Danail Rachev and Roger Saydack
Next week – as in 5 p.m. Friday, May 6 – is the deadline to submit your application to be the music director and conductor of the Eugene Symphony starting with the 2017-2018 season.
Danail Rachev, who has held the post since 2009, steps down from the podium at the end of next season.
Meanwhile, here’s what the symphony is looking for:
“The ideal candidate will possess exceptional musicianship and conducting skills; significant conducting experience, including work with professional musicians; knowledge of a broad range of repertoire; strong interpersonal, leadership, and communication skills; vision, passion, and ability to make symphonic music relevant and exciting for existing and new audiences through both traditional and innovative means. Previous or current music directorship or comparable experience is preferred,” according to the job posting.
The symphony has been on a roll of sorts with hiring conductors ever since it took on a young Marin Alsop in 1989. Her hire followed a search run by Eugene lawyer and arts supporter Roger Saydack. She went on to such fame and fortune – Alsop is now music director of the Baltimore Symphony – that Saydack has run the candidate searches ever since.
He uses a remarkable, thoughtful method, both time consuming and expensive, that has led the orchestra in the past to hire Miguel Harth-Bedoya (now conducting the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra), Giancarlo Guerrero (now conducting the Nashville Symphony) and, most recently, Rachev.
In fact, you might say Saydack wrote the book about hiring orchestra conductors. His “Music Director Search Handbook,” a roughly 50-page document, is available – to its members – from the League of American Orchestras.
The handbook lays out a deliberate and careful process based on a search committee with roughly equal representation from the orchestra and the board/community. Spreading out the decision among constituents who are sometimes at odds with one another requires one unusual thing: consensus. That’s very different from a majority vote, or even from a unanimous vote.
“A consensus is a decision that almost everyone supports,” Saydack writes. “Unanimity is not required, but a very strong majority is. … If you require consensus on the many decisions in a search… your orchestra and board will be working in agreement at every step. You search will be a level playing field for the right candidate to bring you all to consensus.”
In the process Saydack describes, three finalists are ultimately invited to guest conduct the orchestra in public performances as part of their evaluation. In this search, three finalists are expected to be announced in September; they will conduct the orchestra in public, ticketed concerts in December, January and March.
Saydacks handbook also contains these gems of advice:
“As you move through the search process, stay focused on what you know about each candidate; don’t worry about what you don’t know.”
“The exceptional candidates are people whom musicians go out of their way to work with. They regularly get invited back to conduct orchestras. They seem to get asked to do an unusual number of premieres, or festivals that musicians play at for enjoyment… There’s a buzz about conductors like this that you pick up on when you start talking to people in the music business.”
“A clearly competent conductor whose heart isn’t in the job won’t be able to develop that special relationship with your orchestra and your audience that brings the music to life. And without that, in a few short years you’ll notice that your orchestra is bored, your audience is declining, and the red ink is spreading.”
Too bad Saydack’s little book isn’t required reading for the people who hire corporate CEOs.
The complete position description and application details are available here.