Doing a Good Turn

Miguel Harth-Bedoya, associate conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, does something that orchestra conductors rarely do.

He turns around.

And not just for the obligatory bow at the end. Harth-Bedoya, 32, turns around often during a performance--just to talk to his audience, to explain the composition it is about to hear.

“I always say something; there is always something that the audience may not know, even if they read the program notes,” says Harth-Bedoya in a recent conversation at the Music Center’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. “There has to be a reason why we are doing this program. It adds to the experience and makes it more personal.”

Harth-Bedoya will have much to tell his audience during his next appearance with the Philharmonic May 10-13, when he will conduct several concerts commemorating the 100th birthday of the Spanish composer Joaquin Rodrigo. Included are Rodrigo’s Five Children’s Pieces, “A la busca del mas alla” (In search of the beyond) and “Ausencias de Dulcinea” (Absence of Dulcinea).

“He died just two years ago--he almost made it,” Harth-Bedoya says of the prolific composer, blind from the age of 3. “We know of Rodrigo mostly because of his guitar works; this time, we are doing only orchestra work that is very seldom played, so people can have an idea of the range of the work, the musical languages that Rodrigo created.”

Of course, sometimes Harth-Bedoya turns around in order to explain himself--as he did following a recent morning concert for secondary school students at the Chandler Pavilion, part of the orchestra’s Symphonies for Schools program.

Because this is an educational concert, orchestra members wear T-shirts instead of their usual formal wear. The T-shirts are labeled on the back with their section: Blue shirts labeled “STRINGS,” turquoise for “WOODWINDS,” and so on.

Harth-Bedoya, a lean and athletic presence on the podium, doesn’t look much older than the high schoolers. He also wears a T-shirt. His is black. On the back, in white letters, is the formidable word: “MAESTRO.”

A student wants to know whether he observes any superstitious rituals before stepping up to the podium. He doesn’t.

“One of the things you have to realize is, I’m normal,” Harth-Bedoya tells the students. His urgent tone makes the words sound less like the answer to the question than a plea to be understood.

He does not want to be just “Maestro.” He wants to be Miguel.

In some ways, Harth-Bedoya is anything but normal. The Peruvian native attended German schools in Lima, received his conductors’ training at the Curtis Institute and Juilliard, speaks five languages and conducts concerts around the globe.

His late father was a surgeon, divorced from his mother when Harth-Bedoya was only a few months old; he and his dad would not be reunited until the boy was 20.

He was raised by his mother, a chorale conductor specializing in Latin American repertory. During his childhood, she led a chorus formed by the employees of a Peruvian airline; the group performed music from every country on the airline’s routes, and her children--Miguel and his sister--traveled and performed with them as both singers and folk dancers.

Harth-Bedoya committed to a career in music around age 15, when he took an after-school job doing a little bit of everything at an opera house in Lima. “School got out very early, at about 1:30--and I would go to the theater every day until midnight,” he says.

“My interest in music was never about an instrument, even though I had taken piano lessons as a kid. It was that sort of communal experience, with a lot of people doing a lot of things, becoming one product. It was a turning point in my life--I said, that’s what I want to do.”

Because there were no university-level conducting programs available to him in Latin America, Harth-Bedoya wrote to dozens of schools around the world looking for a suitable course of study. The hunt led him to Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute and Manhattan’s Juilliard School.

“I was nobody when I started; I didn’t have connections, I was just determined to do it, and I did it,” he says simply.

“It’s a lot of work, much harder than practicing an instrument. The physical part is the one that takes the least amount of work. That’s the obvious one, you can see that. You move the arms, you keep it in time, pretty much everybody can learn the gestures.

“The rest of it--you can’t really explain or illustrate the concept of music, of sound. It’s a lot of studying too--all kinds of things, not only music, but cultural aspects, history, literature. Everything comes together in music for me.”

Those watching Harth-Bedoya’s career agree that the young conductor is studying hard enough--and that he’s on the fast track to leading one of the world’s major orchestras in the future.

At the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Harth-Bedoya conducts the orchestra at both the Chandler and the Bowl. Concurrently he is music director of the Auckland Philharmonia in New Zealand and Oregon’s Eugene Symphony. He will resign the Eugene post in May 2002, when his contract there ends, because of the increasing demands at the Fort Worth Symphony, where he became music director in June 2000.

Both types of jobs--assisting at a major orchestra and leading a smaller one--are considered steppingstones to the top job at a major orchestra.

“Miguel’s talent was very obvious, not only musically, but also from a human point of view,” said Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Philharmonic’s music director, of why the orchestra sought out Harth-Bedoya. He was appointed one of three assistant conductors in 1998 and promoted to associate conductor in 1999.

“He is a born communicator,” Salonen continues. “He will go very, very far.”

As he pursues the professional pinnacle of music director at a top orchestra, Harth-Bedoya has another, more personal, normal-guy quest: to bridge the gap between the concert hall and the community, the podium and the audience--through outreach programs, neighborhood concerts and sometimes simply turning around.

He’s even cooked in the name of music. Last year, Harth-Bedoya, a culinary enthusiast, connected with Eugene--which has been his home base since 1996--by preparing his special pasta sauce on the city’s KVAL-TV noon news program.

“He has spent many of his free weeks here, making a life here. He’s done everything from learning how to fly-fish and how to ski to working on a Habitat for Humanity home project,” says Rebekah Lambert, executive director of the Eugene Symphony, a part-time orchestra with an annual operating budget of $1.4 million (the Phil’s budget is $50 million).

“We have youth concerts, family concerts,” continues Lambert, “he has done all of those for us. He’s charmed the community.”

Harth-Bedoya and his wife of 10 months, Maritza Caceres, 36, are in the process of moving from Eugene to Fort Worth, where Harth-Bedoya will have to find a new soccer team to play on. Maintaining a residence in Fort Worth is a requirement of the job, says Fort Worth Symphony executive director Ann Koonsman.

“I think it’s wonderful for the community to see him shopping, going to the movies, “ she says. “I think it’s just a good thing for people view him as a human being, not just as the artist on the podium.”

Although he has no physical home in Los Angeles--he usually stays in hotels or the Philharmonic’s guest bungalow at the Hollywood Bowl--Harth-Bedoya bonds with the general public here by conducting many of the Phil’s neighborhood concerts in schools, churches, synagogues, parks and community centers.

Those who attend the free neighborhood concerts receive an invitation to attend a concert at the Chandler Pavilion for just $10.

“When we go to communities, I feel like we are visiting them, and we expect them to visit us as well--it becomes a circle,” Harth-Bedoya says. “It’s more a part of me than a part of any particular position, or title. I believe in them.

“I think classical music, or symphonic music, has been isolated for some time--it became exclusive, it became detached, it wasn’t part of people’s regular activities,” he continues. “The entertainment industry flourished, and everything became so visual--we sort of got left behind. I want to make sure that we get back into everybody’s daily life.”

Philharmonic executive director Deborah Borda says that often an orchestra of the Phil’s stature will farm out the community-concert conducting duties to conductors below the associate level or even someone not on the regular staff. “It’s not approached with the seriousness and the musicality that is actually crucial if you are going to sell these kids on classical music,” she says. “Miguel brings to it a very high level of artistry and a wonderful, direct relationship with the orchestra.”

And Borda points out that, for a city like Los Angeles with a large Spanish-speaking population, the fact that Harth-Bedoya has a Spanish surname and speaks the language is an invaluable asset (he is also fluent in German, Italian, and French, and speaks enough Russian for him to joke that he speaks a “half-language”).

“He is international, but Spanish is his native language,” Borda says. “I think the first way that young people are drawn into music is identification. So if someone speaks Spanish, I believe very strongly that it makes a difference.”

Borda says that the Phil is trying to make itself more accessible through efforts such as its planned Friday Casual and Sunday Brunch concert series, and Harth-Bedoya’s choice to address audiences nicely fits that bill. “I think we have to trust that it’s OK for us to communicate verbally--it’s not as though we’re in an intellectual straitjacket, and there’s only one way that things should be done,” she says.

And, Borda adds with a wicked grin, when it comes to charming audiences, “it doesn’t hurt that he looks like a movie star. We certainly all enjoy it.”

Harth-Bedoya’s wife, Caceres, laughs when she hears the comments that her recent marriage to Harth-Bedoya broke hearts in several cities. “He doesn’t make any comment when people say things like that. I think it gets him very nervous,” she says. “I keep telling him that he’s handsome; he looks at me weird. But he is the greatest romantic--you have to know that.”

The pair spent their honeymoon backpacking through Italy--a respite from their frequent nights in hotels--visiting relatives in Chile and Peru, and reading. Harth-Bedoya loves big, weighty books--history, biographies.

Caceres, a native of Chile, was Harth-Bedoya’s best friend for 14 years before he finally said: “No more friends--we’re getting married.” The pair met in 1988 when they came to the United States to study music, and they have maintained their relationship over the years and miles.

Most recently, Caceres held a job as chorale instructor at Santa Catalina School, a private girls’ academy in Monterey, Calif., but is taking time off because the couple are expecting their first child in October.

“He is a very sincere, humble and giving person,” Caceres says of her old friend and new husband. “He likes to be approachable, he is very friendly, very open. He has a lot of respect for his fellow musicians. He gets much better response from them than if he were coming in saying, “I am the conductor--I am up here, and you are down there.’ ”

Caceres says that Harth-Bedoya sometimes spends seven hours in a row poring over his musical scores in preparation for a concert--but he also knows when to come up for air. “I know what his next phrase will be--’I’m hungry!”’ she says.

“He loves fishing, playing soccer, he likes eating, he loves cooking,” she adds. “He is a very good husband, he will do dishes without you telling him, he does his own laundry, he irons better than I do! And his family comes first. He will cancel almost a month of performances in October for the baby.”

Harth-Bedoya confirms his determination to maintain that balance, no matter where his career takes him. “I have days that are completely free of music,” he says happily--at the same time gathering up the trash from an informal lunch in one of the Chandler Pavilion’s chandeliered lobbies instead of leaving it behind for the cleaning crew.

With a baby on the way, he insists, “my schedule has to change, it has to adjust--instead of the other way around. Probably what we will do when we have free time is just stay home. I’d like to get back to my woodwork--and doing more sports. You have to be fairly regular or you can’t be part of the team.”

A few days before the youth concert at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Harth-Bedoya conducted a similar program of Aaron Copland music at a neighborhood concert at Wilshire United Methodist Church. This mid-city church conducts services in English, Spanish, Korean and Tagalog--and that night’s audience reflects the diversity of the surrounding community.

Harth-Bedoya addresses the audience in English as he points out the quiet power of the coda of the Suite from “Appalachian Spring,” which ends the program. “We are producing powerful music, with very little sound,” he tells the audience, his voice as hushed as the composition about to be played. “Music doesn’t have to be loud to be powerful.” And whether or not everyone understood his words, their wildly enthusiastic applause at the end of the evening clearly showed that this church considered Maestro Harth-Bedoya--Miguel--to be part of the team.

“People who see him now--they’ll look back 10 or 15 years from now when he’s leading a major international orchestra and they’ll think, ‘Gee, I remember when he was associate conductor of the L.A. Phil,’ ” observes executive director Borda. “They’ll remember that they saw him at their church, at a music fair, in Sherman Oaks or Thousand Oaks. Watch him--he has a tremendous career ahead.”

* * Miguel Harth-Bedoya conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic, May 10 and 12, 8 p.m.; May 11, 1 p.m.; and May 13, 2:30 p.m. Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A. $10-$70. (323) 850-2000.