Conductor Karen Kamensek. San Jose, California. May 17, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Karen Kamensek conducts the Symphony Silicon Valley

From my ongoing project photographing classical musicians that their world, this photograph of conductor Karen Kamensek comes from a recent performance of the Symphony Silicon Valley, one of the groups I have been working with. (One reason for this project is my hope to expose people who are not familiar with this world to a bit more of its reality, ranging from the sometimes mundane aspects of the work to the aspects that reflect the intensity, dedication, and incredible work that isn’t so easy to see directly.)

All performers in this world distill their technical skills and emotional/aesthetic focus to levels not often experienced by those in more prosaic lines of work. If you have the opportunity to watch closely—as I have, both as a former performing musician myself and now as a photographer—you begin to see subtleties that are difficult if not impossible to see from the audience during a performance. Or, people might see them, but only small parts of them and only for brief moments. The conductor provides a more visible example of what can be seen among all of the performers. A huge number of factors are simultaneously at work—tempo, expression, technical issues of timing and balance and intonation—and all of this unfolds rapidly and inexorably as the music moves forward in time. And the conductor must express (or, often, over-express) all of these things visually, often simultaneously signaling things about to happen, being in the moment of things happening now, and even responding to things that have just occurred.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.