Incidentally, I suppose I ought to send you the recommendation I wrote of and for Nathaniel. It would have been best to seek your feedback before submitting it, but I was already running up against the deadline, and perhaps you would have claimed it unkosher for me to share such a recommendation. At any rate, it is submitted, and here it is. It is a melancholy fact that if Nathaniel does get in, he will move away. I do find the passion of modern musicians for higher and higher education bizarre. If Schubert had gone for a doctorate of musical arts, he would have been dead before he ever got started. Nikola Chubrich Former manager, Du Bois Orchestra 156 Franklin St. Allston, MA 02134 8 December 2009 Office of Admissions and Financial Aid IU JACOBS School of Music 1201 E. Third Street, JS 100 Bloomington, IN 47405 To whom it may concern: Throughout my career as a musician, I have made a habit of working with rising conductors, both as violinist and violist, and sometimes as impresario or manager. Many have gone on to substantial careers: Aram Demirjian, Lidiya Yankovskaya, Yuga Cohler, Perry So, and Jesse Wong come to mind. I have also played under a number of established conductors: Benjamin Zander, Shinik Hahm, and Alasdair Neale, among others. Nathaniel Meyer is the best conductor I have had the privilege of working with. I have played under him a number of times, starting with the Belmont Festival Orchestra early in his career, and later in the Du Bois Orchestra, which I went on to manage during a key phase of its development. He possesses five qualities rarely found together. 1) He has what one might call 'conductorship' (in analogy to musicianship). Conducting is one of the hardest jobs in the world to do well, but also (with the right brand of showmanship) one of the easiest to fake. The essence of conductorship is to develop a compelling interpretation of the score, and then to get the best possible performance out of a given ensemble. When the Saybrook Orchestra at Yale decided to split music directing duties one year, it ended up creating an inadvertent controlled experiment in conductorship. Nathaniel, then an undergraduate, did the first half of a concert I attended, while a graduate student did the second. Under Nathaniel, this admittedly amateur ensemble delivered a compelling and tight performance. Under the other conductor, it was nowhere near as good. It was hard to believe I was listening to the same ensemble. Anyone who doubts what the best conductors are capable of should have been at that concert. The eventually got to play under Nathaniel in his Belmont Festival Orchestra, which put together a thrilling performance of the Eroica on three days of rehearsal, using mostly college students on break. This remains to this day my favorite memory of performing, over and above even professional performances. Every performance of Nathaniel's has been thrilling, meticulous, and full of heart. 2) Because of his talent, charisma, and winning personal qualities, Nathaniel has the good fortune to be able to attract excellent players. His specialty is creating ensembles from scratch. Those he does not create, he transforms. When he took over the Du Bois Orchestra, it was a ragtag ensemble of fifteen players of widely varying skill. He left it a thriving chamber orchestra approaching full size, staffed in large part by young professionals, with an enthusiastic and loyal audience. 3) Plenty of conductors can lead compelling performances of warhorses with long interpretive histories. It is much harder to create an interpretation from scratch. The Du Bois Orchestra premiered Florence Price's Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight in 2019. Nathaniel took a manuscript rescued from an abandoned house, supervised its typesetting into a modern score and parts, and revealed a masterpiece. In this he was ahead of his time. One now sees Price performed by major ensembles, and she is starting to achieve recognition in the top rank of American composers. Nathaniel was there first. 4) Many new ensembles founder during their growth phase, when extramusical concerns come to dominate decision-making. As the Du Bois Orchestra's manager, I saw firsthand how he put music above all, and was unwilling to let the orchestra get sidetracked. 5) Finally, and rarest of all, he is humble. Though he leads with a firm hand, his duty is to the score, not his ego. Some conductors make the podium a stage, a sort of show-within-a-show. Nathaniel's only stage is the concert stage. I find it deeply impressive that once he put the Du Bois Orchestra on a successful trajectory, he selflessly handed it over to a successor more aligned with the mission of the orchestra. Under this hand-picked successor, the orchestra has continued in its successes. I am excited to see what Nathaniel will accomplish in coming years. Sincerely, Nikola Chubrich, former manager, Du Bois Orchestra.