metropolis, throughout which he helped develop the orchestra in dimension and stature, he left, returning in 2004 to show at Georgia State College. He based the Georgia Music Pageant final 12 months to current music in the course of the ASO’s down season but in addition to create a brand new era of music administrators.
“I wish to do what I can to move on a convention,” he mentioned, mentioning the conducting legacies of Shaw and the nice music director’s main affect, George Szell. “You need to educate it starting with the research of conducting itself and conversations and examples of what it’s and what it means to be a conductor and a music director.”
For the closing program, Han is conducting the primary motion of Mozart’s twenty ninth Symphony. Han carried out the piece in his highschool orchestra, so the nostalgia issue is in full impact, however he mentioned he’s additionally drawn to the whimsy of the music.
“I believe it matches my temperament very well,” he mentioned. “I significantly beloved Mozart as a child, and he’s my essential man now.”
For a younger choral conductor getting into the symphonic world, he’s cautious of prepping an excessive amount of. He doesn’t wish to make the music too educational by fussing over the rating. He as a substitute begins with the listener. He mentioned he tries to deal with the emotion of every piece and never “steering away from what the essence of the music is.”
The Pageant can be about bringing new voices into the Atlanta music scene, increasing the scope past the standard organizations, mentioned Logan Souther, Georgia Pageant of Music’s affiliate conductor. Souther began working with Palmer as a 15-year-old conducting scholar.
“There are unbelievable orchestral musicians within the ASO, the Atlanta Opera and ballet orchestras. These very advantageous establishments are essential for our metropolis however actually solely signify a restricted inventive voice,” he mentioned. “For a classical music scene to thrive in a world-class metropolis like Atlanta, there must be new inventive voices and plenty of voices.”
These new voices are good for Palmer’s strategies. He needs to develop conductors and music administrators as being “someone apart from somebody who simply stands on the rostrum and conducts,” he mentioned. This implies instructing the artwork of conducting but in addition displaying future music administrators easy methods to grow to be an important and vibrant participant of their communities — easy methods to weave the orchestra into the material of the town. In his estimation, many symphonies across the nation have misplaced their method.
“The orchestra went from being a robust voice for music and for the significance of artwork for the folks … to having grow to be a glitzy, skilled, big-time orchestra,” he mentioned.
Palmer intends to cease that showboat development earlier than it even begins.
“The younger conductor will get enamored in a short time of the desires of being a star after which being a giant presence and having the whole lot revolve round her or him and make some huge cash,” he mentioned. “And it’s so antithetical to conducting as an artwork. The purpose of the nice conductor is to get out of the way in which of the music.”
By molding younger conductors on this picture, exposing them to a terrific Atlanta conducting lineage, Palmer and Souther hope to make use of the GFM to proceed to develop the town’s classical scene.
“We solely wish to do one factor at Georgia Pageant of Music: make music on the highest stage,” Souther mentioned, “whereas fostering heat and intimate relationships between the musicians and the viewers.”
The place & When
Rising Conductors Live performance. 8 p.m. June 28. $25. Saint Mark United Methodist Church, 781 Peachtree St. NE.
::
Jon Ross writes about music and tradition. His work seems in Atlanta Journal, The Bitter Southerner, The Atlanta-Journal Structure and Downbeat Journal, amongst different publications.