Hello everyone and thank you for joining me for a special episode of YQG In Bloom.
My name is Tracy Martens and I am your host and we are here this evening at the Historic
Capital Theatre and I am interviewing our conductor for the Windsor Symphony Orchestra,
Robert Frantz.
How are you doing?
I'm great Tracy.
Thank you for having me.
I'm so excited to have you because I'm very new to the orchestra and one of the ladies,
Lauren, had invited some of us content creators.
It was the first time that I had ever seen anything like this and it was just your rehearsal
and then we came to the superheroes and I'm like, it just blew me away.
So tell me, what was your first impression at the rehearsal?
What did you notice?
I was shocked.
I mean, okay, they had Ben Davis from Broadway, so starstruck already.
And I was very overwhelmed by the amount of instruments, especially now looking at this
place with none of them in it.
It's like, how do you guys fit it all in here?
Everybody has their place, Tracy.
Everybody has a place.
Yeah, but it was beautiful.
It was beautiful.
And then I enjoyed it even more from the balcony for the superheroes.
And I was shocked at how interactive you are with the audience.
Is that something that all maestros do or is that your niche?
Well, I can't speak for everybody, but I can say that for me personally, I love that interactive
quality.
I feed on that.
I want to know what the audience is thinking and how they're feeling and I want to get
their vibe and their energy about what's happening and also quite frankly, I do enjoy getting
a laugh.
And so if I say something or do something funny, if I have a little shtick or whatever,
then it's fun for me and it motivates me and it kind of keeps me going.
You know, I grew up watching the Carol Burnett show and obviously Carol Burnett is total
genius.
Oh gosh, yes.
But what was really impressive about Carol Burnett was that question and answer period
where she was just off the cuff at the end of each show and she was just letting anybody
ask her a question and just be really natural.
And I always just imagine that I'm just having a conversation with people in my living room
when I'm talking to people in the audience.
We were up in the balcony, as I said, and there was a bunch of kids around us and they're
all dressed up in their costumes and they were glued to it and I was shocked because
they were quite young and for them to like something like a symphony.
Well I think what most people don't know is that when you think of whether a child is
going to like classical music or not, usually adults look at that through their adult lenses.
Kids just are having an experience.
They're in a space, they hear great music, they see a lot of stuff going on, they're
curious, they're inquisitive, they love it.
So if we don't tell kids that they're not supposed to like classical music, then they
just naturally like it.
And so I think that's a really important lesson.
And then the second thing is what I find with audiences that are new to us is that sometimes
there's some trepidation.
Okay, I grew up Catholic, right?
And so you know, when you ever took anybody to a Catholic church, they were like, okay,
when do I genuflect, when do I stand, when do I sit?
And I'm like, just relax, it's going to be okay.
But it's nerve wracking.
And I think people have a similar feeling when they come to the symphony, like, oh,
how well I know what to do, when do I applaud, when do I do this, when do I do that?
But my feeling is, if you just come with a sense of curiosity, that we'll take care of
the rest.
And there's so many cool things that we can express with our instruments through music,
you know, lots of emotions.
So you talk about the superhero concert, obviously, that was a sense of grandeur, a sense of really
rising to the occasion and expressing like these superhero sized emotions.
Yes.
But sometimes an orchestra can express something very intimate or express something that you
could only imagine in your head, but you could never use words to say, or the orchestra can
make you laugh or make you cry or make you think.
And that's really what great art is about.
One thing that I never understood is a maestro conducts.
What exactly am I doing?
Well, yeah, because what are you doing?
So there are a couple of practical things, considerations of being a conductor.
One is my job is to keep everyone together, right?
So how fast or slow the music is, how loud or soft, all of those things are determined
by the single focus of the conductor bringing everyone together.
The second component of a conductor really is the rehearsal process.
It's almost like the part of the iceberg you don't see.
When you come to a concert, you really just see the top 10% of what it is that I do.
And 90% of my work is outside of the performance in either my personal preparation or in rehearsals
with the orchestra.
When I'm rehearsing the orchestra, what I'm doing is I'm looking at the score and trying
to figure out the intention of the composer.
What did the composer mean when they wrote this or that?
I'm listening to what the musicians are playing, and then I'm making a decision about whether
or not I think what they're playing matches what I think the intention of the composer
is on the page.
And so there's this cycle that's created.
And so we're working together, the orchestra and I, to really bring that score to life.
Then the third thing that a conductor does, and this is the hardest thing to quantify,
is that when you think about a performance of a play or a movie or a symphony or a pop
concert or whatever, there really is a beginning, a middle, and an end.
And the pacing of that architecture in time is determined first and foremost by the composer.
They wrote it down.
But then the conductor has to understand that journey and take the audience and the musicians
on that journey with them.
And so that's really the bulk of what I do, is try to figure out, okay, so let's say I
have two-thirds of the way through a crescendo gradually getting louder.
How big of a crescendo is it?
Is this all the way to the max?
Do I hold back just a little?
Is there something else coming later?
I have to have an idea of where I am, but also how it fits into the big picture.
When it comes to, like you say, Beethoven or anything, are you able to take any liberties
to make it your own or do you stick right with the sheet music?
So it's a great question.
So I don't think in terms of how do I make this Beethoven, the Robert Franz version of
this Beethoven, but what I think is how do I, through my scholarship, through my understanding,
through my study, how do I perceive this music?
What do I perceive that Beethoven meant by it?
Because of that, it comes out a certain way.
Because I'm a human and I have my own history and my own background and I bring that to
every performance.
So each conductor approaches the score differently based on their background.
And so I don't really think about my interpretation so much as much as I think about what information
do I have that helps me bring it to life.
For instance, to go back to the Superheroes concert for a second, I was really taken by
the music from the movie Thor.
I had not seen the movie Thor.
So I rehearsed the music and then on Saturday afternoon between the dress rehearsal and
the concert, I was just relaxing at home like I do on a concert day.
And I thought, I'm going to watch the movie.
So I watched Thor.
Great movie.
It was really, really fun.
But the music was a bit slower, maybe considerably, than I had been performing it.
But when you listen to the music without the movie, the intention, it doesn't hold up as
well at the slow tempo.
In the movie, there's a lot of other visuals and suspense that's going on.
So in that case, even though the composer doesn't say it, it really made sense to me
in a concert performance to perform the music slightly faster than they did in the movie
because of the other things that were going on.
Now how long have you been a conductor?
A long time.
So I would say at least 30 years.
So what happened was I started music when I was eight years old in a public school in
upstate New York where I grew up playing the cello.
In grade six, I switched to the oboe and I became an oboist in high school.
And then I went to the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and did a bachelor's
degree in oboe performance.
About halfway through, I guess I was about 20 years old, I stood up in front of an orchestra.
I took a conducting class.
I stood up in front of the orchestra and raised my hand.
The orchestra went ta-da, ti-da, and right at that moment, I was like, OK, this is the
coolest thing I've ever done in my life.
This is what I want to do.
So then I started studying conducting, private lessons, and then I did a master's degree
in conducting.
Then I graduated with two degrees.
I had a bachelor's, an oboe, and a master's in conducting.
Zero hope of getting a job because in order to get a job, you have to have experience.
In order to get experience, you have to have a job.
As usual.
So I thought, well, if nobody's going to hire me, I'll just start my own orchestra.
How hard can it be?
And the great thing about being 24 is that you don't know the answer to that question.
Now that I'm past 24, I know the answer to that question.
It doesn't mean I don't do it, but it's a different question.
So I started an orchestra, a professional orchestra, and learned how to raise money,
sell tickets, run it, and that was my first job.
So that was 32 years ago.
So you know the ins and outs of all of it, right from being the performer to ticket sales.
Starting it from scratch.
I ran, I mean, I was a one-man band for that orchestra, I'll tell you.
This is probably how you have brought so much to the Windsor Symphony in the 10 years that
you've been here.
And by the way, happy 10th anniversary.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Yeah, because you have done, I mean, a lot.
Lauren sent me a bunch of stuff and I'm just shocked.
I think in a very entrepreneurial way.
And I love the idea.
So I love the art form, obviously.
Music is everything to me, but it's also a business.
And I'm really intrigued by the idea of how you take something that is so beautiful and
so intrinsically powerful as music and you blend it with a job, like with a business.
And how do you make those two things come together?
And so that's just always been how I thought.
And so it was a natural progression for me.
So for instance, here in Windsor, when we're looking at a new project, I can look at the
budget and go, OK, well, this is what it's going to cost and this is how we, you know,
this is, I can work with our executive director in a meaningful way.
You realigned the chamber and the orchestra.
People know now that we have a symphony.
Right.
Yeah.
So when I arrived here in 2013, it was a very different time.
It was the end of the economic downturn.
Windsor and Detroit have been hit very hard.
The symphony was part of that.
There was a whole thing about bingo funds and laws changing and all of that.
All of those things combined really made it a very treacherous place when I arrived in
terms of just the inner functioning of the orchestra.
And so the positive to that was that it meant that everything went out the window and we
had to rebuild from scratch the entire organization, which meant that we could ask ourselves, is
this important, if so, who is it important to, to whom and what do we want to where do
we want to pour our resources?
And so over the course of my 10 years here, what we've done is we've really assessed to
the best of our abilities what the needs are in the community.
And we've crafted our our performances, our product, if you will, to accommodate that.
So for instance, the Chamber Orchestra concerts that you're referring to, where we have about
20 musicians from the Windsor Symphony perform, they perform here on stage now.
But the audience also sits on stage and they sit in a circle around us at bistro tables.
We put bars in the wings.
So we have food in one side and drink on the other.
They're an hour long concert.
They're very informal.
They're fun.
There's a question and answer period.
There's a lots of engagement.
And we found that people in our community really respond to those concerts.
Now how often do you guys do that during the year?
So we do four pairs of them this year.
So we do a Thursday night at 730 and a Friday morning coffee concert.
So we replace the bar with a coffee bar Friday morning at 11.
Both of those sell out one to two weeks before the concert.
So the book each of the pair.
So next year, we're going from four pairs to five pairs.
So we'll have five weeks of those kinds of concerts.
And we're even going to experiment with some Wednesday right after work type concerts.
Because we think there really is not only a market, but there's a group of people in
town who really enjoy having that kind of experience.
So you walk in not the front of the Capitol Theater, but the stage door.
The shell for the orchestra is down and gone.
And so you see the raw bricks and wiring and everything in the theater.
Which to us in the orchestra is just kind of part of life.
But to our audience, it's like a whole new world.
Like to see this, because when you come to concerts, you see it's very sort of fancy
and wooden and all buttoned up.
But when it's all gone, it is raw.
And it's really, there's something super fun about being in that environment.
It feels not only casual, but it feels real.
Well, you get to see all the behind the scenes.
We are an acoustic ensemble.
We do not mic the orchestra.
So when you come to the Capitol Theater, you're hearing just the actual sound of the instruments.
And the way the shell works on the stage, this wooden shell, is it's like a big megaphone.
And we're sitting inside of a big, like almost like one of those big things of an old phonograph.
And it's shooting the sound out to the audience and enveloping you.
Yeah, but you've got to have people that maintain that and take care of it.
But I like that.
You guys are catering to all different genres, like your family series, the PB&J concert
that you had started for kids.
Yeah, so when I first arrived, we had these peanut butter and jam concerts.
We're super cute, super fun.
It was like a group of 20 or 30 kids that would come.
And we do it in one of our back rooms back here and have a small ensemble play.
And so about seven or eight years ago now, we brought them onto the stage with our orchestra.
And now we have anywhere from three to four hundred people per show.
And we do two shows because we can't fit them all in one hall.
And they're concerts that are designed for kids ages four to eight and they're guardians.
And we really make sure that kids are amused at that age, but also that parents and grandparents
also feel connected.
Because I don't know about you, but I know when my girls were young, the things that
I enjoyed the most were the performances and the things that we could do that had multiple
levels.
Yeah.
And the things I enjoyed the least were the things that didn't.
So we make sure that our family concerts have multiple levels so that there are jokes and
humor for the adults that the kids don't necessarily get and that there's a lot of fun stuff for
the kids to do and experience.
And it all sort of works together.
And in that way, we really fulfill our mission, which the mission of the Windsor Symphony
is to connect people through music.
And what we see in those family concerts is multi-generational groups, four year olds,
40 year olds, 80 year olds enjoying something together, really experiencing it together.
Kind of like the experience you had as superheroes, where you saw those kids with their guardians
really connected and engaged with the orchestra.
Yeah, it is wonderful to see all age groups enjoying something that has been around for
so long and I'm finding that in Windsor, Essex County that there's a resurgence of the interest.
It's kudos to you and to everybody that works with you because you have not just you, but
the youth orchestra and the community orchestra.
Like there's a lot of different things going on.
So there's a little bit of something for everybody.
We have a big family and we like to say that if you want to make music at any level, there's
a place for you here.
So we have junior strings for young string players, youth orchestra for strings, winds,
brass percussion in high school.
We have a community chorus, the Windsor Symphony Orchestra chorus, which you can be any age
to sing in.
And we have the Windsor Symphony Community Orchestra, which is an amateur orchestra.
Those four ensembles plus the Windsor Symphony Orchestra make up the entire umbrella of the
Windsor Symphony Orchestra family.
Really you can come to the Capitol Theater and partake and really participate if you wish
at just about any level.
And that's wonderful.
And in fact, that you have the Capitol Theater in order to do it is great, but you don't
just do it in here.
You guys, some of them, they take it outdoors.
In fact, you will be too.
Yes, that's right.
So this summer we're going to be performing at Seacliff, the park in Leamington down on
the lake and the full orchestra will be down there.
I'll be conducting.
But I think Tracy, one thing that people may not be aware of is that we perform over 125
concerts a year and over half of those are outside of the Capitol Theater.
So for instance, we do 32 concerts, pairs of concerts, mind you, in elementary schools
around Essex County.
And what we do is we have a relationship with the public school board and the parochial
school board.
We have committed to visiting every one of the elementary schools once every three years.
So we're in a three year cycle with elementary schools live.
And so we take the orchestra into the schools and do concert performances for them there.
Then we have, that's for kindergarten through grade three, grade four through six come here
to the Capitol Theater to see a concert.
And for those who can't come, we digitize it.
So we make a virtual concert and the assistant conductor puts together the glue and makes
it into an actual learning experience.
And then we have a program for grades seven through 12 where they can come and see me
and the orchestra perform one of the big symphonies that we're doing during the year.
So really if a school was interested, a child was interested, there really is a contact
point once a year, kindergarten through grade 12 with the Windsor Symphony Orchestra now.
And it's for everybody.
So that's what's really cool because we have these relationships with the public school
board and the parochial school board.
They make sure that every child, no matter where they come from, no matter what part
of the county they live in has equal access to great art, great music.
And to me, that's what it's all about.
For sure.
Because what better way to express yourself than through music.
And no matter what kind of music.
And I think it's also exciting because I mean, I was in a band and in the school band in
high school.
What did you play?
Clarinet.
But I might have even been more excited about it if I would have seen.
Absolutely.
It being played here and hearing what really could come out of it other than the horrible
squeaks that came out of my clarinet.
But it's like it's the same thing.
Like if you play hockey and you go see an NHL game, you're like, oh, that's really cool.
I can connect with that.
I want to be like that.
And that's the exact same thing with music.
No question.
That's perfect.
You were doing the outdoor concerts as well.
Yes.
And aren't you guys in conjunction with WIF this year?
We are.
So we have 15 concerts that we call main stage concerts.
That means 15 weekends we're performing various kinds of programs on the stage.
Five are classical.
Five are those chamber on stage concerts I told you about.
And then five are what we call pops, which means they're more popular oriented.
Like Super Heroes was one of the pop series.
Next year in October, we begin the season with the Golden Age of Film, which is an exploration
of great film scores from 40s and 50s.
So it'll be like Gone with the Wind and Casablanca and Ben Hur and the Eric, this swashbuckling
films of Errol Flynn, that kind of music.
Those scores are so grand.
There's like they don't write classical music.
They don't write film music like that anymore.
Like that's just it's an era gone by.
But what's really exciting about it is it's the week before WIF starts and the Windsor
International Film Festival celebrating their 20th anniversary.
So we're celebrating with them.
That's going to be great.
And you guys also in the background, you put up various stuff.
I know through the Super Heroes we saw that.
So during COVID, we developed a production studio here at the Capitol Theater.
And this actually happened just before COVID.
And it happened not because of COVID.
It happened because we started being the main tenant and landlord of the Capitol Theater
for the city over 10 years ago now.
And in order to when we weren't using it, rent it out more and have it be more flexible,
we needed the technology to be at a higher level.
So unbeknownst to us pre-COVID, there was a whole production studio that was set up
upstairs and all of these cameras and all of this equipment that we got here at the
theater so that people who rented the theater could use that equipment.
So COVID, we switched over to digital concerts.
So we used it then, obviously.
And now that we're post-COVID, we're still enjoying all of that technology.
So for instance, we have the technology to show videos, GIFs, pictures on the back screen
behind the orchestra during a show.
So are any of the movies going to be playing?
So one.
So there's a movie, a Buster Keaton movie, and it's the original movie that was performed
on opening night of the Capitol Theater back in 1920-something when the Capitol Theater
opened.
It's a 20-minute short, Buster Keaton, and we're going to perform that live, orchestra
live under the silent film.
All of the others will just be the music soundtracks without clips from the movies.
That will be really exciting to see.
It's fun, huh?
It is going to be fun.
I can't wait.
Now you got me all excited.
I'm waiting for January with Abba and then the one in the summertime.
But I see here that you also created a Christmas CD.
Yes.
So a few years ago now, we...
Okay, I'll tell you how it started.
Santa Claus, who happens to be a friend of the WSO.
Oh, thank goodness.
I know.
He bought me a book called 12 Canadian Days of Christmas by Elaine Becker, one year, first
Christmas.
And it's an adorable version of the 12 Days of Christmas, but like with beaver tails and
moose and Mounties and Stanley cups and things.
So we took an arrangement of the 12 Days of Christmas and we changed the words and we
sang it.
The audience fell in love with it.
It was super cool.
So after that, I thought to myself, we know some great composers.
If we could get someone to write a brand new version of this that was specific to this
book, what would that look like?
And Elaine Becker had other Christmas books that were Canadianized.
So we commissioned three of them.
We Wish You a Merry Christmas, Deck the Halls, and then 12 Canadian Days of Christmas.
And we premiered them and performed them.
But then I thought, people really need to hear these.
So we went out, we did some fundraising, and we found some supporters, really generous
supporters who funded a CD project for us.
So our CD is called Christmas A, and it's all Canadian versions, not all, but a bunch
of Canadian versions of Christmas songs.
It's really super adorable.
That sounds cute.
Also on that actually is a piece for narrator and orchestra by local author Kara Kutstra.
And it's called Bobby Orr and the Hand Me Down Skates.
And she wrote this book with Bobby Orr.
And we got her to agree to let us compose an orchestration for it.
And so there's a version of it for narrator and orchestra on the CD of Bobby Orr and the
Hand Me Down Skates.
Oh, that sounds cute.
Yeah.
Oh, I'm going to have to find that.
It's easy to find.
Apple, iTunes, anywhere, Spotify.
Where you buy your sound.
This isn't your only symphony that you work with.
You work with a lot.
Yes.
I was blown away.
So it's really common in the business for conductors and musicians, by the way, to play
in multiple groups.
So for instance, many of the musicians in the Windsor Symphony also play in like the
orchestra in Hamilton or Niagara Falls or London Symphony, like other orchestras.
So it's pretty normal, seeing with conductors.
So I have two other positions that I juggle with the Windsor Symphony.
Now, my home is in Windsor, but I travel to Boise, Idaho, where I'm the music director
of the Boise Baroque Orchestra, which is an orchestra that focuses on music from the 18th
century.
It's a very specialized, stylized kind of music.
But composers you would know, Vivaldi, Telemann, Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn.
It's a pretty rich bunch of pieces of repertoire.
So I do that in the summer.
And those actually are really fun because they're outdoor concerts at a chateau in rural
Idaho.
And so it's a French garden.
It's beautiful.
And then I recently became the music director of the University of North Carolina School
of the Arts Symphony Orchestra, which is my alma mater.
It's in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and I go back and forth a few times a year, four
times a year.
And then you've also been guest conductor for like all over the world.
Whenever there's a week empty, my manager and I will say, OK, who do we want to pinpoint?
Where can we do this?
And so I've been really fortunate.
I mean, I've been in this business for a long time, and I feel really fortunate that I've
been lucky.
I've worked hard.
I've had good breaks, and I've really tried to maintain a sense of connection, passion,
and direction about what I want to accomplish.
And because of those things, my career has, you know, knock on wood, has really been three
decades.
Yeah.
And so being a conductor, you realize the importance of conductors, and in Windsor,
you helped make it so that the part-time conductors are getting paid full-time because they're
basically working full-time.
Yes.
So it's nonstop.
So what happened was when I first got here, we had an assistant conductor that was part-time,
and we ended up really building out the portfolio of that position with the community orchestra,
with the youth orchestra, and with doing a lot more education concerts in the schools.
So that allowed us the opportunity to hire a full-time assistant conductor.
And so now there are two conductors on staff, myself and an assistant conductor, and we
pretty much split, you know, about 100 of the 125 concerts.
We do have a couple of other guest conductors, and some are without conductor, but about
100 concerts we split.
Oh, so there's also other guest conductors?
There are.
So we bring in other conductors from time to time as well.
I mean, there's so many concerts.
The orchestra really needs fresh blood as well.
I can't be at everything.
The assistant conductor can't.
We can't do everything.
So yeah, so that keeps it fresh and new and interesting.
And I know a lot of the different musicians, they're not from the Windsor.
They're from all over Ontario.
That's correct.
So I would say probably 25 or 30 percent of our musicians live in town, and the rest live
up and down the 401.
And so we have a lot of people from Toronto and London and Kitchener, Waterloo and Hamilton
and Niagara Falls and all sorts of areas.
And because of that, they are an incredibly talented group of people who make their living
at playing music.
So they're freelancers.
They play all the time.
So they're not doing like another job and do this on the side.
Every week they make music with a different orchestra, and that's how they make a living.
It's incredible.
That's a lot of dedication, and you can tell.
And we're really fortunate in Windsor because of that.
It means that the orchestra plays at an exceedingly high level.
And because of that, because of how great the musicians are, we can do 125 concerts
because we don't have a lot of rehearsal time.
So the Superheroes concert you saw only had two rehearsals.
Generally we have three or four rehearsals for a classical concert and one or two for
a Pops or a Family concert.
Wow.
Yeah, I know.
It's fast.
Toronto's fast.
That's crazy.
I couldn't imagine learning their specific pieces in one or two practices.
Just to get it all together and flowing.
So what happens is the musicians get the music one or two weeks ahead of time.
They practice their part.
They come with their part learned.
And then we very quickly put it together.
It's working.
It's wonderful.
Thank you.
That's sweet.
Now, is there a piece or a symphony or what is there one thing that you've wanted to do
that you haven't been able to do yet?
Well, that's a really good question.
Kind of like a bucket list, right?
Kind of.
Yeah.
So a long time ago, I became at one with the fact that by doing this as a career.
Okay, let me say this in this way.
My dad told me, he said, are you sure you don't want like a regular job?
This is when I was a kid.
He had a regular job to do music on the side.
I said, no, I want to do it for a living because it's going to be a lot different when you
do it for a living.
And I was like, no, it'll be fine.
But he was right.
It is so different because when you do it for a living, there's a deeper understanding.
It really hits me in a very profound way.
But I don't really think of it in terms of I really want to do this piece or I don't
want to do that.
I think of it as what piece would be the best piece of music to do on this concert?
And then I go for it.
And so the art of making music is more important to me than the actual piece.
Having said that, there are some pieces that I have not conducted and next year we're opening
the season with a piece by Bela Bartok, a Hungarian composer.
It's called the Concerto for Orchestra.
I learned it years ago, but I've never gotten to conduct it.
And I'm conducting it twice next year, two different orchestras.
Very excited.
And so there are pieces still at my age that I'm still learning.
Like there's so many new pieces I've conducted.
I keep track of this.
Over 750 pieces in my career.
750 pieces of music over.
And still there are hundreds, maybe thousands of pieces that are standard that I have not
done.
Oh my goodness.
And then you guys are also doing pop and you're doing so many other things.
I mean, like you could continue on forever.
And I love that.
Like it really is for me, it's very, it keeps, it's how my mind works.
It keeps it going.
It's like, it's very interesting, right?
Because I think, okay, I, you know, I do a concert on Sunday afternoon, Monday morning
I wake up and I'm like, okay, so next up we've got this and let's think about this and how
does this go together?
Cause you know, when I was a kid, you do a concert and then for three weeks you'd be
in a glow.
You'd be like, oh, that was so great.
Now I'm like Sunday, I'll have a drink after the concert.
And then Monday morning it's on to the next one.
And it's, it's not a sad thing.
It's the most profound, like rewarding aspect that I could imagine with my life.
My dad was right.
I know it was going to be different, but he wasn't right in the sense that it was so much
better than I could have ever dreamed.
Well that's the misnomer that a lot of people have is never make your passion your job because
then you're going to start to hate it.
And they don't realize that maybe you're going to find parts of it that you didn't even know.
And you love it.
You're just nonstop.
You do it year round, all around the country, all around the world, even during COVID.
And if you make your passion your job, then it never feels like a job.
It really doesn't.
I mean, I still honestly, Tracy, I'll wake up and I'll pinch myself and be like, okay,
so today I'm going to go conduct a piece of music for a living.
Like that's what I do for work.
It's awesome.
And it is.
Especially when he can wear a space helmet.
Yes.
Although that was a little tricky, but yes, I've worn trickier costumes.
What is the weirdest costume you've worn?
Probably the two person camel.
So I was conducting a concert of Arabian music and I was in a two person camel.
I was the front person and we didn't want to have someone stuck behind me for the whole
concert.
So they built a frame around my waist that went back to the butt of the camel, down the
legs and they put roller skates on the back two legs.
And so what was funny about that costume was it was fur and it was hot, hot, hot, hot.
And I had not taken into account how hot it would be.
So I got up to conduct the first piece and I'm standing there in complete fur head to
toe.
It was so hot that I started to get dizzy and I thought, okay, fainting in front of
you know, 3000 people is probably not the best way to go.
So I started doing Zen breathing in the middle of the piece.
Then I thought, okay, when I'm done, I'll get a drink of water.
I'll be fine.
So I looked down and as a joke, and we all thought this would be funny, instead of putting
a bottle of water, they put one of those big containers of water that you use like in an
office with a straw that was that big around.
So I went down to try to get some water out of it and the straw was so big I couldn't
create suction.
So I couldn't get any water.
So I had to conduct the concert with no water, just about to pass out.
So then in between concerts, it was double.
I went back, they had an air conditioned area for me.
So I took the top part of the costume off and I was standing in the air, just panting,
drinking water.
And I'm like, you've got to put a regular human sized water out there for me, please.
And so the second show was fine.
That was hot.
And where was that?
In Houston.
Yeah.
I used to be the associate conductor of the Houston Symphony.
I was for 14 years and I would do three or four concerts a year where I would always
wear a costume.
So I've been a giant chicken.
I've been Dr. Seuss.
I've been, you know, you name it.
So you really get into this job.
I love it.
Love it.
And then until probably a couple of years ago, I hadn't even heard about the Windsor
Symphony.
And now it just, everywhere you go, you're seeing the advertisements and to see both
the concerts that were like sold out.
And it's wonderful.
It's exciting.
Season tickets.
And it's nice to see a new breed and a new generation of people that are enjoying classical
and new music.
Well, we love having you.
It's wonderful.
And I can't wait until next year.
It's awesome.
Yeah.
And what are your plans for the summer?
So for the month of June, I teach in Idaho, actually.
I have to a camp that I started called the Idaho Orchestra Institute, which is for high
school and college age students.
And then I do a conducting workshop.
So I teach conducting.
And then in August is the summer music festival for my Boise Baroque Orchestra.
So I'll be there for the month of August doing Sunday evening concerts.
May and July I have off from conducting, which is perfect because I really need the
time to prepare for next season and kind of get things going.
And your season starts in September here?
Yes.
So we start third week of September and we go through the first week of May each year.
And then there is still the summer with the other?
We'll do about five or six concerts at the end of July.
A small ensembles like Quintets, five people in Amherstburg and on the river here in Windsor.
And then we do the one orchestra concert in Leamington.
And that's what we do in the summer is just a very small amount because honestly, the
staff is also getting ready for those 125 concerts during the year.
It's a lot.
It is.
You guys keep it going year round, which is fabulous.
That's right.
And I want to thank you so much for the 10 years that you've given us and how much you
have improved the symphony and the experience of the symphony.
And you've created a convert out of me.
So thank you so much for being here today.
I really do appreciate it.
Thank you, Tracy.
I appreciate it too.
And thank you again for watching another episode of YQG In Bloom.
My name is Tracy Martens and I hope you enjoyed this interview this evening with Robert Frantz.
You guys have a good night.