Some big-time podium time

Erin Bejot spends most days conducting student musicians at Omaha North High School.

So she was understandably excited, even giddy, when she stepped in front of the Omaha Symphony on a recent afternoon at the Holland Performing Arts Center.

“Thanks for letting me take this Porsche out for a spin,” Bejot said.

Bejot was one of nine music teachers from Omaha Public Schools who attended a new education program last week with the symphony. “Educator as Maestro” provided these teachers with one of the rarest and most valuable commodities in the classical music world — podium time with a professional symphony orchestra.

Bejot led the orchestra in a leisurely performance of Aaron Copland's arrangement of “Simple Gifts,” the piece her band is working on.

She held her baton in her right hand and moved it in small, graceful patterns. She used her left hand sparingly to suggest the shape of a phrase or to cue an entrance.

Her interpretation, to the layperson, sounded fantastic. Symphony Music Director Thomas Wilkins, however, wasn't satisfied. When he hears a symphony, he senses more than a mass of sound. He detects each instrumental line moving separately, distinctly and in tandem. Wilkins suggested that Bejot needed to listen to just three of those parts in isolation — the piano, harp and double basses.

So Bejot cued just those instruments, and the players dug into their majestic, sonorous theme. Her small gestures, however, didn't match the grandiloquence of the music.

“Your conducting needs to look like the music your orchestra is playing,” Wilkins said.

Orchestras around the country often engage in outreach with their local schools, said Jennifer Boomgaarden, the symphony's vice president for education and community partnerships. Their musicians perform at the schools and their conductors lead workshops for the teachers.

But “Educator as Maestro” is different.

“I can't think of another city where the music teachers actually get to conduct the professional orchestra,” Boomgaarden said.

Omaha music teachers spent the better part of two days last week with the symphony and its conductors — Wilkins and resident conductor Ernest Richardson.

Wilkins believes that all people are natural-born conductors.

“Our bodies already know how to conduct,” Wilkins told the group. “But our brains get in the way.”

Therefore, he began the “Educator as Maestro” program with a two-hour workshop designed to bring mind and body into harmonious sync.

“I've got some crazy stuff for you guys to do,” Wilkins said.

Wilkins had devised exercises that called to mind a scene from “The Karate Kid” where a martial arts master has his student pretend he's waxing a car. The student was actually learning basic karate technique.

Similarly, Wilkins had the teachers stand in a circle with their forearms stretched out perpendicular to their bodies, as if they were balancing imaginary cafeteria trays.

“You now know the basic conductor's stance at the podium,” Wilkins said.

Next, Wilkins had the music teachers move both hands in small circles, then big circles. Once those movements were mastered, the teachers learned to move their right hands in small, fast circles and left hands in large, slow circles.

“Your right hand is your baton hand, and its movements need to be automatic,” Wilkins said. “You use your left hand to make expressive gestures.”

Wilkins' next two exercises were more complex.

First, he had the teachers use both hands to trace figure eights in the air. Almost everyone could that. No problem.

But then he asked them to move their right hands in fast figure eight motions while their left hands slowly sketched sideways eights. That exercise caused some conducting train wrecks.

“This isn't easy,” said Dan Abrahams, the conductor of the Bryan High School orchestra.

Perhaps, but Wilkins wanted the teachers to feel comfortable using their left and right hands differently. That kind of ambidextrous coordination is all part of a conductor's stock in trade.

When it was his turn at the podium, Abrahams led the symphony in an arrangement of the waltz from “Sleeping Beauty.”

His gestures were big, clear and graceful. All those movements, however, also looked the same.

“You don't want to look like a caricature of somebody conducting in the shower,” Wilkins said.

Wilkins stood behind Abrahams and held his conducting arm for him. Instead of leading the orchestra with big circular motions, Wilkins had Abrahams conduct with patterns that were smooth and horizontal. The movement more or less resembled a dance couple waltzing across the stage.

At the end, Abrahams beamed with satisfaction. He would return to Bryan High armed with a lot of new information.

“My students had better watch out,” he said.

Contact the writer:

444-1076, john.pitcher@owh.com

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