Orchestra Conductor -
Balancing Freedom and Responsibility

Born of Japanese-American ancestry in Honolulu, Hawaii, Michael Jinbo has become a leading figure in American classical music. He is music director of the Pierre Monteux School for Conductors and Orchestra Musicians in Hancock, Maine, and conductor of the Nittany Valley Symphony in State College, Pennsylvania. When he is not at either of those places, he lives in New York City.

Michael's great-grandparents left Japan for Hawaii sometime in the late 1800s. Succeeding generations of his family lived in a Hawaii that was a monarchy until 1893, became a territory of the United States in 1900, and was admitted to the Union as the 50th state in 1959. Statehood came just three years after Michael was born, in May of 1956, so he doesn't remember a time when he did not think of himself as an American citizen, although others were not so sure. Michael went to a music festival in California while he was in secondary school, and a number of people there asked if this was his first visit to the United States. "I didn't like that much," he recalls.

Michael first became interested in music in elementary school. "I attended public schools as a child," he says, "and in the fifth grade we were all given a musical aptitude test to assess our sense of pitch and rhythm. Based on the test, certain students were offered the opportunity to learn a stringed instrument in group 'string classes' in the sixth grade. I remember knowing instantly that I wanted to do that, even though I had had no classical music exposure in the home. The thought of playing the violin appealed to me."

He continued in public school string classes through the sixth and seventh grades and then started taking private violin lessons in the eighth grade. "Although I was a 'late starter' for a string player," he says, "I progressed very quickly and became one of the best of my age in Hawaii. I ended up being concertmaster [first violinist] of the Hawaii Youth Symphony and Hawaii All-State Orchestra by the time I finished high school. As a concerto competition winner, I played a solo with the Honolulu Symphony in my senior year."

After he graduated as valedictorian of his secondary school class, his college applications were accepted by five major universities. He ended up choosing the University of Chicago "because of the amount of aid I received," he says. "When taking into account the quality of the school, the cost of tuition, and the amount of financial aid awarded, UC ended up being the best school my family could afford, and even then only with great financial hardship."

Michael was concertmaster of the university-community orchestra for all of the four years he was at the university, and in his senior year, he started conducting. "A friend of mine offered to give me a small youth orchestra that she was no longer interested in conducting," Michael says, "which was a part-time job. I took the one conducting course offered at the university, got a few guest conducting opportunities, and put together some concerts on my own."

After receiving a bachelor's degree in music from the University of Chicago and a master's degree in conducting from Northwestern University School of Music, Michael first attended the Pierre Monteux School in the summer of 1983. (Monteux, one of the great conductors of the 20th century who was born in France and became an American citizen in 1942, founded a summer school in 1943 that still draws conductors and orchestra musicians to Maine from all over the world. At the time Michael began attending, the school was under the direction of Charles Bruck, who had been a pupil of Monteux's in Paris and took over following Monteux's death in 1964.)

Michael Jinbo's career quickly flourished. "In 1990," he says, "I was offered the position of music director and conductor of the Nittany Valley Symphony in Pennsylvania. Since it was a part-time position, I commuted from Chicago, where I was living, when necessary. I continued to work as a freelance violinist in Chicago as well. A couple of years later, I won an audition for a job as assistant conductor with the North Carolina Symphony. Finally, in my mid-30s, I was working full-time as a conductor."

In addition, Michael continued to go to Maine each summer to study with Bruck at the Monteux School, eventually becoming Bruck's assistant. When Bruck died in the summer of 1995, in the middle of the six-week session, Michael took over the classes, finished the session, and was subsequently named music director by the school's board of trustees. He resigned from his position with the North Carolina Symphony, but is now in his 15th season with the Nittany Valley Symphony and will celebrate his 10th anniversary as music director of the Monteux School in the summer of 2005.

Michael's success has been proof of what he sees as the American dream: "This is a country that gives us the freedom to be what we want to be and do what we want to do, so long as we accept the responsibility and limits that have to coexist with that freedom."

Michael realizes, though, how much things are changing. "Not just our country but the entire world now seems to move so much faster and to be so much more complicated," he says. "I feel that as Americans, we are not viewed the way we used to be by the rest of the world, nor do we view ourselves the same way either. There are so many strong feelings and antagonisms between different types of people, which I find very sad."

But he remains hopeful. "We can regain our sense of ourselves," he says, "if we will just follow a few simple rules: Do your best, try always to think the best of other people, and learn how to be resilient. Maybe the last of these is the hardest." — Robert Taylor

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