Courtney Lewis is looking forward to many parts of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra’s season that begins tonight.
The season includes pieces everyone knows, think Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 and Symphony No. 2 from Gustav Mahler; classical works from Mozart and Haydn; and contemporary music from Gyorgy Ligeti and Julian Anderson.
The quality of guest artists continues to grow and opera returns with a Christmas production of “Hansel and Gretel.”
All that will help achieve two key factors Lewis wants to happen every season: What’s going to help the orchestra grow and what will the audience enjoy.
He’s also looking forward to something else in his second full season as music director for the orchestra.
The Jacksonville job is his only full-time gig. No more having to split time with the New York Philharmonic, for which he was assistant conductor the past two years.
He enjoyed the experience immensely, but it made for a very tough season. One where he worked 44 weeks.
“It was complete insanity,” Lewis said.
He’s working 20 weeks this year, which he admits is light. An ideal year would be 30 weeks.
That lighter schedule is giving him time to enjoy his new Avondale home, where he can cook and read and work out. Where he can actually take time to breathe.
“I’m finding things in my house that I haven’t seen in two years because they were locked away in the back of a tiny cupboard in New York,” he said.
The job of a musician, particularly a conductor, is to inspire people and make them feel an intensification of their passion for the music.
“There were times last year I couldn’t do that because I just wanted to hide under a duvet,” he said.
Lewis feels the inspiration coming back, he said, and it’s exciting.
Building strong fiscal and musical foundation
It’s the second season he and CEO Robert Massey have been working to rebrand and build the symphony.
Massey uses the analogy that running — and changing — an artistic organization is like steering an aircraft carrier. It takes time.
But he likes the turns the orchestra has taken. He believes it’s more relevant now and is reaching more parts of the community than before.
Much of last year was spent filling spots in the orchestra and in the administration.
It’s no secret, Massey said, a third to a half of the administration has been recruited since he started in January 2014.
There’s only one spot to fill — vice president of development — for which there is a national search underway
“We had a lot of transitions,” he said.
He used lessons learned from his and Lewis’ first season to improve their second.
They increased the offerings that were popular last year, such as the Sunday Masterworks concerts, which has grown from three to eight.
The Pops concerts offer a lot of diversity, such as Disney’s Broadway Hits, Second City’s Guide to the Symphony and Bond and Beyond.
Movie selections this season include “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Bugs Bunny at the Symphony.”
The orchestra also is offering create-your-own subscriptions.
The financial picture is strong, as well. Massey said the orchestra closed fiscal year 2016 in the black. Its budget for the new fiscal year is a record-setting $10 million.
Massey said the revamped fundraising office is “seeing very strong contributed revenue” and the organization is controlling expenses by maximizing efficiencies.
It’s all part of the organization’s discussion about continuous improvement, both on stage and off.
Acknowledging the improvements
Massey has high praise for the work Lewis has done, especially considering he’s 32.
He likes how Lewis has taken the ensemble and is getting them to play so well together.
“He’s a remarkable young man with such maturity in his technique on the podium,” Massey said. “I’ve never seen somebody do it that well.”
One area Lewis wants to see continued improvement in is for musicians to listen to each other more.
Doing so, he said, “creates a much more flexible and spontaneous way of making music.”
But he has high praise for the improvements the musicians have made and he knows how hard they are working.
Sometimes that’s even clearer with a little distance.
This summer, he listened to recordings from some of last season’s performances.
Things he felt were “enormous problems” at the time, he didn’t even notice.
“Your memory of what happened and then listening to what actually did happen is so different,” he said.
Lewis admits he’s “always very dissatisfied with everything I do.”
“That’s just being an artist,” he said. “That’s being good at your job.”
But stepping back and being able to hear the improvements and knowing that goals have been reached brings great satisfaction.
Even to a perfectionist.
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