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The Omaha Symphony's Thomas Wilkins guides young conductors toward more polished podium skills

Jungho Kim is leading Mozart's elegant Jupiter Symphony like a maniac. The tall, athletic-looking man sitting behind the orchestra isn't pleased.

Thomas Wilkins rises slowly from his chair and walks briskly to the podium. He thrusts his head directly in front of Kim's nose.

"Who ticked you off this morning?" he asks, mimicking Kim's in-your-face conducting style.

Wilkins, the Omaha Symphony's music director, was leading a symposium for promising young conductors. Sixteen emerging maestros from across the country had traveled to Omaha over the Memorial Day weekend to learn from the master.

The three-day event, at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and the Holland Performing Arts Center, is the only professional workshop of its kind in the Midwest. Often, it seemed more like a Marine boot camp than an artistic retreat.

But as the young conductors soon would learn, discipline is one of the keys to unlocking this mysterious craft.

The art of conducting may seem like wizardry — a conductor waves a wand and magically summons succulent sounds from an orchestra.

But in truth, maestros actually convey huge amounts of information in a few wordless gestures with their batons — tempo, phrasing and instrumental cues.

Student conductors start out learning basic patterns. For example, in a four-beat measure, conductors tap the walls of an imaginary box, moving their batons down, left, right and up in a sort of sign-of-the-cross motion.

But you almost never see that in concert because professional orchestra musicians don't want all of those beats subdivided for them. They have enough to do just playing their notes, and they'll ignore any conductor who confuses them with too many crazy motions.

It's 8:59 on a Friday morning, and eight Omaha Symphony musicians begin to tune.

Wilkins has spent the past five minutes sitting quietly behind a small rectangular table, wearing reading glasses and perusing the score to Schubert's Octet.

In his casual white shirt and designer blue jeans, he looks more like a college professor on his day off than a world-class maestro.

His rapport with the young conductors is friendly and collegial.

"Thanks for getting here so stinking early," he tells this class of night-owl musicians.

The symposium's 16 conductors aren't kids.

They're emerging artists, musicians mostly in their 20s and 30s who are looking for that rarest of musical commodities — podium time with a first-rate professional orchestra.

To give each conductor as much attention as possible, Wilkins invited Mark Gibson, director of orchestral studies at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, to co-teach.

Friday morning, Gibson was in the main hall, working with half the conductors on music from Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring." Wilkins was in a rehearsal hall working on the Schubert.

Composed in 1824, Schubert's Octet in F major isn't part of the orchestral repertory. It's chamber music and, as such, just barely warrants a conductor.

Still, the work features a lot of different instrumental sounds — clarinet, bassoon, French horn, violins, viola and double bass. So it functions as a good starter piece, like a symphony with training wheels.

Daniel O'Bryant, resident conductor of Minnesota's St. Cloud Symphony, is no beginner.

Nevertheless, his home ensemble is extremely small. During the 2008-09 season, he conducted it in just one subscription concert. So when he stepped in front of the Omaha Symphony, he seemed like a Piper Cub pilot sitting in the cockpit of a Boeing 737.

"I'm going to subdivide the beat into four," O'Bryant began.

Wilkins shivered.

"Brrrrrrr!" the maestro exclaimed. "Don't tell them. Just do it."

O'Bryant gave the downbeat and conducted with clear, concise and elegant gestures. The musicians played beautifully. But it didn't take long for Wilkins to notice a problem.

The musicians were ignoring the conductor.

"Your right hand keeps doing the same circular thing," Wilkins said. "You don't want every movement to look exactly the same, because the musicians won't have a reason to look up. You have to create visual levels of expectation or they won't pay attention."

Wesley Schulz, a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin, likewise had a clear but busy baton technique. He used his left hand expressively to cue entrances and suggest phrasing. But there was something about his approach that bothered Wilkins.

"Can you get through the first eight bars without the score?" Wilkins asked.

Schulz pondered.

"Perhaps."

Wilkins pulled the podium and score to the side of the room.

As Schulz dutifully conducted without the notes, Wilkins got mischievous. He placed a music stand in front of the conductor, raising the shelf just below Schulz's chin. Not satisfied with the result, Wilkins took his own baton and used it to prop up Schulz's head.

"You have this habit of bowing your head down over and over again," Wilkins said. "It's going to wear you out."

Wilkins asked Schulz to start again. But this time, he held onto Schulz's baton hand and conducted for him. Wilkins' movements were more economical. Yet he got a bigger, richer sound.

"You'll learn that a lot of beating won't necessarily get you a lot of sound," Wilkins said.

Wilkins, 52, doesn't waste a lot of energy during his own concerts.

Unlike Leonard Bernstein, who engaged in wild choreography when he led the New York Philharmonic, Wilkins is a fairly minimalist conductor.

His main concern is for his musicians to play together and in tune. He gets that kind of precision using spare, concise movements.

Music directors, of course, are more than glorified metronomes.

They work with orchestra staff to create programs and with the board to raise money. They manage the orchestra and supervise the musicians.

Basically, they're artistic CEOs.

The three-day symposium, therefore, also included seminars on orchestra management.

Wilkins was most impressive in a seminar titled "The Audience Connection — Speaking from the Podium."

"Music directors need to be collectors of stories," Wilkins told the group. "Those stories need to be personal."

Wilkins' story is certainly compelling.

Born in Norfolk, Va., he grew up in a housing project. He learned to play trumpet and tuba in elementary school. He didn't have a private lesson until he went to Virginia's Shenandoah Conservatory, where he earned a bachelor's degree in music education.

He had limited experience when he applied for Boston's prestigious New England Conservatory conducting program.

Richard Pittman, the program's director, admitted Wilkins anyway, because he clearly had talent and charisma.

Wilkins gave his symposium students a charisma demonstration.

"I'm going to make up a pre-concert talk," Wilkins told the group. "You tell me. Who is my audience? And what is the occasion?"

Symposium participants imagined a concert hall full of corporate CEOs and blue-color workers, little old ladies and teens.

Basically, everybody.

And the occasion was a concert right after a national tragedy.

Wilkins began giving a detailed speech about the French Revolution.

He talked about an angry mob storming the Bastille on July 14, 1789, and about a young composer who was traveling from Bonn to Vienna at roughly the same time.

That composer, Wilkins said, was Ludwig van Beethoven, who went on to wage a musical revolution with the creation of his Fifth Symphony.

Wilkins talked about how Beethoven expressed a sense of transcendent joy by ending his dark, C-minor symphony in a bright major key.

He briefly segued into the Bible, mentioning the passages where God comes to the assistance of Joshua. He concluded some five minutes later with a grand rhetorical flourish, tying together Beethoven, the Bible and triumph of the human spirit.

The young conductors shook their heads in awe. Wilkins won a rousing ovation.

Saturday night, and the symposium moves into the big league.

The conductors are leading the full Omaha Symphony on the main stage of the Holland Performing Arts Center.

As the budding maestros wait their turns to conduct Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony and Mozart's Jupiter, co-teacher Gibson offers a word of caution.

"The Omaha Symphony is like a Mercedes," he said. "Don't over-steer a high-performance vehicle, or you'll end up in a ditch."

Kim, the associate conductor of the Sioux City Symphony, heeds no warning.

With eyes burning, he digs into the Jupiter Symphony's fast opening movement. His arms are gyrating, his body is leaning far over the podium.

Wilkins, now staring straight into Kim's face, calls for a timeout.

"Is this an angry piece?" Wilkins demands.

Kim shrugs.

"I don't think it's happening," Kim responds.

They start again.

This time, Kim shows a little more restraint.

Instead of brandishing his baton as a weapon, he uses it to trace smooth phrases.

The music sounds more spontaneous, and Kim actually begins to smile.

Wilkins nods approvingly.

"Now that's the guy I want to play for," he said.

• Contact the writer: 444-1076, john.pitcher@owh.com