BOSTON POPS CONDUCTOR KEITH LOCKHART ON HIS LOVE FOR BROADWAY MUSIC,
THE ART OF CONDUCTING, AND THE BEAUTY OF TANGLEWOOD
By Dr. Joshua Sherman
Skip his inaugural season as conductor of the Boston Pops in 1995, Keith Lockhart has led 45 national tours and four international tours, delighting audiences with performances at Boston’s Symphony Hall, Tanglewood, Super Bowl XXXVI, the 2008 NBA Finals, the 2018 World Series, and the national broadcast of the July 4 Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular. Coming up at Tanglewood, Lockhart will lead the Pops in Broadway Today!: Broadway's Modern Masters, on July 6, a performance that promises to captivate audiences with rousing tunes from contemporary, TONY®-winning masterpieces. Highlights include Hamilton, Kimberly Akimbo, Light in the Piazza, The Band’s Visit, In the Heights, and Dear Evan Hansen, among others. Lockhart, who is also the artistic director of the Brevard Music Center in North Carolina, sat down with Berkshire Magazine publisher Dr. Joshua Sherman to share his visionary approach to musical programming, as well as his thoughts on the evolution of Broadway and reflections on conducting.
On Conducting
Sherman: Thanks so much for joining us, Keith! Let’s begin with the basics: What do you think makes a good conductor, and what should an audience look for when they are watching a maestro at work?
Lockhart: A conductor is first and foremost an intermediary. They are an intermediary between the composer and the ensemble, an intermediary between the ensemble and the audience, and an intermediary between members of the ensemble. The original reason for having conductors was because ensembles and orchestras grew to the point where they no longer could hear each other. They needed some sort of common visual point of information so they could all play at the same time. Everything that a conductor does that is not just done for the TV cameras is preparatory, because if you're gesticulating to the orchestra at the point that things are happening, you're just mirroring them. It’s important to look at what the conductor is doing physically. There should be a connection between what they're doing physically and what the resulting sound is from the orchestra. If you can't see that happening, that may be because it's too subtle for you to pick up on. That happens sometimes in the case of great, older maestri who have incredible control over an orchestra. In those cases, no one can quite figure out why they have that control. By that point, it often has a lot to do with the size of the conductor’s persona. But if what the conductor is doing does not seem to in any way be in sync with what you are hearing, there is a core problem.
Sherman: When you are preparing for a concert, do you give your ears a break and listen to other music to recalibrate, or do you immerse yourself fully in the music that you will be performing at that particular concert?
Lockhart: I don't have the luxury of doing any concert in a vacuum. The week before the Broadway Today! show, I’m going to be working on a project down at my summer festival in North Carolina with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz Orchestra at Lincoln Center. Two days before the Tanglewood performance, I’m going to be doing the July 4 Concert in Boston. You have to focus on what’s in front of you, and the preparation has to happen before that. There really isn’t a possibility of immersion, but I do think that you can get too caught up in the product and in the procedure. When I arrive at any concert hall, I fine-tune and make adjustments based on what I hear. For example, a tempo I thought made a lot of sense when I was sitting at my desk with the score might be too fast for the words to be understood by the audience, so I make a practical adjustment. Generally speaking, I rehearse, I close the book, and I move on to the next project.
Sherman: Do you have any superstitious, pre-performance rituals?
Lockhart: I don’t really have superstitious rituals like other conductors may have. Seiji Ozawa had a particular part of the wooden frame of the stage left entrance door at Symphony Hall that he always used to rap on before he walked out. I'm more of a routine guy. I need a nap, I need a meal at a certain time, and it needs to be a protein-oriented meal. I also need to not be interrupted for half an hour before I go out. Some of those sacrosanct rules get violated now and then, but generally that's what makes it feel like I know where I am, and I know what I'm doing.
Sherman: How do you build a collaborative and respectful environment as a conductor with the musicians you work with, particularly when you’re working as a guest conductor?
Lockhart: As a guest conductor, it's kind of like a blind date situation. You walk in, you're introduced, you get some tepid applause, and within 15 minutes, most of the people have judged whether they want to work with you or not. The biggest compliment you can get from the players is if somebody comes up to you and says, “It is so easy to play for you.” That is the best thing anybody can say, because at the end of the day, my job is to remove all of the impediments so that everybody can perform at their highest level. A lot of times, orchestra members feel like they're on separate islands and playing a game of telephone. If you can make the players feel like they can hear each other—even if they can’t—that’s what’s most important. As long as they feel that your intentions are the right ones, that you want to make them sound good, and you want to create something that the audience will want to come back to, they will follow you.
On Life and Music
Sherman: If you didn’t work as a conductor, what other career would you have pursued?
Lockhart: When I came out of high school and went to college, I didn't have any role models in this business. I thought, “I know somebody must do it,” but I didn’t know how to get there. I actually intended to finish an undergraduate liberal arts degree in music and then go to law school. That didn't happen, which might be better for the legal industry or not. I did the next best thing: I married a lawyer, so we have great arguments. (Laughter) Looking back, now that I know myself a little better than I did when I was 17, I would be an author. I don't know if I'd be a good author or not. It would remain to be seen, but I love words. I love the poetry and beauty of the written word, perhaps even more than I like music, which is a hard thing to say. But it was a big decision when I was a kid as to whether I was moved more by Beethoven and Tchaikovsky or by Shakespeare. I think I would probably be in a lonely cabin, trying to write the great American novel.
Sherman: I’m sure everyone asks who your favorite composers are, but I would love to know—who are your favorite authors?
Lockhart: I love Amor Towles, who wrote A Gentleman in Moscow. I love Ann Patchett. I always like people who use language really well, like Milan Kundera, the person who wrote The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Sometimes for me, an author’s ability to say things beautifully is more important than what they're actually saying.
Sherman: Were there any career setbacks, or fortuitous moments, along the way that led to you ultimately becoming conductor of the Boston Pops?
Lockhart: The problem with conducting is that auditioning and nurturing conductors is very expensive. You can audition 200 violinists for a job, but you can’t audition 200 conductors, because you need an orchestra. In the beginning of my career as a conductor, I wasn’t being rejected because people didn't like my work; it was that I wasn't getting invited to the auditions. When I started teaching at Carnegie Mellon University after doing my graduate work there, I was considering taking the LSAT and going back to law school. I started taking auditions for tenure track orchestra director positions at music schools, and I got rejected by one position at the University of Akron. The committee chair called me and told me that I taught the best conducting classes, but they said that I was too young for the job. Coincidentally, there were people on that committee who were faculty at University of Akron. They also worked for the Akron Symphony. The next year, the Akron Symphony was looking for an assistant conductor, and they reached out to me. I got hired there, and the general manager left that same year to become operations director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. They called me and invited me to audition, I got the vote, and they gave me the job. After I got there, the iris opened ever further, and I think it all started because I had made that one initial good impression. The principal horn, tuba player, and the flute player on the University of Akron staff played a huge role in moving my career forward towards the Boston Pops. When people believe in you and say good things about you, you can be invited to a bigger stage.
Sherman: You’ve worked with countless talented artists over the years. Are there any musical collaborations that are still on your wish list?
Lockhart: The person whom I always thought should do the Fourth of July at Tanglewood is “The Boss," Bruce Springsteen. We could just put him on stage, and my job would be done.
Sherman: Bradley Cooper recently portrayed Leonard Bernstein. If a movie were made about your life, what movie star would you want to play you?
Lockhart: Hugh Grant. There's enough of a physical resemblance, and he has an intelligent demeanor and an approachable, everyday manner about him that I think would work if he played me in a movie. Plus, I like the accent.
On Broadway Today! and Tanglewood
Sherman: How did the Broadway Today!: Broadway’s Modern Masters program come together?
Lockhart: I've always been a huge Broadway fan. I love the combination of words, storytelling, and music. When I came to Boston, I was able to do things like collaborate with Stephen Sondheim, which was really a great thrill. I got to know a lot of really wonderful Broadway performers, and I’ve been lucky to collaborate with a whole catalogue of the greatest people who've been on Broadway in this last half century. Recently, I was talking with my friend, Jason Danieley, and we realized that we hadn’t showcased the work of the next generation of Broadway composers who were influenced by Sondheim, such as Jason Robert Brown, Adam Guettel, Jeanine Tesori, and Lin-Manuel Miranda. I told Jason that I wanted to find a way to put that music onstage, and he enthusiastically agreed and came on board as director. That’s how we got to where we are today.
Sherman: How did you and Jason go about selecting the music?
Lockhart: I gave Jason a lot of the lead on this but suggested some gentle guidance because he had very specific ideas of things he wanted to highlight. One of the things we particularly wanted to look at was the diversification of Broadway voices. Jeanine Tesori then became an obvious choice with Kimberly Akimbo, and David Yazbek brought a very different sort of base sound and base culture to Broadway musicals with The Band’s Visit. I've also admired Adam Guettel and Jason Robert Brown's work for quite some time. Of course, we couldn’t do it without Lin-Manuel Miranda, because that sound has been so transformative and everybody has seen that show. We’re touching on Hamilton, but we're also doing songs from In the Heights, which I think is a glorious musical.
Sherman: Do you believe that the sound of the 21st century musical has been defined?
Lockhart: I'm not sure it's been defined yet. What the Broadway musicals that we're presenting all have in common is that they're really great artistic statements by very talented people. They go in a lot of different directions, and they use a lot of different musical voices. I think that maybe what defines 21st century musicals is the fact that the field has been opened up. We're only two decades in, so it's difficult to draw those conclusions.
Sherman: Do you remember your first Tanglewood show?
Lockhart: Well, it's funny, I had a little history with Tanglewood before I came to Boston. I went to high school in Dutchess County, New York, and I used to get together with friends, load up a car, and drive up there for concerts. As an audience member, I was impressed by the immensity of that lawn, the giant Berkshire cottages, and the sweeping views around it. It seemed a very cool place to make music. Who would have thought that a few years later, I would be there? I don’t remember my first performance there. I do remember the first performance I heard there after I got the job, because it allowed me to keep everybody's ages straight. They had a BSO celebration of birthdays, and Yo Yo Ma was 40, Itzhak Perlman was 50, and Seiji Ozawa was 60. I remember seeing all of the luminaries in addition to those three just wandering around the grounds, and I remember thinking, “Wow, this is where classical music spends the summer.”
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