The Music Man
Conductor Francisco Noya leads the Boston Civic Symphony on Nantucket this summer.
Written by Brian Bushard
Photography by Kit Noble
Francisco Noya comes from a family of athletes, not musicians. His father played professional soccer in Venezuela. But music has always surrounded him. Noya started taking piano lessons when he was six. But it was not seen as a career. Noya chose engineering over music, studying electrical engineering as an undergraduate in Valencia. At some point during college, Noya felt an urge to pick up a second instrument and started taking cello lessons. In those days, he would travel back and forth from engineering classes to those lessons, practicing for hours on end.
“I needed to make a decision,” said Noya, who will conduct the Boston Civic Symphony at Nantucket High School this June. “Do I continue with engineering or do I pursue music? Not only do I have no regrets, I would do it again. I don’t recall agonizing too much about it; I just remember having to decide. When you’re in your late teens and early20s, any decision you make can be traced back. You’re young. You don’t know what you’re doing. You have no fear.”
Music turned out to be a fortuitous choice. At the same time in Venezuela, a movement had begun to start a national youth orchestra program called El Sistema. Noya joined one of the Sistema’s orchestras in Valencia, playing cello. When the group’s conductor needed to leave, the then 20-year-old Noya was appointed conductor. At his first rehearsal, the orchestra had 14 members. By the time Noya left the orchestra three years later, there were 90 members.
“There was an explosion,” he said. “I was a conductor for several years, but I decided I didn’t really know what I was doing and I would need to go learn it because I really liked it and seemed to have a facility for it,” Noya said. So he applied to Boston University, where he ended up completing an undergraduate degree in compositions, with a scholarship from the government of Venezuela. Noya returned several years after his graduation for a master’s in conducting, and soon began orchestra hopping.
His first big gig came in Albany, New York. He conducted the Empire State Youth Orchestra, known as one of the best youth orchestras in the country. “We did all kinds of big repertoires—European tours, concerts at Carnegie Hall. It was fun,” he said. His resume runs the gamut: the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra, the New Philharmonia Orchestra, the Longwood Symphony Orchestra and the Berklee Contemporary Symphony Orchestra, as well as Venezuela’s Caracas Philharmonic and Teatro Teresa Carreño.
Noya has made international appearances with orchestras in Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Italy, Peru, Russia, Spain and the Czech Republic. He is also a member of the conducting faculty at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. When Noya—the husband of Nantucket Public Schools Superintendent Beth Hallett—conducts the Boston Civic Symphony on stage at Nantucket High School this month, Noya will not only have the 45-50 symphony members he’s bringing to the island, but a group of island students participating in the Nantucket Island Youth Orchestra. Those students join the Civic Symphony at the end of the performance, sitting side by side with the professionals.
“The orchestra members love doing that because they remember what it was like in the beginning,” he said. The opportunity is something the Nantucket Community Music Center, which organizes the youth orchestra, has been planning for years. The youth orchestra, an after-school program now in its second year, is something the Music Center has been wanting to establish for several decades.
“We really wanted to do something with the kids, and the kids were first,” said Tony Wagner, the Music Center’s executive director. “There was a conversation we had with Francisco on how to build a youth orchestra on the island. The first thing we have to do is inspire the kids, and having the Boston Civic Symphony comedown and play with them is a way to inspire the kids to be part of a music education program, and it worked. ”He describes his approach to conducting as an interpretation. On the one hand, he considers himself respectful and faithful to the wishes of the composer whose work he’s playing. On the other hand, he said it’s not possible to play a piece of music if you don’t have a part of yourself in it.
“That’s how human beings are,” he said. “So in that sense, it’s an interpretation, but it’s informed by my understanding of the score and the composer and the style of music at the time the composer was writing.”
Looking back on his career, Noya reflected on what has changed since the day he started conducting. “I think I have changed, I like to think,” he said. “I think the industry has changed tremendously. When I began conducting in the late ’70s, there were still record labels, and LPs and CDs were still far in the horizon. Now we have streaming, which gives you unlimited access to music. In the beginning, if you wanted to listen to a recording of something, you had to go buy it. Most things were not available. It was much more difficult to do a search. Now we have a much wider variety in our repertoire. Musicians are also getting better and better. The caliber of play is getting so high.”
The Boston Civic Symphony plays a free concert at the Nantucket High School Mary P. Walker Auditorium on June 22 as part of the Nantucket Community Music Center’s 50th anniversary.nantucketmusic.org.
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