CCO’s Mischa Santora is At-Home on the Stage

He’s a musical traveler who has followed his talent and his passion where they have led him – around the world. Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra Musical Director Mischa Santora has lived in Switzerland, Hungary, New York, Philadelphia and Minneapolis. His home has, for the last two decades, been wherever his pursuit has taken him; his only permanent address has been the stage.

For now, and for a few months in each of the last eight years, Cincinnati has been one of his homes. Dividing his time between his apartment in Minneapolis, where he has served as an associate conductor for the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra, a vineyard he shares with his brother in Hungary and a carriage house overlooking the pool belonging to a Hyde Park family, he has guest conducted orchestras from Los Angeles to Budapest, New Zealand to Peru. And while his life may be transient, he is leaving a mark on Cincinnati’s arts scene.

“Cincinnati has a reputation around the world as a music community,” he says, lounging poolside. “I was excited to come here.”

Google Santora and you’ll find reviews of his conducting lauding his creativity, the way he brings something unexpected to every performance, whether with the CCO or as a guest conductor elsewhere, his reputation is that of a man with a particular take on performance. No willing to settle for stiff formality, he’s challenged musicians and audiences alike, staging operas with chamber orchestras, offering new takes on familiar pieces and doing his best to break down the wall between the stage and the audience. It is unusual in the world of classical music for a conductor to talk at-length with an audience, but Santora often speaks between pieces, offering historical and cultural context to what is being played.

“I try to do things just a little differently,” he says. “Take Mozart for example. We label him as ‘classical’ now, but in his day, he was avant-garde, he was experimental and edgy. I think it helps an audience if they understand that.”

While Santora is certainly a musical scholar, it is really the world as a whole that interests him. Fascinated by politics and economics – he still considers a career in academia a possibility – jazz and culture, he does a spot-on impersonation of Borat and is just as likely to laugh with you at himself, as he is to conduct a perfect rendition of Hyden. Born into a musical family – his father played violin with the Lucerne (Switzerland) Symphony, his mother is a pianist – he started off as a violinist, but a hand injury forced him to try conducting while attending the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

He got his start as a conductor with the New York Youth Orchestra, an experience he claims was a perfect training ground not only as a musician, but also for dealing with the politics and strong feelings that often surround arts organizations. In the intervening decade and a half, he has crisscrossed the globe doing what he loves to, what he was born to do.

“My brother Benny is really the wanderer,” he says, when asked about his hectic travel schedule. “He is a cellist. We never really know where he is. We call him ‘Benny the Bohemian.’ Then again, I’ve got a Hungarian background… I’m more like a gypsy.”