Extras
Interview with Mallory Thompson
Check out my interview (plus the whole transcript) with Dr. Mallory Thompson, the conductor of the Symphonic Wind Ensemble and the Director of Bands at Northwestern University.
Transcript:
When did you realize that you wanted to become a conductor?
MT: Well, you know, like most people, as you probably know I was an undergraduate student here. And back when I was a student, we all came in as performance majors and we declared our area of specialization at the end of our sophomore year. But everybody had to take the same amount of lessons, had sort of the same standard of expectation and so on. I decided to specialize in music ed for my bachelor’s degree, and as a result of that, I took basic conducting in the fall of my junior year, which was sort of the time that people did that. And to be honest with you, the way that conducting was taught back then was horrifying. We conducted recordings, and you know, when you conduct a recording, you learn how to follow. You don’t learn how to lead. It was really archaic. I’ll just say it; it was archaic. But I enjoyed it and I went on and took some advanced classes. Actually, Fred Ockwell taught the advanced orchestral class and I loved that class! I volunteered to conduct every single day and I learned a lot. I really enjoyed it. Mr. Painter – my predecessor—allowed me to take his graduate conducting seminar one quarter when I was an undergraduate student, and that was really eye-opening. So that led me to decide that I wanted to pursue the study of conducting further. So I auditioned and was accepted to stay here for my master’s degree. Things turning out just the way that they did, through my job applications, at the end of that I had applied for a number of public school jobs. But the position that I was offered first was at a small college in Michigan, where my title was ‘director of instrumental music’ and I conducted everything, ranging from the concert band to the marching band to the jazz band to the college community symphony orchestra. So that’s sort of how that all happened. Or at least, how it started.
How did you get into wind ensemble conducting?
MT: Well you know, I was a trumpet player and I played in wind groups all my life. I got my master’s degree here in wind conducting because that seemed the logical thing to do. I wasn’t a string player. And one of the things I had learned in playing in orchestras was that it was sort of frustrating to the string players to have the conductor not really know what they were talking about in terms of bowings and things. And that’s where the bulk of the attention had to go. So it seemed a logical outgrowth for me.
And what about working with students as opposed to professionals? Is there something you like particularly about students?
MT: I love the openness. I love the enthusiasm. I love that they, you know… things are happening for them so fast. So eager to learn and their ears – especially here – the students are so smart and they adjust so fast that it’s really exciting for me to see how much I can get them to do as quickly as possible. How much I can help them to hear, how much I can help them to absorb. And then not just playing it right, but playing it with heart and creatively and understanding how their parts fit and sort of opening their view of music and then applying what we’re doing in say, a piece like David Maslanka’s Symphony No. 4], to lots of other pieces or orchestral repertoire or whatever. But it’s all just music, so it’s a matter of trying to make those applications and then hopefully, something that they learn playing in [Northwestern’s Symphony Wind Ensemble] is something that they can apply when they’re playing in Civic [Civic Orchestra of Chicago] or in New World or when they’re playing in the New York Philharmonic. Music Is music, and good skill as an ensemble member is good skill as an ensemble member. Period.
Is it tricky to find good repertoire for a wind ensemble?
MT: No. I’m just very picky. I have sort of standard rep that I rotate around every three or four years. Then I’ll take new things like the Maslanka and rotate them in. It’s not tricky to pick the repertoire. It’s tricky because of the rotation because I only have people for two concerts at a time, and I really want to create within the programming for those two concerts something that will be a good experience for them because when they re-audition, you don’t really know when you’re going to see anybody again. And you can’t just assume you’ll see them again a quarter after next because you might not. So I try to have a nice balance of chamber music – maybe the odd transcription, maybe something newish sounding – I have to juggle all these things making sure I have something for the saxophones and euphohium and the percussion and just having an interesting program for the audience as well. Because I do like to think about the audience. And so it’s more a matter of trying to create that really great SWE experience in two concerts. That’s the difficulty.
Do you think that being a woman has influenced your career at all?
Well it’s hard to say because I can’t compare it to anything, right? I think that it would be naïve to say that it hasn’t, but I can’t really say how it has. It certainly hasn’t hindered me. I mean, I wouldn’t be here if it hindered me. And I wouldn’t have been here, wouldn’t have been hired for this job at the age of 37, if it had hindered me. I think that I owe a lot to my parents, because they really made me believe that I could do whatever I wanted and that if I worked hard, that I would get what I deserved. As I think it has turned out in my career, that’s true. Doesn’t mean that it’s turned out that way in every career. I think that a number of people have had a much more difficult time of it than I have. And I don’t know why, and I can’t speak to their experience. I can only respect it. But I will say that for me, and also starting out as a trumpet player and as a musician, that helped because it was never really felt a problem relating with the people in the back of the room or knowing what was going on in the back of the room. Or you know, if you have to pound your fist once in a while, that’s never really been a difficulty. Although I’ve never really assumed there would be a problem.
There was a time in my career when I was fearful that the best opportunities might not fall my way. I was fearful that it might have to be half a generation later. I never ever thought I didn’t get an opportunity because I was a woman. Similarly, I never thought I got one because I was a woman. My feeling about that is that if you accept one side of that equation, you have to accept both sides. So if someone says, “Well, she just got that because she’s a woman,” then they also have to be willing to accept, “Well, maybe she didn’t get that other thing because she’s a woman.” So that’s something that early on, I thought, “I can’t go there.” I don’t have the energy for that, and I’m not going to play that game in my own mind. I’m just going to work hard. That’s all I have time for. I’m just going to work hard and do my best. And you know, love my students along the way and make the very best music I possibly can and learn as fast as I can how to be the best musician I can be. That’s what I did. And what I’m doing, I hope.
I think that for some women, it’s been an incredibly difficult road. Quite frankly, I’m fortunate. I have one of the top positions in the country – in the world – in my area of specialization. But there isn’t another woman who has a similar position yet. I mean there are other women at other levels, and they’re very talented. I’m saying that the positions they hold aren’t of the same caliber as this position at Northwestern. So I’m waiting to see when the next one breaks into one of those top positions. Then maybe we’ll have a trend. But you know, this happened to me twelve years ago. There have been other opportunities; surely there are other qualified women. Why haven’t they had the chance?
The question frightens me a little bit because I’m afraid it’s easy to become defensive or to have that become the focus as opposed to just the work. If I have been able to carry myself with some amount of grace in my career, that’s what I would hope for. That’s what I would hope I’ve been able to do.
Ok. I had to ask. I’d like to think that it shouldn’t matter at this point whether someone’s a man or a woman.
MT: Oh, it matters plenty.
H: I wondered what you think is the future for wind ensembles. Is it going to be in academia for the most part, or military bands, just where you see it going in the future?
MT. You have a number of streams of this. You have public school as training. And really there isn’t a top wind player that hasn’t come up from the public school band program. I mean, It would be difficult to point to one. So that’s important because everyone starts out the same and then people with talent just start to emerge from that. Then you have the universities, and this is again a refinement of training, places like Northwestern, or Michigan or Indiana. It’s a refinement of that training. And again I think … I’m not a real rabid wind ensemble person. I’m a rabid music person. There are some people in my business who feel like they really want to fight for the wind ensemble. I think that’s good – I think we need people to do all these different things – but to me, that sort of doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. It’s like fighting for chamber music. Well, it exists. It’s going to do what it does. Or fighting for percussion ensemble. You play the music, and then percussionists go do other things. And I don’t think that we need professional wind ensembles in every major city to validate what it is that we do. I think that we have music by the very best composers who have lived or are alive. I think that, especially at the university level, composers love us. Because we will take the time to rehearse their music. Whereas professional orchestras are constantly under the pressure of finances and their rehearsal schedule. And we take the time. And if I commission a piece, and it’s good, I tell my friends and the next year there’ll be ten or fifteen performances of the piece. How many world premiers by professional orchestras get one performance and that’s it? And not because it’s not a good piece, but because they have other pressures and other clientele that they have to appease in a way.
I have a great deal of respect for military bands. They serve an entirely different purpose and they still are able to play at an incredibly high professional level. So I think instead of trying to be like something else, we should try to be the best of what we are, wherever we are, and just play great music at the best level we can. And maybe I’m naïve. Maybe I’m not a great innovator. I just want to play great music really, really well.