Symphony program walks on wild side

After the good things that have been coming his way lately, let’s hope it’s not bad luck for Morihiko Nakahara to conduct the Spokane Symphony on Friday the 13th.

Appropriate to a day that has edgy feelings for some people, Friday’s concert is the first of this season’s Symphony on the Edge programs at the Big Easy Concert House. (Regular symphonygoers should note the earlier starting time of 7:30 p.m.)

The nightclub venue with its rock ‘n’ roll atmosphere (but no smoking) allows Nakahara to be a bit wild in selecting the program.

He has chosen short works by an international group of modern composers – including Samuel Barber and John Mackey from the U.S., Latin Americans Osvaldo Golijev and Alejandro Gracia Caturla, and the Scotsman James Macmillan – along with other pieces including works for film and dance by Barber and Takemitsu.

“This is probably the edgiest of the Symphony on the Edge programs we’ve done so far,” Nakahara says. “The difficulty of some of the music is probably giving some of the musicians nightmares. I know it is for me.

“We saw that the most enthusiastic response of last year’s audiences at The Big Easy was a lot greater for the pieces that were a little bit further ‘out there’ than the more traditional pieces,” he adds.

Nakahara, the symphony’s associate conductor since 2003, has been a lucky find for the orchestra.

Though he has not been quite as visible as Music Director Eckart Preu in concerts at the Opera House and The Met, he has led the group in both venues.

And Nakahara has conducted dozens of performances unheard by most members of the symphony’s subscription audience, concerts in schools and out-of-town outreach performances. He was recently named artistic director of the symphony’s SuperPops Series, and he is in charge of programming for the orchestra’s educational and outreach concerts.

In June, Nakahara’s value to the orchestra was nationally recognized when he was awarded a Bruno Walter Associate Conductor Chair by the Bruno Walter Foundation. Nakahara and David In-Jae Cho, resident conductor of the San Antonio Symphony, were chosen for the honor from among a group of 20 applicants.

Walter knew about the associate conductor’s life, having been an assistant to conducting titan Gustav Mahler. One of the missions of the foundation that bears his name is to recognize outstanding talents among associate conductors and further their careers by supporting their orchestras and providing grants for career development

The Bruno Walter Chair award carries with it a development grant of $2,500 for the recipient and an award of $7,500 to the orchestra where he works.

“The development grant will give me a chance to spend some times over the next season with four conductors across the country that I would like to ‘shadow’ to see what I can learn from them,” Nakahara says.

“I wanted to pick four conductors who are not only great conductors technically but also in the forefront of innovation in terms of programming and audience relations.”

Specific plans for that are not yet in place.

Nakahara was born in Kagoshima, a port city in the far south of Japan, and came to the United States as a teenager. He attended high school in Berrien Springs, Mich., where he also received his bachelor’s degree in music education from Andrews University. He earned his master’s degree in conducting from the College-Conservatory of the University of Cincinnati.

Before moving to Spokane, Nakahara taught conducting at Andrews and led its orchestra. He served as resident conductor at Cincinnati’s Music 2001 Festival and was interim music director of the South Bend Youth Orchestra while teaching at Indiana University-South Bend.

In addition to Nakahara’s job with the Spokane Symphony, he heads the conducting program and conducts the orchestra at Eastern Washington University.

This season he also completes a six-year tenure as music director of the Holland Symphony Orchestra in Michigan, where he’s been commuting.

He is one of five finalists for the music director’s position at the Missoula Symphony, where he conducted the opening concerts of that orchestra season on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1. He is also a finalist in the music director search for the Lubbock Symphony in Texas, where he will conduct in April.