Greek is the first female conductor in the Conro Symphony Orchestra in Texas

She is young, glamorous with a huge smile and now the first woman conductor and music director of the Conroe Symphony Orchestra in Texas, USA. This is Anna-Maria Gouni who, as she explains, may not have known from the cradle that she would become a conductor, however, her parents’ encouragement to learn the piano and her experience in the children’s choir of ERT’s Third Program led her to music.

He is inspired as mentioned by Theodoros Kourentzis and admires the mythical Dimitris Mitropoulos.

With a bachelor’s degree from the Ionian University, a master’s degree from the University of Nebraska and now in the process of obtaining a doctorate from the University of Houston, the young Greek conductor, whose professors describe her as “natural talent”, is called to in the midst of a pandemic.

The rehearsals have not started yet, due to her health condition, but she is looking forward, as she says to the Athens News Agency, to catch a baguette and lead the ensemble to its first concert, if conditions allow, next summer. In fact, she had the opportunity to meet – by all means – its members orchestra (mostly volunteers) as he wanted to meet them in person before being in front of them on the podium.

The first musical steps and the children’s choir of the Third Program

Anna-Maria Gouni was born in 1990 in Athens and her first contact with music was at the age of 7, when her parents enrolled her in the conservatory.. It was then that a world full of notes with notes began to unfold in front of her and made her want to study at the music high school of Pallini and then at the Department of Music Studies of the Ionian University.

He explains that he was lucky that while he was still a child there was the children’s choir of the Third Program on ERT and he made her see the music world more seriously. “Every weekend, we spent 3-4 hours on ERT. And whenever the orchestra happened to rehearse in the adjoining studios, it was the magical world: whenever I saw the orchestra I would pierce through the doors to look at what was going on inside. The instruments, the conductors, the musicians… Somehow the seed came in to become a conductor “, he remembers.

As a student at the Ionian University, she chose the direction of the Orchestra Conductor under Professor Miltos Logiadis, whom she knew through his concerts and who had impressed her both for his musical work and for his personality. It was at the Department of Music Studies that she came in contact with piano teacher Lampis Vassiliadis, who encouraged her to continue her studies in the USA.

The στην break in Amorgos of special people

After completing her master’s degree, she returned to Greece and the summer vacation found her in Amorgos, where the tranquility of the island -suitable for study and research- and the good-natured people won her over immediately. The vacuum created by the departure of the music teacher from the island and the need of the people to express themselves with sounds led her to make the decision and stay in Amorgos for almost a year.

«I had a studio for 10-15 kids, the children’s choir and the adult choir. I saw people coming tired after work and a transformation was happening during the rehearsal and he left happy! That’s how I realized that in a society, music binds people“, Says the conductor, who after the break of Amorgos returned to the USA for her doctorate.

The newspaper clipping with Kourentzis that he has been holding since 2007

Theodoros Kourentzis inspires her and has kept a newspaper clipping from the time when he was not yet as well known as today. He had a posture that seemed to be in “deification”. I saw him and I said, this man is doing something very great. And this is confirmed. His work inspires me personally. “Like listening to him talk,” he says. He also greatly admires the mythical conductor Dimitris Mitropoulos, “who, apart from being a great conductor and musician who had conquered the science of music, was also a very complete personality as a human being”.

To the question, what goes through the… head of a conductor while conducting a musical ensemble, he answers that apart from the thousands of thoughts that change very quickly, what is very important is to be focused and vigilant for the slightest sound because things that one has worked many times, in the concert they can develop differently.

“Otherwise the heart beats in the concert, otherwise in a rehearsal. Then there is the emotional factor. “You feel your soul swell with emotions”, he emphasizes.

The pause in the practice of music and in the… pandemic

During the pandemic, the conductors lowered their baguettes and the orchestras fell silent. But how does she experience this pause? “I am thinking of a parallel. Surely the pandemic was a pause in music. In the practice of music we have the sound and we have the non-sound, which is also very important. The pauses and where they are placed in a work give us some information about it. They answer some questions. Why did the pause come in there, what does it symbolize? So for me, this phase also symbolizes something. I try to see the glass half full and see something positive -if there is- in this situation. “And yes, it was and is an opportunity to redefine ourselves, to see what happened, why it happened to us, what is problematic in our society and to try to fix it.”

The great embrace of the Greek community

In America, Anna-Maria Gouni found an αγ unexpected hug, that of of the Greek Diaspora. In fact, when she invited people to her first concert, to a visit to the consulate, where she had gone to sort out some papers, she did not think that both the consul himself and some other Greeks would respond. Her ties with the Greek community were strengthened during the award ceremony of the Hellenic Society of Texas and “we now have very frequent contact with each other”, as she says, adding that all this gives her strength.

Photo source: Athenian News Agency