Delaware County Symphony starts season with guest conductor
With the Delaware County Symphony’s maestro Roman Pawlowski retiring in May after holding the baton for 40 years, the organization is seeking a new music director.
Jeremy Gill is first on the docket for tryouts Oct. 18, as part of a guest conductor program. He got the gig while giving an impromptu lecture on opera at Neumann University.
Gill doesn’t remember to whom he was speaking — it wasn’t students, he recalled, so it may have been members of the community interested in music. He had been hired as an accompanist to a singer who was going to sing her father’s opera compositions.
Two days before the gig, the singer called Gill, and told him that she was sick, and unable to perform. Originally she had asked Gill to give an hour-long lecture about her father’s music. Gill didn’t know about her father’s work, so he spoke instead about the root of all Western music and opera, Greek music, which he had been studying at the time.
“It was actually a last-minute thing,” Gill said. “I threw something together, ran out there, and gave the lecture — which went fine.”
Following the successful outing, he was approached by Delaware County Symphony board member Bill Conville, who said the symphony was seeking a conductor. According to Gill, Conville had seen him conduct with the Atlantic Coast Opera Festival a few years ago.
Gill identifies himself as a composer, focusing on chamber and vocal music, and holds a degree in composition from Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., and a doctorate in composition from the University of Pennsylvania. He held a teaching position for the last five years at Temple University, where he taught everything from theory to aural training to composition, but recently gave that up in favor of performing.
Gill had been thinking about leaving teaching for a while, and that decision was made easier by the fact that he was not tenured, worked long hours and had to barter with the dean to get a salary comparable to that of other teachers’. And those long hours didn’t allow for enough time to compose.
“The reality for composers is that they always have to do something else,” Gill said. “You just can’t live on it. Commissions are generally few and far between. And you have to find a way to make a living in the meantime, [but] I was much more interested in performing, as a conductor primarily, and secondarily as a pianist.”
He’ll be able to do the former Oct. 18, when he takes the baton in front of the Delaware County Symphony at Neumann University’s Meagher Theatre for its first performance of the season. The symphony’s season is called “The Year of the Steinway,” referring to the “factory fresh” Steinway Grand Concert Model D that the university picked up last November for a cool $91,000, according to Conville.
And Gill said he took special care to incorporate the piano into his concert. Prior to Gill getting the nod to perform Oct. 18, there was a piano solo worked into the repertoire.
Stephen Campitelli will be performing Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat by Franz Liszt. So Gill said he picked pieces by Brahms and Rachmaninov, two of the best pianist/composers that complemented it.
“I knew that the Liszt was happening, so I wanted to find music that went well with that piano concerto,” he said. “Also, Neumann is celebrating the fact that it just bought this new Steinway grand [piano], and I wanted to pick music that either used the piano or somehow referenced the piano.”
He added that the piano part in the Rachmaninov piece is “pretty substantial and prominent.”
Gill had his first rehearsal with the symphony Sept. 14, which he said went well. And he jokingly said that while classical music is extremely unpopular, there are more local symphonies in the country than ever before. He added that he was extremely surprised to hear that there was one in a town as small as Aston, Pa.
“Classical music has never been the most popular kind of music — and I mean never,” Gill said. “But, at the same time, if you compare what’s going on in the classical music world to what was going on 40 years ago — there are more orchestras, there are more concerts, and the people I play with are all young, in their 20s and early 30s.
People like to say that it’s dying, and that the audiences are all 60, 70 and 80 years old, and when they die, it’s over, but that’s not the reality. There are lots of young people playing.”
On the Delaware County Symphony, “It’s a group of amateurs in the truest sense, which is to say they do it out of love.”
Jeremy Gill and the Delaware County Symphony will perform Oct. 18 at 3 p.m. at Meagher Theatre at Neumann University, 1 Neumann Drive, Aston. For tickets and more information, visit www.dcsmusic.org.
Gill doesn’t remember to whom he was speaking — it wasn’t students, he recalled, so it may have been members of the community interested in music. He had been hired as an accompanist to a singer who was going to sing her father’s opera compositions.
Two days before the gig, the singer called Gill, and told him that she was sick, and unable to perform. Originally she had asked Gill to give an hour-long lecture about her father’s music. Gill didn’t know about her father’s work, so he spoke instead about the root of all Western music and opera, Greek music, which he had been studying at the time.
“It was actually a last-minute thing,” Gill said. “I threw something together, ran out there, and gave the lecture — which went fine.”
Following the successful outing, he was approached by Delaware County Symphony board member Bill Conville, who said the symphony was seeking a conductor. According to Gill, Conville had seen him conduct with the Atlantic Coast Opera Festival a few years ago.
Gill identifies himself as a composer, focusing on chamber and vocal music, and holds a degree in composition from Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., and a doctorate in composition from the University of Pennsylvania. He held a teaching position for the last five years at Temple University, where he taught everything from theory to aural training to composition, but recently gave that up in favor of performing.
Gill had been thinking about leaving teaching for a while, and that decision was made easier by the fact that he was not tenured, worked long hours and had to barter with the dean to get a salary comparable to that of other teachers’. And those long hours didn’t allow for enough time to compose.
“The reality for composers is that they always have to do something else,” Gill said. “You just can’t live on it. Commissions are generally few and far between. And you have to find a way to make a living in the meantime, [but] I was much more interested in performing, as a conductor primarily, and secondarily as a pianist.”
He’ll be able to do the former Oct. 18, when he takes the baton in front of the Delaware County Symphony at Neumann University’s Meagher Theatre for its first performance of the season. The symphony’s season is called “The Year of the Steinway,” referring to the “factory fresh” Steinway Grand Concert Model D that the university picked up last November for a cool $91,000, according to Conville.
And Gill said he took special care to incorporate the piano into his concert. Prior to Gill getting the nod to perform Oct. 18, there was a piano solo worked into the repertoire.
Stephen Campitelli will be performing Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat by Franz Liszt. So Gill said he picked pieces by Brahms and Rachmaninov, two of the best pianist/composers that complemented it.
“I knew that the Liszt was happening, so I wanted to find music that went well with that piano concerto,” he said. “Also, Neumann is celebrating the fact that it just bought this new Steinway grand [piano], and I wanted to pick music that either used the piano or somehow referenced the piano.”
He added that the piano part in the Rachmaninov piece is “pretty substantial and prominent.”
Gill had his first rehearsal with the symphony Sept. 14, which he said went well. And he jokingly said that while classical music is extremely unpopular, there are more local symphonies in the country than ever before. He added that he was extremely surprised to hear that there was one in a town as small as Aston, Pa.
“Classical music has never been the most popular kind of music — and I mean never,” Gill said. “But, at the same time, if you compare what’s going on in the classical music world to what was going on 40 years ago — there are more orchestras, there are more concerts, and the people I play with are all young, in their 20s and early 30s.
People like to say that it’s dying, and that the audiences are all 60, 70 and 80 years old, and when they die, it’s over, but that’s not the reality. There are lots of young people playing.”
On the Delaware County Symphony, “It’s a group of amateurs in the truest sense, which is to say they do it out of love.”
Jeremy Gill and the Delaware County Symphony will perform Oct. 18 at 3 p.m. at Meagher Theatre at Neumann University, 1 Neumann Drive, Aston. For tickets and more information, visit www.dcsmusic.org.
