THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 31, 1995 TAG: 9508310068
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By MARK MOBLEY, MUSIC CRITIC
LENGTH: Long : 131 lines
THE VIRGINIA SYMPHONY is at the Norfolk Botanical Garden tonight. Imagine that out in the crowd, among all the fidgeting kids, there is a little boy or girl so amazed that he or she decides right then and there to be a conductor.
It's happened before.
Thirty years ago, a third-grader from Norfolk's Young Park went with his class to hear the Norfolk Symphony. Tonight the orchestra will follow him.
Thomas Wilkins, resident conductor of the Florida Orchestra, makes his Virginia Symphony debut. The program, ``For Love and Honor,'' will be repeated in Virginia Beach Friday and Chesapeake Saturday.
Wilkins, 38, is a former associate conductor of the Richmond Symphony and a graduate of the New England Conservatory. He also graduated from Ruffner Middle School and Booker T. Washington High School.
Wilkins grew up Norfolk public housing, the son of a single mother and church organist. He has since conducted orchestras across the United States and Europe.
His area debut is long overdue, considering that for 5 1/2 years, he was just up the road in Richmond.
``I don't get wrapped up in all that stuff,'' Wilkins said last week, from his home in Tampa, Fla. ``Those guys knew what my phone number was when I was in Richmond, and they could have called.'' Everything does seem to be going Wilkins' way. The Florida Orchestra is larger than the mid-sized Virginia and Richmond symphonies. Since last year, he's been the No. 2 man to music director Jahja Ling, who spends a considerable amount of time on the road.
``It's almost like being a music director without all the headaches,'' Wilkins said. ``I can institute programs if I want. I can hire my own guest artists, the whole bit.''
His concerts this season include such challenging repertoire as Brahms' Second Piano Concerto, the Dvorak Sixth Symphony and the Berlioz ``Roman Carnival'' Overture, all of which he is busy learning.
``In this business, at my age, you're always doing something for the first time,'' he said, after spending an hour and a half on harmonic analysis of Shostakovich's Ninth Symphony. ``On the one hand, it's very frustrating, because it's always frustrating to be young while you're young. In this profession, your knowledge is acquired by doing. I have enough common sense to know that I have a lot more to learn.''
In his first year in Tampa, Wilkins led classical concerts, pops concerts, park concerts and school concerts, morning, afternoon and evening concerts. In January, Wilkins led a performance including the piano concerto of Norfolk State University professor Adolphus Hailstork. The St. Petersburg Times critic wrote, ``Under Wilkins, Hailstork's concerto got the bright, glossy treatment that its score calls for. There were powerhouse passages in the brass and strings.''
``My feeling these days is I'm ready to be a music director,'' Wilkins said. ``I have very strong opinions and philosophies about how music is made and, more importantly, what role an orchestra should have in a community.
``This ivory tower business goes back to the 19th century. I think we've sort of painted ourselves in a corner with that attitude. I know for some people I have to be the maestro, and that's OK, too. But when I go home at the end of the day, I like to take off my shoes and watch football.''
Wilkins said his two role models are conductors who have forged strong bonds with their cities - St. Louis Symphony Orchestra music director Leonard Slatkin, who was recently named head of the National Symphony, and Oregon Symphony conductor James DePriest.
In June, Wilkins and three other young conductors worked under DePriest's supervision, conducting new American music at an American Symphony Orchestra League convention. ``Oh my, was that a special experience,'' Wilkins said. ``When the guy walks in a restaurant, people look up at him and say, `That's Jimmy.' They don't look at him like he's the maestro. They look up like, `That's our guy. That's Jimmy.' That's what I want to be when I grow up.''
DePriest was just as struck by the younger conductor, who was faced with preparing unfamiliar work with an unfamiliar orchestra in a short period of time. ``I had not seen his work before,'' DePriest said, from his home in Oregon. ``I was impressed by his unflappability, his obvious skill and his ability to engender confidence in the musicians.''
Wilkins also looks to DePriest because both are African American in a field long dominated by white Europeans. But neither is obsessed with racial identity. ``All ethnic groups enjoy seeing a member of that ethnic group succeeding,'' DePriest said. ``It has nothing whatsoever to do with anything artistic. The only time it comes up is if somebody brings it up.''
When the subject was raised, Wilkins said, ``I don't really think about that stuff.'' He added that in Richmond, ``They may have seen me as a black conductor, but they saw me as Tom in very short order.''
But not every audience member, musician, administrator or critic is as color-blind as Wilkins and DePriest.
``Sometimes people hire me because I'm black,'' Wilkins said. ``I was hired in Dallas because I'm black, and Baltimore because I'm black. Nobody ever rehires me because I'm black. It's because, `He did a good job here,' not, `Oh boy, it's going to be Negro night at the symphony. Tom got it, and didn't do a bad job; let's give it to him.'
``That I don't think about it isn't true. That I don't get bogged down by it is absolutely true. There are so many people who have gone before me, who have had to put up with more overt acts of injustice.''
Wilkins said he's never been treated badly on a job, largely because he's too nice a guy. But he has faced the kinds of tests that give a young conductor maturity. Midway through his tenure in Richmond, the orchestra went on strike.
``I quite frankly feel they never recovered from that,'' he said. ``It was a tough situation and the orchestra was divided. A lot of people who had been friends for years walked away from the process no longer friends.
``I had the first rehearsal after that happened, and it was terrible. And the orchestra absolutely adored me. A lot of them came up to me after the break and said it wasn't me. They were hurtin'.
``I think about how much I grew over the 5 1/2 years. I was greener than green. I wasn't making major mistakes, but I wasn't making music at the level my players were at. Nobody tried to make wrong notes or usurp my authority on the podium. They nurtured me and just sat there and watched me grow.''
Wilkins said he has recently found an emotional depth in music, an intensity he ascribes to fatherhood. He and his wife, Sheri-Lee Wilkins, have twin daughters, Nicole and Erica, who will be 3 in late September.
But even before he had children of his own, he was deeply involved in education. In Richmond, he contributed often to a children's radio program and taught at Virginia Commonwealth University.
``I got tons of encouragement from teachers. It ended up being a major focal point of my sort of work ethic. The trumpets I trumpet the most and the drums I beat the most are on behalf of education and teachers.
``How did it happen, that a person in that environment could walk out into a drastically different world? It was that the adults in that environment were so nurturing.'' His mother, he said, ``didn't let me go to school dirty and disrespect my teachers. You didn't just screw around, whether you came from a two-parent home or not.
``If you don't have time for a kid today, just forget it.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH
KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY MUSIC CONDUCTOR by CNB