Peter Rodgers
John DeMain at a podium, dressed in black, with a black background.
John DeMain: Stepping down.
When the Madison Symphony Orchestra notified patrons and symphony-goers last week that Maestro John DeMain, music director of the MSO, will pass the baton at the conclusion of the orchestra’s 2025-2026 season, the news created mixed feelings. It was sad, yet it felt like after 30 years on the MSO podium, the maestro deserved to kick back a little. A search committee will be formed to find a new music director.
DeMain is only the orchestra’s fourth music director in its 98-year history, a testament to the strong bond that forms among the conductors, musicians, staff, and administration.
During his tenure with MSO, DeMain has given many interviews to Isthmus and the paper has profiled him and his musicians and previewed and reviewed many MSO performances. In interviews, he is enthusiastic about the music, the musicians, the staff, and about life itself. He is also considerate. If he misses your call at the agreed-upon time for a phone interview, he calls you back.
His long music career is strewn with honors. Before he moved to Madison for the MSO’s 1994-1995 season, he spent 18 years at the Houston Grand Opera, where he led a historic production of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess that won a Grammy Award, Tony Award, and France’s Grand Prix du Disque for the RCA recording. He premiered the John Adams opera Nixon in China. This year, he won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Opera Association. With such an outstanding reputation as an opera conductor, we might wonder why DeMain wanted to conduct a symphony orchestra.
In a 2018 interview with Isthmus, DeMain said what led him to want a symphony orchestra experience was the repertoire. “I wanted to explore and perform music of the great symphonists, music of composers I played as a child,” he said. DeMain’s agent found out that the MSO was looking for a conductor. DeMain got the job and took over for conductor Roland Johnson, who had led the orchestra since 1961.
When DeMain arrived, he found that the winds and brass in the orchestra were terrific, but he worked with the string section to improve its sound and resonance. “I did careful work with the strings for five or six years,” he said. “It was hard work and some musicians only worked with the orchestra for one season because they didn’t want to work that hard, but eventually the strings raised to a much higher level.”
He wanted a sophisticated orchestra because of the caliber of music offerings at UW-Madison. “You can’t have a city with a [Wisconsin] Union Theater series that brings stellar artists like Gil Shaham and Itzhak Perlman and then have a symphony orchestra who hires artists that people have never heard of.”
“Madison is not a try-out town,” DeMain continued. “People with established international pedigrees want to perform here.”
Throughout the interview, DeMain expressed warm feelings for his musicians. “I’m proud of the orchestra, and the atmosphere for rehearsals is terrific,” he said. “I’m their papa now."
He was also confident in the ability of the staff and administration. “I go to sleep in peace at night knowing that the orchestra is beautifully and responsibly run and funded by very loyal patrons.”
On Sept. 24 the MSO played its first fall concert of the 2023-2024 season. It featured works by American composers Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, John Adams and Howard Hanson. It also featured pianist Terrence Wilson, who is well on his way to international stardom.
Copland’s Suite from Appalachian Spring and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue were familiar to most of us. Pianist Wilson and the orchestra brought the audience to their feet at the end of Rhapsody. The strings shimmered in Appalachian Spring, creating a peaceful aural setting that evoked images of springtime in the Appalachian hills. DeMain’s hard work with the string section at the beginning of his tenure has really paid off.
The second half of the program featured less familiar works, John Adams’ The Chairman Dances (Foxtrot for Orchestra) and Howard Hanson’s romantic Symphony No. 2, Op. 30. The Adams piece was an example of minimalism that involves hundreds of repetitions of a rhythmic pattern, a nightmarish job for conductors to keep count and bring the various instruments in at the right times. This modern work, which relies on precision, showed off DeMain’s collaborative guidance of the orchestra.
Before the start of Adams’ piece, DeMain told the audience that maybe someday AI will count all the repetitions, but then he might be out of a job. We laughed.
We will miss DeMain’s warmth, humor, and uncanny gift for conducting American music, but that time won’t come for a few more seasons.
