{"id":181646,"date":"2025-08-28T05:38:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T05:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/181646\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T05:38:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T05:38:14","slug":"youthful-stephanie-childress-to-conduct-sd-symphonys-tchaikovsky-spectacular","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/181646\/","title":{"rendered":"Youthful Stephanie Childress to conduct SD Symphony’s Tchaikovsky Spectacular"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Stephanie<\/a>Conductor Stephanie Childress. (Photo courtesy of the artist)<\/p>\n

In his 1932 Handbook of Conducting, German conductor Herman Scherchen described the orchestral conductor as a \u201cmaster mind\u201d and \u201calmost superhuman \u2026 magician\u201d who is \u201cthe vehicle for the manifestation of spiritual art.\u201d Such talk won\u2019t get you very far these days, but conductors still retain an aura that reflects their unusual role \u2014 somehow essential though producing no sound. How many of us can walk into a room of professional musicians and get them to perform a work the way we think it should be played?<\/p>\n

British conductor Stephanie Childress<\/a>, who will lead the San Diego Symphony<\/a> in its annual Tchaikovsky Spectacular<\/a> on Saturday, has built a promising career doing just that with orchestras as august as the London Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris and Cleveland Orchestra. These days, she stands out less for being female and young (26) than for her distinctive path to her profession.<\/p>\n

Raised in West London by a non-musical American father and French-Vietnamese mother, Childress decided at age four to learn violin \u2014 though not necessarily to become a violinist, or even musician. Even after years of lessons, she explained in a recent call from Cleveland, Childress sensed that playing violin was not her destiny. <\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be a musician, full stop. I always saw the violin as just a serious hobby. From the day I started, I knew that really, deep down in my bones, the violin was not going to be my path. It\u2019s difficult for people to believe this,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with committing so much time to something and knowing this is not for me? I don\u2019t think it was a fruitless pursuit. I do think that my experiences, both a soloist and as an orchestral musician, have taught me much more about conducting than I could have ever imagined.\u201d<\/p>\n

That interest in conducting began in her mid-teens when, as a member of the U.K.\u2019s prestigious National Youth Orchestra, she began to become intrigued by conductors\u2019 leadership role \u2014 and quickly became the orchestra\u2019s co-leader (at 15) and appointed leader (at 16). Watching English National Opera rehearsals of Strauss\u2019s Der Rosenkavalier and Benjamin Britten\u2019s Billy Budd and Death in Venice turned that interest into a career objective. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Deciding to go all in, Childress noted that the conductors she respected, including the English National Opera\u2019s music director Edward Gardner (2007-15), had used university (non-conservatory) education to launch conducting careers. \u201cThat\u2019s the best way one can get a theoretical foundation of music, which is really crucial to become a conductor,\u201d Childress said. \u201cI looked around and said, \u2018Well, they did that. I might as well give it a shot\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

But unlike Gardner and other university-route conductors, like John Eliot Gardiner, Mark Elder and Christopher Hogwood, Childress\u2019s shot came at a mere 16 years old. Graduating from Cambridge when many undergraduates are just getting warmed up, Childress\u2019s opportunities began proliferating \u2014 signing with one of the most distinguished global artist management agencies (HarrisonParrott), conducting world premieres (Anna Semple\u2019s The Next Station Is Green Park), and conducting outside the U.K. (Germany, Portugal). <\/p>\n

Just weeks after winning second prize in Paris\u2019s La Maestra competition for female conductors, Childress led the London Symphony Orchestra \u2014 often ranked among the top five orchestras worldwide \u2014 in a globally broadcast concert. The following month, she was named St. Louis\u2019s Symphony\u2019s assistant conductor (she\u2019s currently the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra\u2019s principal guest conductor).<\/p>\n

Though Childress is below the age at which most conductors get their first principal music directorship, she\u2019s ready. \u201cI believe everything comes at the right time. Maybe that\u2019s my diplomatic answer, but it\u2019s like a relationship. Both parties have to want it. Just because you like an orchestra or an orchestra likes you doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s necessarily going to work. Timing is everything,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere I am now, at this moment, I\u2019m ready for it. Definitely my desire to be a music director comes from my desire to get to know a group for a long time. I think that\u2019s where my strengths lie. Someone who can be the figurehead of an organization and can help an organization move forward. [Classical music] needs people who are very passionate, who are willing to fight the good fights, in terms of, raising money, reaching new communities, and programming interesting things, pushing the art forward. That desire for a music directorship in me is really to be associated with a group for a long period of time and build something.\u201d<\/p>\n

One gets the feeling that questions about gender\u2019s relevance to her career\u2019s trajectory don\u2019t thrill Childress. \u201cThere are still some biases,\u201d she said, but added \u201cI think it\u2019s so much more open. Especially, post Covid, when my career was starting to flourish, I feel like opportunities for female conductors also did the same. I\u2019m so pleased to see so many wonderful colleagues who are now taking the helms of orchestras in the States \u2014 Chlo\u00e9 Dufresne, who\u2019s just been appointed in Colorado Springs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut in general, I do think there is still a bit of a glass ceiling. In terms of gender equality, we still have a long way to go in the world in general, not just in my own little bubble of conducting,\u201d she explained. \u201cGender equality and what it means to be a woman in a position of leadership is a topic that we\u2019ve only really begun to scratch the surface of.\u201d<\/p>\n

Resistance, whether due to gender or age, doesn\u2019t trouble Childress. \u201cWhen I\u2019m on the podium, I\u2019m doing my own thing. Regardless of age [or gender], they\u2019re going to be people who are not amenable to what you bring. You have to expect some degree of resistance, but also expect some people to come with you, and you know that balance, and that percentage can vary from orchestra to orchestra,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomeone\u2019s opinion of me, I don\u2019t have to be burdened by it. I go and I do my own thing and share my love of music. I\u2019d like to think that I can enable the people in front of me to perform their best, rather than simply dictate all the time. And I do think that\u2019s how you achieve whatever definition of a successful performance might be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Childress\u2019s Tchaikovsky-centered program with the San Diego Symphony in Rady Shell represented a similar kind of give and take. \u201cI offered the pieces that I thought would fit that theme. It\u2019s always a bit of a dialog.\u201d Aside from stalwarts like the Romeo and Juliet overture-fantasy, and of course that perennial excuse for pyrotechnics, the 1812 Overture, there\u2019s also \u2014 reflecting perhaps Childress\u2019s first love, opera \u2014 selections from Tchaikovsky\u2019s most popular opera, Eugene Onegin. Austrian pianist and Juilliard student Kiron Atom Tellian will play Chopin\u2019s first piano concerto in E minor. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

After San Diego, Childress\u2019s calendar is busy: the Juilliard Symphony in New York in September, followed rapidly by the Bordeaux Symphony Orchestra, the Bremer (Germany) Philharmoniker, then concert leadership in Barcelona, North Carolina, Wales (U.K.), Warsaw, Helsinki, Zurich, and Berlin \u2014 and that\u2019s just the next six months.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere I am right now,\u201d Childress admits, \u201cis just very grateful for the opportunities that have come my way. If I chat to my dad before a gig, he always tells me, \u2018Be great and be grateful.\u2019 That\u2019s something I always try and keep in my back pocket: just do the best you can and also be grateful for the opportunities you\u2019re given. I have an amazing job \u2014 I get to travel the world, meet all these incredible orchestras, meet so many different types of people. It\u2019s a very privileged position. So I don\u2019t take it for granted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul Bodine has been writing about music \u2014 from classical to pop\/rock \u2014 for over 30 years for publications such as Classical Voice North America, Times of San Diego, Classical Music Daily, Orange County Register, and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Among the artists he\u2019s interviewed are Joshua Bell, Herbert Blomstedt, Sarah Chang, Ivan Fischer, Bruno Canino, Christopher O\u2019Reilly, Lindsay String Quartet, David Benoit, Laura Claycomb, Jon Nakamatsu, Paul Chihara, the Ahn Trio, Lucas Debargue, and John Thiessen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Conductor Stephanie Childress. (Photo courtesy of the artist) In his 1932 Handbook of Conducting, German conductor Herman Scherchen…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":181647,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,1576,102418,3549,23769,7264,102419,102420,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-181646","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-classical-music","12":"tag-conductors","13":"tag-san-diego","14":"tag-san-diego-symphony","15":"tag-sandiego","16":"tag-stephanie-childress","17":"tag-tchaikovsky","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-united-states-of-america","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115104783104251819","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}