Most Influential 2018: Carl St.Clair leads the Pacific Symphony to new heights

In 2018 the musical world outside Orange County experienced something that local classical music patrons have been well acquainted with for decades: the strengths and passions of Pacific Symphony music director Carl St.Clair.

In the space of less than a month, St.Clair and his musicians — the largest American orchestra formed in the last half-century — debuted at Carnegie Hall in New York and then toured China for the first time with five stops bookending the trip in Shanghai and Beijing.

St.Clair, 66, especially relished the Carnegie Hall performance, which capped a year-long celebration of composer Philip Glass’ 80th birthday. The Pacific Symphony was invited to perform “The Passion of Ramakrishna,” a work by Glass that the symphony commissioned in 2006.

“The biggest compliment (was being) invited by Carnegie Hall,” St.Clair said before the concert. “You and I could rent Carnegie Hall, but it’s extremely significant in the life of any orchestra to be invited there. It’s an acknowledgment … of our quality and our artistic integrity, a great honor.”

This was a watershed year for both the conductor and symphony on a number of other fronts. In its 40th year, the orchestra finally achieved a long-term contract with its musicians, establishing a 10.4 percent wage increase over five years and a guaranteed number of rehearsals and performances each season.

Another milestone was achieved in June when PBS’ “Great Performances” broadcast a Costa Mesa performance of Peter Boyer’s Grammy-nominated score for “Ellis Island: The Dream of America,” the Pacific Symphony’s first national TV appearance.

“This (was) the kind of alignment of opportunities that strengthen an orchestra,” St.Clair says. “We now belong more fully to Orange County.”

While the conductor has been a cornerstone of the county’s cultural life for the past three decades, St.Clair’s path here was both surprising and serendipitous, even to himself.

As a farm boy in Hochheim, Texas (pop. 36), St.Clair received piano lessons for his sixth birthday, a gift that didn’t thrill him. “Studying piano wasn’t exactly what I’d envisioned,” St.Clair once recalled.

Regardless, those early lessons steered him to what would be a lifelong preoccupation with music. But while he ultimately gravitated to trumpet as well as keyboards, his teenage influences and inclinations were similar to those of other kids of his generation: pop music, ranging from the straightforward singer-songwriter declarations of Joni Mitchell to the acid-infused Bay Area rock of Jefferson Airplane and the take no-prisoners intensity of L.A’.s the Doors.

In fact, he had never heard a symphony orchestra until he performed in the Texas all-state student ensemble before an audience of thousands in Dallas.

After graduating from the University of Texas, St.Clair studied conducting at the University of Michigan. His big break came in the summer of 1985 when Leonard Bernstein, the most influential figure of 20th Century American music, strode into a room full of young conducting fellows bellowing out, “Where’s my cowboy from Texas!?” A bond through music was born.

Bernstein’s career-long ties to the Boston Symphony helped pave St.Clair’s way to becoming assistant conductor there in 1986. Other important mentors followed: He befriended the Boston Pops’ legendary conductor, composer John Williams, who was helpful in steering St.Clair toward the Pacific Symphony.

In 1989, the symphony was adrift. After a messy divorce from founding music director Keith Clark, Orange County’s most significant homegrown musical institution held a very public and exhausting tryout of conductors stretching across two seasons. A field of eight had been winnowed down to a staid traditionalist when the 37-year-old nascent maestro breezed into town and wowed both management and audiences through his conducting talent and personal appeal.

“I felt a certain energy,” St.Clair said on the heels of his introduction to Orange County. The vibe was reciprocated and it — and he — has stayed in place for the past three decades.Beyond work, St.Clair made a life here. Before marrying, he first bought a condo near the surf in Laguna Beach in 1994 and, subsequently, St.Clair and his wife Susan, son Cade and daughter Siena, have called the town home ever since.

Three years ago, St.Clair described a sample day:

“Cooking breakfast for my children, while my wife gets an extra half an hour of sleep. Taking the kids to school, coming back and going for a walk in Heisler Park. Having a cup of coffee and doing a crossword puzzle. Of course, there’s always the phone ringing.

“Lunch, either at home or in town, picking up the kids, taking them to whatever after-school activity. Then getting the opportunity to rehearse with the Pacific Symphony in the evening and coming home for dinner, with a nice glass of wine. That’s a pretty ideal day.”

One thing in the coming year St.Clair won’t be doing is resting on his laurels. The 2019-2020 season will see the orchestra’s music director celebrate his 30th anniversary at the helm.

This tenure is no mean feat — the League of American Orchestras reports that music directors on average serve 12 1/2 years; of the 25 largest U.S. orchestras, none has had anyone in the role for as long as St.Clair.

He typically downplays his own achievements, focusing instead on the orchestra’s longevity (“though in orchestra years — dog years or whatever — we’re like an adolescent basically,” St.Clair once kidded) and impact. He does, however, find in the length of his tenure one important quality: trust.

“In its history, we’ve only had two executive directors or presidents and two music directors,” St.Clair said. “This has helped keep the orchestra on course. It’s offered the community a chance to place their trust in a few people.

“I’m just very honored to have been one of those.”