St. Clair conducts the orchestra, his
wife handles the checkbook
By Tamar
Alexia Fleishman • Bankrate.com
 Bankrate:
You have been fortunate to have had some of the great conductors
as mentors. In any field of life, mentors are important. How does
one find and develop a great mentor relationship?
Carl St. Clair: I've
been very blessed with some of the greatest teachers. It's almost
impossible to force such a relationship, you can't insist. The teacher
initiates and the student has sponge-like qualities! I studied with
Dr. Walter Ducloux and he was Toscanini's assistant in Europe. Ducloux
spoke, like, seven languages. He joined the U.S. Army during World
War II as Patton's interpreter, because he spoke so many of the
languages he needed on the front. I met him at Texas. I wrote him
a note. He wrote back. I had a three and a half minute audition!
I needed an assistantship to go to school. I became his assistant.
I was a conducting fellow at Tanglewood. That's how I met Bernstein.
Yeah, you sit there and keep thinking, "Pick me! Pick me!"
But I just did my best and hoped. It was not overtly done. They're
so busy, it never works to force it. Now that I have so much work,
I can see how it is. Mr. B. came up to me and asked, "Cowboy,
why don't you call me? You know I'm up at three, four in the morning."
I told him, "One day, I will call you, when the only one who
can help me is you." He always respected that. Finally, he
said, "It's your turn to fly the flag." He meant, "You
have to give back."
Bankrate: What about
the competition to be a conductor?
Carl St. Clair: Oh,
that's unbelievable. For my assistant position, we had 160 applicants.
You have no idea. You have to judge their quality and artistic ability
from a video and resume. It's hard to visualize from that how they
will work with your musicians, board of directors, educational board.
Getting their resumes, I read them all personally. You narrow it
down to 25, then 15. You get some other input and narrow it to 10.
Then you invite five to come and audition. The year I was invited
to Tanglewood, they had 300 applicants and only took five. Sometimes,
it's just a matter of having a good day. Sometimes, not getting
the job is the best thing that never happened to you. It's happened
to me a few times.
Bankrate: What expenses
do you have as a conductor?
Carl St. Clair: I don't
have a $100,000 violin. I do have insurance. I have a piano, I have
my trumpet. Batons are not expensive. What's expensive are the scores,
the research. The computer helps a lot. The parts are copied from
the original by hand, then done on computer.
Bankrate: How much
does it cost to commission a new work?
Carl St. Clair: When
you commission a new piece, the going rate is a minimum of a $1,000
per minute of music. That seems to be a good way of measuring the
price. The price rises up from there, though. There's the cost of
the rehearsals. You have to fly the composer in. And, if you have
a chorus or soloist with the music, it can cost quite a bit to give
birth to it.
Bankrate: Do you manage
your own money?
Carl St. Clair: My
wife is much better at it than I am, that's her background. She
pays attention to the details. This artist is not very keen at it,
not very good at it. She was blown away when she met me, how I kept
my checkbook, how I used to reconcile the missing lines. She finds
mistakes in bills.
Bankrate: Do you have
investments?
Carl St. Clair: Of
course we do! I have a 403(b) with the PSO. That's because we're
a nonprofit. I've saved for my retirement. I have stocks. Fortunately,
my portfolio stayed relatively healthy in the last onslaught.
Bankrate: Have you
been saving for your kids to go to college?
Carl St. Clair: Oh
yeah. I'm astonished at the costs. I'm totally amazed, especially
with people going to music school. With musicians, there's no guarantee
of making a living. There are a lot more variables to the job. And,
there's the pay level. It's very competitive. For a principal trumpet
opening, maybe, maybe at our level there's one or two openings every
few years. Don't forget, when Philly was in its infancy, they also
didn't pay a living wage. People would take side jobs in pit orchestras
under false names, because they didn't want people to know they
were playing there.
Tamar Alexia
Fleishman is an attorney and writer based in Baltimore.
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