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\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAndrew Litton Celebrates 10 Years as New York City Ballet’s Music Director<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n The company\u2019s resident maestro is well known as a powerhouse at the podium.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n As a budding young pianist born and raised in New York City, Andrew Litton was taken to The Nutcracker<\/em> at New York City Ballet when he was 6 years old. He loved the performance, especially Tschaikovsky\u2019s captivating music, he recalls. \u201cIt\u2019s fascinating to\u00a0look back. Sitting there as a little kid, I could have never imagined in a million years that one day, I would be conducting this piece.\u201d<\/p>\n As it happens, George Balanchine<\/a>\u2019s The Nutcracker<\/em>\u00a0was the first ballet Litton would conduct after becoming NYCB Music Director 10 years ago. Dressed in his signature high-collared tuxedo, baton in hand, the Company\u2019s resident maestro is well known to NYCB audiences as a powerhouse at the podium, the zestful, exacting conductor who has won critical praise for the lustrous sound and consistently high standard of performance of the 62-piece NYCB Orchestra.<\/p>\n In a recent conversation, Litton, fresh from conducting the Symphony Orchestra of India in Mumbai, recalled the thrill he felt when he was offered the job. \u201cAfter 33 years of being an orchestra conductor and an opera conductor, I was very interested to try something new,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n And new it was. As a student at Juilliard, Litton had a brush with ballet, accompanying star dancers Rudolf Nureyev<\/a>, Natalia Makarova<\/a>, and Cynthia Gregory as an onstage pianist. But after winning a prestigious conducting award, he left ballet to become an internationally renowned symphony orchestra conductor with resident positions in Britain, the U.S., and Asia, as well as an indemand guest conductor of symphony and opera orchestras.<\/p>\n As NYCB Music Director, he quickly learned how different leading a ballet orchestra would be. He credits his colleagues, notably former Associate Music Director Andrews Sill and the late Resident Conductor Clotilde Otranto, with helping him to find his footing. He adjusted to following sight instead of sound, learned to tweak phrasing for different casts, and figured out how to communicate musical reference points with the repertory director leading rehearsals (singing a phrase, instead of citing a dance step or counting, worked like a charm).\u00a0<\/p>\n And landing at a ballet company where 80 percent of the musical repertory comes from the concert hall has allowed Litton to call upon his decades of experience with the music that inspired Balanchine and Robbins. \u201cThat\u2019s been really fun for me,\u201d he says. \u201cI love conducting pieces like Jewels where three composers give you three different experiences in one night. It feels like a symphony to me.\u201d<\/p>\n As for narrative ballets, Litton points out that those in the NYCB canon have wonderful music. \u201cNot all story ballets do, but when you get to perform Tschaikovsky and Prokofiev\u2014Romeo & Juliet<\/em> is one of the great ones\u2014it doesn\u2019t get better than that,\u201d he says. Besides The Nutcracker<\/em>, he counts Copp\u00e9lia<\/em>, which NYCB will dance this spring, as a conducting favorite. \u201cIt\u2019s such a joy and such great music,\u201d he says. (Delibes\u2019 Copp\u00e9lia also happens to have been his audition piece for the Music Director position.)<\/p>\n At NYCB, he relishes the opportunity to dive into challenging and otherwise seldom performed pieces by composers like Anton Webern, Paul Hindemith, and Igor Stravinsky<\/a>. \u201cBallet audiences, maybe because they also have the visual stimulation of space and choreography, have a way to get around the thorniest music,\u201d he observes. \u201cLook at Agon. Try and program that into an orchestra concert, and people will be scratching their heads. But watch it with the dance, and it\u2019s incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n During the Company\u2019s 2025 Fall Season, Litton looks forward to conducting Gabriel Faur\u00e9\u2019s Ballade<\/em>, a 1980 Balanchine ballet last danced by the Company in 2003, and Heatscape, a 2015 ballet by Resident Choreographer Justin Peck set to a 1925 Bohuslav Martin\u016f concerto that will have its NYCB premiere. \u201cIt\u2019s fun to do pieces like Ballade that have a musical history without being part of the standard repertory,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd Heatscape fascinates me. It\u2019s on the fringe of classical music performance, but the ballet gives it a whole new life.\u201d<\/p>\n Whether conducting a score new or beloved at NYCB, Litton\u2019s view from podium remains exhilarating. \u201cThere\u2019s still a frisson after 10 years of walking into that pit and bowing and knowing, as you look at the faces in the audience, that when you turn around you\u2019re going to change lives. Because that\u2019s what our performances do,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\n Andrew Litton
\n Amir Hamja<\/span> <\/span>
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