How a massive CD collection helped shape Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor of three major orchestras
A childhood collection of some 12,000 CDs helped shape Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor and director of three major orchestras, into the musician he is today.
"I would go to a record store and buy CDs and discover repertoire after repertoire, every symphony by Brahms, every symphony by Beethoven, by Bruckner, by Mahler," he said. "I wanted then to hear every version and buy every version of every symphony. And I'm not shy to say that it's shaped a lot of who I am as a musician."
His parents assured 60 Minutes correspondent Jon Wertheim 12,000 CDs is no exaggeration. Of course, Nézet-Séguin's trained his ear in more formal ways too. He studied piano and conducting at the conservatory in Montreal, and conducted a church choir in his teens.
Throughout his 30s, Nézet-Séguin worked the international circuit — London, Vienna, Rotterdam — guest conducting 100 orchestras. He made his Met Opera debut conducting "Carmen" in 2009 and now serves as music director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City along with orchestras in Philadelphia and Montreal.
Nézet-Séguin took over the podium at the Met in 2018, after his predecessor was fired for sexual misconduct. Already facing weak ticket sales and perpetually strapped for cash, the Met has had a hard time rebounding from COVID and has dipped into its endowment to cover around 10% of its $300 million operating budget.
Nézet-Séguin is hitting the reset button, betting on new composers and new operas to bring in wider audiences and shore up the bottom line. He's threading the needle, hoping to balance new pieces with traditional operas.
"The truth is I'm not necessarily concerned about not upsetting traditionalists. I think people who love our art form are still going to love it because we're still gonna play some Puccini and Verdi," Nézet-Séguin said. "To me it's, it's never about not upsetting. And if some people are upset, well, too bad. They just don't have to come to everything we do."
A recent premiere of the opera "Fire Shut Up in My Bones," based on the memoir of journalist Charles Blow and composed by jazz legend Terence Blanchard, sold out and outsold Verdi's classic Rigoletto that season. What's more, half the seats were filled by first-time Met goers.
The Met will put on 17 new and recent works over the next five seasons — this, at a place that once went near decades without staging a new opera. This spring brought "Champion," a jazz-infused Blanchard composition based on the complicated life of Emile Griffith, a bisexual boxing star in the '60s and '70s.
"Champion" is a rare collaboration between a conductor and a living composer. Blanchard, a seven-time Grammy winner, is the first Black composer in the Met's history.
"He gets the story," Blanchard said of Nézet-Séguin. "He gets the whole notion of bringing these different styles of music together."
During rehearsals, Nézet-Séguin also steps away from the "old concept of authority." He says in some old recordings, you can hear that singers were afraid of their conductors. Performing on stage is nerve-wracking enough without the conductor waiting for musicians to fail, Nézet-Séguin said.
"The music wins when everybody feels free to express who they are," he said.
As Nézet-Séguin conducts, his eyes reach musicians in the pit and vocalists on stage, seemingly all at once. The bounce in his baton consecrates every note.
"I try never to take myself too seriously, but music has to be taken seriously," he said.
He brings this sensibility to bear up and down the Eastern Seaboard. In Philadelphia, he is the current custodian of what's been a world renowned orchestra for more than a century.
Hundreds of miles north, in his home city of Montreal, Nézet-Séguin has a lifetime contract with the Orchestre Métropolitain. He's led musicians there for more than 20 years, including his husband Pierre Toureville on viola.
Some weeks, Nézet-Séguin conducts performances in Philadelphia, New York City and Montreal, but he demurs when asked if he has a favorite child among the three orchestras.
"I can't deny that it's a very demanding schedule," he said. "And even the word 'schedule' — if, should I ever retire, I want to ban that word from my life."
Nézet-Séguin keeps busy blurring the boundaries that have long kept some audiences away from classical music and opera.
"I would love that when I finish my time on Earth that no one ever says again, 'Oh, classical music is not for me. It's for the educated. It's for the rich. It's for the white,'" the conductor said. "Whatever it is, you know, I want everyone to feel, 'Oh yeah, I could like it, some of it. I don't like Mozart, but I like Blanchard.' Fine, but at least you feel that you could go there because there would be something for you."
