Copious Notes

Alastair Willis conducts the Lexington Philharmonic in a rehearsal Tuesday night at the Singletary Center for the Arts Concert Hall. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.

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Alastair Willis’ résumé reads like a world tour. He started playing piano when he was a boy in Russia, took up trumpet and then conducting while he was living in England, continued his conducting studies in Houston, toured Japan and other foreign lands with Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, and held posts with orchestras in Cincinnati and Seattle, where he lives now.

This week, Willis, 37, who speaks with a British accent, has set his sights on Lexington, where he is the ninth candidate to succeed George Zack as music director of the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra.

“Every conductor needs an orchestra, and every orchestra needs a conductor,” Willis says when asked what attracted him to Lexington. “My research of this area and this orchestra has showed wonderful support for the arts and wonderful potential for future growth here, and I don’t know any conductor who’s currently not got a music director position who wouldn’t be interested in that.”

After one rehearsal, on Monday night, Willis had a good impression of the Phil, saying, “The orchestra seems open to what I have to offer.”

On Tuesday, he threw the players a bit of a curve ball, rehearsing Osvaldo Golijov’s Last Round, the opening number of Friday’s concert. It requires the violins and violas to stand as opposing orchestras, with the basses and cellos seated in the middle. After some initial confusion, he pulled a fairly flowing rehearsal out of the players.

Willis had no hesitation about coming in and shaking things up a bit.

“Why have we always played in the form we always play in?” Willis asks, referring to the Phil’s traditional seating arrangement. “Because it works. Because it’s how orchestras historically sound best, for most of the repertoire. No one’s ever going to change that, but I love to find the variety.”

Willis has experienced a lot of variety in the past few years. He was in Cincinnati in the late 1990s for a year as assistant conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony and Pops Orchestras and director of the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra.

He says he loved the experience working under symphony conductor Jesús López- Cobos and pops conductor Erich Kunzel, but Cincy didn’t offer what he thought he really needed: “podium time.”

So Willis moved to Seattle, where as assistant and then resident conductor he was able to direct more than 100 performances in three years.

In 2003, he went the free-lance route, guest-conducting around the world and hanging out, when he could, with leading orchestras. He has a particular in with the Berlin Philharmonic, where his sister, Sarah Willis, plays fourth horn.

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Note: I’ll be Twittering the Grammy Awards tonight, using the hashtag #grammys, if you want to join in the chat.

Discovering new music is often a matter of trust, particularly if you are interested in exploring something like contemporary classical music.

Osvaldo Golijov. Photo by John Sann | Deutsche Grammophon.

Yes, you can just dive in and start listening to any piece composed in the past 50 years - classical music is a field in which that would be considered “new.” But exploration is often more interesting if you find artists whose tastes you appreciate and you keep up with what they’re doing.

That’s how I discovered Osvaldo Golijov.

The Lexington Philharmonic audience will get its first chance to hear Golijov on Friday, when guest conductor Alastair Willis conducts the orchestra in a performance of Golijov’s Last Round, a piece that helped introduce the composer to many listeners in 1996.

“He looks to be a voice to be reckoned with,” London’s Independent wrote of the world premiere of Last Round, commissioned by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.

The group was created by conductor Simon Rattle, an artist whose contemporary tastes I started following many years ago when he was making ear-grabbing recordings with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

But that is not where I found Golijov.

It was Kronos Quartet’s and Dawn Upshaw’s work with the composer that initially intrigued me, and when I heard it, I had to hear more.

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