Wielding the Baton

Wielding the Baton

Michael Morgan delivers classical music—and more—to the people through the Oakland East Bay Symphony.

After 22 years at the helm of the Oakland East Bay Symphony and a lifetime spent leading orchestras, Artistic Director and conductor Michael Morgan, 55, thinks he might finally be learning whether he’s any good at conducting.

“Conductors only start to find out if they’re any good around 50,” says Morgan, a soft-spoken man whose matter-of-fact speaking style belies a deep passion for music. “When you’re playing an instrument, you can practice alone, every day. But a conductor can only practice when they’re in front of an orchestra. That’s the nature of the business, so it takes time to gradually evolve a vision for their music.”

That’s a vision not easily articulated; the world of conducting is one of innate talents and gut feelings, where a conductor must simultaneously understand the needs of his orchestra and the desires of his audience and be able to meet both with simple hand gestures. Morgan’s conducting prowess comes not just from his love of music but also from a deep dedication to making music relevant to other people—even those who might not share his connection to symphony music.

In his years as artistic director, he’s held true to a vision that the symphony should do more than play the standard repertoire of classical music. Rather the music should be a reflection of the city where the orchestra makes its home. To that end, he’s pioneered experiments in performing music from around the world and any time period.

Morgan’s philosophy as artistic director is to always woo nontraditional audiences. It’s a constant challenge to make orchestral music, often seen as elite and stodgy, relevant to a mass audience. There are lots of people in Oakland who enjoy traditional repertory music, but there are far more people who’ve never been to the symphony, who have a mental picture of symphony music as something staid and old-fashioned, who don’t know the full range of what a symphony orchestra can do. And Morgan sees his job as connecting with those people by finding the music that most moves them.

Whether he’s organizing the program to draw new audiences into the Paramount Theatre or visiting schools to talk to students about careers in music, Morgan has a passion not just for music but for helping others connect to music.

“Connecting with the orchestra isn’t that difficult,” he says. “Like the conductor, they want to make the performance the best they can, and a conductor can give them the atmosphere to better make that happen. The orchestra will pick up on that. Conducting is a combination of your competence, your music imagination, and just your humanity. It really entails a lot of observing and listening. When you’re conducting, you look around and see who’s in the audience and you try to reflect them on stage to some degree. You don’t just follow what they want, but you look at what they’re seeing. The audience gives you those freedoms.”

And while Morgan is quick to point out that orchestral music is always a joint effort between orchestra and conductor, there’s no doubt that the conductor draws the audience’s eye. At center stage, Morgan works hard to make each performance stellar.

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Born in Washington, D.C., Morgan was musically inclined from a young age, beginning piano lessons at age 8. He began conducting when he was only 12. Ever since, music has been an integral part of his life. In his little spare time, Morgan confesses to being a political junkie as well as a theater fan. (On a recent trip to New York, he took the chance to see as many shows as possible.) But Morgan makes it clear that music isn’t just a job for him; it’s also what he does for fun.

“I was attracted to the physical aspect of conducting,” says Morgan. “No one knows whether they have a particular talent for being able to communicate with gestures until you take that chance. Everyone has a sound they go after, and the orchestra they conduct will pick up on that. You can’t put it into words because it has to do with balances.”

Every movement of a conductor’s hand affects an orchestra’s sound and cohesion. (It’s especially tricky for the string section, notes Morgan, where every flick of the wrist gives musicians important feedback about bow speed and bow use.) It’s that challenge that drew Morgan to conducting as a child.

Morgan later studied music at Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and also at a summer academy at what is now called the Tanglewood Music Center in Massachusetts, working with master conductors Gunther Schuller, Seiji Ozawa, and Leonard Bernstein.

Henry Fogel, then executive director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., first engaged Morgan as a guest conductor in 1982.

“Someone told me he’d won a European conductor award and conducted at the Vienna State Orchestra,” says Fogel, now dean and distinguished professor of the arts at Roosevelt University’s Chicago College of Performing Arts. “I thought it would be nice to give a local young man a chance.”

Morgan immediately impressed Fogel as a skilled conductor, but also as a warm and enthusiastic human being with a passion for connecting people via music. When Fogel later became president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1985, he hired Morgan to be assistant conductor.

“He’s got the combination of things that it takes to be a good conductor—efficiency, clarity, a good ear, he knows what to say to musicians to correct it. He’s never rude, never displays any temper or irritation,” says Fogel. “As an assistant conductor in Chicago, he had a lot of community contact, attended a lot of teacher and donor functions. He’s extremely communicative and warm; it comes naturally to him. He knows how to talk to people without talking down to them. He’s got an incredible enthusiasm for communicating music, both to musicians and to lay people.”

In 1990, Morgan moved to Oakland to be artistic director for the newly formed Oakland East Bay Symphony. He also serves as artistic director of the Oakland Youth Orchestra, music director of the Sacramento Philharmonic, artistic director of the Festival Opera in Walnut Creek, artistic advisor to the Peoria Symphony in Illinois, and teaches at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. More recently, he has also taken over as music director for the Bear Valley Music Festival in Alpine County. But Oakland is the city that most captures his heart.

“The most attractive thing about the symphony is that it’s in Oakland,” says Morgan. “This city has an incredibly diverse population. My task is to make it all relevant to the people here. The diversity of population here makes it one of the most difficult cities to read. It’s a huge experiment and extremely multiracial, extremely socially diverse.”

That diversity means a symphony can’t rely on just traditional orchestral music to draw in a cross section of city residents. The city’s previous symphony, called simply the Oakland Symphony, battled years of financial woes before finally going bankrupt in 1986. (Musicians from the defunct symphony joined to form the new Oakland East Bay Symphony in 1988; Morgan joined two years later.) Among other issues, the old symphony relied only on traditional repertory, Morgan says, which contributed to its decline. While the usual symphony standards still have an important place in the orchestra’s lineup, Morgan understands that the symphony needs to do more.

Morgan’s natural rapport allows him to reach outside of traditional symphony circles to collaborate with musicians of all stripes. Jazz pianist and composer Taylor Eigsti frequently works with Morgan; the two sat together on a panel at Grammy Career Day in San Francisco and more recently collaborated on a jazz concert with the Bear Valley Orchestra.

“I trust him,” says Eigsti. “Symphony music is such a different language—jazz is more my own world. Michael is very patient when I’m not versed in classical thinking. He plays an important bridge between two worlds.”

Last year, Eigsti premiered his composition “Courage,” a tribute to the victims of the 2011 tsunami in Japan, with the Oakland East Bay Symphony, with Morgan conducting.

“Michael has a lot of experience working with other kinds of music,” says Eigsti. “His conducting is easy to follow. He’s inspirational, and people want to do well for him. He’s a conductor who will smile back if you smile at him. There are not too many like that.”

Morgan has made it his mission to constantly experiment with the symphony’s program. In one of his proudest moments, the orchestra successfully tackled Bernstein’s “Mass,” one of the most complicated and expensive musical compositions because of its combination of orchestral music, two choirs, and rock and marching bands. The symphony’s 2010 season opener featured accompaniment by legendary guitarist Carlos Santana.

Morgan regularly explores music from around the world with the symphony’s “Notes from” series. “Notes from India” included the world premiere of a work by Indian composer Juhi Bansal as well as a commemorative sitar concerto in tribute to Ravi Shankar. For “Notes from the Philippines,” Morgan commissioned Filipino-American composer Victor Noriega to write a new orchestral piece based on Filipino rhythms. The symphony has also featured music from Armenia, China, and Persia.

“The countries we feature aren’t random—that’s who lives here,” says Morgan. “There’s a significant population there to connect with. For example, ‘Notes from Persia’—there’s a huge Persian-American population in Oakland. It’s part of figuring out how to market to people who don’t normally come to the orchestra. The audience is always very enthusiastic. For example, when we did ‘Notes from the Philippines,’ people were very touched that we were showcasing music they knew.”

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It’s Oakland’s diversity that gives Morgan the freedom to experiment, something that he rarely found while conducting in other cities around the country. Even as close as Sacramento, Morgan finds that audiences are more conservative, more interested in adhering to the traditional orchestral programs. But the Bay Area—attracting diverse people from all over the country and the world—is uniquely accepting of the new and different.

“There are great audiences all around the Bay,” he says. “Look at the programming. The most successful concerts are all fusions of different kinds of music. You have to bring the audience along with you, so you’re constantly taking the audience’s temperature. You listen to people and guide them towards things while doing experiments.”

A big part of the experiment isn’t just attracting nontraditional concert attendees; it’s also bringing music into the community. Morgan helped develop the Symphony’s Music for Excellence (MUSE), an instrumental music program that brings musicians into 19 low-income public schools in Oakland to help introduce students to the potential of music. The program was designed to help students who might not otherwise receive any music education. In one school year, Morgan may see more than 2,100 kids during his classroom visits.

In 1995, Morgan visited Danielle Taylor’s fourth-grade class at Sobrante Park Elementary School, looking for kids with the talent and passion to join the Oakland Youth Orchestra. He saw Taylor’s potential and helped her take private violin lessons. Taylor eventually played with the youth orchestra for five years, including a concert tour in Italy. Now a violinist and violin teacher in Oakland, she credits Morgan and her time in the youth orchestra with fostering her love of music.

“It’s really because of Michael that I’m still teaching and playing music,” she says. “Michael held us to a really high standard, but I know him as warm and very supportive in education. He can simultaneously be very stern, telling us, ‘You do not chew gum in here,’ and the next moment he’ll say something hilarious to get the whole orchestra to burst out laughing. Michael always said funny things you wouldn’t hear from other conductors, like ‘You’ll want to groove to the music’ and doing a little dance on the podium. But we all knew his goal was to play well and enjoy it.”

In addition to MUSE, the symphony also provides after-school programs like class piano, after-school orchestra, and Saturday practice labs, and performs free concerts for over 5,000 students through its Young People’s Concerts. The semi-annual Young Artist Competition gives winning East Bay students a chance to perform publicly with the symphony.

“If you want orchestras in the future, you have to make sure kids today are exposed to music,” says Morgan. “My visits to schools are about the simple exposure to music and making the human connection. I want to leave them with knowledge that music is an option. It has to be. Because these kids are Oakland. And the orchestra needs to reflect Oakland.”

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The Oakland East Bay Symphony kicks off its 2013-14 season Friday, Nov. 8, at 8 p.m. with a performance of Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring,” as well as pieces by Verdi and Wagner. For info: (510) 444-0801 or oebs.org.

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Mike Rosen-Molina is an East Bay writer and a frequent contributor to The Monthly. His favorite music is krautrock technopop.

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Margaretta K. Mitchell is a nationally known artist and professional photographer, author, and educator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. To explore the possibility of Mitchell shooting a portrait for the web or print, an environmental portrait like the Bay Area Boomer cover, or a creative portrait of your fantasy persona: (510) 655-4920 or margarettamitchell.com

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