E-Mail This Article to a Friend Triple threat Already the conductor for Symphony by the Sea, Boston Ballet music director Jonathan McPhee signs on with the Longwood Symphony — and waits to see if three’s a charm BY TAMARA WIEDER

FREE TIME IS not a concept Jonathan McPhee is familiar with. First there was his day job, as music director of the Boston Ballet for more than a decade. Then, in 2001, he took on another music-director role, this time for the North Shore–based Symphony by the Sea.

Now the jet-setting McPhee, who’s conducted a veritable who’s who of ballets and orchestras — New York City Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, National Philharmonic Orchestra, Boston Pops, and San Francisco Symphony, to name but a handful — is taking on another position closer to home, replacing Francisco Noya as music director of the Longwood Symphony Orchestra. The 21-year-old orchestra, comprising primarily local health-care professionals and medical scientists, presents four concerts a year, all of which are benefits for charitable organizations — a draw for McPhee, who believes artists should spend more time giving back to their communities.

Q: Why’d you decide to take on this third music-director position?

A: That’s the question of the year! Longwood’s an interesting group. I’ve known them for, oh, 14 years, and have been in and out as a guest and sometimes an adviser as they’ve gone through their growing pains. The group has changed so much from the original sort of ragtag, "Well, who do we have? Well, we’ve got one bass, we’ve got one trombone, and no oboe section." And part of the attraction over the years has been the fact that it is such a unique organization of some very serious musicians in there; in fact, there are several people in there who actually at one point or another had to make a decision between a music career and a medical career, and they chose a medical career. But here’s a collection of extremely intelligent people — everything from surgeons to anesthesiologists. And they’ve created an orchestra with a very unique mission, which is, every single concert is a benefit. There’s no other orchestra in the United States that does that. And I think that’s something that’s very important, that they can really offer quality music — which is good for them; it’s one of the opportunities for the healers to have a healing experience themselves. I have always done a lot of community stuff; I go into the schools all the time. I think it’s important for artists to really do as much as they can in the community.

Q: Do you anticipate making any major changes at Longwood, once you take over the reins?

A: What I’m planning on doing, and I’ve talked about this with the board, I’d like to raise their profile in the community. I think in a way they’re sort of a best-kept secret. Some of the medical groups know it, but the general public doesn’t realize how well they play.

I said [to the musicians], put together a wish list, and I’m not guaranteeing anything, but a wish list of repertory you’d like to play. It seemed to me that an orchestra in town that has that unique a mission should also have as unique a repertory. In other words, not the kinds of things that are being played at Boston Symphony or Boston Philharmonic or the other things. There’s a whole group of wonderful pieces of music that for some reason or another, either because of marketing, box office, whatever, don’t get played much. And I really wanted to explore doing that repertory with them as well, so people can come for a unique group of pieces, and an interesting mix of emerging artists and well-known artists. So again, that mission is going to continue: service to the community, providing the highest-quality classical music, and perhaps music that you will only hear here.

Q: What are the biggest differences between performing with the ballet, when you’re accompanying dancers, and performing with a more standard orchestra?

A: Oh, it’s completely different. I mean, if you do it right, ballet conducting, most people have no idea you’re even there. Just like the movie score in a movie supports the action on screen, and if it’s wrong, it detracts; if it’s right, it adds to the whole emotional experience. But a lot of people when they come out of a movie, they can’t think of what the score was. In ballet, you’re in that same sort of giant accompanying scheme, so there are the composer’s wishes, the choreographer’s wishes, the artistic director’s own imprint of how it should look with the dancers, and the individual dancers. They all affect it. It’s this gigantic, challenging, wonderful soup that I’ve spent 24 years of my career in.

I had never planned on walking into ballet when I came out of Juilliard; it was really Martha Graham and George Balanchine who tapped me for this. So starting with Symphony by the Sea, it was a lot of fun to get back to really looking forward to the fact that I’ve got five concerts a year that I can do with the Beethoven Symphony, and the other corners of the repertory that I haven’t been able to get to in 20 years. I mean, I’m basically European-trained, and the repertory that I got at the Royal Academy of Music, and then with my conducting professor at Juilliard, is a lot of this wonderful 20th-century European repertory that we don’t do a lot of. As well as contemporary ensemble stuff that I always did. But you’re completely interpretively free when you’re not working in a ballet environment. It’s just you and the musicians.

Q: Do you ever have any twinges of jealousy that the dancers get all the attention, that people have come to see them?

A: No. Not at all. In fact, it makes me feel really good, because I know I’ve done the job well. People shouldn’t be focusing on what the music did. If that happens, then I really have pulled the focus away from the stage, and our role is to heighten that visual experience on stage.

Q: How do you feel about The Nutcracker’s move from the Wang?

A: Well, there’s good things and bad things. Bad thing first is moving out of the Wang, because that’s been such an enormous part of our existence for 35 years. And of course the pit in there I hate to leave, having been the person who designed that as well; it’s got every feature that I love in it. The move to the Opera House I think is a very positive one. Sometimes I worry about what happens in the arts in Boston, because this is such a unique city; it has so much, and then it has so much that it takes for granted. I would love to get on a soapbox sometimes and be able to talk to the people of Boston and say, "Don’t take this for granted. It needs support, it needs attention, you don’t have enough theaters that are working here." And there are some directions that really do worry me in the long term, as far as music and theater. The Opera House being refurbished is an extremely important step for the cultural landscape of Boston. I wish it could’ve been our home right along, but when we tried that opportunity five years ago, it just didn’t happen. Clear Channel came in, they were able to work out help from the city to overcome the obstacles that we couldn’t. And they’ve made it happen. Nutcracker is going to be fabulous there. It’s a better-size house, which improves the experience for the audience, because if you’re up in the top of the Wang, in a 3700-seat theater, it’s not a good experience.

The one hurdle we have to get over is the near-term next season in the Colonial. The company is working very hard to make that a special Nutcracker experience. I was in there just a week ago trying to figure out how to get the entire orchestra in a pit that’s too small, and we solved that one, so we will have the entire orchestra there.