Ross Jamie Collins and Na’Zir McFadden spent 8 ½ weeks in the intensive 2024 Tanglewood Music Center fellowship for conducting this past summer. On Nov. 29, they will both make their Symphony Hall debuts conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Two of the program’s four pieces, Jean Sibelius’ Symphony No. 7 and Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto, will be conducted by the BSO’s Music Director, Andris Nelsons. Collins and McFadden will also each get the opportunity to conduct a piece of their own — Sibelius’ “Finlandia” and Grieg’s “Holberg Suite,” respectively — as Symphony Hall premieres to cap off their Tanglewood fellowship experience.
Founded in 1940, the TMC is known worldwide for its intensive summer training fellowships. The 2024 conducting fellows said they spent their summer immersed in master classes and rehearsals with the TMC Orchestra.
The two fellows said the experience was an exceedingly rewarding one, as the program was intense yet inspiring.
“It not only taught me how to become a better musician and a better conductor, but also how to be more efficient as a professional,” McFadden said. “How to manage your schedule, to manage your sleep, manage the social time and still perform at the highest level possible to exceed what you thought were your own capabilities.”
“It’s so close, and it very much feels like a family,” Collins said. “And with the conducting program just being Na’Zir and me, just two people, it feels very personalized, the kind of teaching experience we get.”
Much of the conducting fellowship consisted of individually-focused training and practice, but Collins said the fellows came together with the rest of the TMC for fun festival-wide events like the annual Opening Ceremony and the “Tangolympics.”
The fellows perfected their craft alongside well-seasoned professionals — namely, conductor Andris Nelsons. Entering his 11th season as Music Director of the BSO, Nelsons has not only mastered the art of conducting but also the teaching of his craft to up-and-coming professionals like 23-year-old Collins and 24-year-old McFadden.
“It's totally a ‘eureka’ moment every time he fixes something or corrects something or advises,” Collins said about Nelsons’ demonstrations during TMC orchestra rehearsals.
“One of the most informing and maybe transformative things that I've learned and have changed in my conducting is how to let the music be free, and how to be vulnerable on the podium through your gestures,” McFadden said in regards to his mentorship from Nelsons, who he called a “superstar.” “You have to be the conduit between the composer, the core, the musician and the audience. You have to connect everything.”
Collins and McFadden will take their Tanglewood skills to the stage in a Symphony Hall program on Nov. 29 and 30 alongside Nelsons himself. The young fellows say they have been excitedly preparing for the collaboration with the BSO and their own Symphony Hall debuts.
Collins has found a special personal connection with the “very Scandinavian” program.
“It's a program that obviously very much resonates with me being half Finnish,” he said. “It's a very wholesome kind of moment for me to do Finlandia with an orchestra like the Boston Symphony. The … preparation for this has been very, very joyful, and I'm just excited more than anything else.”
“I don't typically get nervous for the music, because I trust myself, I trust the musicians and I trust the music,” McFadden said. “If anything, I'm more excited, and I am grateful to have this opportunity to conduct the Boston Symphony Orchestra. I think it's one of the greatest orchestras in the world, maybe one of the greatest art institutions in the world. … I am just proud, and once again, feel grateful that they felt something in me, and want to have me there.”
McFadden also commended the BSO’s “commitment to music education and ushering in the next generation of artists,” a notion that resonates strongly with both him and Collins, who attribute much of their passion and success to exposure to the arts from a young age.
“Many of my family played in the church ensemble, so I remember going to rehearsals from a very early age, and I used to sit in the back of the church, and throughout the rehearsal, I would sneak pew to pew just to get closer to the music,” McFadden said. “I remember being just infatuated with the conductor and the way that the person was able to embody the music.”
McFadden said he also played the clarinet, but knew from his early days in the church that conducting was his ultimate goal. Now, that boy in the pews holds a position as the Assistant Conductor and Phillip & Lauren Fisher Community Ambassador of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
Collins explained that both of his parents are violin makers. He was also first introduced to conducting at a young age, when Finnish conductor and cellist Klaus Mäkelä came to the shop for instrument repairs.
“Whilst we were fixing his cello, he kind of gave me the basics on how to wave my arms and do the Harry Potter stuff because I thought that would be interesting and that looked fun,” Collins said.
Collins gives credit to Mäkelä and his teacher, Finnish conductor and composer Jorma Panula, for their support and guidance. The career that he says began because of their mentorship has brought, and continues to bring, Collins to international engagements in cities such as Los Angeles, Taipei, Helsinki and now Boston.
As young professionals coming into their careers as conductors, Collins and McFadden spoke on the underappreciation of and lack of advocacy for classical music for future generations.
“I hate this phrase that classical music is ‘dying’ because it is so untrue; … it's not dying, it's evolving,” McFadden said. Collins echoed a similar sentiment, saying that, “the limits for what classical music can do are basically endless.”
“I would encourage people, of any age, if they haven't heard a symphony orchestra before, to try it, to take that first step and be active,” Collins said. “Buy a cheap ticket, sit somewhere in the back. And then, you know, it could change your whole life.”
In recent years, the BSO has been a pillar of advocacy for the arts for younger audiences and musicians. They have launched initiatives like the BSO Youth Concerts and the Bridge to Equity and Achievement in Music.
Noting his background as “an inner city kid” from Philadelphia, McFadden emphasized the importance of such advocacy and representation of classical music.
“It's not just for the elite, it's for everyone,” he said. “And if you don't believe it, come in our doors and let us show you and tell you differently.”
