PT72: "4 Steps to Creating a Transcendent Experience," with Markand Thakar

Today we talk with Markand Thakar, Music Director and Conductor of the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, about creating the transcendent experiences possible in your music making. We discuss how “interpretation” is not an effective word for what we can do as conductors, what Sergiu Celibidache understood about classical music and performance that almost no other conductors understand, and how Markand sought to study, practice, and teach that understanding.

You will learn:

• How to learn “aggressively,” whether by observing rehearsals, listening to recordings, or score study
• The benefits of auditing and not conducting at a workshop
• What Celibidache understood that few others do, and how Markand made that his primary goal to understand and express and teach
• Why we do art and why we do music, and understanding of the transcendent experience for the audience and the performer
• How to practice hearing every sound on the podium
• How what we think is “left to interpretation” is given in the piece and how we can discover it
• Why conducting without a score is not about memorizing the music
• How an understanding of structures and energy can lead us in an understanding of the whole work

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