Rogue Valley Symphonic Band’s ’24-25 season opens Sunday

By Jim Flint

He plays the euphonium, trumpet, and classical guitar. He also is a master of cutlery percussion. But his favorite instrument is a stick he waves through the air.

Meet new Rogue Valley Symphonic Band Artistic Director Alexander George Gonzalez. He also is director of bands at Southern Oregon University where he conducts the SOU Wind Ensemble and SOU Jazz Band.

The stick he waves around is his conductor’s baton.

“While silly or obvious, I consider my baton very much as an instrument,” he said. “It requires the same type of practice and study as any other instrument — even though it produces no sound beyond the errant ‘swish’ if I move it fast enough.”

The cutlery percussion?

“I also play the spoons pretty well, but there aren’t a ton of gigs that pop up for that.”

He originally went to college to compose music. The musical “aha” moment he can most clearly remember was long before that when, as a teenager, he first listened to the movie soundtrack CD, “Pirates of the Caribbean.”

“I wore out the ‘grooves.’ I don’t listen to it all that much now, but at age 13 it was impactful enough that I chose to pursue music as a career,” he said.

He switched to music education when he began teaching private brass lessons to help pay his tuition.

“I became addicted to seeing the growth of my relatively young students.”

Lure of the baton

Inside of a typical music ed degree curriculum, students are required to take a course or two in conducting.

“After my first class with a baton in hand, I knew I’d pursue this craft for the rest of my life,” he said.

Gonzalez, 34, an Ashland resident, was born in Palo Alto and spent most of his youth in Florida, with short periods also living in California and Cancun, Mexico.

Nobody in his immediate family plays an instrument or sings. But there is lore in his family of great-grandparents who may have passed on some musical genes.

A great-grandfather, a Russian-based conductor, reportedly went missing, “removed” by the government. And one of his great-grandmothers, he was told, played piano for silent films.

Gonzalez was previously the assistant director of bands at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He also has taught conducting courses at Capital University Conservatory of Music in Ohio, served as the director of the Middleton Symphony Orchestra’s wind octet in Wisconsin, and taught music history at Hillsborough Community College in Florida.

His current research focuses on works commissioned by Robert Boudreau, who recently died. Over the span of 50 years, Boudreau commissioned more than 500 works for wind orchestra from composers all over the world.

“I don’t know of another person who thought that worldly and accomplished that much.”

With that legacy as inspiration, Gonzalez hopes to program as diversely as possible, while still celebrating the rich traditions of American composers.

Mining a mime meme

Gonzalez credits many mentors for fostering his growth as a conductor. One had a picture of Marcel Marceau hanging above the door inside his office. The mime’s face had a judgmental look, with a raised eyebrow.

“When I asked, ‘Why this photo?’ he explained that he imagined Marceau asking him, ‘Did you really have to say that?’ or ‘Could you have shown it better?’”

The point was that mimes and conductors practice the same endeavor: non-verbal communication.

“While rehearsals are replete with conductor’s comments, much of it can be done away with if the conductor can ‘show’ more and ‘say’ less,” Gonzalez said.

Another mentor taught him to be dogmatic on behalf of a composer’s intentions.

“He used to tell me that a good composer is like a bad poker player: he’ll show you his cards right away.”

It’s the job of the conductor to discover the composer’s parameters, live within them, and explore the work for relating material, he said.

Gonzalez says he has found the members of the RVSB to be “the kindest and most welcoming humans” he has ever had the pleasure to meet and work alongside. And he’s impressed with their virtuosity.

“I have worked with many community bands in my past and this one is the best by far,” he said. “I am honored daily to wave my arms in front of them.”

The band’s Halloween concert, “Phantom Fantastique,” will be performed on Sunday, Oct. 20, at 3 p.m. at Oakdale Middle School, 815 S. Oakdale Ave. in Medford. It will include a performance of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” by the band’s wind octet.

Holiday concert

“Harmonies for the Holidays” will be performed at 3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 8, at the SOU Music Recital Hall, 450 S. Mountain Ave. in Ashland.

“It will surely be a special one,” Gonzalez said. “There will be some fan favorites, but a highlight will be David Lovrien’s medley of Christmas tunes called ‘Minor Alterations.’ This barn-burner of a work alters very familiar melodies that were originally set in a major key and turns them into minors. It will be fun for audiences to see how quickly they can guess which works are being played.”

Gonzalez is looking forward to one of RSVB’s spring concerts to which high-achieving middle school band students around the valley will be invited to join.

“This is perfectly aligned with a foundational mission of RSVB,” Gonzalez said, “to foster a life-long love of the arts. We all come to rehearsal to learn, myself included. We want to show young music students what is possible.”

And demonstrate the joys of waving one’s arms with an instrument that needs no sound of its own.

Freelance writer Jim Flint is a retired newspaper publisher and editor. Email him at [email protected].