{"id":74004,"date":"2013-03-13T09:52:33","date_gmt":"2013-03-13T13:52:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=74004"},"modified":"2013-08-08T10:41:45","modified_gmt":"2013-08-08T14:41:45","slug":"orchestra-conductor-harvey-felder-joins-uconn-faculty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2013\/03\/orchestra-conductor-harvey-felder-joins-uconn-faculty\/","title":{"rendered":"Orchestra Conductor Harvey Felder Joins UConn Faculty"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Harvey<\/a>
Harvey Felder, associate professor of music and director of orchestral studies. (Ariel Dowski ’14 (CLAS)\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As an elementary school student, Harvey Felder knew he wanted to be a public school teacher and decided that music would be the subject he would teach. What he did not know was that his decision to pursue a life in music would lead to conducting symphony orchestras around the United States and the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy path to the conducting podium was rather circuitous,\u201d says Felder, who earlier this year joined the faculty of the School of Fine Arts as an associate professor of music and director of orchestral studies. His appointment is part of UConn\u2019s expansive hiring initiative, designed to attract up to 500 professors in four years. He will conduct the UConn Symphony Orchestra on Thursday at von der Mehden Recital Hall.<\/p>\n

Felder did teach music in a public school in Wisconsin for several years before deciding to continue his study of music in graduate school. Those studies set him on a new path teaching college students and attending conducting workshops, and eventually led to an audition to become the assistant conductor of the Milwaukee Symphony.<\/p>\n

\"Director<\/a>
Director Harvey Felder conducts the UConn Symphony Orchestra as they rehearse in von der Mehden Recital Hall. (Ariel Dowski ’14 (CLAS)\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Working with the Milwaukee Symphony immersed Felder into a busy schedule helping to prepare musicians for 300 performances a year, including about 50 concerts that he conducted.<\/p>\n

He would go on to serve as Resident Conductor of the St. Louis Symphony and work with orchestras in Atlanta and Baltimore before being invited to make his Carnegie Hall debut with the American Symphony Orchestra. Following his New York performance, Felder received invitations to serve as guest conductor for the Chicago, Kansas City, and San Antonio Symphonies, New Japan Philharmonic, Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional de Costa Rica, and Mikkeli City Orchestras of Finland, among other renowned orchestras.<\/p>\n

As Felder\u2019s conducting talents became widely known, Symphony Magazine<\/i> described him as \u201cone of America\u2019s promising conductors.\u201d His further studies with such notable conductors as Kurt Mazur and Seiji Ozawa led to his selection as music director of the Tacoma Symphony Orchestra, which he led for 18 years.<\/p>\n

Interpreting a score<\/b><\/p>\n

Felder says there\u2019s a lot more to conducting than meets the eye.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole process of deciding on a composition and presenting it to the public I find fascinating,\u201d he says. \u201cThe vast majority of what you do as a conductor is never seen by the public. Every hour the public sees in performance represents about 50 hours of solitude, working and studying the music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Felder says the hand signals, facial expressions, and body language seen by the orchestra as he conducts a piece of music provide reminders to the musicians of the way they rehearsed the work for as many as 10 hours together. The rehearsals are developed based on his intense study of the piece, \u201cnote by note, measure by measure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe learning takes place sitting with the score,\u201d he says. \u201cI sit at my desk, read the music, hear it in my mind, study it, and learn it based on what I\u2019m hearing and seeing. I often tell people that audiation \u2013 the process of looking at something through your eyes and hearing it in your brain \u2013 is something most conductors do at a very sophisticated level. However, my contention is that all humans learn how to do this, but some go further with developing the skill than others.\u201d<\/p>\n

Across the generations<\/b><\/p>\n

Felder says he was looking for the right opportunity to return to a university setting when he learned of the position at UConn, where the resources also were available to allow him to pursue his interest in broadening the audience for symphonic music.<\/p>\n

\"Harvey<\/a>
Harvey Felder says generational diversity is critical in symphonic music. (Ariel Dowski ’14 (CLAS)\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the current edition of Symphony Magazine<\/i>, a publication of The League of American Orchestras, Felder addresses the challenge of broadening the appeal and relevance of orchestral music to the current generation of young people who view the world through the technology they are connected to 24 hours a day. Noting that orchestras have worked for many years to be more inclusive and diverse in their audiences, musicians, and board memberships, Felder says generational diversity is just as critical.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve worked hard to help my industry with the issue of diversity,\u201d he says. \u201cNow, we\u2019re losing generation after generation\u2019s interest in this art form. I\u2019ve made a shift in my focus to make our art form more appealing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Felder says that some orchestras around the nation are seeking ways to bring technology into concert halls, such as having a docent backstage during a performance sending messages to hand-held devices describing what is happening in a score. Some orchestras post videos online during the weeks leading up to a performance to describe the various aspects of the music presented on stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cWorking with young people every day as a professor I\u2019m learning even more about their inclinations and their comfort with technology and desire to fuse all sorts of disciplines,\u201d he says. \u201cThe lines between things are much grayer for them than us. We need to find ways to use that in outreach.\u201d<\/p>\n

Felder says that as a major research institution with a wide range of academic disciplines, UConn has the resources to address such issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the environment, the place where we can bring all these disciplines together over a cup of coffee,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s something I would like to explore with my colleagues in engineering, computer science, and digital technology \u2013 how to change our concert halls.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harvey Felder will conduct the UConn Symphony Orchestra in a program of classical and opera music on Thursday at von der Mehden Recital Hall at 7:30 p.m. The program includes Dvorak\u2019s \u201cSymphony No. 8 in G Major;\u201d an aria from Handel\u2019s \u201cJulius Caesar\u201d performed by Meredith Ziegler, adjunct professor of vocal music; and Mark Edward Wilson\u2019s \u201cThe Phoenix Rising,\u201d conducted by graduate student Paul McShee.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Felder, who previously led the Tacoma Symphony Orchestra, is considered one of the nation’s promising conductors. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":74082,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[55],"class_list":["post-74004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-19 07:17:33","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74004"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81693,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74004\/revisions\/81693"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/74082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74004"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=74004"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=74004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}