Usually two conducting sessions, occasionally one, are offered on all class days. Podium time is one of the many elective aspects of the Retreat's experience.  These sessions offer the opportunity to practice and apply the concepts learned in other facets of the Retreat.

The goal is not simply to collect podium time in the way student pilots collect hours of flight time. The work is not exclusively on technique or waving one's arms through a work to be able to say, "I've conducted it."

There is a clear sense of purpose and direction. That direction is at once practical, musical, physical, emotional, and metaphysical.

The work focuses on...

• making the knowledge gained in score study audible and tangible in the rehearsal and performance.
• establishing the connection between study and execution.
• alleviating the musical, physical, and mental walls which inhibit the clear communication of musical ideas.
• the understanding that the end we seek is meaningful, communicative, effective, accurate and spiritual performances which are catalyzed by a language born of the music.
• the development of the participant's ability to become so resonant with the music that concentration improves and musical ideas flow from the music through the conductor more naturally.
• learning to lead effective and efficient rehearsals where the goal is not limited to being effective and efficient.
• developing rehearsals in which musicians sense they are at work on the music for the music, not for the conductor.
• technique which doesn't exist for itself; but technique which is only made meaningful when it is enmeshed with musical ideas, emotional connection and human communication.

The 2008 application deadline has passed, however applications submitted now will be received and considered, as a few positions occasionally become available during the weeks prior to the beginning of the Conductors Retreat. If you have any questions, please send an e-mail to info@conductorsretreat.org.