Toledo Blade
November 12, 2009

Young conductor to lead symphony

By Sally Vallongo

"Younger conductors are not a novelty anymore," says Tito Munoz, who will make his local debut leading the Toledo Symphony in the Mozart and More II series concert Saturday in the Franciscan Center.

Munoz should know - he is one. At 26, he's three years junior to Gustavo Dudamel, the Venezuelan wunderkind conductor just named as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

"I'm moving in baby steps," says Munoz. "I'm hoping my next position will be music director of a small orchestra and that I'll be able to grow from there."

Munoz is in his final year as assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, where he works, tours, and learns from maestro Franz Welser-Most. Before that, he held a similar position - a sort of intense musical internship - with the Cincinnati Symphony.

His breakthrough from orchestral violinist to conductor happened during the 2004 Aspen Festival, a famed and respected center for concerts and conferences.

Instrumentalists can rocket to stardom before they've left their teens - think of violinist Midori, the late cellist Jacqueline Du Pre, pianist Ingrid Fliter (returning to Toledo in May), and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. Conductors take longer to grow.

"It's a very unique profession," says Munoz, who began studying violin at age 13 in the Juilliard School's Music Advancement Program. He moved to the Manhattan School of Music while also attending the Fiorello LaGuardia High School for Music and the Performing Arts - "the Fame school," he says. Further instrumental study took him to Queens College.

Through it all, Munoz played in orchestras, small ensembles, and as a soloist. That experience informs his conducting and gives him the confidence to face players who may be twice or even three times as old. "When I get up in front of an orchestra, it's business. That's all I think about."

In Toledo, he will lead operatic music in the first half of the program: Mozart's Overture to The Magic Flute, and Wagner's Siegfried Idyll.

Munoz says he's looking forward to the second half of the evening, a performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 4. "It's unfortunately an underplayed symphony, but it's such a great piece, so optimistic," notes Munoz, adding, "It was commissioned. There's no famous story about it. But it's Beethoven at his most witty and most positive."

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