Pitch

Professor Mcclure is much more than a Music teacher here at UNE. She conducts the Odeon Orchestra in Rockport, Maine currently but has conducted all over the United States in many different orchestras. She worked for the Oakland Opera Theater in the San Franciso Bay area that produces music for movies and tv shows that features some well-known composers. She has toured the U.S, Canada, and Mexico with the Club Foot orchestra that also does scores for movies and tv. She is passionate about music and her personality is very apparent in class. Doing a profile on her would be interesting as she is a professor in which teaching seems to be very much her secondary job. Uncovering more about her past is a topic of interest for the people at UNE who only get a glimpse of her as she is an adjunct professor here. Conductors are also not as mainstream as most artists in music these days and which makes covering a conductor a piece of interest. 

Questions

Where did the passion for music come from?

How did you get into conducting orchestras?

What kinds of feelings arise from conducting?

Tell me about Conducting in the Oakland Opera Theater? What was it like and how did working for them come to be? 

How did you get into teaching music?

What’s a side of you not shown from teaching and conducting?

Early Draft

The family took music seriously, considers herself lucky. Parents felt that whatever they were attracted to they would enable. Music was it for her. Played flute since 5. Grew up playing piano. Played flute in the middle school band. 

“I was drawn to orchestral music.” Left flume to play bassoon in eight grade. Played that all through hs. Started playing youth Symphonia in 10th grade and “my world just exploded with these pieces, these pieces of music they just drew me in.” Fell in love with the depth and quality of orchestral music. She was in her element, thought it was fabulous. Becoming a conductor was the natural thing to do for her. Bassoon wasn’t enough, she wanted to get into the bigger picture of music. Decided by senior year of hs she wanted to be a conductor. 

“I’m really lucky, I see many people, many people in my family who didn’t have that. That’s fine

Got a degree in piano in undergrad. I got a bachelor of arts in music, went to graduate school for conducting. M.M, D.M.A., Conducting, Peabody Conservatory of Music, B.A., Piano, Macalester College)

“Conducting is a musical professor that makes no sound, any sound that I get is generated from other people.” she translated music through gestures. It’s a pure emotional idea. So let’s say it’s a fairly joyous piece of music, there’s an exuberance that I might display to try to get them to feel that way so that they can create this music that has that emotional content. 

Where she is presently

How she got here.

History with conducting.

Early life.

Where she wants to go from here.

Workshop Draft

Dr. Deirde McClure has earned her self confidence through a life full of trials and triumphs. 

“The technique of what I do is very very good. I can come up with a musical idea and it comes out in my hand and that came from tremendous hard work and a lot of failures.”

Dr. Deirde McClure’s whole life has been immersed in her passion for music. She’s an accomplished and well-respected conductor with a deep profound love for what she does. She lives an artist’s life, forgoing the benefits of a full-time job because her work keeps her afloat, and keeps her happy. 

Currently, Dr. McClure splits her time as a music teacher at the University of New England, being a conductor for the Odeon Orchestras up in Rockport Maine and First Parish Choir in Portland, where she and her family reside. In her 11th year at UNE, she was brought in informally after being asked to set up a basic music program for the school. She teaches Music Appreciation which dives into a broad overview of contemporary music history and Music in Film and Animation. Finding herself as a music teacher makes sense when looking at her life from the perspective of a treble clef (the note at the beginning of written music). 

Dr. McClure found herself growing up in a household that encouraged exploration and supported interest. Her parents took music seriously and felt that the would enable their kids to focus on whatever grew an interest for. For Dr. McClure, it was and always would be music. At five she picked up the flute and slowly got into playing piano in the following years. Playing flute in her first middle school band the dots started to connect as orchestral music became a part of her life regularly. There was a beautiful complexity to it that drew her in and has never let go. In eighth grade, she left the flute for the bassoon. 

She played all through high school. But in 10th grade, she joined a youth symphony and her “world just exploded with these pieces.” She found herself in love with the beautiful vibrations composed in a time long before hers. The depth and quality of them seeped into her very being and the orchestral music became her element. By senior year she knew from then on that she wanted to be a conductor because it seemed the only natural thing to do. Just playing the Basson wasn’t going to be enough as the bigger picture wrapped itself around her.

She went on to receive a B.A., in Piano at Macalester College and an M.M, D.M.A., Conducting, Peabody Conservatory of Music, stating that, In “graduate school, there was a tremendous amount of study and honing my craft. It was hard. I had a teacher that could be cruel but strong but it made me a fabulous conductor.”Before conducting for the Odeon Orchestras, she has employed with many different opera companies, orchestras, and chamber ensembles. From 2001- 2014 she was the Musical Director and Conductor for the Oakland Opera Theater in the San Francisco bar area. She has also toured the United States, Mexico, and Canada with the Club Foot Orchestra, which performs contemporary music for silent film and contemporary animation. 

“Conducting is a musical professor that makes no sound, any sound that I get is generated from other people,” she described. Conducting orchestras and operas have been the majority of her adult life. When asked about it, her insight was fueled with years of soaking in all the details, sounds, and joy of living a life driven by the happiness of the process. As a conductor, she translates music through gestures explaining that conducting is as much emotion as it is a craft. “So let’s say it’s a fairly joyous piece of music, there’s an exuberance that I might display to try to get them to feel that way so that they can create this music that has that emotional content.”

She notes one example of the importance of having that the emotional connection between the music, the conductor, and the artist. During her time with the Oakland Opera Theater, there was a specific show in which the venue put her behind the stage and not in front of her singers. This broke that crucial connection because she could not see her singers. The singer was able to view Dr. McClure through a live-streamed tv in eyesight but because she couldn’t conduct in person, it was a disaster. “To be queueing into a camera instead of a person’s face [doesn’t work]. That relationship that I have with a singer, I look at the singers’ eyes and face and we go onto the next thing together. If I can’t see them, there’s no connection.”

Reflecting on her time conducting, “I’ve been lucky in much of the work that I do is work that is written by really fabulous composers. I get to spend my time with Beethoven, with Bach, and with Charchofsky. They are such great artists. You can tell when your working with the work of a great artist. The passion and structure of a piece of music.”

Dr. McClure looks forward to integrating more of her opera background into her current work as she continues to find meaning and passion in every day she gets to thrive in her element “This is already happening with my social justice chorus concerts, where staging, dance, and music work together to envelop an audience in a transportive experience. That’s exciting to me! I hope to continue conducting silent films too. That’s really fun and the music is great.” 

Revised Draft

A Symphony at her Fingertips

Dr. Deirdre McClure has earned her self-confidence through a life fueled by a passion for music and a deep understanding of her craft. 

“The technique of what I do is very good. I can come up with a musical idea and it comes out in my hand and that came from tremendous hard work and a lot of failures.”  

McClure is an accomplished and well-respected conductor with a deep profound love for what she does. She lives an artist’s life, stating that “being in the arts and earning a living as a musician is tough. I have three half-time jobs, no retirement or benefits or health insurance or job security.” Currently, McClure splits her time as a music teacher at the University of New England, being a conductor for the Odeon Orchestras up in Rockport, Maine, and Sea Change Chorale in Portland, Maine, where she and her family reside.

“How do I stay buoyant? I love my work. It makes me happy to make music, and I hope I am making a difference in the lives of the people I interact with. It is meaningful beyond words, but hard.” In her 11th year at UNE, she teaches Music Appreciation and Music in Film and Animation spawned from her time touring the United States, Mexico, and Canada with the Club Foot Orchestra, which performs contemporary music for silent film and contemporary animation. When she’s not in the classroom, she finds herself immersed in her element, conducting. 

McClure smiles when she talks about conducting and takes her time searching for the right words to explain her passion, saying, “I’ve been lucky in much of the work that I do is work that is written by really fabulous composers. I get to spend my time with Beethoven, with Bach, and with Charchofsky. They are such great artists. You can tell when your working with the work of a great artist. The passion and structure of a piece of music, they really make a difference.”

McClure found herself growing up in a household that encouraged exploration and supported interest, explaining, “My parents felt that whatever we were attracted too, they would enable.” For McClure, “Music really got me.”

At five she picked up the flutophone and slowly got into playing piano in the following years. Playing flute in her first middle school band, the dots started to connect as orchestral music became a part of her life regularly. “I was drawn to orchestral music,” she said. In eighth grade, she left the flutophone for the bassoon. 

She played all through high school. But in 10th grade, she joined a youth symphony and her “world just exploded with these [orchestral] pieces.” There, her passion for orchestral music took off. “Orchestral music and the depth and quality of that stuff was just fabulous; I was in my element.”

By senior year she knew from then on that she wanted to be a conductor because it seemed the only natural thing to do. Just playing the Bassoon wasn’t going to be enough as the bigger picture wrapped itself around her. 

She received a B.A., in Piano at Macalester College and an M.M, D.M.A., in Conducting at Peabody Conservatory of Music, stating that, “In graduate school, there was a tremendous amount of study and honing my craft. It was hard. I had a teacher that could be cruel but strong, and it made me a fabulous conductor.” 

“Conducting is a musical profession that makes no sound, any sound that I get is generated from other people,” she described. As a conductor, she translates music through gestures explaining that conducting is as much emotion as it is a craft. “Emotional conversation is a lot of my world, so the feelings I have are like every feeling you could have, if it’s a gloomy piece of music, well that’s the feeling,” she says. 

She further explains the complexity to conducting, “So let’s say it’s a fairly joyous piece of music, there’s an exuberance that I might display to try to get them to feel that way so that they can create this music that has that emotional content.” Conducting is all about the harmonious connection between the music, the conductor, and the artist.

She notes one example of the importance of having that emotional connection. During her time as Musical Director and Conductor for the Oakland Opera Theater in the San Francisco Bay area from 2001-2014, they performed an opera by Igor Stravinsky called Rake’s Progress, at the Oakland Metro Opera house. For this production, the director placed the orchestra behind the stage, hindering her ability to conduct in the eyesight of her singers which broke that crucial connection. 

The singers were only able to view Dr. McClure through a live-streamed tv on display, but because she couldn’t conduct in person, it felt like a disaster. “To be cueing into a camera instead of a person’s face [doesn’t work]. That relationship that I have with a singer, I look at the singers’ eyes and face and we go onto the next thing together. If I can’t see them, there’s no connection.”

There are always two sides to that connection, and violinist Joyce Hillman of the Odeon Orchestra reciprocated the importance of that connection that McClure makes. “In my opinion, one of Dr. McClure’s most important requisites is that we watch her. Literally, we must have our eyes on her. A conductor of her caliber can speak volumes with a mere gesture or a look, and if our eyes are not on her to see this, then we miss crucial information. Her whole entire body can tell us how to play if we just watch.”

Dr. McClure looks forward to integrating more of her opera background into her current work as she continues to find meaning and passion in every day she gets to thrive in her element “This [integration] is already happening with my social justice chorus concerts, where staging, dance, and music work together to envelop an audience in a transportive experience. That’s exciting to me! I hope to continue conducting silent films too. That’s really fun and the music is great.” 

WorkShop Experience

What I need to work on are a few key points. 

1. First I need to add in the information from the other people I have interviewed to have people understand more angles of Dr. Mcclure. 
2. I need to revamp my lead a little and alongside that bring some more relevant and exciting information from the bottle to the top to get people more interested in reading more.
3. I need to organize my piece a little less chronologically. 
4. I need to develop my theme some more which is the focus on her deep emotional connection to music. 
5. I need to make sure that my lead doesn’t give off the wrong impression.

I think overall I need to break up some of my paragraphs, add some details, make others a bit more concise and really drive my theme into the article. Find a way to bring out her voice more and show her deep connection rather than tell it.  

I think a lot of what I need to do is bring more current information to the top and let that drag person in. Then figure out where I will add my extra information from the players in her orchestra that I have interviewed. 

The other part I would add, is that I miss being in person for these workshops. The online feedback is good but it’s harder to get a good feel of the impact I made with the article without hearing it in other people’s voices. I have solid concrete ways of making the article better but without the emphasis on what people really enjoyed and needs work on. 

Editorial Team Reflection

The workshopping for this project was different in lot of ways due to being remote, but I didn’t feel that the quality of the feedback was any lesser than when in class. Throughout the four groups, it was really interesting to see the progress that has been made since our first story. I found that everyone’s first draft needed less overall revising than the feature story. Also, everyone seemed to be able to hone their advice better and it a more concise way. There was no holding back on specifics when it came to what needed improvement. The area’s in which I saw the most overall comments were on the leads, the people interviewed, and paragraph length. For leads, it was clear that people learned from their first draft and some tried interesting angles with their lead and the editorial team certainly gave our input on them. For some, there was overwhelmingly positive feedback on how the lead was crafted, for others, some work needed to be done to tie the focus and the lead together. There were particularly strong opinions on Harry’s lead because it was out of the box and tried something new. For some, it worked great, for others, they enjoyed it but suggested a concise version of it would work better. One area that many people also seemed to agree on was that an article is better when you have different people interviewed. It makes the articles more engaging and providing different perspectives always makes the content of an article more desirable. The last common theme of the editorial team was on paragraph length. Almost every single feedback group had some kind of comment about the length of the paragraphs and I thought that was great that we paid attention to that. It’s an interesting shift going from longer form paragraphs in academic writing to short and more easily digestible writing in article form. I think that overall we learned to make that distinction. 

Profile Story Reflection

This story was a pretty big deal to write for me. Writing profiles is a big part of what I aspire to write about in the future with my career. With that in mind, I wanted to give this my all and produce an article that I could be proud of.  I did that. Choosing my subject was actually the easy part, I knew Dr. McClure had an interesting story to tell based on my time with her in Music Appreciated she seemed like a great person to interview. I had a good background of research on her so my questions for her came pretty easily to me. Her life is heavily involved in conducting so I wanted to unpack that for the world. 

The interview went great because I had memorized the important question I knew I wanted to get to but the interview turned into a conversation really naturally, so extracting the information was simply a product of the conversation. I just made sure to go back and hit on some of my main questions when there was a break in the conversations. I also notice that some of the best quotes I got were based on questions that I asked in the spur of the moment based on an interesting point she had made. 

With the interview recorded, I listened back through and actually noticed that there were two important details I wanted to include in the article, being: a perspective from someone in her orchestra and what she thought the future looked like for her. I emailed back and forth with her for that information. One key thing I learned from everything up to that point was that it’s a no unless you ask.  Another part of that is it’s important to build a rapport with the person you are interviewing, in this case, I feel I have a good student/ professor relationship with Dr. McClure this process never felt like it was “work” because I was genuinely interested in learning more about her life, which is why I find that I love writing profiles. I love learning about people with interesting lives and fascinating stories to tell, especially when they are passionate about what they do. 

My first draft and my revised draft look very different and that’s because in the first one I do a lot of telling about her life from my voice, even though I didn’t insert myself into the article at all. Which is an angle that I think will depend on how future interviews go. Going forward, I feel like it’s good to insert myself into the article if there is a story within the interview, like how I did when I interviewed Abdul Malik in Tangier. For this article, I felt since she had so many good quotes, and little mannerisms, that I should try to put the article in as much of her own voice as I could guide the reader along her telling the story of her life. Do I feel that I quoted her too much? Potentially, but that’s where I’m curious to receive feedback.  

Overall, I loved doing this project, and I look forward to writing more profile pieces. 1. Because I love the challenge of writing about other people and having my writing accurately portray them and 2. I love getting to know people.