Meet Santa Rosa Symphony conductor candidate Graeme Jenkins

Like Santa Rosa Symphony’s outgoing Music Director Bruno Ferrandis, music director candidate Graeme Jenkins is based in Europe but has spent a great deal of time in the U.S.

Also like Ferrandis, Jenkins knows his way around the string bass and has deep roots in opera, serving as the music director of the Dallas Opera for nearly 20 years. But the similarities between the Frenchman and the Brit stop there.

The 58-year-old Jenkins, a choral and orchestral conductor who specializes in Mozart and the Viennese classics, will lead a program of Haydn, Mozart and Bartok from Saturday through Monday, Jan. 13 to 15, at the Green Music Center’s Weill Hall.

The mostly Classical-era program will provide a palate-cleanser from the music performed so far this season, which has leaned heavily toward big, Romantic works by composers such as Berlioz, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff.

One of his most famous mentors - Sir Peter Hall, a theater, opera and film director who died in September at age 86 - set Jenkins on the “less is more” path a long time ago, and he has never veered very far from it.

“Sir Peter Hall really insisted on integrity to the piece, and that is the heart of what I do as a conductor,” Jenkins said. “So that the music speaks its truth to the audience.”

Jenkins, who has conducted all the major UK orchestras and other opera companies such as the Vienna State Opera, uses restrained gestures when he conducts to communicate the sound that he wants to the orchestra.

“If you watch the greatest conductors ... they shape the music with their hands,” he said. “If you want (Gustavo) Dudamel - somebody doing huge and flamboyant gesture - that’s maybe what Santa Rosa needs. But if you want someone to delve deep into the music, that’s where I might fit in better.”

A self-made musician, Jenkins is the son of a banker and a hard-working housewife and fell under the spell of music as a young boy. He was able to excel, he said, due to Britain’s top-notch musical education system. His training started at Dulwich College, a private boarding school in South London; and continued at the University of Cambridge, where he read music; then at the Royal College of Music in London, where he studied conducting.

“I come from a family where there wasn’t much music, but for some reason I loved classical music,” he said. “I’m a product of education bringing people to music.”

His career took off when he was appointed Music Director of the Glyndebourne Touring Opera from 1986 to 1991. “I was very, very lucky,” he said. “After doing a festival in Brighton, the Glyndebourne Touring Opera asked me to come there, and I was there for seven years, with (Bernard) Haitink and (Sir Simon) Rattle.”

Jenkins is the fourth and penultimate candidate to audition with the Santa Rosa symphony this season to take Ferrandis’ place. A final decision made by the board will be announced in March.

Here is an edited version of our interview with Jenkins, who lives in Dorset, England, with his wife, Joanne. The couple has two daughters: Martha, 27, and Isabella, 25.

What will the symphony musicians enjoy about working with you?

I hope, in that week, that some form of spark will come between the rostrum and the musicians. Without talking, without enormous movements from me, the music will speak for itself.

From the very first down beat, I’ll know if there’s the concentration and level of professionalism that wants to go further. I’ll start with the Bartok (Concerto for Orchestra) and those quiet phrases, and I’ll know from the intonation from cellos and bass how we’re going to get on.

In my first job, I was wonderfully tutored in committee, letting everybody talk, getting the feeling of the room, and then suggesting an approach ... it’s much better to have everybody involved. That’s the same way when you conduct an orchestra. Yes, you dictate the tempo, but you need to nurture the person in the back of the second violins and the new student in front, and remind the jaded members that the music is life-giving and remind them what it was like when they first did it.

What ideas do you have to engage and grow the audience here, and can you give an example of what you’ve already done with other orchestras?

That’s very hard to answer without being in California and seeing what is needed. I’ve seen what the planning has been and the educational works that have already been done. It’s actually sitting down with the board and audience and asking, “We have this marvelous orchestra, what do you want to do with it and how can we grow an audience?”

In Dallas, it was very much working together with board members and audience and singers. It’s pointless saying, ”We must do this,” without knowing and nurturing what is going on there.

What is your programming philosophy and how do you plan to keep concerts exciting for everyone?

It’s making every piece you do as exciting as possible. To take the orchestra to the absolute limits of what they can do and beyond. We must not become a museum culture. We must find new composers and new works. Why was it Haydn wrote 104 symphonies? Everyone wanted to hear something new.

Now the obsession is to hear everything everybody knows already. I don’t go into the same restaurant and eat the same meat with the same sauce. I want to try all kinds of things ... There are many different shades of cabernet sauvignon, depending on how much time in the barrel and the bottle. It’s the same with music. You want to try and develop different great varietals of the time.

Where do you see classical music going in the future, and how would you take this orchestra in that direction?

Classical music is in a difficult place at the moment, in that media does not take it seriously and everyone is calling it elitist. For me, it’s never been elitist. In Germany, every child at age 4 goes to see a production of “The Magic Flute.” It’s not difficult. And what is vital is that one keeps the support from the board and community to keep prices low so that anyone who wants to can afford to go.

The traditional standard repertoire should not be unknown. One should know the works of Mozart and Beethoven. But in America, that’s a challenge. So one has to tell the audience, “What we’re doing is really important, and you must come and hear it.”

And if one is to do an hour-long Shostakovich, you have to say “This is what you need to know,” and do a symposium ahead of time.

Why do you want to come to Sonoma County, and how much time can you spend here?

What I’m good at is running things. I enjoy guest conducting, but I enjoy being part of an organization and working with people. Although I have conducted orchestras, I have never been a music director of a symphony orchestra.

I would hope I would continue the work that Jeffrey Kahane did. I would certainly have a part-time residence there ... you’ve got to get to know the community, get involved with the student groups and talk to board members.

I think it’s important that I continue my European career as well. But what I adore about America - what is still great - is that if you say to a group of people, “Come on, we need to do this,” they will back you, and there’s still an extraordinary enthusiasm about ‘Go West, young man,’ and let’s achieve something.

What instruments do you play and how does that experience serve you in your role as conductor?

I kicked off on the piano, harpsichord and organ ... and I also played the double bass and did timpani, so I have a rudimentary knowledge of strings, then timpani and percussion. Once I got into Cambridge, I was a choral scholar, and I sang Evensong (evening prayer) every night of the week. That taught me how to sight read, and I know how to accompany the voice. You try to create an orchestral sound with the piano when you accompany people, so you really learn how to make it sound like an orchestra.

Conducting is your favorite thing. What is your second favorite thing?

I adore salmon fishing in the rivers. (In August) I was recording Verdi in Glasgow for Decca, and then I had a week fishing on the east coast of Scotland. I’m very new to this, but I’ve had casting lessons and now I get my fly into the river. No Internet. No noise. Incredibly beautiful scenery ... it’s really important, in this stressful world, that one can go completely away from things.

Can you talk about the program you’ll be leading?

I chose an extraordinary symphony (No. 100) that was premiered in London by Haydn ... Music is so often telling a story, and in Haydn’s “Military” Symphony, there’s a story in the second movement; perhaps Mozart’s best piano concerto (No. 21, to be performed by pianist Orli Shaham); and an extraordinary piece by Bartok (Concerto for Orchestra) written in New York City during an unhappy and difficult time of his life. He was thinking of his homeland and wonderful times back in Hungary. On the West Coast of America, that music will speak for myself.

Staff writer Diane Peterson can be reached at 707-521-5287 or diane.peterson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @dianepete56.