Emil de Cou, on Conducting a Musical Career

The conductor, featured in Xploring Xtremes and Pictures for Your Ears, talks about his path to music and conducting.

How did you come to music and what brought you to where you wanted to play or conduct?

In high school, I was given a French horn by my band director, because I wanted to be in the marching band. I sort of had that “aha” moment, like “this is just right.” And then [I saw] the re-release of Fantasia, featuring Leopold Stokowski. I had never heard classical music to that extent and never heard The Rite of Spring or Toccata and Fugue. It set my whole life on a whole different track from that moment.

How did you know what you were going to do?

Even in high school, I just always wanted to conduct and I can’t say why. It’s almost like being a film director as opposed to being an actor. You’re not writing the music. You’re not actually playing the music or making any sound at all. But you’re marshaling the forces, very much the way a film director would do off-camera.

What, at this point, would be your dream?

I feel like I am doing my dream job because to conduct the National Symphony and stand in front of them and conduct this amazing music in this incredible place, it’s just everything I always wanted to do.

Who are some of your mentors, and people that you look up to in the conducting community?

Leonard Slatkin is one of the most encouraging conductor mentors since Leonard Bernstein. He takes out weeks at a time, when he could be conducting major orchestras, studying, or just on vacation with his wife and his son, to devote to maybe six, seven conductors at the National Conducting Institute here at the Kennedy Center. So, I would say Leonard Slatkin is really the primary mentor for American conductors

What would you say to kids who aspire to be professional musicians?

You spend a lot of time alone. You spend a lot of time away from your family during holidays, which is when we usually have concerts, or weekends when we have concerts and people are off. But it’s incredibly rewarding. You have to have an overriding passion for what you want to do.