Musician and conductor James S. Kahane is nearing the tip of his first season as Music Director of the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra. He additionally holds the place of Principal Conductor with the Helsinki Chamber Orchestra, and Orchestre de Chambre de la Drôme in Die, France.
Naturally, he spends a bit of his time today travelling, together with criss-crossing the Atlantic. LvT caught up with him after a current Hamilton live performance to speak.
James S. Kahane
Kahane started formal music research at age 14 on the Conservatoire à rayonnement communal du 13e arrondissement de Paris in his native France. By about t17, although, his consideration had shifted to conducting.
On the age of 19, Kahane was admitted to the conducting class on the fabled Sibelius Academy the place he studied from 2015 till 2021. One among Europe’s largest music academies, the Sibelius Academy was established in 1882, and has change into famend for turning out a protracted checklist of former college students who at the moment are among the many world’s outstanding musicians. Notably in recent times, that features many acclaimed conductors resembling Esa-Pekka Salonen, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Klaus Mäkelä, and Santtu-Matias Rouvali, amongst many others.
Along with his coaching in Finland, James pursued his research by invitation on the Menuhin Competition in Gstaad, in Bernard Haitink’s conducting masterclass on the Lucerne Music Competition, and the Tanglewood Music Competition. Throughout this time there, Kahane studied with Atso Almila, Sakari Oramo, and Hannu Lintu.
In 2018, he was invited by Kristjan Järvi invited to conduct the Baltic Academies Orchestra in Berlin. He has since gone on to conduct lots of the world’s main orchestras, and would assist to re-establish the Helsinki Chamber Orchestra, the place he now holds the title of Principal Conductor.
Kahane formally took up his place because the ninth Music Director of The Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra in the beginning the 2024/25 season.
The Interview
What made him make that change from piano to conducting as a young person?
“It was a mixture of a number of elements,” Kahane says. As he explains, as a younger music pupil, he was extra occupied with performing and dealing with teams than he was spending time in a solitary piano studio. “I didn’t actually benefit from the solitary facet of piano,” he says. “Except you do chamber music, its all by yourself.”
It was additionally a vital query of style. He was listening nearly completely to orchestral music, and enjoying piano transcriptions of orchestral works.
“The combination of these two issues form of led me naturally to conducting,” he observes.
The Finnish Means: The Sibelius Academy
What makes The Sibelius Academy such an distinctive place to study conducting?
“I can slender it all the way down to a mixture of three issues which can be all crucial,” Kahane begins.
First, he factors out that in his research, an orchestra was out there so that every of the 5 to seven college students in a cohort may work with the musicians immediately twice every week.
“It implies that each week you possibly can conduct an orchestra for about 40 or 50 minutes, which is so much.”
It’s an unlimited benefit to achieve all that have even earlier than commencement.
“They’ve this fairly fascinating and fairly efficient philosophy of instructing,” he continues.
Basically, it boils all the way down to: the liberty to develop your individual fashion.
“The instructor doesn’t intervene very a lot.” It’s akin to letting youngsters learn to work out find out how to stability and journey on a bicycle on their very own, the place intervention solely takes place if one thing clearly isn’t working.
The third element was a copious quantity of suggestions. “All our classes have been recorded on video.” After a category, the scholars would sit with the instructor, and undergo the video to replay the lesson and what was discovered. “There, we’d get an enormous quantity of suggestions.”
The duality of whole freedom in entrance of the orchestra when you have been conducting, juxtaposed with detailed suggestions afterwards, creates a uniquely productive surroundings for studying, he believes. The proof, as he notes, is within the proverbial pudding.
“You possibly can see it of their skilled life,” he factors out. “There aren’t any two Finnish conductors which can be the identical.”
Europe vs North America
The surroundings for Western artwork music is totally different in Europe versus North America. The roles he occupies with varied organizations are additionally not the identical. With the HPO, for instance, as Music Director, he’s answerable for programming, whereas as Principal Conductor elsewhere, he could make strategies, however the needs of a committee and the Inventive Director in the end decide what’s performed.
“Sure, the philosophy of programming could be very, very totally different,” Kahane says of his varied roles. In France, with the Orchestre de Chambre de la Drôme, the ensemble is devoted nearly completely to up to date music.
“We program new music nearly each live performance,” he says, drawing similarities to his current work with the Hamilton Philharmonic and their Intimate & Immersive live performance sequence.
He remarks that the classical music market is a good deal extra crowded in Europe than it’s in Canada, as a rule. In Helsinki alone, for instance, there are 5 orchestras. “I feel the audiences in Finland count on possibly a bit extra selection than audiences in Canada,” he says. “In case you are […] any orchestra in Helsinki, it’s important to set your self a bit bit aside.”
European applications will have a tendency to incorporate rarer and lesser heard works, in different phrases.
Coming Up…
Kahane can be again in Hamilton to conduct the HPO with visitor soloist James Ehnes on Might 3 in a program that features Mahler, Tchaikovsky, and the premiere of a brand new work by HPO Composer Fellow for 2024/25 Massimo Guida.
The HPO then ends their season with group concert events and a pops live performance of online game music. For subsequent season, Kahane can’t say a lot, however he’s promising an method that can take the orchestra in some new instructions.
“We try to range a bit bit our providing,” he explains. Meaning, there can be some additions to the anticipated symphonic repertoire and mainstage concert events. “We’re dipping our toes into opera, a bit little bit of ballet,” he says.
- Discover our extra concerning the Might 3 live performance and the HPO season [HERE].
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Anya Wassenberg is a Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. She is an skilled freelance author, blogger and writing teacher.