Conductor Michelle Merrill

I am watching a rehearsal of the Nielsen Symphony No. 3 “Espansiva,” written in 1911 by the late-Romantic Danish composer Carl Nielsen (1865-1931). Leading the Winston-Salem Symphony Orchestra is an elegant, tall woman named Michelle Merrill. Her efficient techniques for rehearsal are laced with quiet touches of humor. Her movements are strong, measured, and passionate. They  reflect fully in the movement of her luxurious, thick mane of hair, secured firmly with a band at the nape of her neck.

This hair cannot be contained, though. It acts as a counterbalance to each gesture. At one moment it lies quietly; at another, it dashes side-to-side across her back like restless waves in the sea. Occasionally the whole pony-tail leaps straight up, usually as the music reaches a climax.

I know that hair. I first saw it in the early 2000s in my classroom at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, where Merrill was an undergraduate in my music history classes. Her goal back then, as I understood, was to complete a Bachelor’s degree in Music. She dwelled fully in the world of wind instruments, her own specialty being the saxophone.

Merrill’s academic work was conscientious, insightful, and a pleasure to read. I recollect these qualities not solely from memory, but by looking through grade books that fill a hanging file in my office. I have kept these grade books all the way back to my first semester at SMU in 1985. They serve as triggers, evoking not the scores inside (heaven forbid); rather, they evoke the magic of specific classrooms filled with this or that group of marvelously talented young people, a big percentage of which have gone on to fabulous careers in music.

Merrill was fairly reserved as an undergraduate (at least around me). Only when she traveled as an upperclassman with a dozen or so other music majors on my “SMU-in-Germany, Summer in Weimar” program did I get to know her better. Infused with the beauty of the German landscape, we spent our days studying and our evenings filled with concerts and operas. Weekends found us on trains headed to Berlin, Leipzig, Erfurt, and Dresden. Weekday afternoons, our students filled cafes to eat Italian Eis or strolled in the historic “Goethe Park,” where the energies of luminaries like Goethe, Schiller, Bach, and Liszt still resonate.

Perhaps that summer played a role in shaping Merrill’s decision to throw herself into the advanced study of orchestral conducting. Later, I heard she had completed a masters in conducting. Eventually the news reached me that she was working at a high level in the profession, including as Associate Conductor of the Detroit Symphony.

That was thrilling enough to hear. Imagine, then, how I danced in my kitchen when I heard she had won the directorship of our orchestra here in Winston-Salem. Not only might I see her again, as well as her fine husband Steve, a terrific percussionist and member of the same class at SMU, but I could experience her as the masterful conductor she had become.

And that brings me to tonight. I’m here officially to prepare for two pre-concert talks I will give to patrons of the Winston-Salem Symphony. This is work I am highly familiar with, having done it for nearly forty years in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex and elsewhere. Still, Winston-Salem is our new home, and so I’m a bit nervous about it. One thing for certain: nothing helps to prepare a pre-concert talk more than witnessing rehearsals, watching as the pieces are taken apart and built back together. And while I cannot hear her every comment, I see how sympathetically she works with the orchestra. I hear the difference her suggestions make in the music.

Anyone who has taught a long time knows exactly how I feel right now. Students come to us young. We have our time with them, hopefully a meaningful time. They move forward in their lives. Sometimes, the future gives us the blessing of being connected with their lives once again. At that moment we experience two opposite feelings. Before us stands a grown-up, in this case a fully mature person whose poise, knowledge, and power strike us as emanating from someone absolutely new to us. But there’s always a giveaway that links us to the young person or child we once knew. In this case, it is that hair, that free and joyous bough of hair that seems to be conducting the whole concert hall. And from it, I find the laughter, bright eyes, and radiant smile of the 18-year old I first encountered in another life.

I’m ever so glad to be together with you again, lovely Michelle Merrill—this time as a happy traveler entering your world, with you being the teacher, the one setting the beat, directing the flow, and shaping the beauty of the phrases.