Australian-born British conductor Jessica Cottis reached for a pen and paper during a phone call from London in mid-December.
โGo ahead,โ she said as the caller ticked off a list of Tucson must-doโs/must-sees:
- Mexican food, a no-brainer.
- Sonoran hot dogs, a Tucson signature delicacy.
- Saguaro National Park, a forest of towering saguaro cacti with tangled limbs giving you all sorts of greetings.
โDo you have any wildlife?โ she asks.
Do we. Watch out for the javelinas, you offer as a friendly warning.
Her curiosity is to be expected. Sheโs never been to Tucson. In fact, she had never stepped foot in Arizona before her plane landed in Tucson Monday for her American debut with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra.
โI canโt wait. Iโm really excited,โ said Cottis, who lived outside Washington, D.C., when she was very young and her father, an Australian diplomat, was stationed in the States. โIโve been reading about it and it sounds interesting. I am really, really eager to get out to the desert, actually.โ
Cottis, 38, is also eager to conduct the TSO in a program that features the Tucson premiere of a work by a British composer who is all the rage in Europe.
Thomas Adรจs โThree Studies from Couperinโ opens a program anchored by Mozartโs Symphony No. 29 and Shostakovichโs Cello Concerto.
โIn programming I wanted something to connect the Mozart to the Shostakovich Cello Concerto,โ Cottis explained. โI wanted to do something that combined old and new and make them fit comfortably side by side so Tomโs piece seems to be the link to enable us to do that.โ
This will be the first time Tucson has heard from Adรฉs, who based โThree Studiesโ on the French Baroque composerโs piano pieces โLes Amusemens,โ โLes Tours de Passe-Passeโ and โLโรขme en peine.โ But rather than just simply reimagine the works for a 21st-century ear, Adรจs inserts contemporary sensibilities that bring out ideas long overlooked in the originals.
โItโs a great piece, a really superb piece. Yes this is new music, contemporary music, but what he has done is so clever from basically taking pieces, heโs using exactly the same harmonies, the same rhythms,โ Cottis explained. โThey even have the same bars as the originals.โ
Cottis views her Tucson concerts as a turning point in her decade-long career, perhaps an open door that could lead to more American engagements squeezed into a career that this year will find her leading the London Philharmonic Orchestra after Tucson and premiering a new opera for Londonโs Royal Opera House later this year.
โWeโll see what happens but it does feel like a new chapter in the book of me,โ she said.
Cottis, whose career has mostly been focused on conducting in London and the UK, with frequent baton turns in her native Australia, started her professional life as an organist. But a wrist injury sent her in another direction, one that as a young musician had never dawned on her.
โIt never crossed my mind,โ she said. โFor me, a conductor was an older male and I think conducting has been archetypically a masculine (position).โ
She realizes that as a female conductor, she is part of a โa rare and protected speciesโ that defies โthese kinds of unspoken hierarchy and traditions.โ
โFor me, any form of music, whether conducting, performing or playing any type of instrument, itโs completely genderless,โ Cottis said. โIt has nothing to do with gender. Talent and creativity have no gender, and it will take the world time to catch up. They donโt change until we actively question them.โ
Cottis was expecting to arrive in Tucson on Monday and stay for a week, just enough time to explore the mysteries of the desert and get to know Tucson.
โOne of the real gifts of conducting is getting to see places. Being a whole week in Tucson allows me to get the flavor of Arizona, as well,โ she said. โIt feels like a really nice start to 2018.โ