A sense of togetherness
Chloé Dufresne gives her first concert as Music Director of Colorado Springs Philharmonic this weekend. She explains why she’s excited about her new role, and how her experience of singing in an opera choir as a child led to her passion for the communal experience of conducting
You first conducted Colorado Springs Philharmonic in January – what was that like?
I really enjoyed the atmosphere. The players were very welcoming and willing to make music and have fun. We performed a programme for small orchestra, which allowed us to enjoy a truly collaborative chamber music spirit. We played a humorous and sparkling Haydn symphony and some very colourful Fauré – it wasn’t a particularly difficult programme for them, so we could focus on feeling the music together.
What are your ambitions with the orchestra?
I’m hoping to programme French music of the 20th century, as well as Romantic French repertoire. On my last visit we played Lili Boulanger and Fauré and this is a style we can develop together – the sensation of listening and creating transparent colour. This music runs very deep with me and I look forward to sharing it with them.
The orchestra hasn’t done very much new music, apart from film scores, so this is something I want to bring. Performing contemporary works is how we continue the tradition of music. I have also tried to bring a work by a female composer into every programme.
What excites you about becoming a Music Director?
I love programming, and being Music Director means you can think on a bigger scale about how to draw an audience across the whole year and build themes. I enjoy the imagination it takes to programme and to be artistic in presenting the pieces, bringing the audience on our trip. This is a different world to being an invited conductor. As Music Director, you also get to meet everyone regularly, which leads to a great working atmosphere and you have the chance to develop the level of the orchestra, and a deeper musical understanding between each other.
How much progress do you see in presenting female composers?
I think it’s now in the mindset of programmers to think about the gender of composers. Previously no-one even asked the question. We only programmed men and nobody thought about it. Now we have put the question into everyone’s consciousness. Some people may think, ‘We try to plan and play female composers more because they are women and not because of the music.’ But we have arrived at the second step: we should also care about the music, while still being careful that women are there. We don’t want to play music by female composers just because they are women, but because it fits the programme. We still need to consider which pieces written by a woman could work in any programme, but with a more artistic view rather than only being about gender.
Who were the conducting mentors who really inspired you?
The Finnish culture in general has inspired me – I spent five years at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. It was so different from my French training, and broadened my range of possibilities. Most of my teachers were Finnish – my last one was Sakari Oramo and I also worked as his assistant, which was inspirational. Gustavo Dudamel was also very influential for me as a Dudamel Fellow with Los Angeles Philharmonic, especially for Romantic repertoire and rhythmic matters, as well as his personality. He’s a very happy and sociable person. Latin culture is so different to the Finnish one. French culture is somewhere in the middle, so I have experienced both ‘extremes’!
How does your own choral background support your opera conducting?
As a child I sang in the children’s choir at Opéra national de Montpellier and played the viola. The love of opera I developed there has kept me in music – the stage, the costumes, everything. It was how I built my personality. I continued singing throughout my studies. Singing in a choir is such an important way to be part of community, making music together. That sense of togetherness drove me to conducting, and to orchestral conducting. I wanted to be at the centre of the sound, and to make music with people.
Singing is how I connect to music. When I first study a score, I always sing the parts, so opera repertoire feels natural to me. Conducting opera can be more challenging than a symphony concert, because there are always things we cannot anticipate. There is so much happening on stage that you have to react to in the moment, but I love the challenge.
What are the most important things you’ve learnt about conducting opera?
It’s a different way of conducting than with a symphony. We learn that we are just a detail in the whole story. Opera is much bigger than us. It’s the same with a symphony orchestra, to a certain extent, but somehow in opera, you feel it from the start of the process. There are so many different people and artistic fields involved. You have to be very flexible. You are still the person who decides, but making decisions doesn’t mean that you are in control. Sometimes you decide something and you have to do it differently because of the situation. We learn flexibility and teamwork – maybe more so than with a symphony. But both disciplines feed each other.
What is your ideal balance between symphonic and opera conducting?
I love 50–50, which is what I do at the moment, depending on the season. Opera has a longer working period of a month or two. I enjoy being somewhere and getting to know people more deeply and have a long-term project. But I also like going for one week as a guest conductor. Each one helps the other. I like travel and meeting new people, but sometimes I need to rest in one place, and opera is good for that. If I only did opera I might get a little restless, and if I only did symphonic music, I might not have enough time to go deeper humanly and artistically. To keep the love and passion, I need both.
What kind of atmosphere do you try to create in rehearsals?
It’s very important to enjoy ourselves, because we are making music – we are not saving lives. If we don’t have fun, we are not useful anymore. Having fun comes across: if the players have fun on stage, then the audience enjoys themselves and we all feel alive in the wonderful moment. That doesn’t mean that the music has to be happy, but it means loving the process of making music and feeling closer to each other as we work. It’s important to bring joy in rehearsals and in the process, because the world is in enough trouble.
I always remind myself how lucky I am to do this work and to meet these people. That’s my mindset before rehearsals, and if I enjoy myself during rehearsals, the players enjoy themselves, too. I’m not trying to force them to have fun. I don’t make jokes and I’m not a clown – I’m actually quite introverted – but I try to inspire people. If I have an idea of where I want to go or what colour I’m looking for, for example, my brain starts to be very inventive, and sharing that thought allows the players to bring their own inventiveness.
What do orchestras need to do to encourage new audiences?
That’s difficult to answer because every audience, city and place is different, and each has a different culture and history. But it’s important to get closer to the audience. Social media allows people to see our lives and feel included, for example. Maybe in the past, classical music has made the mistake of making concerts feel historical, like museums. We need to talk to people, explain the music, give them some tools for listening, and share with them our vision of why we have put these pieces together. The audience needs to leave the concert having learnt something, enjoyed something and felt something. And also maybe just having spent some time within a community and without their phones!
What are your hopes and fears for classical music?
My hope and fear go together. I hope that the money will stay in the institutions, and that we will still be able to make great music with big orchestras and extensive projects. It’s so important to have enough money, because if you don’t pay people properly, you don’t get quality. My fear is that politicians and the public don’t feel the need for music and forget to feed the field with enough money. That would be a huge loss for society. We are all part of a big system, and music and art are vital in that. We saw with the pandemic – everyone still listened to music. That didn’t stop, so we can’t say that it’s not important. It’s a huge part of people’s lives and yet somehow it gets forgotten when it comes to economics.
What responsibilities do you think musicians have?
Our responsibilities include communicating with audiences, being inventive, living in our times, and making people understand that they feel as they do because of our art and what we do. Music has so many virtues in education – it includes psychology, mathematics, literature, motor skills. And being able to listen is also an important skill nowadays. But this should be a social project, including politicians and the whole of society, not just us on our own.
Chloé Dufresne begins her tenure with Colorado Springs Philharmonic on 4 October, conducting Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto with soloist Awadagin Pratt, and Camille Pépin’s Laniakea
