The orchestra’s conductor strikes a new chord with modern audiences as the organization begins a new season
As told to Renee Ambroso | Photo by John Michael Simpson
Raised in the wings of Durham’s orchestra scene, Niccoló Muti, artistic director & CEO of The Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle, builds on a legacy of leadership, innovation and connection through music with a baton in hand and a vision in mind. His father, Lorenzo Muti, served as the conductor and artistic director of The COT from 1988 to 2024, and his mother, Jill Muti, is a flutist. Niccoló earneda degrees in violin performance from Indiana University, Rice University and The University of Texas at Austin and performed professionally before pursuing conducting studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Do you have early memories connected to the orchestra? So many. I grew up with this orchestra because Mom played [in it], and Dad was conducting. I’m an only child, so I was brought to all the rehearsals and concerts. I grew up in concert halls and would entertain myself under pianos and running through the aisles and exploring theaters. I started actually playing in the orchestra when I was a teenager and played in orchestras basically all throughout college.
Have any aspects of your father’s work informed your approach to your own career? I’ve witnessed firsthand and kind of live the life of a conductor from day one by being around him – not only what it means to be a conductor artistically but also what it means to be a conductor when you’re off the podium, in terms of the music and what it means to plan a season and make an interesting program. And then, of course, working with musicians. [I learned] how you have to comport yourself off the podium and in your relationships with people.
You’re a people manager; you’re leading a group of people. Describe how The COT has grown and evolved since its inception. The orchestra had a simple beginning at St. Stephen’s [Episcopal Church] in Durham, and it principally performed there. At some point, [the orchestra] distanced itself from the church, became a nonprofit and changed its name to The Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle. When I came on board [in 2017], the orchestra had been operating at about the same level for a while, in that it was performing about six concerts a year, mainly at the Carolina Theatre.
Of course, The COT has always been highly respected in the Triangle for its artistic prowess. Dad developed a reputation for the orchestra of having really interesting and diverse programming that you don’t really see commonly in the industry. But the one thing that I noticed – what I think you notice with a lot of arts organizations; it’s a national trend, maybe a global trend – is that we had an aging patron base. The orchestra had been doing the same thing for a while; it wasn’t reacting to the fact that its patron base was aging out. And at the same time, Durham and the Triangle were growing really rapidly. I realized that if we didn’t grow and start altering our approach, we would eventually trickle out.
We started implementing a series of changes. One of the core parts of our mission is to give exposure and performance opportunities to upand-coming professional musicians, both nationally and globally. We’ve leaned into that by starting our string quartet-in-residence program that brings world-class young string quartets to not only play in the orchestra and lead the string sections but also do outreach and [take part in] a chamber music series. We were lucky to bring on the Verona Quartet as our first quartet-in-residence, who have gone on to have an incredible career. That program has continued … with the Balourdet Quartet. That sparked a whole new wave of programming with community engagement [through bringing orchestra members] into schools. At first we were trying to put the quartet anywhere we could, just to bring music into public spaces. That led to us starting a new series called “Beerthoven,” where we bring our resident and guest artists into breweries. That has grown and become a fan favorite. The most recent piece of the puzzle has been the creation of our professional Durham Fellowship Program for young string players – think of it as their first real full-time job. … They’re on a two-year contract to play in the orchestra, but they also do so much more. This program allowed us to launch our educational initiatives; this year we were in 13 elementary schools in Durham and Orange counties. [There’s been] a lot of change.
Where can Durhamites look forward to experiencing The COT this upcoming season? Most of our performances take place at the Carolina Theatre. … All of our shows are so different, so I think that every show is worth coming to for one reason or another. But a couple really stand out. We’re doing a project [at Bay 7 at American Tobacco Campus] with a fantastic clarinetist named Alexander Fiterstein in December that’s called “The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind.” This is a piece for strings and klezmer clarinet, and it’s about a 50-minute work. It tells a story through music of this old medieval rabbi who believed that the answers to the universe were in the Hebraic letters that make up the Torah. It’s a really interesting and kind of mystifying story that we are going to be enhancing with light in the space that we’re in. And it’s a North Carolina premiere.
Then we’re doing a really cool piece in March … by George Frideric Handel, who we know as the composer of the “Water Music” or the “Messiah.” This is his first oratorio, and its name is “The Triumph of Time and Disillusion.” It’s an allegory about beauty and has four singers each who represent a different character in the allegory. We’re staging this at the Carolina Theatre.
How does The COT engage with local organizations? Two seasons ago, we launched our Da Capo education program, which basically sees our fellows going to elementary schools in Durham and Orange counties at least twice over the course of the season. At the end of the season, we bus all of those kids – primarily third graders – to the Carolina Theatre. You can imagine a theater of 800 third graders hearing the orchestra, which was a lot of fun. It’s a totally different energy than a concert and is a blast. That’s a huge part of how we engage with the community.
I’m a big believer that art and beauty are something that should be in our daily lives. It should be there and be something that we can access. So we look for opportunities at The COT to have music be at the farmers market, or when we do our Pops on the Green, or we just did a new series at American Tobacco Campus [called] Music Under the Stack. I think it’s always nice to turn the corner and see something that brightens your day.
How does the orchestra highlight the work of local visual artists who have contributed to the marketing materials for each season? That taps in, again, to the whole idea of partnerships. What’s so cool about being in the position that I’m in and the position that the orchestra has in the community is that we have the potential to connect with a lot of really talented artists and thinkers here in the Triangle, and there are a lot, many of whom [the public] don’t really know about. I feel that anybody’s first impression of an organization is a visual one. Our branding was a bit lacking in the early days. I thought, ‘We definitely need to do something there. How cool would it be to engage with the local design community by engaging a young local designer every season?’ So that’s what we’ve done every year. We select somebody new who brings a new [aesthetic], and we like to give them carte blanche in regards to the design. We tell them what our season is and some basic elements, but then we want them to put their personal touch on it.
What’s your vision for the future of The COT? How will you continue to connect contemporary audiences with classical music? Orchestras are incredibly powerful tools, [as is] the concert space or the theater. I like to compare it to the ballpark. When you think about going to a baseball game, you don’t always go to watch the game. You go to be with friends and to experience something together. You might go because it’s a beautiful day outside to experience the weather. That’s the power of the theater, so making the orchestra a space where people can come together and enjoy something in commune, I think, is really powerful. So [I consider] how to enhance that experience, and how to take the orchestra to the next level artistically.
I think we continue to be highly respected in the area [as a professional orchestra]. But, how can we diversify the program to where we’re speaking to different portions of the population? How do we speak to the incredible history and also the future of the art form? Classical music is something that goes back hundreds of years, but it’s also a living art form – we’re tapping into that as well with new compositions. Tapping into younger patrons ties into that – I think we feel as a society that we need to be in proximity with one another, and we need to have experiences together, and that’s something that the orchestra provides. And we want to create common experiences on a whole – whether they’re purely orchestral; or with opera; or a Beerthoven, where we’re pairing [the music] with beer, food or wine – where people can [come together] and be able to talk about it and be moved.
