Hi everyone, this is Chaowen recording in May 2023.

After finishing the first season of The Conductor’s Podcast, I have decided to give this podcast project a dedicated website with more user-friendly functions. So now we have a brand new website called theconductorspodcast.com. And now we also have its own Instagram handle, it’s also the same, The Conductor’s Podcast. So older show notes have been moved to the new site and I invite you to come check out all the resources and happy listening.

Kristin: 0:00
The challenges that I found in being a parent and a musician were also challenges that other musicians have been solving for hundreds of years, just like we solve how to conduct this particular crazy bar with three fermatas and weird entrances. The solutions are out there, but you have to ask for them. You have to seek out the people and ask for help and then you have to be willing to do the work.

Chaowen: 1:53
Hi there! Welcome to episode No.12 of The Conductor’s Podcast. I am your host, Chaowen Ting, and I am thrilled that you are tuning in with me today. Merry Christmas if you are having a big celebration this week, and happy holidays to those who don’t celebrate Christmas, like myself, but are currently in this holiday season together. If you are none of the above, as a holiday is something far from your current status, I wanted to wish you a great ending of the year. After all, 2021 was really something special, wasn’t it?

Chaowen: 2:29
The pandemic has taught us a lot of things. Many of us lost their loved ones, and some of us had a chance to reflect on their relationships with others. Being forced [to stay] at home gave some people a chance to spend more time with their families, while some others couldn’t see their loved ones for months because of COVID-related travel restrictions or other concerns.

Chaowen: 2:55
In today’s episode, I will be exploring the topic of a family centered career trajectory with my friend Kristin Roach. Kristin will share with us how she fostered her relationship with her family while creating projects around her homebase, San Antonio, Texas. We will also discuss challenges in the career as a working and traveling parent, and how you can make it work by owning your decisions and taking responsibility for the results of your choices.

Chaowen: 3:31
Kristin is a Grammy-nominated pianist and international conductor with 37 new operas and 21 world premieres under her baton. Her high level of artistry, comprehensive knowledge of operatic repertoire and performance practices, and strong communication, management, motivational, and organizational skills place her in demand as a conductor, pianist, and vocal coach across the nation. She currently serves as Assistant Professor of Opera at Lawrence University, and conductor at Vocal Academy of Orvieto, and maintains a busy private practice as vocal coach and award-winning pianist with extensive collaborations. As Founding Music Director of Alamo City Opera, Kristin conducted 17 productions of operas, including many South Texas premieres. A San Antonio native, she partnered with founder and General Director, the late Mark Richter, to help ACO establish an atmosphere of intimate opera with diverse and ground-breaking programming, which drew hundreds of audience under the age of 35, many of whom were first-time opera-goers.

Chaowen: 4:50
Hey, welcome to the show, Kristin. I’m so thrilled to welcome you to The Conductor’s Podcast, and I can’t wait for you to share your story and experience with my audience.

Kristin: 5:00
Chaowen, I am so thankful for this invitation, and I look forward to talking with you. I really enjoyed listening to the episodes that you’ve already released, and I’m so proud to be a guest here. Thank you so much.

Chaowen: 5:13
No, the honor is mine. I’m so happy to have you here. So before we get started, though, will you please give everybody a brief intro?

Kristin: 5:21
Sure. So I started off as a pianist, and I’m still a pianist. My first accompanying job was actually playing for my mother while she conducted the little kids’ choir at our church. And I’ve always been a collaborative pianist–it’s always my favorite thing to play and someone else plays or sings beautifully alongside. I also loved playing in instrumental ensembles: I grew up playing the flute in the band, and also for as a professional for the last 25 years as an extra musician with the San Antonio Symphony and other orchestras.

Kristin: 6:00
At the Eastman School, I got a Bachelor of Music in piano and a Master of Music in both collaborative piano and piano performance. And I also got to study conducting with David Effron. And that’s really where opera became a huge part of my life. Effron had been in Germany and then was at New York City Opera for years, and just hanging out at rehearsals and watching him conduct the opera, work with the singers, put that huge art form together–[that] really inspired me. And he was very kind to me as a student and also incredibly demanding. And he also gave me one of my first professional jobs then working at Brevard when he was the music director. So I learned from him also the importance of recognizing young conducting talent and providing them [with] a path to get started.

Kristin: 6:59
After I finished at Eastman, I did a couple of years as a fellow in Aspen, and also a summer with the Mariela program, and [I] started working professionally in opera as a pianist. Karen Keltner was the long-time resident conductor of the San Diego opera. She had been a guest conductor while I was at Eastman–I played for her–she hired me for my first professional job at San Diego Opera, and then I spent the next several years traveling around working for other American operas. And while I loved that, and it’s more of what I ended up doing later, I really wanted to develop a home base and make music in my hometown.

Kristin: 7:49
And it turned out that I moved back to San Antonio where I was from. And I also wanted to have children and I wanted to have them right away. I didn’t want to be in my 40s and have young children. So at 27, my oldest, Carl, was born. And four years later, Kyle was born. While I was traveling around for opera, what I realized was that certain members of an opera cast can and do travel with their families. And for example, if a singer is not on stage for the bit that we’re rehearsing at that moment, they don’t come to rehearsal, and they’re free to explore their new city with their family, or they can arrange for a sitter to be with their child in their dressing room during a performance. But for the pianist and for the conductor, and for the stage director and the stage manager, we’re in rehearsal all the time. There is no rehearsal that happens without a pianist. And so I realized that traveling, particularly when my children were little, was going to be very difficult.

Kristin: 8:59
Now it is possible. So anybody out there who wants to be a pianist or conductor in opera and and bring their children with them, by all means do, but I didn’t want to do that. So I made a home base in San Antonio, [and] I did a lot of chamber music and accompanying as a pianist. In the meantime, I recognized the need to develop the operatic presence in my hometown. And so I worked with the San Antonio Opera on the largest pieces of the standard repertoire. And that was either as a pianist, later as the chorus master and assistant conductor, but I wasn’t hired to be the conductor. And I really wanted to conduct the operas. So I got together with my now late colleague, Mark Richter, and we founded Alamo City Opera, which was a smaller opera company that was operating alongside the larger company.

Kristin: 9:55
Alongside that, I also found myself teaching quite a lot, both private coaching of opera singers, and also at the university level. I taught for 10 years at the University of Texas at San Antonio, for 11 years at Texas State University in San Marcos. And most of that was teaching undergraduate level opera repertoire, putting together opera scenes and opera productions either as the coach pianist, or occasionally as the conductor. The pandemic hit, and my position was eliminated at Texas State. I was fortunate to join the faculty at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, which is where I’m talking to you now.

Chaowen: 10:41
So I just want to jump in for the audience members who are not familiar with the form of opera, or particularly opera productions. Can you maybe tell us a little bit more about how, say, you’re coaching a singer from beginning to the end for opera production? What’s that like?

Kristin: 10:58
Sure. Well, opera is a giant team sport. If you look at any team sport, what you see is a whole coaching staff. And the same is true in any theatrical production. From start to finish of any opera production, the team begins with the vocal coach, and then the singer’s private teacher. Those people work with the singer on learning their role, and the voice teacher works on how to sing the music, and then the vocal coach will work on the musical style, on putting the vocal line together with the accompaniment, also, how that particular character’s music interfaces with all the other characters.

Kristin: 11:44
The next step is what we call the first day of school, where everyone in a production comes together and sings through the music for the first time. And in that scenario, there will be someone at the keyboard, there will be someone waving their arms in some fashion to lead the music, and if there is a chorus or a larger musical ensemble involved, there will be someone who has put that group together. Each of those people could also–or each of those duties, I should say–could be taken by multiple people. If you’re in an opera company that’s doing more than one show at a time, potentially different music staff could be assigned to different projects, but in different roles. You might need multiple pianists on a show, if the principal artists are working in one room, the chorus is staging in another room, and the cover singers are rehearsing in yet a third room. So larger opera houses in this country would be like the MET, Chicago, Houston, LA–places where they’re doing more than one show at a time. They will also have multiple pianists, multiple assistant conductors.

Chaowen: 12:58
So as you described, there are just so many parts of this giant production team of people. When you have an opera gig, you are very often traveling away from home for–we talked about that recently–from three weeks to three months. And when you said that, I understand you’re a fellow mom with children, and I had my kids at a similar age. So I had my first one when I was 29. And three years later, I had my second one. So I was a mom throughout my career, in a sense. I’m always a mom, I’m always looking out for my child, for my family and to be protective of my time, because that is something very important for me. And can you share maybe a little bit about if you had other decisions in your career that were largely impacted by your family or by the fact of being a parent?

Kristin: 14:03
One of the decisions that I made was, I did not want to travel when my children were little. And I own that choice, and I talk about it a lot. What it has given me is now an empathy for people who do choose to travel and the difficulties that they face, whether that’s how do I actually physically care for my children when I am not the one caring for them?

Kristin: 14:29
The other decisions that were really vital were to separate my work area from my home area as much as possible. So in my home in Texas, I had an entire room where the music happened. It was my studio. And of course my kids were welcome to be in there when I wasn’t working, but it was very clear: this is the music area. {For] anybody who doesn’t want to work in [their] home: I highly recommend, then, renting a studio somewhere where you go to teach work, record, practice, whatever it is. Because what you don’t want is the feeling like you either never leave work because you’re at home and you’re working, or the feeling that you never can go to work because you’re always tripping over toys and diapers and all of those accoutrements of the little ones. And if it’s a dedicated area, it’s easy to keep that area home-free, and then to keep the work from bleeding out into your home. So I think those are those are my pieces of advice.

Chaowen: 15:39
I think a lot of people experienced the last part of your advice this past year through a pandemic, because we were forced to go back home and you suddenly are stumbling, as you said, over toys and unfolded laundry, diapers and everything that’s suddenly your professional life and your personal life mingled, and there are no boundaries at all. Yeah, and then I have certainly seen other musicians taking their kids to rehearsals. I’ve seen a lot of them just like being in the concert hall doing homework. And I’ve heard of other conducting colleagues, they would either homeschool their kids or hire a full time nanny so the family could travel when they need to travel, which was not the case that you chose.

Kristin: 16:31
Yes, although I will say that work is work, and rehearsals happen when they are scheduled. And that may or may not be when your kids are involved in anything else. So the need for childcare and the need for decisions about their education, like those are universal. My kids went to a lot of rehearsals. And when they were really little, a lot of the work that I did was with instrumental and choral ensembles, and particularly in schools.

Kristin: 16:57
And it was very convenient for me, becaus you know, if I was going to a high school, say, one of the choir officers could play with my son in the director’s office during the hours that I was there, or, you know, one of the choir parents could come in. I made friends with a lot of choir moms when my kids were little, and they were thrilled because they had high school kids, and they remembered when their kids were little, and they got to kind of vicariously revisit little kids, you know, before they were at the age, say, to be grandparents. And so there were a lot of pluses in all of that.

Kristin: 17:45
The benefit, then, to being local while your children are growing up is [that] then you also get to meet all the parents’ friends, and you get to have them over. And so again, that’s the life I wanted to create for myself, and I’m very grateful that I was able to do that. Now my kids are 22 and 18. And they’re, you know, off on their own lives. And so that part of my life, that door has closed in a certain sense, in terms of having kids living at home. So I’m really glad that I was able to do that when they were at the age to be, you know, on my lap every night to read a bedtime story. I’m very glad I got to do that.

Chaowen: 18:31
It’s certainly a personal choice, as you say, and you really have to make the choice for yourself, and to really own it. And it doesn’t mean that you can’t change your mind because things happen. And as life and career goes on, sometimes circumstances change, like you might get an invitation to conduct somewhere that is further away, but then you have to work out things, just like all the working parents really, honestly. So I had a question about the mentality of parenthood. My teacher, Neil Varon, at Eastman taught us that he felt he was a much better teacher and also a much better conductor after he had kids much later in his life, because he learned how to teach, how to be empathetic, how to talk with people and also be a little more patient and graceful when people are making mistakes, for example. Did you feel the same?

Kristin: 19:36
Absolutely. I think what I have learned being a parent is certainly the things that you say. The patience thing? Oh, my gravy. I often say that there’s a reason that God makes children cute because otherwise their parents would eat them. They just touch every single one of your nerves.

Chaowen: 19:55
I totally agree.

Kristin: 19:56
That does not change; it doesn’t matter how old they are. But also, there have been times when I have just had the worst possible day, for whatever reason, in music land, [and] my kids have done something that’s made me laugh, or that just reminded me that there’s more to life than music. My younger son in particular was very affectionate. Even now, he’s, you know, 6’3″, and he’s like, “Hi, Mom!” But you know, there’s just something that reminds you that life is not all about music.

Kristin: 20:35
I also am grateful that because of meeting other families through my children, either through their schooling or their extracurricular activities, I have met people I would never meet in the professional world, or even in my own social circles. I tend to hang out with people who like the same things I do. That’s what we do with our friends. But I have become very close to people I never would have just because of my children. And I think that’s given me a wider appreciation for the, I guess, the wider world would be the phrase I would use. My own friend base is so much more diverse because of the people I met through my children. And I also think that my kids reminded me of what I had to learn, because I saw them have things that came easy to them, and then also have things that were incredibly difficult. And so sitting with them, and just helping them learn how to learn.

Kristin: 21:43
I would agree, then, with Neil Varon–that it makes you a better teacher, because you do have to learn. How do you explain to a kid who’s very, very physical, how to sit still? How do you explain to to a kid who is very loud and very emotional, that you have to choose the volume of your voice? And people will listen to you differently if you speak at different volumes. And, you know, these are things that you’re teaching not once–you’re teaching that over the course of their entire time that they’re with you.

Kristin: 22:20
Now, in my own teaching, my current students are the same age as my children. So, for this very, very brief window, I also know all of their pop culture references. So as a teacher, I have maybe two or three more years, where I’m going to appear cool as a college teacher, because all the stuff that my students grew up with, I grew up with my own children, That window is going to close, and I’m going to be the dork again very quickly, but I’ll take it for as long as it will last.

Chaowen: 22:56
I was thinking about that myself, because I don’t know if I had a choice again, if I would choose to have kids, or choose to have kids at that age, because I had my first one at the end of my master’s degree, and my second one at the end of my doctorate. So each time, I got a degree and a kid, and then I’m done.

Kristin: 23:20
Okay, well, Chapeau, my friend, because I was long done with school when my children came. And I actually I ended my schooling after the Masters, mostly because at that time, what I really wanted was a DMA in opera conducting, and that didn’t exist then. It does now. And I think I probably would have done that, if it had been available.

Chaowen: 23:44
Well, I had to do a DMA because I was on student visa. I was an international student, so I needed to stay on a program before I got my green card. But I love that we are now taking kids to rehearsals, like my kids have been going to rehearsals, and it was important for my kids to understand why Mommy’s always away. I’m not away for fun; I’m actually doing this kind of work and they can be part of it.

Chaowen: 24:11
But I wanted to ask: through the almost 20 years, really, for you, being a parent in the professional field. Did you feel [that] the atmosphere changed in the profession? And were you able to talk about being a parent at the very beginning? Because I didn’t feel safe. When I was [at the] very beginning in my career, I felt I would be judged if I said I have very little kids, that they might look down on me or not take me as seriously.

Kristin: 24:46
I think…there’s a couple of different answers to your questions. When I was pregnant with my oldest, I was still on the road as an opera pianist. I had two basic responses when people either saw that I was pregnant, or in the earlier stages, when I shared that I was pregnant. The the first one was, Oh, you’re going to have such an awesome time and there’s nothing like parenthood. Or the other one was similar to what you just said, which was like, Oh my gosh, how are you going to do it, or You’re going to face all these obstacles.

Kristin: 25:19
I will say, the career itself and the people in the career presented me zero obstacles that I could not solve. I don’t think I faced any obstacles that were any different to any other woman trying to work. Now 22 years ago, there was a little bit more stigma than there is now against women working. And certainly in the last like four or five years, including podcasts like this that you’re starting, we’ve seen a lot of people really working hard to level the playing field for women in our particular profession.

Kristin: 25:58
But when I was having kids, I was not calling myself a conductor. I was really thinking of myself as a freelance musician, willing to do basically whatever it took. The challenges that I found in being a parent and a musician were also challenges that other musicians have been solving for hundreds of years, just like we solve how to conduct this particular crazy bar with three fermatas and weird entrances–like, the solutions are out there, but you have to ask for them. You have to seek out the people and ask for help, and then you have to be willing to do the work.

Kristin: 26:42
You know, you and I before the podcast were talking about how you care for your family while you’re away for many weeks at a time. And it’s not just your children, in some ways the children are easiest to care for, because they have school, they have very specific nutritional needs, they have needs to be supervised. And there’s a lot of people who can help you supervise your children, and they will have that wonderful experience. Those demands are shared by all of us who are in the musical field. And so the answers of how to do that, how to find the balance in your life, how to create the kind of home life that you want. It’s out there, you just have to keep asking.

Kristin: 27:21
And so when I was really young, one of the things that I would ask people is like, So tell me about your kids. And a really open ended question like that, they would often then sneak in there little bits of their frustrations or their solutions. And so I learned a lot really early on just from asking my older colleagues in the symphony, or when I was when I was traveling, just asking people like, Oh, tell me about your children, tell me about your family. How long have you lived here in Tulsa, San Diego, San Francisco, whatever city I was in? And then they would tell me about what made things work for them. And it was very helpful.

Chaowen: 27:56
I know. And my–well, how should I put this, I was just thinking, because a lot of our problems and challenges, maybe a better word, as you described, are commonly shared by working parents around the world for hundreds of years. But the perception is different. I do have a personal question. I’m curious. Your mom or parents’ friends? Are they separated from your professional friends? Or do you promote your professional engagement? Since you’re local and you’re growing the art scenes in San Antonio, do you share with your mom friends and, like you said, people who you might not even get to know if you were not a parent?

Kristin: 28:46
Yes, I did. I will say that most of my quote unquote “parent friends” are not musicians. And so I didn’t have that opportunity of, you know, having other musicians who had either children my same age or that I just felt like, we were friendly enough to share our troubles. When I was a pianist, though, everyone came and talked to me, particularly in the opera rehearsal room, in a certain sense of the pianist–you’re a sitting duck, they know where you are, and you’re not going to move, because you’ve got to play, but they would come and they’d hang their elbow at the piano, and they talked about everything. And I often found out sensitive information that way, which could be advantageous or could be really uncomfortable. It can be an incredibly difficult emotional load to carry if people are kind of considering the pianist the dumping ground.

Kristin: 29:40
But as I transitioned into different rungs of that music staff ladder, as the chorus master and then as the conductor, I found that people talked about their personal stuff to me less and I think that was just a function of the leadership role. Or they were worried, for example, singers were worried that I might not cast them if they had issues with their children or with their spouse or with their university job. And I found that difficult at first, particularly when I was actively trying to leave the piano bench and move towards the podium, I found that very hard, and I don’t want to say I lost friends. But I think I lost certain levels of friendships with people who didn’t feel comfortable sharing their lives with me in the way that they had when when they perceived that we are more or less on the same rung of the musical ladder. So that is something that, as a conductor, we have to contend with.

Chaowen: 30:43
Thank you so much. But I also heard a few conducting colleagues or mentors that it’s so important for them to keep that boundary between their musicians, they don’t want to know their personal problems, not because they don’t like working with them, but once they bond too closely, or become too intimate [with them] over other musicians, then there’s some tension in the workplace. And I certainly felt that.

Kristin: 31:11
I think in a larger ensemble, that’s definitely true. And certainly in a hierarchical ensemble, like an orchestra or, you know, an opera cast, I think that can be tricky. I also think it’s important to realize that these are potentially people you’re going to be working with for years. And in the opera world, you hope that you’re going to work with the same singers time after time after time, because then you get to know each other. And you’re going to want to form the types of relationships also where you are recommending them for things and, and they you.

Kristin: 31:44
When I was hiring orchestras, I wanted certain people in certain posts because of my respect for them. But I also, you know, living in the same town for almost 50 years, I did get to know them as people. And so I think it’s both, and I think you have to find the level that works for you. And as a freelancer, I also was not always in a leadership role. So I tended to be always conducting my friends and close colleagues. That’s unusual, I will say, but it’s also one of the bonuses of being based in a particular community for a long time–you do get to know people.

Chaowen: 32:30
I’m glad to hear that has worked well for you. So just before we wrap up, I had just one last question. Is there anything that you want to share with the audience or the things that you would have done differently if you were doing it again, like [making a] different choice, or the best advice you were given?

Kristin: 32:48
I think the best advice I was ever given actually came from my teacher at Eastman, Dr. Jean Barr, who just retired after running the collaborative piano program there for decades. And she said to me, Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. And just because you should, doesn’t mean you can’t or can. And there’s another version of this, which actually comes from the inventor, Henry Ford, who said, whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right. And so that goes to the idea of really setting your mindset and setting up your thought processes to support where you are and where you want to be.

Kristin: 33:36
And I have certainly found that when my mental health and when my frame of mind are positive and clear and focused, that’s when my life works the best. When I let my thoughts get cloudy and distracted, or if I’m not actively inspiring my mind and my soul, when I let myself get too busy or distracted, or let things upset me that I need to let go of or whatever version of that happens–then my my creativity slows down as well. So just keeping my mind and soul clean and fresh and healthy and vibrant–that is my number one duty now. And then everything else that happens is fantastic.

Chaowen: 34:29
That is wonderful. And I will share everything in the show notes but I wanted the listeners to hear it from you. So can you tell everybody where they can find you? And if you accept friend requests on social media, and all that.

Kristin: 34:43
On social media, I don’t accept friend requests from people I haven’t actually met. But you can follow me on Twitter and Instagram @KristinConducts. I also do a Tolkien podcast where I am the newbie on the show. You can follow my conducting adventures at kristinroach.com and my college work at lawrence.edu. I’m also going to send you, Chaowen, with a couple of pictures of my children in rehearsal settings and the funny antics they got up to. So one of them is my younger son, Kyle, doing push ups on the clothing bar that was in my dressing room where I was supposed to hang my–I had three different jackets I had to wear–and so he was doing push ups while he was waiting for the show to start. And there’s another one of him asleep on one of the kneeling rails at the church. And another one of my youngest who attended a performance of Hansel and Gretel at age three months, dressed as a pumpkin, in the arms of my colleague, dressed as the witch. So those are perfect examples of just toting your kids along to the things that you’re doing.

Chaowen: 35:56
I would love to see those pictures and there was a thread in Maestra Moms (there is a Facebook group for the theater moms). Did you see that? So they were asking for pictures of your kids at your work, they wanted to do a feature of that. So there were so many fun pictures. But thank you so much again for coming to the show. And it was such a great chat.

Kristin: 36:23
Thank you, Chaowen. All the best to you.

Chaowen: 36:28
So here you have it. And I hope that you feel encouraged and perhaps reassured if you’re ever wondering about finding a way to navigate the path of professional growth and parenting responsibilities. I personally hate the word ‘balance’, and I don’t believe that there is a balance at all between your personal and professional lives. We only have so much time and energy to spend on things and people that we care [about] and love. And the truth is, what you give to one, you don’t give to another. Marin Alsop told us that guilt is absolutely useless and pointless at the Dallas Opera Heart Institute for Women Conductors when she came and taught the class. I totally agree with her that there are ways to make things work and really owning your decisions and being fully present whenever you’re at work and when you’re spending time with your partner, family, or even pets is the most important thing.

Chaowen: 37:33
So how do you manage your relationship with your loved ones while maintaining a career as a musician and a conductor? I’d love to hear your story with the good, the bad, and the ugly. You can DM me on social media. I am @chaowentingconductor on Facebook or @tingchaowen on Instagram. If you post something, don’t forget to use the hashtag #theconductorspodcast. Or, if you like, you can also email me at theconductorspodcast@gmail.com.

Chaowen: 38:18
Again, don’t forget that I’m hosting a monthly giveaway of an hour of free consultation with me, starting in December. All you have to do is to leave a review of the podcast on why you love the show, share the screenshot of the review, and tag me on social media, and you will enter be entered into the monthly giveaway for a free hour-long consultation. During the time with me, you will have a chance to ask any questions you might have about conducting or the business. You can also get an extra entry every month as long as you share the podcast post and tag any friend. So go ahead and subscribe and leave a review if you have been enjoying listening. Okay, I will see you next week at the same time, same place for the last episode of the year. Take good care and bye for now.