Yellow Springs News Online

Mr. Music brings expertise to town

James Johnston rehearsing with the youth choir at the First Presbyterian Church, just one of several musical activities Johnston is involved with in the village.

The two-hour commute James Johnston makes twice a week between his home in Indianapolis and his job at Antioch College does not faze him. Nor is he flustered by conducting the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra one day and the Antioch Chamber Orchestra or First Presbyterian Church choir the next. On any podium, in either town, he is the same neat and articulate man who does anything and everything for the chance to make music.

Any musician should expect to be on the road a good deal to do the kind of work that excites him, said Johnston, who this fall became a full-time faculty member in Antioch’s music department. For him, that work includes playing and conducting music with as many groups as possible in as many styles as necessary.

Johnston joined Antioch in 1998 as a part-time faculty member while he was working on his doctorate at Indiana University and conducting the Indianapolis Symphony as a fellow. Gradually increasing his time at Antioch, Johnston began by teaching theory and violin performance, moved into conducting the orchestra, and then in 2000 took over the chorus as well. When Antioch music professor John Rhinehart retired last spring, Johnston stepped in.

Johnston said he enjoys the educational component of the Antioch performances, which, he said, allows more room for collaborations with other groups and cross-disciplinary musical interpretations than professional orchestras can accommodate. Last year, for instance, he staged Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas with the Antioch orchestra and chorus, with a witch “flying” around on stage in roller blades. The year before, he invited poets and a classical guitarist to perform Erik Satie’s piece on the death of Socrates, organizing the concert around the theme of philosophy.

Next Tuesday, Nov. 29, the Antioch Chamber Orchestra and Chamber Singers will perform a multimedia presentation of French composer Felicien David’s Le Desert. The music, influenced by the Western view of Orientalism and exoticism in the mid-1800s, includes soloist John Koch of New York City and a narrator who will describe nomadic life in the desert while images of post-impressionist paintings and current photos of the Iraq war appear on a screen on stage. The concert starts at 8 p.m. in Kelly Hall. Koch will host a master class on Wednesday, Nov. 30, at 7 p.m., in Kelly Hall.

The performance speaks to post-French Revolutionary rhetoric about freedom and liberty and the connection to current relations between the U.S. and the Middle East, Johnston said. He likes to connect with an audience in a broad way, he said, and to encourage people to explore new ways of thinking and seeing the world. He also likes to draw people into the world on stage that can engage and enchant, the way, he said, he felt enchanted as a boy attending his first children’s concerts of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

“Several of the performances were enthralling, and I can remember early on focusing on the person conducting,” he said. “If I was personally affected by that experience, it’s something I want to recreate for others. I’m doing my version of something that attracted me in the first place.”

Connection with the audience only happens by connecting first to the performers, where Johnston’s passion and commitment are obvious, according to one performer.

Local resident Mary White, who often occupies the principal violinist’s chair in the orchestra, said she appreciates Johnston’s ability to capitalize on the strengths of a group and perfect the big gestures of a performance that are needed to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.

“I’m amazed at the musical quality of the performances that he pulls out of an orchestra of extremely mixed abilities,” White said. “He seizes on whatever talent is available and keeps his eye on the little details that will make the big picture. Both are signs of an extremely savvy musician and an extremely savvy conductor.”

Libby Rudolf, who says she isn’t knowledgable about music, knows that Johnston is an excellent musician because her daughters, Melanie and Lilli Rudolf, who sing with him in the youth choir at the First Presbyterian Church, hum his music outside of church, at home and all day long, she said. And the performances since he came to the church this year as the organist and conductor of both the youth and the adult choir are inspiring, Rudolf said.

“He really must inspire the children because the performances come out so beautiful. It’s like a light shining through the chapel windows,” she said. “People should realize what a treasure we have in the community.”

Johnston also is co-directing the Community Band with Yellow Springs High School band director Dennis Farmer, and he has interest in coordinating with the music program Shirley Mullins has nurtured in the Yellow Springs schools.

“He’s Mr. Music,” White said of Johnston. “I don’t know how much more you can do in this community short of living here.”

Though the band and the choirs are different than an orchestra, with different instruments and more emphasis on the breath, Johnston said the principles of conducting are basically the same: to practice intonation, rhythm, phrasing and flow and to balance individual expertise with the whole to create an ensemble.

“Ultimately, there has to be this blend. An orchestra can’t have 50 spotlights. There has to be this wash where we’re all contributing to the performance,” he said.

Johnston’s ideas of collaboration fit into the new curriculum at Antioch in which learning communities approach an academic subject from a multi-disciplinary perspective. He said he has ideas about how to make connections between music and the wider world, and it’s a process he is naturally energized by and inclined to pursue.

Johnston is a candidate to be the conductor of the Miami Valley Community Orchestra, and he continues to guest conduct with the Indianapolis Symphony and other area orchestras and musical groups. He also has an interest in tapping into the theatrical activities in Yellow Springs and collaborating with the YS Kids Playhouse and the Shakespeare enthusiasts in the village, he said.

“Maybe this will revive and bring the opera circles back, which could be combined with different arts areas….” he said. “It would be another aspect of my variegated professional career.”