Indiana Wind Symphony music director and founder Charles Conrad is using the rest of the 2022-23 season and the following season to find his replacement.
Conrad, 68, said he is retiring at the end of the 2023-24 season, his 25th with IWS. He will turn 70 shortly before that season ends.
“We are in conductor search at this point,” Conrad said. “I’m going to have a guest conductor do at least a couple of numbers as kind of an audition at each show.”
The IWS will perform a concert featuring “Pictures at an Exhibition” at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 6 at the Palladium at the Center for the Performing Arts in Carmel.
Conrad will conduct the opening piece and then introduce guest conductor Trae Blanco, who is the director of bands at Butler University. Blanco will conduct the rest of the concert.
Jessamyn Anderson, a 2011 Carmel High School graduate, will be the guest soloist.
“Pictures at an Exhibition” is the arrangement that was done for the Marine Band, which is most of the second half of the concert, Conrad said. Anderson will perform “Songs from a Silent Land” by composer Michael Daugherty, a composition professor at the University of Michigan. The piece is inspired by poems of Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti.
“It’s a new piece that premiered in 2018,” Conrad said. “We were supposed to do it in 2020 but it got canceled because of COVID.”
Anderson will sing “The Girl in 14G” to demonstrate her Broadway skills. The song is about a girl who moves to New York and has a jazz singer below her and opera singer above her.
Conrad is recovering well after having surgery to repair a detached retina in his right eye. The IWS had to cancel its Sept. 25 concert featuring the music of John Williams. It has been rescheduled for Feb. 26, 2023.
For more, visit Indianawindsymphony.org.
