When Maestro Roger Kalia announced his decision to step down as the music director of Symphony New Hampshire at the end of the 2024-25 season, Executive Director Deanna Hoying assembled a search committee comprised of board members, musicians, and community leaders to identify his successor.

Five finalists were chosen and over the next season each finalist will curate and conduct a concert while participating in meet-and-greet events across New Hampshire. Audience members will have the opportunity to provide feedback for the individual concerts through surveys after each concert.

The third of the finalists is Adam Kerry Boyles. He will perform “Bernstein’s Legacy” at the Keefe Center in Nashua on Saturday, March 7 at 7:30 p.m. with a pre-concert conversation at 6:30 p.m.

Boyles was born in Tucson, Arizona, to a family of amateur musicians and theater lovers. He was involved in theater, dance and music from an early age. His first chance to conduct occurred in high school, where he said he caught the virus. He did undergrad at Indiana University and attended grad school at the University of Arizona and UT Austin in orchestral conducting. He now serves as director of orchestras at MIT and the assistant conductor of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra.

NHPR’s Joe Boehnlein sat down to talk with Boyles about his upcoming show and leadership philosophy.

Transcript

Adam, congratulations on being one of the finalists for Symphony New Hampshire.

Thank you. I actually found out — funny story — I found out about my being a finalist on my birthday last year. So it was one of the best birthday gifts one could get. It was fantastic.

Nice. For your program on March 7 at the Keefe Center, you’ve chosen Beethoven, Crawford Seeger, Mahler and Tchaikovsky. What’s your line of thinking behind that? Why, those composers and those pieces?

Well, the thrust of the program as a whole is to celebrate the legacy as a conductor of Leonard Bernstein and what he gave to us, especially through his 14 years on air, doing his young people’s concerts. What he gave to us as a classical musician is something unparalleled in this country. And he featured especially Beethoven many, many times throughout those concerts and has a very beloved recording of the Beethoven overtures, of which Egmont is one of them. And it’s hard to say at times what the the connection for Ruth Crawford Seeger is, except that he never programed this piece. I’m not sure he ever performed any of Seeger’s work, and there’s not much orchestral work anyway to be had.

He did, however, champion composers who were neglected. I especially think of Charles Ives, who he brought out into the forefront in a very big way through his concerts, through the Young People’s Concerts, celebrating what was here. We have to realize that the repertoire in the symphony orchestra during Leonard Bernstein’s time was so European dominated, even more than it is now, and he was among those who wanted to celebrate what we had in this country. And my playing this piece, the “Rissolty Rossolty” of Ruth Crawford Seeger, is to celebrate that legacy of bringing forth to the light those works that are neglected, those composers that are neglected, and giving people a chance to have a new favorite composer in the same way that he did for Ives, for David Diamond, for William Schuman.

The Mahler “Adagietto” is inextricably linked with Leonard Bernstein. In fact, he wanted his recording of it played at his funeral, and he himself conducted it at both the funeral of Serge Koussevitzky, who used to conduct the Boston Symphony Orchestra and was his mentor, as well as RFK. He loved this piece to its core and he loved the composer. I think he felt a kinship with Mahler, not just because they were both Jewish, but also because they were both not understood in their time. I think we all have those sorts of feelings, but I think he felt it very acutely. There were those that, in Leonard Bernstein’s young part of his career, wanted him to change his name, and there’s more than a whiff of anti-Semitism about that, in the same way that Mahler had to deal with that much more directly in his time.

And he loved Tchaikovsky. He recorded Tchaikovsky so many times, brought up Tchaikovsky in multiple young persons concerts, and among his last live concerts and recordings was his performance of the Tchaikovsky “Fifth Symphony.” A composer with whom he felt a great affinity and felt the passion of this music so great it went so well with his more extrovert nature and heart on the sleeve nature of conducting that to end with Tchaikovsky seemed just natural to me.

So what’s your approach to the music director position? How would you conduct your time with the musicians? What would you do? How would you lead them?

Everybody sitting on that stage is a great artist. They wouldn’t be there if they weren’t. And to be in charge of a symphony orchestra is to know when to captain and to really take charge of the wheel, as it were, and when to back off and let other people’s ideas in. And so that it can feel like a situation where everybody is bringing all of their artistry and imagination to the table. I think there is still this idea that the conductor is this dictator that just tells everybody exactly how it goes. And a conductor should have opinions about how everything goes, but also be prepared to throw those opinions away if something else is working better. So the idea of creating a cohesive team is very important to me, both on and off the stage.

Anything else you would like the audience to know about your show coming up on the seventh?

I think the one thing I want people to know, whether they have any contact with Leonard Bernstein or not, is that this is something where we’re celebrating local. He was born in his first years, were in Lawrence, Massachusetts, which is 30 miles from the Keefe Center, where we’re going to be performing. So it’s like the idea of buy local when you’re buying produce or you’re buying goods. We’re celebrating such a huge figure who happened to live down the street biking distance from the Keefe Center. And to me, knowing that this came from here and celebrating his legacy of giving us so much music and so much passion, giving himself so freely, and being able to surmount very difficult odds.

In his time, the orchestra scene in America was completely 100% dominated by European males. When he got the position at the New York Philharmonic eventually, that broke the ceiling for all of us. It said we can, those of us that were born and raised here, we can do it. We can actually break through and do it. And you can be a classical conductor and a classical composer, whatever that means, but also still have a foot in musical theater. Of course, you wrote “West Side Story” and “Candide,” 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and a hand in jazz as well. And he recorded and he gigged in nightclubs when he was in New York, especially when he was starting out trying to make some money. You can do anything, and you can bring it all to the table, and it’s all okay. You don’t just have to be so rigidly focused on classical with a capital C.

Adam Boyles, you’re one of the finalists for the music director at Symphony New Hampshire. Your show Beethoven, Crawford Seeger, Mahler and Tchaikovsky be at the Keefe Center for the Arts at 7:30 p.m. on March 7. And I think you, as well as all the other finalists, are taking part in Preludes. Is that right?

Yep. So I’ll chat and give a little extra background about each of the pieces and about the whole structure of the program as well.

Awesome. Thank you so much for coming in to talk or for zooming in, I guess, and talking to me.

Thank you Joe. Looking forward to it.