Circus
Meets
Symphony
Bob Bernhardt Brings his Baton under the Big Top
by Martha Thomas
B
ob Bernhardt had no way of
knowing as a kid how his unusual combination of interests
in high school would serve him
as a conductor. “I was a jock
nerd,” says the maestro, Principal Pops
Conductor for both the Louisville Orchestra and the Chattanooga Symphony
and Opera.
Bernhardt, spent his boyhood in
Rochester, NY alternating between playing sports — soccer and baseball, mostly
— and taking music lessons, studying
classical piano, playing in a rock band,
and listening to Tony Bennett and Rosemary Clooney when his mother played
the radio. He played baseball so well that
after college, he was invited to spring
training with the Kansas City Royals.
But ultimately, “They suggested I pursue
a life in music,” he says with a laugh.
Even so, that athletic training prepared
him for a particular style of conducting.
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One of Bernhardt’s favorite roles is working with dancers and acrobats, as he will
in the seven December performances by
Cirque Musica at the BSO (December
11–15). “Ballet dancers are among the best
athletes in the world,” he says, equating
the Cirque performers with elite dancers.
“I have an enormous respect for great
athletes,” says Bernhardt, who conducted
a Cirque program for the BSO in 2011
and the Holiday Pops concert in 2012,
as well as the Patriotic Pops with the
BSO at Oregon Ridge in 2011, and the
Patriotic Pops again this year. “There is a
certain breathing pattern to motion, and
when an athlete is performing, especially
in a routine like Cirque, there’s a tempo
that they need to be successful. It’s never
precisely the same each time.”
When he’s conducting for a ballet
performance in the orchestra pit,
Bernhardt can watch the dancers on the
stage, calibrating the music to movement.
But the Cirque performers, w