By GARY DEMUTH
For the Salina Symphony
It took “Just One Look” for Vlad Vizireanu to know that conducting was in his future.
When the Romania native was about 3 years old, his parents bought a vinyl record for him, a recording of popular American singer Linda Ronstadt’s rendition of the song “Just One Look.”
“My parents put headphones on me that were three times the size of my head, and I played that record nonstop, basically bobbing my head back and forth to the music,” Vizireanu said. “It was my first experience as a conductor. Music has always been a very physical process for me.”
Vizireanu is the fifth and final candidate auditioning for the position of conductor and music director of the Salina Symphony. His concert, “Symphonic Dances,” will begin at 4 p.m. Sunday at the Stiefel Theatre for the Performing Arts, 151 S. Santa Fe.
The program will include a performance of Rachmaninoff’s dynamic “Symphonic Dances,” a contemporary composition entitled “Mothership” by composer Mason Bates, and Tchaikovsky’s passionate “Piano Concerto No. 1,” featuring guest pianist Lorraine Min.
Vizireanu and Min will give a pre-concert talk at 3 p.m. May 1 in the Stiefel Theatre’s Watson Room. Doors open at 2:30 p.m.
After Vizireanu’s concert comes the most difficult part of the Salina Symphony’s 2021-2022 season: deciding which of the five finalists – Devin Patrick Hughes, Melisse Brunet, Yaniv Segal, Yaniv Attar or Vlad Vizireanu – will be Symphony’s permanent conductor and music director.
Adrienne Allen, executive director of the Salina Symphony, expects the decision to be made in early May.
“The search season and the privilege of working with each of our talented finalists has been an incredible experience for our staff, musicians and audience,” she said. “We are thrilled to be nearing the end of the process and look forward to the next era under our new artistic leader.”
Sharing skills
Although he has conducted professional orchestras worldwide, Vizireanu said he was ready to settle down in one location and “make an orchestra my own.”
“It was great to travel on a plane all the time and conduct without any responsibility,” he said. “But I’m getting to the point where I want to share my experience and skills with a group of people that I enjoy making music with. That was the impression I got with the Salina Symphony, that it seemed like a close-knit group of people who enjoy the process of making music together.”
Vizireanu hopes to make a memorable impression both with Salina Symphony musicians and audience members during his time here.
“I definitely feel like I’m anything but boring when I’m on the podium,” he said. “I think I’m going to be able to get some amazing sounds from the orchestra. For me, there’s nothing greater than going into a coffee house and have people come up and say, ‘that was a great concert last night.’”
While researching the Salina Symphony, Vizireanu said he also was impressed by the organization’s commitment to their youth orchestras and to the development of young musicians.
“There’s no bigger priority than getting youth involved and making music a major part of their lives,” he said. “It’s something you have to advocate for.”
A brighter future
Vizireanu was born in Romania and moved to the United States as a child with his mother in 1990.
“After the Soviet Union fell, it wasn’t the safest place to be anymore or the best place for a kid to have a brighter future,” he said. “So we moved to Los Angeles.”
Envisioning music as a career, Vizireanu, who also is a pianist and singer, received a master’s degree in conducting from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music and a doctorate from Arizona State University. He also studied musicology and piano performance at the University of California Los Angeles.
A regular presence on the conducting competition circuit, Vizireanu came to international attention after winning second prize in the 2013 Cadaques Conducting Competition in a televised concert in Barcelona. He made his conducting debut with the London Symphony Orchestra as second prize winner in the 2016 Donatella Flick Competition.
Vizireanu also was invited to be one of 14 conductors, out of 400 applicants worldwide, to participate in the renowned Mahler Conducting Competition with the Bamberg Symphony.
Now a regular guest conductor in the U.S. and Europe, Vizireanu recently was appointed principal guest conductor of the Ploiesti Philharmonic in Romania. He also served as music director of the Knox Galesburg Symphony in Illinois and the North Shore Symphony in New York.
An advocate of new music, Vizireanu is founder and executive director of Impulse New Music Festival, which brings together young composers and instrumentalists to study and perform new compositions.
While working with such diverse orchestras and music ensembles has been an exhilarating experience for Vizireanu, he said it also puts a lot of pressure on a young conductor.
“Fully professional orchestras have some of the best players in the world who can do anything you ask of them, but because they’re at such a high level, they know they’re good,” he said with a laugh. “It demands a lot of a young conductor.”
Guest pianist
Working with acclaimed pianist Lorraine Min as a soloist on the Tchaikovsky piano concerto is a special treat for Vizireanu, who missed a previous opportunity to work with her while guest conducting an orchestra in March 2020.
“We know what happened then,” he said. “It got shut down, and I figured that was it.”
Born in Victoria and raised in Vancouver, Canada, Min studied on full scholarship at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University. She received her master’s and doctoral degrees from the famed Juilliard School in New York City.
Min was the top ranked Canadian pianist at age 19 in the Harveys Leeds and Busoni International Competitions, and laureate in the Van Cliburn Competition. She has performed extensively throughout the U.S. and Canada, as well as Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Australia, India, South America and the United Kingdom.
Being able to collaborate with Min on the Tchaikovsky piano concerto, Vizireanu said, was “one of the best pieces of news I received” when planning his Salina concert.
More than a luxury
Vizireanu said it is exhilarating to conduct again after so many live music events were canceled because of the COVID pandemic, and he hopes audiences will return to support dedicated orchestras like the Salina Symphony.
“The arts are more than a luxury,” he said. “They’re a crucial part of your life, even if you may not know it. I’m thrilled to be able to express myself as a musician again and to work with the Salina Symphony.”
Tickets for Sunday's concert may be purchased at the Stiefel Theatre box office at 785-827-1998 or online at www.salinasymphony.org. Single admission tickets are $29 or $39 for adults and $19 for students.
The Stiefel Theatre currently has suspended their COVID-19 vaccine/mask mandate for attendance.