Conductors

What do conductors do, anyway? Do they just stand at the podium and keep a beat?

Nope!

Conductors use their faces, hands, and body language to convey (show):

• Tempo (speed)
• Dynamics (volume)
• Time signature (is the piece in 4/4? 3/4? 6/8? etc)
• Mood (is it a bouncy, happy piece, or a slow, mournful (sad) piece?)
• Articulation (is it a light staccato or more of a weighted staccato?)
• Cues (do different instruments play at different times? is there a soloist?)

The conductor also has to study the score (all of the musicians' parts on the same page, usually many, many pages long - for example, the link on the word "score" is for the band version of "Strange Humors" by John Mackey - it's 24 pages long, and it has 36 people's parts on it!) very closely and know what each musician is doing at all points in the piece of music. It's hard to make eye contact if you're staring at the music the whole time, so conductors can express the qualities listed above the best when they have the score memorized.

The video below is an interview with Marin Alsop, Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony. 

(If you'd like, start at 2:00 to skip the not-as-relevant-to-what-we're-learning stuff.) 

(This is the video we watched in class where Katie Couric, the newscaster, tried to conduct an ensemble.)

This video is a CBS This Morning segment featuring Wynton Marsalis (famous jazz and classical trumpet player) explaining the similarities between quarterbacks and orchestra conductors. In it, he interviews New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and New York Philharmonic conductor Alan Gilbert. Football players/fans and sports fans, I think you'll appreciate this one!

The last video shows a lot of Gustavo Dudamel's conducting from the orchestra's perspective. He says that the conductor's instrument is not just the baton - it is the whole body. (He definitely embodies that statement!) The orchestra is playing Danzon No. 2 by Arturo Marquez. The camera angles are great - you can see a lot of the instruments we've talked about! (Sorry, no saxophone or euphonium, though.)