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YSO’s Fleischer gives students career perspective
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Randall Craig Fleischer, conductor of the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra, talked to visual and performing arts students Thursday at the Chaney VPA School in Youngstown.
By Denise Dick
Youngstown
Talent is great, but that alone isn’t going to net you a career in the arts, the conductor of the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra told students at Chaney’s Visual and Performing Arts School.
“It’s going to be great instruction and a lot of hard work,” Randall Craig Fleischer said Thursday in the school auditorium.
Fleischer, who also is a composer and arranger, told the sixth- through 12th-grade students about his life and career. As a child, he didn’t aspire to a music career.
“I took piano lessons from the sixth grade, but my parents had to force me to perform,” Fleischer said.
He sang in his high school choir but only because his mother forced him to. He was an athlete.
But through choir and theater, he developed a love for classical music and attended the Oberlin Conservatory of Music with plans to be a high school choir director.
He took a conducting class because it was a requirement for the degree and fell in love with it.
During his sophomore year in college, Fleischer got his first conducting job with the First United Methodist Church Choir.
“That was a little unusual for me because I’m Jewish,” he said.
He decided he wanted to be a conductor despite his parents’ cautions about how competitive it is.
The odds of making a living as a conductor are about 1,000 to 1, Fleischer said.
“It’s the same for actors, same for singers and almost the same for dancers,” he said.
He went on to graduate school where he earned a master’s degree in conducting and met his wife, Heidi Joyce, singer, dancer and actor.
The two married and moved to New York City after graduation.
“We started pounding the pavement,” he said.
His wife auditioned several times a day while also taking singer, dancing and acting lessons. Fleischer knocked on doors, looking for a job with an orchestra. Within a month, his wife landed a job.
He got a job first as a production assistant with an orchestra, was promoted to office manager and then became assistant conductor.
“This notion of being discovered is a big lie,” he said.
It takes great teachers, hard work and some self promotion.
Fleischer studied with a conductor who was renowned as the best and meanest teacher. But initially, he was too intimidated to ask the man for lessons. Eventually he did.
Fleischer also serves as conductor of the Hudson Valley Orchestra and the Anchorage Symphony. He also juggles a guest conducting schedule and has won major awards.
He’s worked with cellist YoYo Ma, country music artist Kenny Rogers, singer Natalie Merchant and John Densmore, the drummer from The Doors.
Chaney’s band and orchestra performed Christmas music selections for Fleischer, and he said he might return to the school to conduct those students.
He and his wife have co-authored instructional pieces for children that were premiered by the National Symphony Orchestra.