Aurelia Butler

Art of Craft is a series about specialists whose work rises to the level of art.Freeman Vines was chasing a sound.He couldn’t remember where he’d heard it, but it reverberated in his mind. His attempts to replicate it on mass-produced guitars were fruitless, so Mr. Vines took matters into his own hands: In 1958, he started to make guitars.“I didn’t care how the guitar looked. I didn’t care what color the guitar was,” Mr. Vines said in a 2020 documentary called “Hanging Tree Guitars: the Art of Freeman Vines,” produced by Music Maker Foundation, a nonprofit that supports Southern artists like Mr. Vines. “I was looking for a tone.”Freeman Vines in his store, with some of his creations. Mr. Vines, now 80, never did replicate the sound, but along the way he crafted dozens of unique guitars, using wood from barns, troughs and other unexpected — and meaningful — sources. A series of his guitars featured in a traveling exhibition (currently at the Maria V. Howard Arts Center at the Imperial Centre in Rocky Mount, N.C.) came from wood extracted from a tree that had been used to lynch Black people.Mr. Vines, who now works out of a storefront in Fountain, N.C., grew up on a plantation in nearby Greene County during the Jim Crow era, working alongside his mother in the fields for meager wages. When he got older, he toured for a bit as a jazz musician. But the quest to recreate that one sound proved to be the animating force of his life. He carved guitars in different shapes, with specific designs and electronic configurations. Some are crafted to look like traditional African masks.“These guitars here got a character and a sound of their own,” Mr. Vines said in a video accompanying his exhibition. “To somebody else, it’s just some wood glued together. To me, it’s something else.”Chris Bergson, a musician and associate professor at Berklee College of Music in Boston, said there had been a big jump in independent guitar-making in recent years. “You’re going to get something really special and unique, like the opposite of a guitar you just buy off the rack.”Mr. Vines has multiple myeloma but hasn’t slowed down. “He cat naps a little bit and just keeps working, keeps creating,” said Timothy Duffy, founder of Music Maker Relief Foundation.Mr. Vines was recently discharged from a rehab facility after a stint in a cancer ward. “They really wanted him to stay there,” Mr. Duffy recalled. “He said, ‘Look, I can sit here and be bored. Or I can go back to my shop and tinker around. They say I’m dying, but you could be dead in three minutes. I’m living now.’”Mr. Vines said it’s important to “let the saw do the work” in shaping guitars.“It’s just like making biscuits. Ain’t no two biscuits look alike.”The wood used to make the “hanging tree guitars” has a “characteristic of its own,” Mr. Vines said. “All that stuff in there, people thought I carved and put in there — I didn’t do it. It was in there.”Mr. Vines’s storefront in Fountain, N.C.His sketchbook. On the right is his vision for an unusually shaped lap steel guitar.A photo of Mr. Vines, circa 1960.“Wood talks to me,” Mr. Vines is quoted as saying in the book “Hanging Tree Guitars.” “Wood has a character.”“There’s spirits in each one of these woods,” Mr. Duffy said of Mr. Vines’s philosophy.One of Mr. Vines’s creations.Mr. Vines, in his wheelchair. He toured as a jazz musician when he was younger.A wooded pond near Mr. Vines’s storefront. More

The Pulitzer Prize-winning composer has released a memoir, “Easily Slip Into Another World,” and a new album, “The Other One.”Even as a child, Henry Threadgill liked to experiment.In this Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and saxophonist’s new memoir, “Easily Slip Into Another World,” he recounts a youthful attempt to fly from a window using a “contraption” of his own devising.He managed to escape the ensuing, predictable crash without breaking any bones, but the young Threadgill did earn a reputation for daring in his Chicago neighborhood. His mother’s response — “Henry, why do you have to be so extreme?” — became, as he writes, “the refrain of my childhood.”That same question may have occurred to a few listeners. But Threadgill, 79, has done plenty of soaring, on stages, over the years: composing music intended for social dancing, and pieces for orchestra and string quartet in which players are encouraged to improvise. He has also led some of the most widely acclaimed ensembles in the past half-century of American jazz.

kronosquartet · Henry Threadgill – SixfivetwoAppropriately, he has an interdisciplinary spirit. In addition to his book — written with Brent Hayes Edwards and published by Knopf earlier this month — Threadgill is engaged in a flurry of additional artistic activity, including a new album, “The Other One,” out on Pi Recordings.Scored for a 12-piece ensemble and recorded live at Roulette last year, Threadgill’s chamber music on this release impressed me immediately, as I wrote when it was performed. Those concerts also featured multimedia elements, which Threadgill incorporated into a documentary film that provides a fuller look at the material. That movie, which he produced and edited with D. Carlton Bright, screened at the Museum of Modern Art in late May.Both the show and the film helped Threadgill scratch a long-held creative itch. In a recent interview, he recalled having been impressed by Alban Berg’s opera “Lulu,” which, in an unusual touch for its period, makes dramatic use of a short film at its midpoint. (“That’s one of my favorite operas,” he said. “Love ‘Lulu!’”)Threadgill said that when he produced the staged version of “The Other One,” he realized: “Now is my chance to integrate art, poetry, photographs — everything — into one piece.”This can be a lot to keep up with. But as in his childhood, Threadgill comes by his extreme approach to artistic production honestly.That much was clear earlier this spring when I met him at one of his favorite spots: a combination coffee shop and plant store in the East Village. At one point, as I was peppering him with questions about his mutability, he gestured to consumers throughout the store.Threadgill writes in his new book, “I find that the less I say about my music, the better.”Rahim Fortune for The New York Times“It has to do with cognition,” he replied. “What do we really see or observe? All these people are different sizes, but it’s the same bone structure.”Put another way, all his work is connected, even if he’s not going to get into the DNA of it all with you at the drop of a hat. As he writes in his book, “I find that the less I say about my music, the better.” (And at another point: “Music is about listening. Nothing I say can mean anything once you start to listen.”)Still, a question or two may linger. For example, doesn’t the piano music that kicks off “The Other One” flirt in a surprising way with noirish harmony? And doesn’t that represent something of a break with much of his output this century, which has been conceived outside major/minor composition?

The Other One by Henry ThreadgillWhen I brought that up, Threadgill said, with a touch of good-natured evasion: “These tonal centers, they don’t really mean anything. I love harmony and stuff. But it’s kinda like looking at those flowers over there. You keep scanning; you never really stop.”Fair enough. This piano music — laced as it is with those recognizable tonalities — doesn’t simply resolve there. At the end of that opening section, two saxophones enter with staggered lines that hustle into a more frenetic state of mind. That’s the more recognizable, recent sound world of Threadgill’s music, driven by a quasi-serialized use of intervals, that has most often been performed by his core ensemble, Zooid.Subsequent sections in “The Other One,” like the track titled “Mvt I, Sections 6A-7A,” sound more like the Zooid recording of “In for a Penny, In for a Pound,” which won Threadgill his Pulitzer.

The Other One by Henry ThreadgillStill, there’s a sense of that language being developed on the new album, particularly in the music for strings, which is featured during much of “Movement II.” “I’ve been able to expand the language,” Threadgill said. “I have a whole ’nother freedom now, where I’m moving.”

The Other One by Henry ThreadgillHe then leaped from his seat, seeking a piece of paper from the shop’s employees. On the scrap, he began to diagram some of the modernist composer Edgard Varèse’s ideas about flipping musical intervals — an approach he also describes toward the end of “Easily Slip” — and showed how he was building on Varèse’s example in “The Other One.”After Threadgill filled up the paper with sequences of intervals and melodic phrases — the latter built from a pattern, like Morse Code, of long and short phrases — he moved to toss his notes in the trash.I stopped him. Preserving Threadgill’s working methods is no small matter. Throughout “Easily Slip,” there are tantalizing references to recordings of vintage orchestral performances that have yet to be made available to the public. Some important collaborations, such as concerts with Cecil Taylor, ‌have not been preserved on fixed media at all.Threadgill is thinking about fixing some of these problems. One orchestral recording in his possession may eventually see the light of day on a website, currently under construction, called Baker’s Dozen, a portal that he also plans to offer to other artists who have valuable unreleased tapes in their possession. (He mentioned the pioneering Minimalist Terry Riley as someone who might wind up providing material for the site.)“The Other One” is a majestic addition to Threadgill’s discography, but its film version deserves a wider airing, too. It captures his sense of humor, which tended to emerge during this show whenever he was discussing photographs that he took of possessions abandoned in New York City streets early in the pandemic. He is currently sending the documentary to various festivals, he said, “to see what kind of credits we can pick up.”Other projects in the works, as ever, seem bound to have an unconventional slant. Threadgill said that he has been impressed by the strides that collaborators and acquaintances like Anthony Davis and Terence Blanchard have had in mainstream opera, a world he says isn’t really for him.Instead, Threadgill is planning what he called a “corrupted oratorio,” featuring two choirs: “a traditional choir and a gospel choir,” plus piano and organ, and other instruments as it develops. “I don’t like preconceived forms, you know?” he said. “I like to create new forms.” More

Our photographer followed the maestro when he came to town to conduct Mahler’s Ninth — his first time leading the New York Philharmonic since being named its next music director.The violins were tuning, the woodwinds warming up and the trumpets blaring bits of Mahler. Then the musicians of the New York Philharmonic began to whistle and cheer.Gustavo Dudamel, one of the world’s biggest conducting stars, strode onto the stage this month for his first rehearsal with the Philharmonic since being named the ensemble’s next music director. On the program was Mahler’s epic Ninth Symphony.“I will have the opportunity in the next few days to hug everybody,” he told the musicians, smiling and pumping his fist. “I’m very honored to become part of the family.”As it happened, the orchestra’s new hall, the recently renovated David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, was occupied that day, so Dudamel’s first rehearsal took place at its old home, Carnegie Hall. Dudamel said he felt a connection to Mahler, who conducted the Philharmonic at Carnegie when he was its music director from 1909 to 1911.At his first rehearsal, in Carnegie Hall, Dudamel offered a mantra for his tenure: “We will have a lot of fun.”James Estrin/The New York TimesWhile the orchestra rehearsed Mahler, Dudamel rushed to the center of David Geffen Hall to briefly assess the acoustics.Dudamel, one of the world’s biggest conducting stars, is known for his bouncy curls and fiery baton.The violinist Ellen dePasquale warmed up backstage before a rehearsal of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, one of the repertory’s most sweeping and profound works.“This was Mahler’s orchestra,” he said, noting Mahler’s ties to New York when he wrote it. “Even if they are not the same musicians, they have that heritage of Mahler.”While Dudamel does not take the podium in New York until 2026, his five days with the Philharmonic this month, for rehearsals and performances of the Mahler, were an unofficial start. They came at a moment of transition for him in more ways then one: a week later he would announce that he was resigning as music director of the Paris Opera. But New York felt like a new beginning, and as he got to know the orchestra and the city, he offered a mantra for his tenure: “We will have a lot of fun.”Dudamel took a pause backstage before going to meet with percussionists during a break in rehearsal.“I’m very honored to become part of the family,” Dudamel told the Philharmonic’s players.Dudamel grabbed a sip of coffee in his dressing room during a break in rehearsal.Dudamel examined a Mahler score that once belonged to Leonard Bernstein, a predecessor. He said he felt a connection to Mahler, who led the Philharmonic from 1909 to 1911. “Even if they are not the same musicians,” he said, “they have that heritage of Mahler.”Judith LeClair, the Philharmonic’s principal bassoon, embraced Dudamel after a rehearsal. He was greeted as a rock star by the orchestra, with musicians lining up for selfies and hugs.There were hours of intense rehearsals, during which Dudamel urged the players to embrace Mahler’s operatic impulses and his varied style.There were Champagne toasts and rites of passage. In his dressing room Dudamel examined a Mahler score that once belonged to Leonard Bernstein, a predecessor and noted Mahlerian. There were hours of intense rehearsals, during which Dudamel urged the players to embrace Mahler’s operatic impulses and his varied style.“It’s not bipolar, it’s tripolar,” he said of one passage. “This is Freud. A new character — a new spectrum of humanity.”When Dudamel and the orchestra got back to Geffen Hall for the final rehearsals and performances, there were some surprises.After a spectral whirring sound surfaced during an open rehearsal, he turned to the audience. “Maybe it’s Mahler,” he said.Dudamel spoke backstage with members of the Philharmonic’s artistic team about the timing of a rehearsal break. A few seconds before walking onstage for his first concert at the newly renovated Geffen Hall, Dudamel adjusted his tie.The Philharmonic was warmly received at its performances with Dudamel. On the first night, the ensemble got a seven-minute standing ovation.Dudamel’s appearances were highly anticipated by music fans eager to catch a glimpse of the Philharmonic’s next music director. All three concerts sold out.Dudamel abstained from solo bows, gesturing instead to highlight the contributions of the members of the orchestra.Dudamel in his dressing room. “To arrive here, to achieve this connection with you, is for me a prize of life,” he told musicians at a reception. “We will develop this love, this connection.”Throughout his visit, Dudamel was greeted as a rock star, with musicians lining up for selfies and hugs.“You’re part of my family,” Cynthia Phelps, the principal violist, told him at a reception. “Welcome.”Dudamel thanked the musicians, saying he never imagined he would one day lead one of the world’s top orchestras.“To arrive here, to achieve this connection with you, is for me a prize of life,” he said. “We will develop this love, this connection.”At the opening concert, Dudamel was nervous. As is his custom, he conducted the symphony, one of the repertory’s most sweeping and profound works, from memory. At the end of the piece, Dudamel abstained from solo bows, gesturing instead to highlight the contributions of the members of the orchestra.Backstage, an aide handed Dudamel a glass of scotch.“My God,” he said. “What a journey.”Dudamel with his longtime friend and mentor, Deborah Borda, the president and chief executive of the New York Philharmonic, who lured him east from Los Angeles. More

The pop megastar’s first of three shows at MetLife Stadium featured an appearance from the rising rapper Ice Spice, a fan-favorite song and loads of sequins.On Friday afternoon, a seemingly endless parade of Taylor Swift fans wearing flowery dresses, sparkly cowboy boots, sequined T-shirts and handmade friendship bracelets made their way to East Rutherford, N.J., turning the vast asphalt parking lot at MetLife Stadium into a pop-up performance space, a fashion runway and a meeting ground for friends, old and new.Two months and 25 shows after the pop megastar’s career-spanning Eras Tour began, the show arrived in the New York area for three weekend dates — her first concerts near (but not quite in) her adopted hometown in five years.“I really, really missed you!” Swift told the sold-out crowd of more than 72,000 people.And they had missed her.Fans in the parking lot of the stadium came with balloons.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesFans dressed up as Swift in different eras, wearing colorful and sparkly outfits.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesMelanie Murrat, an enterprising Swift devotee, entertained those gathered in the parking lot.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesOne young woman announced that she was crying tears of joy as she strode down a tunnel leading to the parking lot. Two fans with tickets to Saturday’s concert who had traveled from Costa Rica came hoping to see Swift on Friday as well. A woman in an “I ❤️ T.S.” shirt refused an interview request, admitting that she teaches at a public school and was not supposed to be at the stadium on a Friday afternoon.Even getting into the parking lot required dedication — and a potentially pricey ticket.Six months after ‌a Ticketmaster presale filled with snags, a single seat at the show on Friday was available on the secondary market for no less than $1,000. The astronomical costs led Swift’s loyal fans, known as Swifties, to band together to help each other find tickets at fair prices.Charlie Tokieda, 39, of Brooklyn, got face-value tickets to Friday’s show by waiting online during the presale, and he bought another pair of tickets on the secondary market to a show in Denver to celebrate his birthday in July.“We did get a great deal, and that great deal could have bought a pretty nice used car,” he said.On Friday afternoon, security guards in orange shirts stood near the gates that formed a perimeter around the parking lot and demanded to see proof of admission before stepping aside. It was part of an effort to crack down on “Taylor-gating,” — hanging out in the lot and listening to the concert without a ticket — which MetLife Stadium said would not be allowed.While the mood outside the stadium was celebratory, a host of ticketless fans camped out, hoping for a chance to see the show.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesMaria Naeem, 32, who arrived via Uber around 9:30 a.m. and slipped into the parking lot unnoticed, was among the smattering of fans and chaperones who remained outside as Swift was preparing to go onstage. Naeem, a doctor, had asked two colleagues to cover her shift and driven from Virginia in hopes of buying a ticket at will call.“They’re not selling, and everything online is very expensive,” she said, disappointed.Many of Swift’s most dedicated followers dressed in D.I.Y. costumes, resembling the singer during different moments of her career. One fan draped herself in a pink-and-white “Taylor Swift 2024” flag. Others sported skirts that featured snakes, a reference to Swift’s 2017 album, “Reputation.”Robert Pszybylski, 19, of Long Island, wore a flowery shirt inspired by Swift’s 2021 Grammys dress, more or less custom-made for the concert.Though Swift didn’t take the stage until close to 8 p.m., the scene in the parking lot was bustling most of the afternoon.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesFans made and traded friendship bracelets.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesSwifties admired their newly procured merchandise.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times“I kept Googling ‘3-D embroidered floral fabric,’” he said. “I ordered off Etsy from China. It took a month to get here.”Even those who were not fortunate enough get tickets found other ways to take part in Taylor Mania.For months, fans with and without tickets have been obsessed with procuring concert merchandise, sometimes camping out overnight to get first dibs on the most coveted items. Perhaps in anticipation of a mad rush to vendors, MetLife Stadium’s flagship store began dispensing merch a full day early.But those efforts did little to shorten the lines on Friday, when, in addition to a prized blue crew neck sweatshirt, fans were hoping to take home a new special edition “Midnights” CD (yes, a CD!) that included a remix of the ‌song “Karma,” featuring the up-and-coming Bronx rapper Ice Spice.Fans in the parking lot enthusiastically sang along as though they were inside the show.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesNear the end of the show, Swift premiered the remix’s video starring Ice Spice, announcing that while in the studio, she “not only fell in love with her, but just decided she’s the entire future.” The rapper later joined Swift onstage to debut the remix and close the show. Cue a fresh round of frenzied screaming.Though she has played about 40 of the same tracks during each three-hour-plus set, Swift has also unveiled a handful of “surprise songs” to keep delighted fans on their toes.On Friday, she invited her frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff to perform “Getaway Car,” a fan favorite from “Reputation,” then took a seat at a piano for “Maroon” from “Midnights,” the most recent of the four albums she has released since her last tour.The LP, she said, was about “nights throughout my life,” “things that kept me up” and “memories you keep going back to.”“Maroon,” she said, was about a memory from — you guessed it:And I lost youThe one I was dancin’ withIn New York, no shoesLooked up at the sky and it was maroonFans who had spent the show in the parking lot at the end of a long night.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times More

In concerts and on dozens of recordings, she applied a delicate touch that critics said set her apart from other performers.Ingrid Haebler, a pianist who drew particular acclaim for her performances and recordings of the works of Mozart, impressing critics while still in her 20s with elegant interpretations that set her apart from other musicians of her day, died on May 14. She was believed to be 96.Decca Classics, which last year released “Ingrid Haebler: The Philips Legacy,” a boxed set of dozens of recordings she made for the Philips label, posted news of her death on Facebook. The Austrian newspaper The Salzburger Nachrichten reported her death, attributing the information to her circle of friends, but did not say where she died.Ms. Haebler was born in Vienna, probably on June 20, 1926 (some news reports said 1929). Her father was a baron. Her mother played piano and began teaching Ingrid when she was a young child; she gave her first public performance at 11. They lived in Poland when Ingrid was young but settled in Austria in the late 1930s.As a teenager, she wrote poetry and dabbled in composing. But at 19 she decided to focus fully on piano — “I had to kill a lot of my interests,” she told The Sydney Morning Herald of Australia in 1964. She trained at the Salzburg Mozarteum in Austria and in the early 1950s began earning accolades at European piano competitions. By 1954, recordings she made for Vox with the Pro Musica Symphony of Vienna were drawing notice in the United States.“Ingrid Haebler: The Philips Legacy,” a boxed set of dozens of recordings, was released last year by Decca Classics.“A delicate — but not finicky, to make the distinction — articulation of Mozart that is uncommon today is the way Ingrid Haebler plays the A major (K. 414) and B-flat major (K. 595) Piano Concertos,” Cyrus Durgin, a music critic for The Boston Globe, wrote in August 1954, reviewing one of those records. “You will always find people (including musicians) defending or attacking this manner, but it does meet Mozart’s requirement that his keyboard music ‘flow like oil and water.’”That same year she performed as a soloist in England with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Mozart was her calling card, but she proved an adept interpreter of other composers as well, as she did in 1956 when she played a program of Mozart, Haydn and Schubert at Wigmore Hall in London. She “captured and held spellbound her audience,” The Daily Telegraph of Britain wrote.By 1958, The Bristol Evening Post reported, her stature was such that, at the Bath Festival, she felt free to reject the Steinway that was provided to her during the practice session and sent the organizers scrambling to find another piano.At that festival, she further showed that there was more to her than Mozart. She played Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and impressed The Daily Telegraph of Britain. “Without ever invoking a spurious foresight of the Beethoven that was to come,” the newspaper wrote, “she placed the work in the 18th century, yet across the gulf that already separated him from Mozart.”Ms. Haebler in 1959. “The poise and simplicity of Ms. Haebler’s Mozart,” one critic wrote, “is a rare treat.”The New York TimesIn October 1959 she made her American debut in Minneapolis with the Minneapolis Symphony, playing the Mozart Piano Concerto in B-flat.“The acclaim of the audience brought the pianist back to the stage five times,” Ross Parmenter wrote in a review in The New York Times, “and the members of the orchestra joined in the applause.”Ms. Haebler, who was a baroness but did not use the title, was still impressing audiences with her Mozart interpretations in 1976, when, at Hunter College, she played her first New York recital, augmenting her program with works by Schubert and Debussy but shining as usual on the Mozart selections.“This was cloudless, untroubled Mozart,” Donal Henahan wrote in a review in The Times, “in line with the last century’s view of him as a miraculously blessed child.”Ms. Haebler continued to tour until early in this century. On her numerous recordings, many of them for Philips, she covered a range of composers, but again it was often the Mozart recordings that stood out. Reviewing her recording of Mozart sonatas in 1990 for The Kingston Whig-Standard of Ontario, the critic Richard Perry zeroed in on what made her refreshingly different.“In a concert world rife with pianists of dazzling technique who seemed forced by competition and cavernous concert halls to demonstrate their mettle at every turn,” he wrote, “the poise and simplicity of Ms. Haebler’s Mozart is a rare treat.”Information on Ms. Haebler’s survivors was not immediately available.Christopher F. Schuetze More

Thomas Guggeis was a young repetiteur at the Berlin State Opera five years ago when he was asked a career-changing question: Could he conduct “Salome”?He had worked with the singers, but this new production of Strauss’s opera was meant to be led by the veteran maestro Christoph von Dohnányi — until a dispute with the director led him to back out mere hours before the final dress rehearsal. So Guggeis went on in his place. And he was back in the pit on opening night.“This was a situation of a star is born,” said Bernd Loebe, the general manager of Frankfurt Opera, who saw Guggeis lead that performance.It wouldn’t be the last time Guggeis, now 29, stepped into a high-pressure situation. Earlier this season, as the State Opera’s Kapellmeister, or house conductor, he picked up rehearsals and two runs of a new “Ring” cycle after Daniel Barenboim withdrew because of illness. And on May 30, he will make his North American debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, leading a revival of Wagner’s “Der Fliegende Holländer,” taking over from Jaap van Zweden.Things are happening quickly — Guggeis starts as the general music director of the Frankfurt Opera this fall — but he is trying to maintain a steady development that some of his peers have abandoned in favor of peripatetic celebrity.“There was a question of how to go on,” he said in an interview at the State Opera here. “Do you jump on the moving train or do you stay on track? Together with my agent, I decided to keep calm. If an opportunity is meant to be, there will still be interest and possibility in two or three years.”APART FROM an uncle — the accomplished percussionist Edgar Guggeis — Guggeis grew up in a nonmusical family in Bavaria. His father was the director of a brewery, and his mother was a tax clerk. But he played instruments from a young age, and sang in choirs.Guggeis followed those interests to the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich, but not with single-minded focus. He studied conducting but, aware of the precarious life it promised, also picked up a degree in quantum physics.“I was really interested in the subject,” he said, “and I just wanted to have something on the safe side. You never know how it works out as a conductor. When I started, if you asked me, ‘Where do you see yourself in 10 years?’ I would say I don’t know. But I will have this other degree, and I can always go back to that.”Guggeis is trying to maintain a steady development. “There was a question of how to go on,” he said. “Do you jump on the moving train or do you stay on track? Together with my agent, I decided to keep calm.”Ava Pellor for The New York TimesNow, Guggeis might read about a discovery related to something he remembers studying in school. But his specialty was theoretical particle physics, which is impossible to follow on a part-time or casual basis. So he has stopped keeping up with the field.During his time in Munich, Guggeis was often at the Bavarian State Opera while it was under the music directorships of Kent Nagano and Kirill Petrenko. In between classes one day, he sat in on a rehearsal of Strauss’s “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” led by Petrenko. By the second act, he decided to skip school and stay. He was hooked, and saw nearly everything the house had to offer in what amounted to a parallel education. “To see those conductors,” he said, “was amazing, but also so formative.”Guggeis continued to study conducting in Milan, then returned to Germany to serve as a repetiteur in Berlin. He coached singers from the piano but almost never spoke with the house’s long-reigning maestro, Daniel Barenboim. “It was hard to get close to him,” Guggeis said, “because everyone wants something from him there.” But slowly, the two built a relationship in which Barenboim became increasingly approachable.For his part, Barenboim didn’t need much time at all. He recalled watching the young conductor lead a rehearsal and immediately thinking he was gifted.“You can see these things straight away with somebody,” Barenboim said. “And he was obviously a very natural conductor. He had a rare combination of easiness and comfortable responsibility. He moved his arms in a natural way, and was naturally in command. From the very beginning.”Their bond deepened. “It felt like family,” Guggeis said. “He was generous, supportive, kind and always there when I had questions about career.” They talked about music, art and philosophy, or gossiped about Pierre Boulez. Between those conversations and the rehearsals Guggeis would watch and later ask about, Barenboim became, he said, “the most influential mentor for me.”GUGGEIS BELONGS to a class of conductors — more common in Germany — that comes up through opera houses rather than concert halls, even if their careers eventually balance both. He said that the repertoire he learned as a repetiteur has stuck “deeply in my head and guts,” and that his time at the State Opera in Berlin, as well as in Stuttgart and Berlin as a Kapellmeister, has defined his approach to the podium, such as how to manage rehearsals and soloists or wrangle a large-scale work for orchestra and chorus.“You can never buy that experience,” he said, “no matter how talented you are.”He has also tried to test out famous pieces like Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony away from very public stages like the Philharmonie in Berlin or the Musikverein in Vienna. He has conducted the Beethoven, but in Italy, in a five-concert series with the Milan Symphony Orchestra, following advice he once heard attributed to Herbert von Karajan, that regardless of where you lead this work, the first 15 times won’t be good; so start early.Guggeis at the Met. In fall, he becomes general music director of the Frankfurt Opera.Ava Pellor for The New York TimesWhen Guggeis shares memories and insights like that, he sounds like a conductor looking back on a career rather than forward. His mix of confidence and self-awareness was part of what endeared him to Barenboim, who said: “He’s very talented, but he knows that he has a lot to learn. He has a great curiosity, and that will go until the end of his life.”Curiosity, but also the courage to take on classics by Wagner and Strauss in front of the boo-happy audience at the Berlin State Opera. (Reviews during his time as Kapellmeister have tended to be positive.) So, when he stepped into the pit for “Salome,” it was just another day on the job. He was supported by Dohnányi, who remains a mentor — and gave him most of his score library — and stunned Barenboim.“It was remarkable,” Barenboim said. “There was no ‘What shall we do now?’ His future was absolutely clear.”Loebe, Frankfurt Opera’s general manager, was similarly struck by this 24-year-old conductor he had never heard of before. “I wanted to know more,” he said. “So I saw him many more times, and we started to have many meetings.” Loebe was looking for a new music director, and Guggeis was “the only guy I wanted.”Frankfurt’s orchestra, Loebe added, was used to having two or three choices, but he insisted on Guggeis, who formed a quick bond with the musicians. During the pandemic, he led them in a streamed performance of Mozart’s “Requiem” — one of the few videos online of his conducting — that reveals his clear direction, level head and sense of shape. Then, in 2021, he was named as their new music director.Mozart is how Guggeis will begin his tenure next season, with a new production of “Le Nozze di Figaro” premiering on Oct. 1. In a demonstration of the range he hopes for there, he will also lead Ligeti’s “Le Grand Macabre,” Wagner’s “Tannhäuser,” Verdi’s “Don Carlo” and Strauss’s “Elektra,” in addition to concert programs.Guggeis’s inaugural season in Frankfurt took shape as he was wrapping up his time as Kapellmeister in Berlin. There, he was working with Barenboim on a new production of Wagner’s four-opera “Ring” that was unveiled all at once last October, an immense and virtually unheard-of undertaking for a repertory house. It was years in the making, but Barenboim’s health rapidly declined that summer, and the planned four cycles were split between Guggeis and Christian Thielemann.When his condition permitted, Barenboim shared his wisdom with Guggeis about, for example, which notoriously tricky passages in the operas’ 16 hours of music should be the focus of rehearsals. They still speak; Guggeis values his advice, seeing it as the equivalent of singers working with coaches long into their careers.Guggeis was also in constant contact with Thielemann, an experienced hand in Wagner. “We were working out problems together,” he said. “It was very interesting. But then he would also say things like not to worry about ‘Ride of the Valkyries,’ because it’s self-going, it will become loud by itself. All this was really fantastic for me.”Earlier this month, Guggeis said goodbye to Berlin, for now; his tenure as Kapellmeister ends this season. He led two concerts with the Staatskapelle, the opera house’s storied orchestra, and was on a plane to New York for “Holländer” rehearsals the next day.“The little bird is now flying from its nest,” he said in an interview at the Met. “I’m conducting professionally since five years, more or less. I was with this fabulous orchestra and now I’m here working at this tremendous place. To be here is something I never would have expected, and couldn’t ever wish for.” More