Celebrating her first season with the Chicago Sinfonietta as the new music director Mei-Ann Chen sat down with Chicago Classical Music to chat about her first season, goals with the organization and favorite things in Chicago.

Your conducting style is so intensely energetic and vibrant as compared to other conductors I’ve seen. Where does all that energy come from? How did you develop such a unique style?
It’s a combination of all my experiences. I worked with the oldest youth orchestra in the country, the Portland Youth Orchestra.  The most precious thing that I took away from that experience was that those children make music from the heart. They don’t know hardship yet and make music in the purest form: they simply make music because they love it.  The energy that they had has remained with me and their love for music reminds me why I wanted to be a musician to start.

I have an embarrassing admission. This weekend while I was watching the television, I saw an interesting commercial with a completely gorgeous song in it. I could have sworn up and down that the song was the theme from Alan Menken’s score for Beauty and the Beast.

Well, I was wrong.  It wasn’t Disney but Camille Saint-Saëns’ the Aquarium movement from Carnival of the Animals.  Talk about feeling sheepish.

So in addition to this little incident and the Oscar nominations on Tuesday, I was thinking about film scores and classical music, and how the two inform each other. 

How many times have you heard music at the movies and couldn’t help but think it was Holst and not Horner who’d written the score?  And how frequently have you seen outstanding orchestras and performers lending their talents to film scores?

This year’s viral holiday video seems to be the Fed-Ex delivery guy tosses a computer monitor over a fence.  Well, no offense to Fed-Ex, I think I have a better one.

It’s not often that classical music is overly popular on You Tube (leave that to Gaga and Bieber), let alone a holiday classical music video.  A few years ago there was the flash mob in the cafeteria singing the Halleluiah chorus from Handel's Messiah, and the Copenhagen Philharmonic at the train station but that was about as close to classical viral video as I remember.

Gift Giving: Classical music for the non-listener

Though I may really enjoy classical music, new classical recordings are not typically at the top of the wish list for many people.  During the holidays, I like being creative with my gift giving and offer something that is maybe a new discovery, or an old forgotten favorite, and classical music is a perfect opportunity to expand someone’s musical horizons.  I selected a few of this year’s releases that make the best stocking stuffers for the friends who don’t listen to the genre.    

The Goat Rodeo Sessions; Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Stuart Duncan and Chris Thile (Sony Masterworks)
Though it’s not really “classical” as many listeners would have it, The Goat Rodeo Sessions are a lot of fun to hear, and will perk up any ears to each of these world-class artists.

Mediterraneo; Milos Karadalic (Deutsche Grammophon)

Happy Thanksgiving Chicago Classical Music Readers!

I hope you all have a lovely holiday today filled with friends and family, good food, and plenty of happiness in your home and heart.

I love Thanksgiving, not just for the turkey, Macy’s parade, and also getting to see my family, but because I feel like it’s my own personal kick-off to Christmas: decorating my home, ice skating (done very poorly of course), and as much Christmas music as I can pack into one month. 

I have one very strict rule during the holidays though: no Christmas music until Thanksgiving. The primary rationale for this is that once I do cross over into Christmas music territory, that’s all I’ll listen to day in and day out.