We were lucky to catch up with Micah Gleason recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Micah , thanks for joining us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

When I started to seriously pursue conducting, I had absolutely no idea if I was any good at it. In college, I’d studied voice performance and music education, and had been thrown in to conduct a few times in choral settings (which was the world I lived in as a singer!), largely educational ones. I had really enjoyed those experiences, and, I had always loved orchestral music and opera, but got my start in music too late to really seriously pursue playing an instrument professionally. I applied to graduate school for both voice and conducting programs, knowing that I very well might be rejected from all of them, but feeling really strongly that I had to try. Somehow I was accepted to a few programs and jumped straight into the deep end conducting orchestral repertoire and learning about the idiosyncrasies of different instruments, the ins and outs and traditions of the repertoire, and how to to make sense of so many things going on at once! It is of course still very much an on-going learning process for me (and will be forevermore, I hope!), but I am so grateful to myself for trusting my gut and taking the leap towards something I knew very little about but had a really good hunch about — I am lucky enough to be conducting more and more varied repertoire with high level musicians and collaborators, and I feel so lucky every day to be doing what I do!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am a conductor and mezzo-soprano currently living in Philadelphia where I am a conducting fellow at the Curtis Institute of Music and a freelance singer and conductor. I am so lucky to be able to work across several sub-genres of “classical” music (which is a broad and ever-expanding definition of music), including symphonic music, opera, chamber music, and choral music.

As a musician, I am most passionate about interdisciplinary collaboration and community building. I am curious about the most effective ways to disrupt the stasis and comfort of the modern concert hall; and how artists across disciplines, activists, and researchers can most effectively collaborate. I am a co-founder of LOAM, an artistic partnership creating semi-immersive musical experiences combining poetry, dance, and chamber music. I’ve been lucky enough to conduct and collaborate with ensembles including The Orchestra Now, Eastern Festival Orchestra, the Curtis Symphony Orchestra and Curtis Opera Theater; and collaborate on chamber music projects for presenters including Chamber Music Northwest, Philharmonic Society of Orange County, 92nd Street Y, Phoenix Chamber Music Society, and the Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most wonderful part about being an artist, to me, is the togetherness of it. Making music in a group/ensemble setting feels like the ultimate team sport to me, and watching other people work together towards a common, beautiful goal gives me great hope and inspiration. Ultimately, I think great art is about expressing vulnerability and the full spectrum of human emotion through artistic mediums in order to help other people feel seen, challenged, and inspired. If I am able to be a part of telling a musical story that allowed others (in the audience and in the ensemble!) to feel something new or something familiar (or ideally, both!) I feel like we have succeeded in doing our job.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I am still constantly in a state of trying to un-learn a scarcity mindset that is so pervasive across many disciplines, artistic and otherwise. So much of “making it” as a freelance artist involves hustling and competing in a way that is so very antithetical to creativity and collaboration, that when it comes time to do just that, we lack the necessary tools and perspectives. I do my best work when I am being true to myself, my values, and am surrounded by others who are doing the same!  

Contact Info:

• Website: micahgleason.com
• Instagram: @micah__gleason

Image Credits
Micah Gleason David DeBalko