Community Conductor Candidate Janna Hymes-Bianchi meets Bangor residents before Sunday concert performance

When conductor candidate Janna Hymes-Bianchi lifts her baton at the Bangor Symphony Orchestra on Sunday, she will have Bangor in her blood. As one of five candidates being interviewed this season for the position of music director, Hymes-Bianchi has not only been rehearsing Brahms, Mozart and Rosetti. She has also been practicing a leadership role that extends far past the concert hall.

Hymes-Bianchi, who lives in Camden, has spent the last week interacting with community members and musicians, board members and educators, business leaders and administrators. She has been to dinner, to lunch, to the library, to the bank, to the university, on radio.

A community orchestra, it turns out, isn’t just about community musicians. It’s about the entire community.

Last weekend, at a reception held in a fashionable Bangor home, Hymes-Bianchi did the inevitable when interviewing for a job: She schmoozed. And that’s a good thing. After all, a compelling music director is part PR person, part galvanizer, part wizard. “I’m an ambassador,” Hymes-Bianchi said. “My job is to get the word out. One of the jobs of a music director is to be a part of the community that way.”

With a cheerful glass of red wine in hand, Hymes-Bianchi talked with educators about outreach programs in the schools. She talked with musicians about the Brahms piece on Sunday’s program. She talked to a group of women about performance clothing for female conductors. (She likes to wear tails, but she also has appropriate dresses.) She even talked to an interior designer about the color of the paint on the walls.

“She’s exceptionally energetic which is a big plus for a conductor,” said Esther Melichar, a flutist who was at the reception with her husband, an airline pilot. “To have a conductor who is energetic brings out the best in an orchestra.”

Melichar, who teaches music and conducts the band and choir at All Saints Catholic School in Bangor, was quick to add, “That makes it more exciting for youth to attend concerts. Ms. Bianchi knows that students find classical music boring. But she has so much energy, I think she could make it exciting. She was very personable. Someone said she was jumping around like a typewriter.”

A similar reception has been held for each of the conductor candidates, said Susan Jonason, executive director of the BSO. It’s a chance for board members and others active in the BSO organization to have informal chats with the contending visitors.

Additionally, the audience is invited to post-concert meet-the-conductor receptions at the Maine Center for the Arts. In addition to the board of directors and the musicians, the audience will also participate by survey in the final choice for the position of music director and conductor, a post vacated last season by Christopher Zimmerman.

“The conductor is very much a primary figure in the organization,” said Jonason. “He or she needs to be able to communicate a mission and to generate enthusiasm. A conductor is a leader in that regard whether they are maintaining already established relationships or creating new relationships. The conductor represents the image of the orchestra in a very large sense. It’s very important how they are seen by others and how they relate.”

Clearly, relating comes naturally to Hymes-Bianchi. Growing up in Manhattan, she was the youngest child and only girl to a father who is a lighting designer for TV and a mother who did public relations for the American Ballet Theatre. On the Christmas tree each year, she and her brothers found gift certificates to cultural events in the city. Her brothers went to Knicks games. (They took her as their guests.) She went to opera and ballet. (She took them as guests.)

By age 7, Hymes-Bianchi was studying piano. She switched to cello in high school. One day in 10th grade, the conductor of the school’s top orchestra was late. Hymes-Bianchi jumped up to the podium and raised her hands. The room fell silent and the young musicians waited for a signal to begin. “It was a powerful moment,” said Hymes-Bianchi. “It was magical. I felt giddy inside.”

She suspected then that she would veer toward conducting. But a concert that her high school band played two years later at Carnegie Hall – when she stepped on the same backstage floorboards crossed by Horowitz and Toscanini – left her with no doubts.

From there, Hymes-Bianchi went to the University of Wisconsin, then to Juilliard, then Yale for conducting studies. She got a Fulbright. Took master classes with Bernstein, Ozawa, Slatkin. By the 1990s, she had made guest appearances in Mexico, France, Italy, and the Netherlands. Then she did the same in the United States for another 10 years, and at the same time held resident or principal posts for the Canton Symphony Orchestra, the Columbus (Ohio) Women’s Orchestra and the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra.

Somewhere in there, Hymes-Bianchi found time to marry – her husband Fred Bianchi is a professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts – and have two sons, now ages 4 and 8. The family moved to Maine last year when Hymes-Bianchi left a three-year position as associate conductor at the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. During the last year, she has continued to guest conduct, has taken a post as music director for the Maine Grand Opera Company and is currently interviewing for several music director positions nationally. It’s not a surprise really that she is also a devoted kayaker, hiker and runner.

“I’m happy. I’m doing the work I want to do,” said Hymes-Bianchi, who is 42. “I paid my dues and I learned a lot during those years. It was a great education. But now I want to do my own thing. I am interested in the chance to build something.”

If Hymes-Bianchi is chosen for the post of BSO music director, she will be the first woman to hold that position since the orchestra was founded in 1896. Of approximately 1,800 orchestras in the country, 12 to 15 percent have women in the leadership position of music director or conductor, according to the American Symphony Orchestra League.

At the party Sunday, several women secretly confided that the prospect of a woman at the BSO podium was very exciting. Several men confided the same.

Hymes-Bianchi kept her own focus on the production of music and the proliferation of music in the community. At rehearsals with the BSO, she found herself confronted with a group of musicians who were prepared, flexible and pleasant.

“They are good people and they want to play the best they can,” she said. “They are hungry for that. They are starving for it. I like what I see now and what I see it can become.”

Hymes-Bianchi was the last person to leave Sunday’s party. She had been talking, listening, smiling for three hours – and seemed ready for more. In fact, she tore into the kitchen to grab a last minute snack and to get notes from the hostess about granite counters and wallpaper. That information would help, she said, with the old house she and her family are redecorating in Camden. Which, she reminded, is a mere hour commute to Bangor.

Janna Hymes-Bianchi will conduct the Bangor Symphony Orchestra 3 p.m. Jan. 13 at the Maine Center for the Arts. For tickets, call 942-5555.