Musician and conductor James S. Kahane is nearing the top 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 nowadays 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. Considered one of Europe’s largest music academies, the Sibelius Academy was established in 1882, and has develop into famend for turning out an extended listing of former college students who are actually among the many world’s outstanding musicians. Significantly lately, that features many acclaimed conductors akin to 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 Pageant in Gstaad, in Bernard Haitink’s conducting masterclass on the Lucerne Music Pageant, and the Tanglewood Music Pageant. 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 firstly 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. “Until you do chamber music, its all by yourself.”
It was additionally a vital query of style. He was listening virtually completely to orchestral music, and taking part in piano transcriptions of orchestral works.
“The combination of these two issues type of led me naturally to conducting,” he observes.
The Finnish Approach: The Sibelius Academy
What makes The Sibelius Academy such an distinctive place to study conducting?
“I can slim it all the way down to a mix of three issues which might be all essential,” Kahane begins.
First, he factors out that in his research, an orchestra was accessible so that every of the 5 to seven college students in a cohort may work with the musicians straight twice per week.
“It signifies that each week you may 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.
Primarily, it boils all the way down to: the liberty to develop your personal model.
“The trainer doesn’t intervene very a lot.” It’s akin to letting children discover ways to determine easy methods to steadiness and trip on a bicycle on their very own, the place intervention solely takes place if one thing clearly isn’t working.
The third part was a copious quantity of suggestions. “All our classes had been recorded on video.” After a category, the scholars would sit with the trainer, and undergo the video to replay the lesson and what was realized. “There, we’d get an enormous quantity of suggestions.”
The duality of whole freedom in entrance of the orchestra whilst you had 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 may see it of their skilled life,” he factors out. “There are not any two Finnish conductors which might 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 accountable for programming, whereas as Principal Conductor elsewhere, he could make recommendations, however the needs of a committee and the Inventive Director finally decide what’s performed.
“Sure, the philosophy of programming may 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 virtually completely to modern music.
“We program new music virtually 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 perhaps a bit extra selection than audiences in Canada,” he says. “If you’re […] any orchestra in Helsinki, it’s a must to set your self a little bit bit aside.”
European applications will have a tendency to incorporate rarer and lesser heard works, in different phrases.
Coming Up…
Kahane will likely be again in Hamilton to conduct the HPO with visitor soloist James Ehnes on Could 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 neighborhood live shows and a pops live performance of online game music. For subsequent season, Kahane can’t say a lot, however he’s promising an strategy that can take the orchestra in some new instructions.
“We try to variety a little bit bit our providing,” he explains. Meaning, there will likely be some additions to the anticipated symphonic repertoire and mainstage live shows. “We’re dipping our toes into opera, a little bit little bit of ballet,” he says.
- Discover our extra in regards to the Could 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.
