Talk with Metropolitan Opera Concertmaster David Chan

Description:

Our guest speaker, Maestro David Chan, in his 24th season as concertmaster of New York’s Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, which performs almost daily under a constantly changing series of conductors.  Mr. Chan discussed those challenges, as well as his experiences as an orchestral conductor in the United States and in Europe.

Mr. Chan is a member of the faculty of the Juilliard School and serves as Head of the Orchestral Performance Program at the Manhattan School of Music.  Mr. Chan also recently served as Music Director of the APEX Ensemble and Camerata Notturna. He has conducted the Mainly Mozart’s All-Star Orchestra, the combined musicians of the LA Philharmonic and San Francisco Symphony, as well as the Met Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra. Recent conducting engagements have included Belgium’s l’Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège, the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra, and l’Orchestre Dijon Bourgogne in France, the Grant Park and Classical Tahoe summer festivals, the Juilliard Orchestra and Manhattan School of Music in New York City, and the Apollo Orchestra in Washington, D.C. He is co-founder of Musique et Vin au Clos Vougeot festival in the Burgundy region of France, which pairs wine tastings with music.

The event was followed by a social hour with refreshments.

“I have a very different tolerance of mistakes as well, as a player and as a conductor”

“I’m much more interested in the structure of a movement. So I’ve marked off 4-bar phrases here: two bars of introduction and then 4 bars / 4 bars / 4 bars / 4 bars … what I’ve found is, if I understand how a house is built – and Bruckner’s symphonies are built like cathedrals – it’s all about numbers … he actually put in the period numbering that he was going to use for structure in his score before he wrote any melody. He’s the only composer who did that. And it shows the importance of structure.” – David Chan on Mahler’s Symphony No. 4.

“I had a Soviet-trained teacher […] his training was based around going to the major international competitions and striving to become a soloist. So it was that type of training I did. I owe the technical facility and the physical foundation I have for making music to that.”

Location:

The National Opera Center, 330 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY.

Pricing:

Free for members, $15 for non-members, live in-person or online (video stream available 48 hours after start of program).

Livestream:

WSNY members will receive the livestream link automatically by email; the event is viewable until 48 hours after it begins.

Accessibility:

The Opera America building has ground-level entry with elevators to the 7th floor.  Wheelchair accessible; modular seating will be arranged to accommodate wheelchairs and walkers. Handicap-accessible restrooms are available on the same floor. The venue is located on the west side of 7th Avenue between 28th-29th Streets, closer to 29th Street. Sidewalk curb cuts at the 29th Street corner are uneven; for easier access and tactile paving enter from the 28th Street corner (at the downtown #1 subway station).