Today we are IN THE CLASSROOM with guest conductor Leonard Slatkin of the National Repertory Orchestra.
“The NRO is a school and festival unlike any other,” Slatkin tells Krystal 93 news director Phil Lindeman.
He comes to the NRO from orchestras in St. Louis, Washington D.C., Detroit and France. This deep knowledge of the concert music industry draws young students to the NRO from all corners of the globe.
“The students, if we can even call them that, they’re very advanced, but they don’t have a faculty that teaches them,” Slatkin says. “They are led by the people who are conducting, and they have some mentors as well.”
Slatkin says the NRO prepares these aspiring musicians for that next big step. And they learn from the best.
“It is a bridge between leaving the world of academia in music and moving into the professional ranks,” Slatkin says. “It is the most difficult transition you can make.
NRO musicians don’t just learn to read sheet music. They learn the ins and outs of making music a career.
“How to take an audition, how to read an orchestra contract, (and) what to do when you arrive at an orchestra and you’re thrown in with people who have been doing this 25, 30 years,” Slatkin says. “These are the subtleties, the little bits of finesse, you need to enter this profession.”
See the NRO professionals-in-training live at Rainbow Park in Silverthorne this Thursday, July 4 at 10 a.m.
The evening performance Thursday at The Riverwalk Center in Breckenridge is sold out.
Thanks for going IN THE CLASSROOM from Heavenly Times Hot Tubs and Billiards and the Summit Foundation Bright Futures Fund.