Zimmerman to conduct final concert with BSO Finalists for music post to ‘try out’ next season

BANGOR – Maestro Christopher Zimmerman will pick up the baton Sunday afternoon and conduct his final concert as music director of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra. Zimmerman announced last month that he had taken a job with the Symphony of Southeast Texas after leading the BSO for seven years.

The BSO board of directors was negotiating a new contract with Zimmerman when he submitted his resignation. Symphony staff and board members have been scrambling to get next season’s programming set and decide how to conduct the search for a new conductor.

While a search committee is still being organized, executive director Susan Jonason said last week that plans call for job candidates to conduct the orchestra next season. That is how the five finalists “tried out” for BSO music director during the 98th season when Zimmerman was hired.

“We’re in the process of writing a music director profile that outlines the things we want in the next conductor,” said Jonason. “We need to do everything possible to try to get candidates in line for next season. The fact that we’ve already programmed the season and set the dates shouldn’t be a problem. Over the course of the summer, we hope to receive applications and narrow it down to the five finalists.”

The BSO’s 106th season is set to open Sept. 23 with the overture from “Romeo & Juliet,” the Prelude to Acts I and 3 of “La Traviata” and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Just as they did when Zimmerman was hired, members of the search committee, orchestra, staff and audience will have input into who takes over as Zimmerman’s successor in 2002, she said.

“Most music directors move on after six or seven years,” Zimmerman said when his resignation was announced. “I’ve been here seven years. Basically, it’s been a good time. I’ve given what I can give and now it’s time to move on.”

Geographically and culturally the 43-year-old conductor is taking quite a leap from northern Maine to southeast Texas. He said the SST in Beaumont, a city of 114,000 located 90 miles east of Houston, is similar in size and budget to the BSO. He will conduct five concerts there a season in a hall about 2,000 seats smaller than the Hutchins Concert Hall at the Maine Center for the Arts where the BSO performs.

Zimmerman will continue to live and work in Hartford, Conn., where he teaches and conducts at the Hartt School of Music at the University of Hartford. He said that the SST’s rehearsal and performance schedule would allow him more time with his wife and children, now 5 and 7.

While the BSO rehearses and performs on Sunday afternoons, the Beaumont orchestra performs on Thursday evenings to avoid conflicting with high school, college and professional football. SST’s core group of performers is slightly larger than the BSO’s and Beaumont is much closer to a large city than is Bangor. Musicians come over from Houston to play quite regularly, according to Zimmerman.

“I think they’re ready in Texas to make some moves forward from where we [the BSO] are now,” he said. “In my discussions with [the SST] there are certain things I want to do there which would have been my next steps here. From my point of view they’re going to provide me with more musical opportunities because they’re not going to have the kind of financial constraints that the BSO has due to its deficit. The SST is considerably more stable financially.”

The conductor also has had his differences with local musicians. As an example, two years ago, Zimmerman did not renew the contracts of four long-standing orchestra members. Members of the orchestra committee alleged the conductor violated established symphony policy and the four were subsequently reinstated.

In addition to the orchestra’s financial constraints, Zimmerman said the fact that he has worked with three different executive directors in seven years has been difficult. In spite of these problems, Zimmerman said he accomplished many of the goals he set for the orchestra in 1994.

“I definitely think the orchestra’s improved. Definitely,” he said. “There’s much more of a sense of style from the word go, from the first rehearsal, and less sloppiness. Some of these have been things I want as an individual – a certain type of string sound, a certain type of articulation, more general ensemble and precision.”

Zimmerman added that he was leaving things undone as well. He said that the rehearsal schedule rarely allowed him to work with particular sections of the orchestra in enough detail. The BSO also never was able to add a Saturday evening or full summer concert series under his baton. And, he never had the opportunity to conduct an opera here.

The English-born Zimmerman, who first conducted as a teen-ager at the Pierre Monteux School for Conductors and Orchestra Musicians in Hancock, added that he will miss many of the players and the music they are capable of performing. The conductor said that because he has worked for so long with the orchestra, they often accomplish a great deal in a short amount of rehearsal time.

The conductor said that he will miss working with a large choral group the way he has with the Oratorio Society and the University Singers. The two organizations will perform with the BSO on Sunday.

When Zimmerman began his association with the BSO, he had never maintained a long-term relationship with an orchestra.

“I think I’ve grown tremendously in terms of my relationship with the orchestra and the administration,” he observed. “I’ve certainly learned a lot. … When I made a decision here, I don’t think it was a wrong decision. I’ve had rifts and disruptions, though, because of a lack of communication. I don’t think when I started here I took every element of the organization into consideration. That doesn’t mean you satisfy every member of the organization either.”

Any assessment of Zimmerman’s performance with the BSO always gets back to the music. Thomas Johnston, BSO board president, pointed to the music as the “hallmark of Chris’ tenure.”

“I think we saw and heard music that challenged the orchestra, that challenged the audience, that was romantic and I think it took us all to a new level of appreciation in the community,” he said. “I think we saw a vitality and enthusiasm from this conductor that built on the legacy of Werner [Torkanowsky]. We need to continue that momentum.”

It is Zimmerman’s passion for the music and the way he expresses it that earned him the job in Texas, according to Joseph Carlucci, conductor emeritus and interim executive director of the SST.

“He is a consummate musician,” said Carlucci. “I saw him in rehearsal and he’s what a conductor should be. Every faculty and body movement conveys the music to the players every single instant of the music. I was practically being pulled out of my chair as he was conducting. He compels you, the audience, to go along with him.”

Zimmerman said that despite the organizational and financial difficulties the BSO experienced over the past seven years, he never forgot the real reason he and the players gather onstage.

“The music is not for the orchestra as much as it is a product for the audience,” he said. “This I have always borne in mind. It is not for me or the orchestra. The fulfillment we get out of this is by providing a musical, cultural experience for those who are listening.”