Running Up The Score
By Kyle MacMillan
Most conductors follow the classic symphonic and operatic repertory, some focus on a specialty like choral music or orchestral pops. But Anthony Parnther is a kind of conducting Renaissance man, who has cut a wide swath across the musical landscape, from helming the San Bernadino Symphony Orchestra to working with vocal sensations like Rihanna, Common, and Jon Batiste to leading myriad film soundtracks. “Disney in the morning, Dvořák in the evening,” the busy conductor said breezily.
Anthony Parnther leads the Gateways Music Festival Orchestra in its Carnegie Hall hall debut in 2022, featuring Jon Batiste as soloist in the premiere of his concerto I Can.
“He is, in his exceptional musical reach, the quintessential L.A. musician of our day,” wrote classical music critic Mark Swed in the Los Angeles Times in July 2023. Swed reviewed two proximate concerts that the 42-year-old maestro conducted at the Music Academy of the West and Monk Space, a small gallery and studio space on the outskirts of Koreatown, and the critic extolled both as “extraordinary.”
Alongside an August 17 screening of the Disney and Pixar film Up at the Ravinia Festival, Parnther will lead the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a live performance of Michael Giacchino’s Oscar-honored score. The presentation marks the 15th anniversary of the box-office hit, which was nominated for five Academy Awards, also winning Best Animated Feature.
The movie recounts the story of Carl Fredericksen (voiced by actor Ed Asner) who, in his late 70s, embarks on a fantastical flight to South America by attaching thousands of balloons to his house. A neighborhood boy named Russell becomes an accidental stow-away and eventually a partner in what becomes a grand, sprawling adventure.
The event holds special significance for Parnther, not only because it will represent his CSO and Ravinia debuts but also because Up was the first movie he worked on as a studio musician after arriving in Los Angeles nearly 20 years ago.
“I have worked with Michael Giacchino as his bassoonist and contrabassoonist for many years now, and this particular film takes me back to the very beginning as a Hollywood studio musician. So, I am really looking forward to that.”
No one auditions for what is known as the Hollywood Studio Symphony, a freelance orchestra with an ever-changing roster depending on the cinematic recording project. Instead, musicians are recommended for the ensemble. “Then, once a section and a composer and contractor are comfortable with you, then you begin to develop more relationships and work on more projects,” he said.
“Getting into the room is one thing, but staying in it for 20 years is a different feat all in itself.” Parnther has worked on more than 1,000 film, television and video-game soundtracks—a few hundred as a conductor and the rest as a bassoonist.
“It’s been a long list of really interesting projects,” he said. As a conductor, he got his start on small independent films and then began collaborating on video games, including the hugely popular League of Legends, which was released in 2009. He later progressed to television and studio films, including leading last year’s Oscar-winning score for Oppenheimer. “It was a very gradual thing over a period of 10 years, working my way up the tentpole, so to speak,” he said.
In the Star Wars realm, he performed as a musician on the soundtracks of seventh, eighth, and ninth films in the main canon, as well as on the “stories” Rogue One (2016) and Solo (2018). As a conductor, he has led the music for three seasons of the Star Wars-based television series The Mandalorian and the mini-series The Book of Boba Fett. “It’s been a long and fruitful journey with all those,” he said.
Anthony Parnther with composer John Williams and fellow bassoonists and film score session first-calls Rose Corrigan and Damian Montano
In addition to his studio work, Parnther often conducts live performances of scores, as he will at Ravinia. For such presentations, he typically chooses films on which he worked as a musician or conductor, or ones where he has had a long relationship with the composer. The latter will be the case September 26–28 when he marks the 50th anniversary of Jaws during three performances with the New York Philharmonic. “I may have a different perception of how some of these John Williams movies and scores go, which may be unusual for most conductors, because most conductors have not played under his baton,” he said.
At the same time, Parnther conducts a wide range of classical music with the San Bernadino Symphony and Los Angeles’s Southeast Symphony Orchestra, where he has been Music Director since 2019 and 2009, respectively. He also frequently guest conducts, including an appearance last year with the Atlanta Symphony and upcoming dates with the Charlotte and Virginia Symphonies. He has also taken over as Artistic Director of the just-christened Civic Orchestra of Los Angeles, a pre-professional training orchestra that will function much like the venerable Civic Orchestra of Chicago.
And if all that wasn’t enough, Parnther works with a range of performers in the pop-music realm.He is conducting a series of concerts this summer and fall with Billboard-topping singer John Legend, including July 23 and 24 with the San Francisco Symphony, August 7 with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and September 10 with the Cincinnati Pops. The two men first collaborated about two years ago at the Hollywood Bowl, and they later worked together on a show featuring hip-hop producer Metro Boomin at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre. “Eventually, John’s team reached out to me to see if I would like to go tour as his conductor for his orchestra dates, and I was very excited and happy to oblige,” Parnther said.
Unlike some classical conductors who might turn up their noses at film or pop music, he relishes such opportunities. “I’ve always tried to be as open to all of these experiences as I possibly could,” he said, “because classical music is not my only love. It is the area in which I work the most, but I just love great music, and I want to share that passion with as many people as I can. So, I wouldn’t say that I’m a classical conductor. I’m just a conductor, a musician, and all good music is interesting to me.”
This unusual scope of activities sparked Swed’s high praise for Parnther, but it also raises an immediate question: Why isn’t he better known? The answer, of course, is that much of what he does is behind the scenes. The names of conductors on soundtracks are buried deep in the credits that few people watch at the end of movies, and, during a concert with the likes of Legend, the spotlight is on that headline artist and not on the person leading the accompanying orchestra. But expect Parnther’s profile to rise as his career continues to soar.
Born in Norfolk, VA, Parnther moved to the Washington, DC, area as a young child, dividing his time between there and New York City and ultimately graduating from high school in Virginia. Traces of an elegant Southern accent can still be heard when he talks. Growing up, he not only played cello, bassoon, and tuba, but he “became obsessed” with learning how to play many other instruments in the orchestra as well.
And he has maintained that versatility, even recently performing on a baritone horn for a television soundtrack. He initially got interested in conducting with his high-school marching band, becoming fascinated with the idea of being a drum major, though he never landed the role despite trying out his sophomore, junior, and senior years. At the same time, he was frequently putting together and leading his own brass and woodwind ensembles and even small chamber orchestras in high school and college. He studied music performance at Northwestern University and then went on to obtain his master’s degree in conducting from Yale University.
After working with several ensembles at East Tennessee State University in 2004–7, including the school’s Symphonic Band and Marching Buccaneers, Parnther decided to try his luck in California. Now, there is hardly a minute when he is not busy. “It’s wonderful going to work each day and having a new adventure each week. I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said.
Drawing on his own heritage and some of the challenges he has faced, Parnther has made a point throughout his career of championing music by under-represented composers, including Zenobia Powell Perry and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor from the past and such current musical voices as Kris Bowers, Chanda Dancy, and Gary Powell Nash. Parnther led Long Beach Opera’s 2022 revival of Anthony Davis’s opera The Central Park Five, which won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Music, as well as a soon-to-be-released recording springing from that production.
“It’s not been uncommon in my career to be the only Black person in the room,” he said. “It’s also been wildly apparent to me that some institutions have done a really poor job of opening up the playing field to people they normally wouldn’t hire. Honestly, to me, if you’re not actively recruiting diverse talent, you are actively prohibiting it. I don’t think there is a gray area in between.”
Since 2022, he has also served as orchestral conductor for the Gateways Music Festival, which brings together top musicians of African descent for a concentrated series of presentations in a different community each year. This year’s installment took place at various locations around Chicago in April.
Parnther’s career has taken him to places where few Black musicians and conductors have gone before. “I want to make sure,” he said, “that I keep that door open for people who look just like me.”
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Kyle MacMillan served as classical music critic for the Denver Post from 2000 through 2011. He currently freelances in Chicago, writing for such publications as the Chicago Sun-Times, Early Music America, Opera News, and Classical Voice of North America.