Guest conductor stops for a spell

Philharmonic candidate wants a place to put down roots

By Rich Copley RCOPLEY@HERALD-LEADER.COM

Daniel Meyer had a drive-by relationship with Lexington for years.

He was born and raised in and around Cleveland. His first job was as the assistant conductor of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra. So, burning up Interstate 75 from Tennessee to Ohio, he was always going through Lexington, but he had never spent significant time here.

Until this week.

Meyer is in town courting Lexington as the fourth candidate vying to succeed George Zack as music director of the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra. On Friday, he conducts the orchestra in a concert of two exceedingly familiar works: Samuel Barber's mournful Adagio for Strings and Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 9, "From the New World." Pianist Sara Buechner joins Meyer and the orchestra for Robert Schumann's Piano Concerto.

"I knew about the Philharmonic, and I knew about its reputation, and I knew it was a beautiful community, and I knew about the connection to UK School of Music, which is really highly regarded," Meyer said during lunch at Dudley's on Tuesday. "These were all factors that made this an interesting spot. Not to mention that my wife and I are newly married and looking for a place to put down some roots and start a family."

Meyer's wife, Mary Persin, is a violist with Biava String Quartet, currently in residence at the Juilliard School in New York. Meyer is the resident conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony and music director of the Asheville Symphony Orchestra in North Carolina, so he and Persin essentially have a commuter marriage at the moment.

Growing up in a musical family -- he joked that his mother, a public school music teacher, wanted to turn him and his brother and two sisters into the von Trapp Family Singers -- music was always part of Meyer's life.

"It was an extracurricular," he said. "It was a fun thing to do. But I don't think any of us thought about making a living from music."

That was until he went to Denison University in Granville, Ohio. He enrolled in a pre-law program but had a music minor so he could continue his piano, violin and voice lessons for free.

Meyer's life changed at a rehearsal for a choral piece he wrote. When he expressed some dissatisfaction with how it was going, the director told him to give it a shot.

"So I sort of sheepishly got out of my seat and went down and stood in front of my colleagues and started waving my arms around," Meyer recalled. "And they were singing my music back at me, and I said, 'This is it, this is what I want to do.'

"It was my light-bulb moment."

Meyer went on to get a master's degree at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, then he studied in Austria before starting his doctoral studies at Boston University. He suspended that degree when Knoxville came calling.

The Pittsburgh job, he says, has been an exciting opportunity to work with top-flight musicians, conductors such as principal guest conductor designate Leonard Slatkin, and composers such as John Corigliano, part of Pittsburgh's composer-of-the-year program. The PSO job is a training post he says he would leave if he's tapped for a music directorship.

Looking at the Lexington Philharmonic, he said he sees its role in the community as "completely vital."

"I could imagine each person in Lexington coming to at least one concert by the Lexington Philharmonic," he said, "and creating concert experiences that are interesting and creating experiences that are specific to a particular age group or persuasion."