San Antonio Symphony News and Archive

Christopher Wilkins



This page is about Christohper Wilkins, Music Director and Conductor of the San Antonio Symphony (if this isn't a shameless plug, we don't know what is). He has done a lot of good for the symphony and for classical music here in San Antonio. On this page, we hope to give you a biographical account of this wonderful man and the article from the Express News about him.

This has been long coming since the article came out. I apologize for the delay, and hope that it is worth it. This is dedicated to Christopher Wilkins, who is our inspiration for music, for he will be leaving this wonderful symphony after ten years to brighter and better things. We wish him all of the best.



Measured growth




Wilkins keeps up steady beat of challenge, accomplishment




From the San Antonio Express-News 2/21/99

By Mike Greenberg





It's like marriage. Hard work, commitment, and growth are required of both partners if they're to stick together past the Seven Year Itch.

"Seven years in any relationship tends to be a milestone," said Christopher Wilkins recently, in the middle of his seventh season at the artistic helm of the San Antonio Symphony.

The relationship is in no immediate danger, apparently. Wilkins is full of admiration for the orchestra, his current contract runs through the end of next season, and the big league teams have not come a-courting, though a few are glancing in his direction.

For its part, the symphony organization has little reason to be dissatisfied with a music director who has greatly improved the orchestra, strengthened its ties to the community and brought it national recognition for innovative programming.

But each partner has issues to resolve and growing to do to keep the other interested.

To understand where Wilkins is coming from, it might be helpful to understand where he comes from - specifically, Boston, where he was born not quite 42 years ago to upper-crust but non-musical parents. He spent most of his youth in nearby Concord, the home, he has observed, of Emerson and Thoreau.

Wilkins took up piano at age 5, switched to oboe at 8 and soon immersed himself in Boston's rich and exacting musical life.

While a student at Milton Academy, the young Wilkins rode the subway to take private lessons with oboist Ralph Gomberg at the New England Conservatory. He was the first-chair oboist in the conservatory's Youth Philharmonic Orchestra, and the orchestra's conductor, Benjamin Zander, remains a trusted adviser and close friend to this day.

Wilkins entered Harvard University with the intention of pursuing a pre-med course, but switched to Chinese studies. He continued playing oboe, however, and joined Harvard's Bach Society Orchestra, an undergraduate ensemble.

In his junior year, though he had never conducted, Wilkins was asked to succeed Neal Stulberg as the orchestra's conductor. (Stulberg would later be a strong contender for the San Antonio Symphony post that Wilkins won.)

Giving up Chinese studies, Wilkins devoted his full attention to music and acquired a first-class background in conducting. He studied in Berlin on a fellowship from Harvard and then attended Yale University for post-graduate study with Otto Werner Mueller, whose special strength was the analysis of musical structure.

After earning his master's degree, Wilkins taught for a year at the State University of New York at Purchase and then won a series of important apprentice posts.

Accepted into the Exxon conducting fellowship program, he was placed for one year at the Oregon Symphony under James DePriest and for three years at the Cleveland Orchestra under Christiph von Dohnanyi, a precision craftsman on the podium. In 1986, Wilkins began a three-year stint as associate conductor of the Utah Symphony under Joseph Silverstein.

Wilkins' first post as music director came to him in 1989, at Colorado Springs. His astounding debut with the San Antonio Symhphony, in 1990, led to his appointment as music director-designate the following year.

Despite his rapid rise, Wilkins' success as a mature conductor was not a foregone conclusion in his early years.

Speaking by phone from Boston, Zander said that Wilkins today "has an infinitely greater authority with the stick and the body. He was very stiff when he started out. I had my doubts when he started that he was cut out to be a conductor."

Stephanie Sant'Ambrogio, the symphony's concertmaster for the past five seasons, was playing with the Cleveland Orchestra while Wilkins apprenticed there.

"He was so tentative and timid and not sure of his musical convictions," Sant'Ambrogio recalled of Wilkins' conducting in Cleveland.

When she came to San Antonio, she was surprised by his growth as a musician.

"He has grown and matured and developed so tremendously in that time. It's been really fun to watch," Sant'Ambrogio said.

In San Antonio, Wilkins' own reputaion continues to grow - he won a major grant to travel and study with great conductors in the United States and Europe - and he quickly revived the orchestra's ambition and reputaion, both of which had declined during the '70s and '80s.

Guven his training, it was not surprising that Wilkins raised the orchestra's standard of playing. Less expected was his enthusiastic embrace of the regions's culture.

Rather than try to build a generic symphony, he aimed to build a first-class orchestra rooted in local traditions.

He recruited Hispanic composers with local ties as composer-in-residence and linked the orchestra with the local theater, dance, and voice communities by including dance works, plays with music and semi-staged operas in the symphony's regular programming.

Zander regards Wilkins as a highly interesting and innovative music director.

"He seems to be challenging the orchestra model to the limit," Zander said. "He's one of the few people who have found a way to integrate the orchestra into the community. I don't know anyone who is so successful at making a community feel the symphony is their orchestra, not just an orchestra. That is a very admirable thing."

Wilkins expresses his pleasure with the orchestra's artistic development, but he is not satisfied. The orchestra's chronic financial difficulties have limited its growth, and though the orchestra survived last year's near-bankruptcy, it did not emerge unscathed.

"I've had certain goals for this orchestra, and some of that has been accomplished, some quite recently," Wilkins said at the picnic table in the backyard of his Northside house.

"The first was to sustain collective efforts at improving quality all the time and, second, to establish the symphony as an essential, even central, ingredient in the cultural mix of San Antonio. I think we all feel pride in both those points now. The symphony is playing at a very high level, even in relation to elite orchestras in other parts of the country."

"I would love to say we're all regrouped (after last year's financial crisis) and can take it to the next level - genuine financial stability and an opportunity to have the product heard and appreciated by a wider public."

One of his goals is to have the symphony make recordings.

"It would be a shame to come to this level and not make recordings," he said.

The orchestra has a $14,000 grant from the Copland Foundation to help support a recording of dance-inspired music by regional and Hispanic composers, but the symphony needs to raise the bulk of the cost - as much as $100,000.

"My feeling is that a certain amount of money can more than earn itself back," Wilkins said, noting that some foundation support is available only for recordings.

"If you have a recording and can put your name on it, it makes a tremendous difference. Having a recording is an important tool in raising money. It would be a smart thing to do and a foolish thing not to do."

Wilkins also hopes to expand the understaffed string section.

"To become an orchestra that I would say could be heard in Carnegie Hall, can be a real player nationally, we absolutely need to increase the string section. We must not decrease it. It's already too small, but we have managed. To reduce it more we would be playing Tchaikovsky and Brahms with the orchestra of Bach and Mozart".

He regards the Majestic Theater as a pleasing venue, but not an ideal one. He finds it wanting in presence, and notes that it was designed as a vaudeville house, not a concert hall.

"Playing the Brahms Requiem under stuffed peacocks - it's fun, but it's not a pure space for music. I would love it if San Antonio had that."

But he acknowledges that a new venue is not in the cards for a long time to come.

The symphony's financial troubles have placed heavy demands on the extramusical side of the music director's responsibilities - fundraising, dealing with musicians' flagging morale, even programming, which has been limited by financial resources.

"In terms of the responsibilities of a music director, it's been a real trial here. It's helped me learn a lot, but it's been a terrible distraction. I would like to think that in the future a large percentage of my time would be devoted to purely making music," Wilkins said.

The demands of his job have tested Wilkins' marriage to the former Anne Adair, a ballet dancer.

"We had serious problems with our marriage a couple of years ago - defining goals, setting boundaries (between home and work)," Wilkins said.

The relationship has improved, paradoxically, with the move of Anne and their two children to Columbus, Ohio, where Anne dances with the Ballet Met.

"Anne and I have kind of a new living arrangement which entails having two homes again. That's something I vowed, when I left Colorado Springs, I'd never do again. Here we are kind of doing it again, but with a difference."

When he commutes to Columbus, he devotes full time to his family and makes himself unavailable for work calls.

"At some point we want to get the family together again, but in a curoius way I think I can be a better music director and a better family man with those boundaries set."

For a conductor of Wilkins' ability, San Antonio's limitations are undeniably frustrating, but they have not yet driven him to actively seek a new job.

"Change well-timed is a healthy thing for everybody. It may not be possible to do some things here - recordings, for example. San Antonio is a long way from anywhere. We do labor in relative obscurity. It's advantageous to be closer to the center."

"On the other hand, I've always been a community person. The basic thing for me is how a community experiences music."

"One clear strength (of San Antonio) is the fact that in a very real way, culture is an important part of the identity of this city. The symphony - along with the San Antonio Museum of Art, the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center and the Cultural Arts Center - has been successful in allying itself with the cultural identity of this city."

"It's a rare thing for a city to have a cultural identity any more. I find it thrilling. It has helped the orchestra achieve a national profile we would not otherwise have been able to achieve."

With a more than a year remaining on his contract, he's in no rush to make a decision about his future.

"I'm sort of waiting to see what's next. I haven't been in the market. I've always withdrawn my name immediately if there's been a search."

Orchestras currently searching for music directors include those of Louisville, Jacksonville, Syracuse, Philadelphia, Houston.

"Indianapolis is just starting a search," he said, just days before that wealthy orchestra called him in as an 11th-hour replacement for another guest conductor. His concert earned an effusive review from the local critic, who regarded Wilkins as a strong candidate for music director.

Whatever Wilkins decides to do next, he will likely lean on Zander for advice.

"We've talked about it," Zander said. "I advised him that, all things being equal, if the (financial) circumstances can be contained, he would do well to stay. It's a first-class orchestra. It's a very harmonious and good relationship. A few more years there would be great, as along as all his energies are not drained by the crisis."

"Maybe in three years an offer may come from an orchestra that is bigger-endowed and can do the big repertoire without hesitation."

But Wilkins himself may have some growing to do before he can be considered a shoo-in for the major leagues.

Observers in and out of the orchestra, and even Wilkins himself, have noted a certain want of "freedom" or "fluidity" or inner "pulse" or "breathing" in his conducting.

He is universally praised for achieving clarity of orchestral sound and musical structure, for his rhythmic precision and for the thoroughness of his preparation - he may spend 100 hours studying a new score.

Some, however, fault him for a tendency not to push a score to its emotional limit. The passion he clearly feels, and expresses verbally, does not consistently come through in his music-making.

Wilkins has worked assiduously on his flexibility, a crucial component of a conductor's ability to communicate with the orchestra. He has studied dance, for example, in his pursuit of a more expressive baton and more incisive rhythms.

Even Wilkins' detractors in the orchestra acknowledge that he has untethered his intuition more this season than in the past - and that their own doubts about him are very likely colored by morale problems arising from last year's crisis.

His admirers, including Sant'Ambrogio, do not regard his analytical bent as a flaw.

"I wouldn't agree that he isn't fluid or ecstatic enough," she said, citing Pierre Boulez and von Dohnanyi as great conductors with cool musical dispositions. In some material, especially the French repertoire, Wilkins does ride a fully intuitive wave, she adds.

Henry Fogel, president of the Chicago Symphony, has taken a keen interest in Wilkins, who conducted a subscription program with that orchestra last season and has led several special concerts.

"He's an enormous talent," Fogel said of Wilkins. "I like the way he makes music, the thoroughness with which he prepares music, the seriousness with which he approaches music and the role of the music director."

That's not to say, however, that Wilkins could not benefit from further seasoning.

"I certainly think that working with a variety of orchestras, and orchestras at better levels, helps a conductor grow," Fogel said. "I've alway felt that opera should be part of the background of any conductor. It forces you to be flexible because every singer is different, and I think it stretches you. Exposure to conductors of master status is another."

Zander thinks Wilkins' career is moving at a good pace.

"For somebody his age it is already incredible how he's looked up to as a model of what a conductor should be. His programming is exemplary. He's warm-hearted and very thoughtful. I find him thoughtful and caring and not headstrong, but strong."

"He's growing enormously as a musician. His range of repertory is one of the largest. I don't think San Antonio completely grasps what a treasure he is."

As Fogel notes, most conductors reach maturity in their 50s. The big question that Wilkins faces now is whether the soil he's currently planted in is fertile enough to sustain him into full bloom.

"We came out of this whole mess in the fall with a renewed conviction of what this orchestra is meant to be - about great music-making for a community that cares deeply about it. It's a great time to test the theory that great music-making will get the support it requires," Wilkins said.

"As for my furture, I'll be somewhere where that matters."



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