<\/p>\n“Working with My Heroes” by John DeMain and Greg\u00a0Hettmansberger.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN PRESS<\/span> Greg at the time was reviewing, and he was such an enthusiastic reviewer and knowledgeable about music \u2014 and was a big fan of mine \u2014 so he quickly agreed to do this. Once a week, I would talk into a tape recorder and record these stories. The historical context Greg provided was so important. Greg did a great job of explaining who everybody was and why they were important to me, and that is the real success of the book. That is where you get a look of how fertile the last century has been for music. There was just so much activity in the arts. Greg and his research added that dimension to the book.<\/p>\n
For readers, the episodes that involve the mafia will surely stick out: your interactions with infamous gangster Joe Gallo, your uncle\u2019s home in Youngstown, Ohio being fire bombed, etc. How did you feel returning to these moments?<\/strong><\/p>\nI mean, these things really happened to me. And they stuck in my mind. \u2026 I love to tell the mafia story because it was so unusual. I am at the City Opera in NYC and here I am playing the wedding of a major gangster (Joe Gallo), and then he is killed three weeks later. There were so many things to retell, including my uncle being the godfather of Youngstown.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ve interacted with so many stars and legends over your career. Were there any that made you star struck?<\/strong><\/p>\nYou try not to show it.<\/p>\n
Well rather, how did you manage working with such big names?<\/strong><\/p>\nThere was Arthur Guthrie. In the early days of television, he had a big television show and his own office in CBS. He was unhappy so we had to go over to his office to kiss his ass and put him in a good mood, but when he came out to play with The Kenley Players to do \u201cTake Me Along,\u201d he actually worked harder than anyone else. And so if he\u2019s gonna work, you roll up your sleeves and you go to work. And in most instances, when stars came out to do these plays with only seven days of rehearsal, they walked in there and they worked. …<\/p>\n
When these artists are in that situation, most of the time, it\u2019s not about ego. It\u2019s about work.<\/p>\n
Now that you are toward the end of your career, how do you feel your career has impacted your relationship with music itself?<\/strong><\/p>\nIt\u2019s an interesting question, because when I don\u2019t have the chance to conduct anymore in two years, it\u2019s gonna be very different. I don\u2019t know how I am going to react.<\/span><\/p>\nI mean I have been in rehearsals since I was in the fourth grade. … Did I have a need to make music? No, I was just making it. I just woke up and I made music, every day, every day, every day. There was never a period in my life that I was out of work, thank God. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n\n
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\n <\/p>\nJohn DeMain conducts a rehearsal of \u201cTosca\u201d at the Madison Opera Center in 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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RUTHIE HAUGE<\/span> That instinct to make music hasn\u2019t changed, but the way I work as a conductor certainly has. When I don\u2019t have anything to learn, I sit at the piano and play Chopin, or I do scales and arpeggios, I try to make my fingers work again. And I think that\u2019s great, cause that\u2019s how I came into music, and that\u2019s going to accompany me until I can\u2019t do it anymore. That\u2019s my going back to my childhood, practicing piano and just enjoying it.<\/span><\/p>\nIn that sense, I am still loving music, and I think I love it more than ever, especially now since I realize it is coming to an end. Like when I am doing a piece, it will probably be the last time I do it, so I am relishing it.<\/p>\n
An amazing part of the book is the story of your courtship with your later wife, Barbara, told by her, not to mention the fact that you ended up missing the birth of your daughter because of work. What impact did your family have on your music making experiences?<\/strong><\/p>\nWhen I met Barbara, I could tell in our courtship and in our conversations that she had a really deep love for music, and she had been close to the world of the conductor so she understood.<\/p>\n
I remember, when I was at Juilliard, I was dating a girl who was absolutely gorgeous, and she was a singer. Well, a singer can’t really sing more than about an hour a day. I would start my day at eight o’clock and end at midnight, and I’d try to see her on weekends. She started putting pressure on me, like, \u201cWhen do you have time for me?\u201d And I thought, \u201cI don’t.\u201d But when I met Barbara, she would say to me, didn’t you tell me you have a difficult concert coming up? Why aren’t you in the living room studying? The main thing was just that basis of support from her.<\/p>\n
From reading your book, I was trying to come up with a \u201cJohn DeMain Refrain,\u201d and this is what I came up with: Throw yourself into things, realize the power of honesty, value greatly reflection and collaboration, and always work toward a good performance. Would you edit that for me?<\/strong><\/p>\nI think that was perfect. I would add only: and respect the people you\u2019re working with.<\/span><\/p>\nThere is so much pressure around classical music to be perfect that you can forget that music is something you love, and the making of music should be a loving experience.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source captimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John DeMain has had an extraordinary life in music, gaining him a unique insider perspective on American music-making and some of its most prominent practitioners. After this season, DeMain will retire from his 32-year position as artistic director of the Madison Symphony Orchestra, and he will soon step down from his similar post with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2332891,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2332890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/How-a-Madison-maestro-composed-his-life-career-in-American.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2332890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2332890"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2332890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2332892,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2332890\/revisions\/2332892"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2332891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2332890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2332890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2332890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}