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Argentina-born artist brings music to the masses

By Ed Goldman

If Sacramento would like to claim the conductor, composer and professor Christian Baldini as a local treasure, it had better get in line behind London, England; the Netherlands; Asia; San Francisco; Argentina; Salzburg; Sao Paulo; and Munich. 

Then there’s the city of Davis, where he lives, teaches at its esteemed university (under the Barbara K. Jackson Professorship in Orchestra Conducting) and serves as the music director of the UC Davis Symphonic Orchestra.

In fact, a few days before this interview, Baldini conducted a live orchestra performing John Williams’ score to “Star Wars” as the film classic screened at UCD’s Mondavi Center, one of the planet’s most respected auditoriums for its acoustics design. 

Baldini agrees that the venue’s sound “is amazing” but is mainly excited by “how many kids, young people and moms holding babies” attended the event. 

“In my youth, I’d have turned up my nose at doing something so commercial,” he says over lunch. “Now it thrills me because we were playing a fine music score and also introducing orchestral music to people who might have been hearing it played live for the first time since they were born. That’s how we keep music alive.” 

Baldini is 47 years old and looks barely out of his 20s. With his compact build, large expressive eyes and strong but not insistent voice, he radiates a performer’s energy. In fact, several people at The Sutter Club in downtown Sacramento, where we lunched and chatted, asked me after he left if he was a celebrity. I assured them he was—but in a world that prizes artistic achievement over a social-media profile.

“When I go to conduct in Buena Aires, they recognize me on the street,” Baldini says. “But that’s because the concert hall has promoted my appearance.” 

Sacramento’s claim to Baldini arises from his work as the music director of the capital’s Camellia Symphony Orchestra for the past 13 years. This is where I first saw him conduct a few months ago—no less than Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring,” a still-controversial work since its debut in Paris 112 years ago. It’s a difficult, hard-to-access, sometimes almost cacophonous score from which I’m pretty sure no popular tunes will ever emerge (as opposed to “Stranger in Paradise,” adapted from one of Alexander Borodin’s three symphonies, in the musical “Kismet” a few dozen generations ago).

If that had been my only introduction to Baldini I’d probably have thought of him as one of those Morose Maestri who seem to carry the weight of aesthetic history on their baton-shaking shoulders. But when he addressed the audience in advance of the performance—speaking with a slight accent and projecting charismatic cheer—I knew that art filled him with joy. 

So it was no surprise to learn that his favorite composer is Wolfgang Mozart, the former child prodigy who seemed incapable of a false note as his reputation for versatility as well as impulsive impishness lived side-by-side until his impossibly early death in Vienna at the age of 35.

“He obviously had a love for life as well as music,” Baldini says. 

Baldini’s parents, both of whom are alive and well and living in Argentina, “Enjoyed music but had no particular interest in it as a career,” he recalls. His Italian father, who’s 88 years old, had an in-demand career as a gastrointestinal surgeon in South America and Europe. “He speaks seven languages,” Baldini says. “I speak Spanish and German”—He pauses for comic effect— “and a little bit of English.”  (Trust me, he’s fluent.)