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Career Carver Lucinda Carver DMA ’89 wanted it all – performance and teaching. The first part came easily. The second
soon followed, but balancing the two took some doing. In 1992, she was named music director and conductor of the Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra, a widely admired Los Angeles-based ensemble that specializes in the chamber orchestra repertoire of the 18th century along with an eclectic mix of 19th- and 20th-century neoclassical music.
Since its founding in 1975 by David Keith, the orchestra has never had a permanent home – until now. Beginning with its 2000-2001 Silver Anniversary season, the orchestra will be in residence at the Colburn School of Performing Arts, where it will present 10 concerts annually in the new 416-seat Zipper Concert Hall.
This is not the only change that has come about since she took over leadership. During the 1995-96 season, she led the orchestra’s first commercial recordings, for RCM: an all-Mozart CD of Symphonies Nos. 17, 29 and 34, and an all-Haydn CD of the rarely-recorded Symphonies Nos. 43 (Mercury) and 48 (Maria Theresa) plus the overture to Lo speziale.
During the 1996-97 season, the orchestra undertook two national tours under the auspices of Columbia Artists. Highligh
Lucinda Carver conducts a life that balances performance and teaching. |
ts of the tours were featured on “CBS Sunday Morning.”
Carver, who was born in Seal Beach, Calif., credits a solid piano background as the reason for her success as a conductor.
“I could never be a conductor without first being a pianist,” she says. “Conducting is performing, you just don’t have the feeling of music running through your fingers.”
WHILE STUDYING AT THE Mozarteum in Austria on a Fulbright Grant, Carver began to take an interest in conducting. It wasn’t until she came to USC for her doctorate, however, that she really embraced the challenge.
“It all sort of came together for me here at USC,” says Carver, who is now on the faculty of the USC Thornton School of Music. “Before I knew it, I was doing a lot of performing and conducting,”
Although she also enjoyed teaching, she thought she was through with that when she left a position at Cal State Fullerton in fall 1997 to make her Lincoln Center debut conducting Don Pasquale for New York City Opera. She was performing and conducting all over the country, and teaching didn’t fit into her rigorous schedule. That is until Stewart Gordon, chair of keyboard studies in the USC Thornton School, contacted her about a teaching position at USC. When Gordon explained that USC actually encourages its faculty to be active in their fields and would accommodate her performance schedule, she took the job immediately.
“There was a void in my life,” Carver says of her time away from academia. “I love working with students and I grow as a performer because of it. The students here are so talented they keep you on your toes.”
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