For conductors Thomas Wilkins and James Burton of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, music hasn’t been just a career, but a lifelong journey. Both musicians aim to give the gift of music back to the next generation at the BSO, where Burton is the choral director, Tanglewood Festival Chorus conductor and new children’s choir conductor; and Wilkins is the family and youth concert conductor — a role he does not take lightly.
“It’s easy to … see a world that doesn’t look as much like you, and think, ‘Well ok, clearly, then that’s not my world,’” Wilkins said. “In fact, when I first came on the Boston Symphony, the big question was, ‘How does it feel to be the first black conductor of the Boston symphony orchestra?’ I was like, ‘Well it feels the way it felt yesterday, when I wasn’t,’ Wilkins said. “But to the extent that a kid who looks like me can see me and go, ‘Aha, that’s also an option [for a career],’ then I’m good with that.’”
Wilkins still remembers his first concert at eight years old, when he heard the orchestra play the Star Spangled Banner.
“I had heard that before, but never in the voice of an orchestra, so I was completely blown away and completely sucked into this life of being a musician,” he said to Margery Eagan and Jim Braude, sitting on the grounds of Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts.
“It was all of these different kinds of sounds coming to me and washing over me, and I loved the fact that the man in front of this thing called the orchestra seemed to have some direct connection to all of those sounds," he said. "I walked away that day saying, 'That’s what I want to do when I grow up.'”
Burton similarly remembers his first concert as a six-year-old boy growing up in London.
“They played Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto,” he said. “You don’t need any more encouragement than that. … It was this sort of incredible sound of the strings and the piano. It was all mesmerizing.”
