Jacobs School of Music welcomes another celebrated faculty member

With the Jacobs School of Music’s most recent appointment of Arthur Fagen, the school now has five conductors whom it says are among the best in the world.

Fagen was the former assistant conductor at the Frankfurt Opera in Germany and the Metropolitan Opera in New York and has an operatic repertoire of more than 70 works. Fagen began teaching this fall.

“With these recent appointments, the nucleus of our instrumental conducting program is in place,” said Gwyn Richards, dean of the music school, in a statement. “In combination with the new appointments of cellist Eric Kim and violinist Jorja Fleezanis, both of whom share an orchestral profile at the highest level, the orchestral program is now poised for unprecedented development.”

Fagen joins David Effron, department chair; Uriel Segal, principal guest conductor; Leonard Slatkin, music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra; and Cliff Colnot, conductor of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, whose role at the music school has expanded to include more time in Bloomington, said Alain Barker, director of marketing and publicity at the music school.

“Their addition creates a level of confidence within the faculty, to know our students are well taken care of in the orchestra program,” said Tom Wieligman, executive administrator of instrumental ensembles at the music school. “They give us a new level of intensity when it comes to recruiting. Most schools aren’t able to offer students faculty like we can.”

In addition to hiring more faculty, the instrumental conducting program has also purposely decreased the number of its students.

This fall, the conducting department admitted two of the nearly 100 students who applied to the program, Effron said. With six students total, from undergraduate to doctoral, and five conductors, the student-teacher ratio is now nearly one-to-one.

“We are expanding our faculty with people who are very committed and who are experts in this field,” Effron said. “It’s much harder than it was one or two generations ago to get a job. We think the smaller the group, the more attention each student gets, thereby preparing them even better for the profession.”

Effron said he believes the conducting program also helps students prepare for real-world experiences by bringing in guests from professional orchestras, working with students on resumes and teaching students the important of networking – and the students agree.

“We’re excited to have more variety and to get different perspectives from our teachers,” said Andres Moran, a doctoral conducting student. “In the music world, you can’t make too many contacts, have too many opinions or too many people trying to help you along the way.”

But conducting students aren’t the only ones benefiting from the conductors’ presence.

“A student comes here to study an instrument and comes for a specific teacher who offers them what they want,” Wieligman said. “Of course they are excited to study privately with their teacher, but now with five conductors, students are equally excited to go to orchestra every day and see what the profession can bring to them.”