Leonard Slatkin, the world-famous music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, was recently named the Arthur R. Metz Foundation Conductor at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Though he won't begin his involvement at the school until 2007-2008, he already has a strong sense of his teaching ‘style' and how he plans to work with the school's aspiring young conductors.

Slatkin will spend several weeks a year at the Jacobs School , during which he will conduct student orchestras and work intensively with instrumental conducting and composition students. He says he's looking at this new experience as a “different way to approach how one teaches and learns at a university level.” His focus for the past seven to eight years has been on transitioning conductors to a professional environment, he explains, and he has already begun to outline ideas for how to prepare Jacobs School student conductors for life after graduation.

Slatkin says communication is central to that preparation, and being a good communicator means listening and responding appropriately to others. Conducting is “about what you can't communicate with your hands and eyes and how you get your ideas across in a clear and efficient way,” he says.

“A conductor needs to be able to understand what everyone can do,” he continues. “Let's say it's an orchestra of 80 musicians. Chances are that the people who are playing in the orchestra will be more proficient in what they do than the conductor. A young conductor needs to show a degree of patience and to demonstrate listening skills. A lot of my job as a teacher is to teach young -- or any -- conductors to really pay attention to what's going on and to react to that.”

Slatkin is fully aware, though, that patience doesn't always come naturally to young conductors. Too many of them are overly concerned with “making it quickly,” he says, adding that “conducting is something that comes later. It's a matter of watching other people, of listening, of learning, because we don't have the opportunity to practice like instrumentalists.”

Slatkin, who studied under legendary conductors Jean Morel (“a taskmaster really focused on technique”) and Walter Susskind (“someone very focused on philosophy and matters of day-to-day existence”), insists that it's not his job to teach young conductors how to conduct. Instead, he hopes to identify and correct weaknesses in his students, while encouraging them to find and elicit their individual style.

The latter, he admits, is no easy task. While today's young conductors are technically more proficient than the musicians he grew up with, they “tend to focus too much on technique,” he explains. “There's almost a competition mentality as opposed to operating on instinct. I want to hear what goes on beneath the notes.

“I'm looking for a certain communication level in my students and the ability to communicate what they believe.”

It's clear Slatkin sees great potential in the students with whom he will work at IU and who will carry the baton for instrumental conducting into the future.

“For the last two summers, I came [to IU] for the Summer Music Festival. I saw an intensity and commitment to music that you don't see much,” he says. “ Indiana University is truly focused on the young people, and I saw a real seriousness of purpose to grow in an intense musical environment. The young people there clearly know they are there for the purpose of learning.”

Slatkin says he looks forward to learning more himself. Just as he tells his students, he says, “It's all about listening and making adjustments.”