60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl interviews the new conductor of the New York Philharmonic, 57-year-old Dutchman Jaap van Zweden. He was born in Amsterdam in 1960, picked up the violin at age five, and studied music at the Juilliard School in New York. He launched his career as a conductor with the famous Leonard Bernstein who invited him to lead an orchestra rehearsal in Berlin. In 1996, van Zweden (translated “from Sweden”) made his U.S. conducting debut with the St. Louis Symphony.
In September 2018, van Zweden led his first concert as the New York Philharmonic’s music director at the season-opening gala. He opened the program with the premiere of “Filament,” an “exploratory work” by 36-year-old American composer Ashley Fure*. The 14-minute work is for three soloists (bassoon, bass, trumpet), orchestra and moving voices provided by 15 members of Constellation Chor, an improv vocal ensemble who moved around the hall singing and whispering through acoustic megaphones. Fure refers to the score as “dreamy and dangerous.” During his interview, Stahl is surprised to learn that van Zweden would also like to work with 32-year-old provocative pop star Lady Gaga. 60 Minutes airs Sundays at 7 pm on CBS. Van Zweden is obviously looking in new directions — thirtysomething women haven’t exactly been mainstays of the New York Philharmonic’s programming.
*Fure, who earned her PhD from Harvard University, received the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship (2017), and her “Bound to the Bow” was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2017. [Watch It Again: Stream any CBS show through Amazon Prime or CBS ALL-ACCESS. Both options offer free trials.]
