The Laureano Legacy

“The level of music is a testament to the quality of kids they have in the program, and how the kids respond to them is a testament to their skill as teachers, which is a big part of it,” says Lileks. “If Manny and Claudette were brutal taskmasters who stood up there and yelled and cracked a whip, it would be one thing. But they’re not—they demand a high degree of discipline and musicianship, but the kids love them for it.”

Claudette Laureano is a wisp of a woman, barely five feet tall, but her intensity in rehearsals gives her a much larger presence on the conductor’s podium. From her years of teaching middle-school students at Breck, she has also mastered a way of simultaneously criticizing and cajoling kids to get the results she wants. Once, during a rehearsal of the Star Wars theme, “The Phantom Menace,” she stopped the Repertory orchestra and shouted, “People! The piece is called ‘The Phantom Menace,’ but I can tell you that the phantom does not feel at all menaced right now; in fact, he is quite comfortable!” During another rehearsal, she cracked, “How would Jack Bauer play this!”

“These things just come out of my mouth and then they’re gone,” Claudette says of her humorous conducting-isms. “I just try to reach into their heads to find what they love and use that to get them to love the music.” Her secret to great teaching is simple, she says: “You can’t fake passion—and the kids know that.”

“Claudette is very blunt,” says Claudina Yang, a cellist in the Repertory orchestra. “If we suck, she’ll say so. But by the same token, if we sound good and she compliments us, we know she means it because she doesn’t give compliments out lightly.”

Manny—whom Lileks calls the “coolest cat around”—has an equally effective bag of tricks up his sleeve. “My approach has always been to humanize the music,” Manny explains. “For example, a couple of years ago, at our annual retreat, we were working on the slow movement from Scheherazade, and their phrasing was flat. I said, ‘Do you know what the problem is here? Do you know why you’re not phrasing this well? It’s because you’re from a generation that doesn’t dance together. You have to learn how to move to the music.’ Then I took them outside and taught them all how to waltz.” Now, he says, “we have a little dance party every year.”

“Manny is funny and makes the music come alive for us,” says Max Lundgren, a second-year cellist in Laureano’s Symphony orchestra. “He tells us stories—he even acts them out sometimes. He’s very good at explaining what he wants, and he might get frustrated with us sometimes, but I’ve never seen him get angry.”

(A note of solace for parents who might be feeling a bit inadequate after reading about two people who seem to have figured out how to get teenagers to cooperate: When asked if the same tactics that work so well in MYS work on their own kids, ages seventeen and twelve, Claudette confesses: “No. They think we know nothing.”)

Manny and Claudette Laureano clearly know something about motivating kids, however, often by taking on musical challenges that would be considered formidable for many college and professional orchestras. This year, MYS is celebrating two anniversaries—its thirty-fifth year in existence and the twentieth anniversary of the Laureanos’ reign—and has put together a season full of special moments to commemorate the milestones. In November, the Symphony performed with Cuban pianist Nachito Herrera, and later this year, both the Symphony and Repertory orchestras will perform pieces commissioned for them by composers Stephen Paulus, Shelley Hanson, and MYS alumnus Edward Niedermaier.

All of these pieces will have at least one thing in common: They will be played by a group of students gifted with both great talent and amazing teachers. Indeed, one of the reasons the Strib’s James Lileks keeps emceeing MYS concerts even though he has no kids of his own in the program is that he’s honored to be a part of it all: “Whenever I fear for the future of the republic and I watch these calm youths take their places onstage and bring the great music of Western civilization back to life, I think, ‘We’re going to be okay. ’ ”

Minnesota Youth Symphonies performs at Orchestra Hall on February 24 and May 4.