But the real prize turned out to be Gittleman himself. For the past three decades, he has indeed been everywhere, endearing himself to his adopted community every step of the way. Whether he’s educating his audience at a Masterworks or Pops concert, chatting with senior citizens at the University of Dayton’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute or baking ten of his famous cheesecakes for the Links’ “Cookin’ Men” event, Gittleman is an esteemed and influential presence..
Credit: Andy Snow
Credit: Andy Snow
He celebrates his 70th birthday this month and officially retires June 30.
In the meantime, Gittleman isn’t slowing down. He’ll conduct a Stained Glass concert at New Season Ministry in Huber Heights today (June 8), lead a Masterwork series concert at the Schuster Center June 13-14 and an outdoor Father’s Day concert at Carillon Park on June 15.
“I’ll be doing this job full-bore until the last day of June,” he said. " And the next day, I’ll stop."
He will return as a guest conductor for a Masterworks concert in the fall.
Gittleman said he was determined to retire while he still felt he was doing the job at 100 percent. That decision was inspired by Pierre Monteux, for ten years the music director of the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. In year ten, according to Gittleman, Monteux came home from a rehearsal and said to his wife, Doris, “It’s time to leave.” She said: “What’s wrong?” And he said, “Nothing. That’s why it’s time to leave!”
We chatted with Gittleman about his years in Dayton and his future plans:
QUESTION: What appealed to you about this job and this community?
Answer: At the time I had two jobs. My major job was as Resident Conductor of the Milwaukee Symphony, where I’d been in that #2 position for seven years. My minor job was as Music Director of the Marion Philharmonic, a community orchestra in Marion, Indiana, where I’d been for nine years. I felt I was ready to “move up” and the appeal of Dayton was that the DPO seemed like a good and logical next step. When I came here as a candidate in November 1994, that feeling was confirmed. I got a very good sense of the community’s dedication to the orchestra, and that the orchestra was ready to make a move to a higher level of performance.
Q. What are some of your earliest impressions?
A. My earliest impression of the DPO was that it was a good orchestra playing in a not-so-good hall. Hence my answer to one of the questions I got as a candidate: “What do you think the Dayton community needs?” My answer was, “A minor league baseball team and a new concert hall.” If I’d only known that day that the community would do what I said, I’d have listed the concert hall first.
When we were talking to prospective donors to what became the Schuster Center I told the story about my own violin. I started on “Uncle Herman’s violin” but as my playing got better I needed a better instrument to keep improving. That’s where the DPO was 30-plus years ago because, as I explained to donors, the hall is the “instrument” that an orchestra “plays”. And with a great hall like the Schuster Center’s Mead (now Winsupply) Theater, the Philharmonic was able to grow tremendously. This year, with many rehearsals held outside the Winsupply, has presented a real challenge to the Orchestra’s continued upward trajectory.
Q. How do you view the job of the conductor?
A. For 17 years the DPO had an amazing education program called SPARK, under which musicians from the orchestra did classroom presentations in area schools for grades K through 5. Each class had a presentation from a DPO conductor. My Kindergarten presentation was all about what a conductor does. And the job description I gave the SPARK kindergarteners was that the conductor’s job is to help the musicians in the orchestra play the music as well as they can. That’s it.
Q. What can you tell us about the baton that you’ve used over the years?
A. After searching for “the perfect baton” I stumbled on a baton-maker (such things do exist) named Harman Hermele. I sent him a baton I used and said, “I’d love something like this, but different…” and over several weeks Harman sent me several prototypes until one was perfect. That’s what I’ve used ever since.
One was THE perfect baton, which I saved for performances only…not rehearsals. Last fall that baton broke during a recording session. I was left with a large collection of “my-model” batons so one of them—perfect but not quite as perfect as the one that broke—came off the shelf and went into service.
Q. What are some of the programs that have been the most fun?
A. The most FUN? That’s easy. PhilharMonster and New Year’s Eve. As a candidate, one of the things that I found irresistible about the Dayton Philharmonic is that they called their Halloween Concert “PhilharMonster”. And one of the first questions I asked when we started planning my first season as DPO Music Director was, “Why don’t we do a New Year’s Eve Concert?” So naturally, one of my biggest regrets is that we lost both those traditions in a tough round of 2022 budget cuts. Audiences LOVED those performances, and I wish we were still doing them.
Credit: Andy Snow
Credit: Andy Snow
Q. You have always been willing to accept invites for a variety of community events? Why did you feel it was important to make those appearances?
A. I’ve always believed that a town’s orchestra conductor should be an active member of the community. People should see you as THEIR conductor—even if they’re not audience members. That means being seen in the grocery store (when my wife lets me do the shopping) and it also means being out in the community. That could be helping out on-air with WYSO’s and WDPR’s and ThinkTV’s fundraisers. That could be throwing out the first pitch at a Dragons game (which, alas, I never got to do!) If you want the community to care about your thing, you need to care about their things, too.
Q. What are some of the differences in conducting a concert, opera, ballet, and movie?
A. In a way, they’re all the same. Your job is still to help the musicians play the music the best they can. What’s different is how much autonomy the conductor has in making decisions. Everything a conductor does is, by definition, collaborative, but depending on the genre, they have more or less autonomy in making interpretive decisions.
In orchestral music, the conductor is almost entirely responsible for every decision. In opera, some of that responsibility is shared with the stage director. In ballet, the conductor is an adjunct to the choreographer and a servant to the dancers, and should play the music exactly as the choreographer wants it to go. For live accompaniment of film, the conductor is wedded to the syncing system of click track and/or visual cues to tempo and pacing, so basically no autonomy at all.
Q. What goals did you have for the orchestra when you came to town and have you achieved them?
A. The biggest goal to was to raise the orchestra’s performance level, and yes, that’s been achieved. When I first came here there were some pieces we weren’t ready to tackle. By now, 30 years later, there’s almost nothing in the repertoire that the DPO can’t play—and play magnificently.
Credit: Nick Daggy
Credit: Nick Daggy
Q. In looking back over your career in Dayton, what are some of the things you are most proud of?
A. There are lots of individual performances I’m really proud of, like two complete cycles of the nine Beethoven symphonies, big productions like Bernstein’s “MASS” and Messiaen’s “Turangalîla Symphony” and several excellent studio and from-concert CD releases; “Das Rheingold”, “Otello” and “Little Women” with Dayton Opera; “Swan Lake”, “Romeo and Juliet” and 106 performances of “Nutcracker” with Dayton Ballet.
But I think the things I’m proudest of are 19 years of the Stained Glass Series performances in area churches and all the streaming and hybrid performances we did during the COVID shutdown and aftermath. We were one of the first arts organizations to get back to performing after the shutdown and we created a robust and effective series of streaming offerings to make sure that our audience stayed connected with us.
Q. What have been the biggest challenges? Disappointments?
A. The biggest challenge in the arts is always the same: funding and budgets. Everything we do is expensive and all three DPAA Artistic Directors are always trying to squeeze the maximum beauty and excitement we can out of the budgets we have to work with. We always have to make compromises and sometimes those compromise entail painful decisions.
Big-picture, my biggest disappointment is that we haven’t been able to return to the level of performance and service to the community that we had pre-COVID. I had hoped that by the time I retired I could hand things over to my successor as they were in the 2019-2020 season.
Q. How did the merger of the three major arts organizations affect you?
I think the merger saved us. Without the merger I’m not sure the DPO, Opera, and Ballet would still exist, because when the COVID tough times hit, we were much stronger and more resourceful together than we would have been separately. When we created the Dayton Performing Arts Alliance 13 years ago from Dayton Ballet, Dayton Opera, and the Philharmonic, my biggest worry was that our combined company might suffer from the political infighting and that plagues similar combined city theatre organizations in Europe. But one of the beautiful things about the DPAA is that we’ve avoided that trap. Our Artistic Directors are colleagues, collaborators, and friends—not competitors. And we’ve genuinely liked working together.
Credit: RUSSELL FLORENCE JR
Credit: RUSSELL FLORENCE JR
Q. What are your plans for retirement? Are you staying in Dayton?
A. Lisa and are I staying. We’ve lived in many places over the years, but now we think of Dayton as home.
A perfect retirement day would probably be an early morning walk with Lisa, a round of golf (shooting under 90), an afternoon movie at the Neon, and singing in a Bach Society Chorus rehearsal in the evening. As Lisa likes to say since she retired, “Retirement takes all day!”
Q. What do you love about music?
A. I love everything about music. Even though I won’t be conducting the Phil anymore, I want to keep music in my life. Playing the piano (just for myself). Singing with the Bach Society and the World House Choir. And attending performances by the DPO, Opera, and Ballet, of course.
Q. What else is on your bucket list?
A. On my bucket list? Buckets of stuff. But one thing above all: serenity.
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