Scaling new heights
Rock star conductor to lead Siletz Bay Music Festival orchestra
By Eliot Sekuler
For the TODAY
“Jaw-dropping,” said James Bash in a review for Oregon ArtsWatch. “Spectacular… technically clear with an emotionally engaging style.”
From her first classical repertoire performance leading the Oregon Symphony at Portland’s Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, it was clear that the venerable orchestra, the oldest in the western United States, had found a new star and Deanna Tham, its new young associate conductor, had found a new home.
Audiences on the Oregon Coast will have a chance to see and hear Tham later this month when her luminous talents will be on display at the Siletz Bay Music Festival, where she’ll wield the baton for the two orchestral concerts at Chinook Winds that will close this year’s festival and for the free Native American-inspired “family concert” at Regatta Park.
Hailing from San Jose, California, Tham has taken a circuitous route to the Northwest. After completing studies at Chicago’s Northwestern University, Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon and the Cleveland Institute of Music, she was recruited by orchestras in Louisville, Jacksonville, Boise and Omaha before joining the Oregon Symphony in 2022.
A rock-climbing enthusiast and avowed outdoors sports aficionado, Tham was happy to return to this side of the country where the climate is more suitable to her off-duty pastimes.
“I grew up on the West Coast, so there’s a feeling of home here,” she said. “I feel more at ease in the West’s more laidback, open lifestyle. Back east, the atmosphere feels more tied down, more rules-driven. Here, there’s a sense of exploration; it feels like you can do things in your own way. And the ocean is on the correct side.”
Tham, whose presence on the podium has been described as “powerfully compelling,” described how the sound of an orchestra will vary under the direction of different conductors.
“Conducting is a weirdly touchy-feely profession,” she said. “We are the only members of the orchestra who don’t make any sound. We have to exert influence completely differently from what is natural to a lot of musicians, who are listening to their peers. The differences among all conductors stems from the way we hear the music for ourselves, and that comes out in our physicality. It’s influenced by how we have lived our lives and how we see the world, and everyone is different.”
Her three programs at Siletz Bay Music Festival will include a diverse repertoire, ranging from Beethoven’s 4th Symphony and the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto to the contemporary pieces “Celillo Falls: We Were There” by Nancy Ives, Daniel Freiberg’s “Latin American Chronicles Jazz Concerto for Clarinet” and Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate‘s Native American musical fable, “Spirit Chief Names the Animal People.”
Variety comes naturally to Tham, who enjoys mixing musical genres and styles. She has worked on programs featuring Broadway star Capathia Jenkins, Irish musical group Cherish the Ladies and, this December, she’s scheduled to conduct the Oregon Symphony in a presentation of a “A Charlie Brown Christmas Live.”
“The goal of pop music is very different from classical, and the conductor’s role is different as well,” she said. “Pop compositions present one idea, one mood. There’s not as much texture and the pieces are generally shorter, three minutes, maybe six minutes, so you don’t have to work as hard to find balance and shape. In a longer-form classical piece, that’s not the case. It’s a journey. There are subtle changes in orchestration that you want to bring out. When I’m conducting a classical piece, it’s much more taxing stamina-wise, because I’m keeping the scope of maybe an hour of music in my head at the same time.”
The necessity for stamina and focus leads Tham to drawing an analogy between her work as a conductor and her pastime as a rock climber.
“Finding the trajectory of an hour-long piece of music is similar in a way to climbing a long route,” she said. “Artists talk about finding a ‘flow state,’ and that’s true in both rock climbing and conducting. When I get nervous in rock climbing, I’ll tend to over-grip, to tighten up, and that can lead to a fall. It’s also true in conducting an orchestra. When I loosen up and don’t try to overly control what the artists in the orchestra are trying to create with me, I get a better result. In rock climbing and in music, you have to risk falling if you’re going to succeed.”
Dianna Tham will conduct the Siletz Bay Music Festival orchestra at Chinook Winds Casino Resort on Saturday, August 24 at 7:30 pm and Sunday, August 25 at 4 pm. She’ll conduct the free native American-inspired family concert at 2:30 pm on Saturday, August 24 at the Regatta Park Bandshell. For tickets and more information, go to SiletzBayMusic.org.