Dan: 0:00

I feel like what everybody knows about being a conductor is you wave your hands around. Talk to us a little bit about what's actually going on with your hands.

Carlos: 0:13

Leonard Bernstein was a great educator and conductor. He would say, you can learn the conducting motions in five minutes, but it will take you a whole lifetime to learn how to conduct. And I understand perfectly what he means. I can teach you how to conduct in a four beat pattern or a three beat pattern, two beat pattern, one, and you will do those patterns yet it will mean nothing to an orchestra because it's how you do it that shows you.

Dan: 0:51

That's Carlos Miguel Prieto. He's a music director and conductor at three orchestras, including the North Carolina Symphony and the Orquesta Sinfonica de Mineria in Mexico which you're hearing now.

Carlos: 1:09

If you want the tempo of an orchestra to go faster, 99% of people start waving their hands faster and with a bigger motion. That causes the orchestra to go slower.

Dan: 1:23

Really?

Carlos: 1:24

Oh, yeah. When you want more intensity or more speed, you become smaller in the gesture and more self contained, and that causes that. So some of this is counterintuitive. I would say most of it is counterintuitive.

Dan: 1:44

Carlos said when it comes to conducting, it's less about the hand movements and more about the emotion.

Carlos: 1:52

Conductors could be energy shapers more than conductors. You're conducting the energy. You're controlling the energy. Speed, intensity are gradations of energy. So I would say to you that 90% of what we do is not communicated with gestures, it's communicated with feelings. And that's where we go into the realm of the magical and the incomprehensible.

Dan: 2:38

I'm Dan Heath, and this is What It's Like To Be. In every episode, we walk in the shoes of someone from a different profession. An executive chef, a piano teacher, a welder. We wanna know what they do all day at work. Today, we'll ask Carlos Miguel Prieto what it's like to be a conductor. We'll talk about how and why he color codes his scores in advance. Why in a live performance he's flipping pages of music faster than the performers, and what's different about how Beethoven's Fifth sounds today versus a hundred years ago. Stay with us. A conductor wears many hats.

Carlos: 3:23

You have the hat of a very practical way of let's have everyone start together, finish together, and play together. Then you have a more artistic, which is to give shape to a certain piece or to phrases, very much like a theater director would.

Dan: 3:40

Mhmm.

Carlos: 3:40

Okay? Let's say that instead of being a conductor, I would be directing Hamlet. And I'm not going to change Shakespeare's words. Not only should I not, in music it is stricter than in theater. I can't change a note in a piece by Beethoven. But with slight things like phrasing or slight things like tempo I can change the meaning. So let's go to Hamlet. Shakespeare wrote this very famous set of words... "To be or not to be, that is the question." So let's say that I'm a theater director and I have those words and I cannot change them. But I can tell the actor to put the stress on a specific word and therefore change the message."To be or not to be? That is the question." Or, "To be or not to be? That is the question?" So I don't need to go further for people to understand that based on the enunciation, based on how you stress the phrase, is the meaning of not only the phrase itself, it can be the meaning of the whole play. And, you know, I invite anyone just to listen to just the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Carlos: So I don't need to go further for people to understand that based on the enunciation, based on how you stress the phrase, is the meaning of not only the phrase itself, it can be the meaning of the whole play. And, you know, I invite anyone just to listen to just the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

Dan: 4:58

Mhmm.

Carlos: 4:58

You know, so perhaps one of the most famous pieces of music ever written, and something that even if you don't know, you know. Because there are those first four notes, those are part of popular culture today and forever. Well, listen to a recording made in the early twentieth century versus a recording made in the late twentieth century. And you will hear a huge difference in tempo, so in the speed that these notes are played, and the way they are played, by which the message is changed.

Dan: 5:54

What do you come into the first rehearsal with? Have you sort of come up with your own spin on, you know, here's a shaping we could bring to Beethoven to bring something to life? Have you have you marked up the score, like what do you come in with?

Carlos: 6:10

So if you look at a score of mine, it has incredible amounts of color, I have my own way of marking it, I mark the phrases in green, so the beginnings and ends of phrases in green.

Dan: 6:24

Give me a little bit on what what a phrase is.

Carlos: 6:26

Yeah. So a phrase in music is like the same phrase as a phrase in speech. So let's say that I say happy birthday."Happy birthday to you" would be a phrase."Happy birthday to you" would be another phrase."Happy birthday dear Matt.""Happy birthday to you." So those four phrases. But I could tell a certain orchestra, okay, I really want Matt's birthday to really have only two phrases. So I would say, happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. First phrase. Happy birthday dear Matt. Happy birthday to you. Or then let's say I get creative and I say I want really want to have Matt have a one phrase birthday. And then that whole thing, I'm not a good singer, so I don't wanna repeat my singing. But I could turn it into one phrase or two phrases or four phrases.

Dan: 7:25

Oh, this is so interesting. So so the phrasing is something that's on the interpretive layer, like you're adding that.

Carlos: 7:31

Correct. Sometimes it is very obvious, sometimes it is elusive and magically different, you know. And something that's very interesting and it is it changes as you know more or as if you have more experience with a piece or that you change during your life. For example, I'm in an age where I can say that I'm revisiting things that I was doing thirty years ago with a feeling of doing it for the first time, now I'm doing it for the like thirtieth time.

Dan: 8:04

So go back to the markup real quick, so you're you're marking up the phrasing with green.

Carlos: 8:08

Yeah, the phrasing with green, the dynamics in in blue, and the, you know, musical entrances in in red. Okay. So what does musical entrances mean? Oboe, third trombone, percussion, harp, strings. That would be in red and dynamics is as the music goes up and down in dynamic and that is something that I do in blue. But why do I do that? That's just a scheme in my mind to get my mind organized. And after a while your mind doesn't need that score, it already has it inside your mind. I've always been blessed ever since I was a child memorizing things really quickly, memorizing music, not words, very quickly, and so I don't need to go back to the score. But then I mark things in the score like it could be historical things, you know, things that happened during the time the composer was writing that, or maybe the popular music, the folk music that originated a certain phrase, you know, sometimes you play a piece of music that talks about things that are very powerful and sometimes very sad. You know, there's Mahler's symphony, Mahler's Symphony Number Nine, he wrote when he knew already he was gonna die. And we can obsess about technical things while playing that piece but we're gonna get it wrong unless we understand his situation when he was writing this piece. So sometimes this analysis of a piece becomes more about things like the personal history of the composer, the history of the circumstances where he was living or she was living, and the personal circumstances of musicians around it. So I would say that 80% of the work that a conductor does or 70% is previous to a concert. And in the concert, you are doing the rest, which is really the celebration part. I always feel for a theater director because the theater director, they do a 100% of their work before the performance. And in the performance, they must be, like, dying sitting in the theater.

Dan: 10:40

They just have to sit there and yeah.

Carlos: 10:42

So in a way, we are blessed.

Dan: 10:44

So when you start rehearsals, you've marked up the score, you come in with a point of view on how it should be played. Do you hand out your markup or are you kind of talking them through verbally?

Carlos: 10:55

You do as little verbal as possible and as more showing as possible. But this has to do with technique of rehearsal, and some people say very little and do a lot.

Dan: 11:08

Mhmm.

Carlos: 11:08

And some people mix it up. That would be me. And some people do a lot of talking and very little showing. The more experienced an orchestra is, the less talking. The more experienced with a certain piece an orchestra is, the less talking. But then the opposite is true. Let's say if I'm doing a certain piece with a young orchestra, then they need to hear things like the history of a piece or circumstances around the composer. So I never share my score because it would be unnecessary, plus people have their own parts in front. You know, I have everyone's part in my score. A way of explaining this is I turn pages every four or five seconds, they turn pages every two or three minutes. So I have all that information vertically in a score, and they just have their own.

Dan: 12:06

Do you ever sense resistance to your interpretations from the musicians?

Carlos: 12:11

Yes, of course. And it's part of the profession. I mean, do you think that LeBron James is gonna take the coaching of whoever is his next coach, who most likely is younger than him.

Dan: 12:24

Right.

Carlos: 12:25

He's probably gonna throw some of it out, but...

Dan: 12:28

So how do you handle that? Like, if they're not giving you what you want?

Carlos: 12:32

You just you do your thing. I mean, one one thing is, of course, being a conductor is not a popularity contest. It's more of an honest relationship with you and the composer and what you believe is the music. So no matter what the experience of an individual musician with a piece, that person may think that your tempo is too slow, but if you make it happen, that's you and your interpretation. And, you know, we don't rehearse that much. When you go watch a play, you're probably seeing an ensemble that's rehearsed 10 or 20 times more than an orchestra.

Dan: 13:10

Oh, really? So how many rehearsals might you have for a given performance?

Carlos: 13:14

We have three, four, or maximum five rehearsals for a certain program. And these rehearsals are a certain length, and they have to follow a certain rhythm, you know, you have to go the way that it's announced a month before, and this is piece A, B, C and that's how the rehearsal goes. So in reality, you have to be very efficient, but you also have the benefit of the experience of the 70, 80, 90 musicians in front of you.

Dan: 13:49

Hey, folks. Dan here. Just a quick one today. I just wanted to say thank you to you personally for listening to the show, for telling other people about it, for leaving reviews, for sending us suggestions for other jobs, for everything you're doing to keep this show rolling. I'm really, really grateful that you believe in what we're doing here. Thank you. And now, let's get back to the show. You know, as an audience member hearing a symphony, I feel like you're just purely having an experience, you know, an emotional experience, you're hearing the whole. I imagine in your mind, I mean, you're certainly conscious of the whole because that's what you're conducting to accomplish, but I imagine you know the musicians and the instruments so well that you can immediately pick out, you know, one errant note from an oboe or something. Are you kind of flipping back and forth between the micro level and the macro?

Carlos: 14:55

Yes. And for this, I just thought of an analogy that'll probably make you smile. Okay? So I like sports, and I watch all kinds of sports all the time. And there's one sport that I watch while not really knowing the inside out of it, and that's American football.

Dan: 15:15

Mhmm.

Carlos: 15:16

When I watch and I watch many games, I see a hole. I don't look at a certain play.

Dan: 15:23

Right.

Carlos: 15:23

Like the defensive end missed the tackle.

Dan: 15:26

Right.

Carlos: 15:26

I just look at whether the play had a touchdown or they got three yards or they got sacked or whatever. Well, the coach is looking... Not only the coach, actually, the analyst that they have on TV. They're actually personalizing problems in a way that I can't.

Dan: 15:43

Mhmm.

Carlos: 15:44

But those people, they're in it every day so that they see it very clear. And they make adjustments that maybe you and I don't understand, but that adjustment will fix the problem. Let's say an issue that somebody got hurt and suddenly they have a rookie in that position and the other team has taken advantage of that rookie.

Dan: 16:07

Mhmm.

Carlos: 16:07

Well, in orchestra sometimes we have situations like that. Like we have a certain musician who got ill and someone is just coming in to play principal bassoon without a rehearsal and without too much experience. Well, I as a coach and the colleagues around that person take care of that person so that we are well aware that that person is playing a piece for the first time. Little nitty gritty things like that are not only part of my life but they're part of what makes my life magical because it's not about the music, it's about people. It is not unique of a conductor, but the conductor is put in a situation that you are there in a performance, you are shaping the performance as it happens, but you have also been shaping it in the last week or two. And there are few other professions where that same thing happens. I would even say that a coach during a game has some moments where the coach is completely incapable of leadership, while the conductor is there in front of the orchestra all the time.

Dan: 17:28

That... gosh. I had not thought about this before. You're right that, you know, there are some artistic forms like film or or with sports where the coach or the director has intermittent feedback, like before a take, you give the actor a note or before a play, you know, you you change up the the offensive line configuration or whatever. But then the play kinda happens without any input from you versus you're always on.

Carlos: 17:54

You're always on and my style even when I'm always on is I'm always open for that moment of magic when somebody has an idea that goes into a different direction.

Dan: 18:07

Well, tell me about that. It sounds like you can sometimes be positively surprised by something that happens.

Carlos: 18:13

Absolutely. Not only that, for me what's most important is personal input, is involvement.

Dan: 18:21

Mhmm.

Carlos: 18:21

I enjoy when a musician has a relationship with a certain phrase that is very special and unique so that it could change a certain moment. And in a way I think that's what's magical about live performance, because every day can and will be different. Sometimes you remember live performances not because of how perfect they were but because of things that make it unique. And some of those things are even like unfortunate events, you know, somebody came in in the wrong place and half of the orchestra went with them and the other half, know, and we were able to somehow make it happen.

Dan: 19:04

Are there particular moments that you recall from performances?

Carlos: 19:09

Yeah. There's a kind of very important piece in the twentieth century called the Bartok Concerto for Orchestra.

Dan: 19:15

Mhmm.

Carlos: 19:15

And in the last movement, there's a famous, what's called a fugue or a canon, it's an imitation, and and it's given to, like, first trumpet, then second trumpet, third... no, second trumpet comes in first. And everyone follows the entrance of second trumpet. And in this specific performance, and we have four different performances, in the third performance, the second trumpet came in one bar early by which all of the other entrances based their entrance on that early entrance. However, a whole other part of the orchestra, the strings that don't have these entrances like that, they were one bar off. And you kind of start putting your finger up saying one bar ahead, you know, like you're signaling to the orchestra and there's a point at which everything coalesces into the good place. Well, that performance is one that that I will never forget, while the other four, which were as close to perfect as can be, well, they were just very good performances.

Dan: 20:21

And what are your memories of that performance?

Carlos: 20:24

I just remember that relief, celebration, feeling for that guy who came in early because I knew that that person was going to be mortified and come to see me after saying I'm sorry and and I just wanna make sure that they understand that I don't care, that anything in music can go wrong and it's not like leaving some scissors inside, you know, a patient or something.

Dan: 20:53

Right. Just to linger on that mistake for a second, like, did you have to figure out how to lead them out of that mistake?

Carlos: 21:00

Yes, of course. I knew that the brass because the brass, they know their entrances based on that specific entrance. So I knew that they would be going with that entrance, so they were all collectively be one bar earlier.

Dan: 21:14

Mhmm.

Carlos: 21:14

But the strings are playing this music that's not based on that entrance, so they're playing one bar later. So you start like making eye contact with the string player saying and putting like a one with your hand and going like skip a bar.

Dan: 21:30

Oh, wow. I'm amazed that you can communicate that that quickly with a hand gesture.

Carlos: 21:35

Well, it's not that there's a set communication. It's just that there's like a stuff happens moment. People start noticing that something is wrong because they've done this piece and then start to be these moments of, well, I'm not in the right place, so people start looking up and like, what's wrong? And then when they see you go one bar later, then they skip a bar. And then they see their colleague skip a bar and the people start skipping a bar and then when it's all fixed it's like everyone feels an incredible amount of relief and then the ending is one where again it's all about perspective. Okay? We finished together, thank God, you know, rather than how well did we play as we we were able to get out of this situation and most likely nobody in the audience noticed.

Dan: 22:24

What do you think would surprise people most about what conductors actually do?

Carlos: 22:29

I think it would surprise most people to see how much humor we actually incorporate into everything we do. How much basic comments that relate music to sports and to dumb things we use in rehearsal.

Dan: 22:48

Really? Like what?

Carlos: 22:50

Okay. So let's say that a horn player has a big solo, one of those like gung ho moments of greatness, and that person is kind of playing it safe in order to not botch a note or whatever and then you get like a washed up version of that solo. Well, that's like having a hitter in the ninth inning game seven of the world series going for a bunt when in reality, what you need is a home run.

Dan: 23:22

Gotta swing for the fences.

Carlos: 23:24

Gotta swing for the fences. So I use that very often, especially when I have young people who are more worried about making a mistake than hitting a home run. I prefer the home run than the avoidance of the mistake.

Dan: 23:43

You know, it's interesting you say that because I I was looking at some YouTube videos of of famous conductors doing rehearsals and there was this one I won't name, but I was I was shocked by how, like, belittling he was to the musicians.

Carlos: 23:59

Yeah. That's kind of a no no today, you know. Thankfully, I think that circumstances have changed and people can't get away with that anymore. Conducting has helped me understand how musicians are not musicians, they're people. And they're somebody's kids, they're somebody's friends, they're somebody's families, and that you have to be very very conscious about this.

Dan: 24:28

So Carlos, we always end our episodes with a quick lightning round of questions. Let me fire away here. What's a word or phrase that only someone from your profession would be likely to know, and what does it mean?

Carlos: 24:42

"Taper that phrase."

Dan: 24:44

"Taper that phrase." What does that mean?

Carlos: 24:46

Well, that kind of means that instead of saying "happy birthday to you", you would say "happy birthday to you".

Dan: 24:54

Oh. It just kind of recedes at the end.

Carlos: 24:57

Yeah.

Dan: 24:58

That's great. What is the most insulting thing you could say about a conductor's work?

Carlos: 25:04

I got bored.

Dan: 25:06

Oh. Because a conductor's job is?

Carlos: 25:10

To tell the story of a piece of music and as that story, you can hate it, you can love it, but if if it's boring, then either the piece is boring, so you chose the wrong piece, or you chose the right piece but you made it boring.

Dan: 25:28

What is a tool specific to your profession that you really like using? I think the listeners are ready for you to say baton. Is that what you're gonna come with or something else?

Carlos: 25:37

No. Not at all because because the baton is just a very, very basic thing that you don't really need. Dancing. Moving.

Dan: 25:45

Say more about that?

Carlos: 25:47

I mean, I'm a terrible dancer, but sometimes I get away with twitching my elbows in a way that does the trick and I don't know how to do it, but it's just rhythm. We are in the business of communicating not only tempo but rhythm, And rhythm is a magical part of music where sometimes the conductor just by doing rhythmical things with your body, whether you dance well or not, we communicate things.

Dan: 26:14

What's the smallest movement you think you can make with your body and still get a musical response?

Carlos: 26:20

Zero movement. Just immersion. Just absolutely feeling. Zero movement.

Dan: 26:27

But you're saying that would elicit a response from the orchestra?

Carlos: 26:30

Absolutely. And if I had an orchestra in front of me, I could show you in one second the difference between going from movement to zero movement and what that communicate based on your feeling. People are not watching you. They're watching you peripherally, and most of the time they're feeling what you're feeling, which is I wish I could explain it into words. You know, I'm not someone who believes in, like, esoteric things and all this, but but in my profession, the power of just internalizing something and feeling it. You have to trust that you communicated with just the feeling rather than the movement.

Dan: 27:13

That's helpful actually because one question I was I was frankly too embarrassed to ask was, it seems like it's obviously the case that the musicians are looking at their sheet music most of the time and not at you. And so, I was curious, like, how do they sort of receive the messages you're sending? But but you're answering that, you're saying it's it's emotional language, and so even in your peripheral vision, you can kinda soak up the vibe that you're transmitting.

Carlos: 27:39

Correct. Correct.

Dan: 27:40

This is a question we ask of of all of our guests, and you're gonna chuckle because you are in a sound based profession. What is a sound specific to your profession that you're likely to hear?

Carlos: 27:53

Oh, but no, the response is very simple because the thing is that what's specific to my profession is that you can shape a sound from being barely discernible as as loud as possible because of your gesture. You know, I just recently got to know someone who had speakers, each of which was $30,000, and that person wanted me to come to their house, which I did, and to just to listen to the marvel of this speaker. And of course, yes, it is a marvelous speaker. And I was like, wowed and paid this person a compliment. Yet, there is nothing that replicates the sound of an orchestra when you are inside the orchestra. So when I started doing what I'm doing, I stopped being an audiophile because no speaker replicates this. No television, no sound system. So my response to your question would be the uniqueness of the sound in my profession is the sheer incredible nature of different sounds that can be produced with an orchestra and with a palette of combinations with of how you play in an orchestra. It's infinite. It's not one. It's absolutely infinite. It's basically how you play and how you combine these instruments in a way that only a great painter could replicate with color.

Dan: 29:40

Carlos Miguel Prieto is a music director and conductor. I was struck by his story of the performance where the second trumpet came in one bar early and caused a mini crisis. And remember he said, that performance is one I will never forget while the other four, well, they were just very good performances. Isn't that interesting that the inferior performance, at least technically speaking, was the one that lingered in his memory. And I think that says something about experience that when you get really good at something, it's almost like you define yourself by the ability to deal with the unexpected, the edge cases. You know, a patient crashes during a healthcare procedure and the surgeon adapts to it instantly. Or a drunk passenger on an airplane acts a fool and the flight attendant comes in and handles it gracefully. Carlos had almost certainly never dealt with the second trumpet coming in one bar early problem. There was no recipe for that. There was no hand movement. It had not been rehearsed, but still somehow he knew what to do. And when those moments come, when we get to show off our confidence and our creativity, it's like a demonstration to ourselves that we have achieved mastery, and that's what makes it so memorable. Marking up a score with green, blue, and red, managing the egos of dozens of world class musicians, breathing new life into centuries old classics, and evoking the right feelings during a live performance. Folks, that's what it's like to be a conductor. A shout out to recent Apple podcast reviewers, CorianderC, AminChicago, and KinTheCountry. This episode was produced by Matt Purdy. I'm Dan Heath. See you next time.