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Merriam-Webster defines a soloist, simply and not unexpectedly, as one who performs a solo and a conductor as the leader of a musical ensemble. Not to be confused with the composer, a person who writes music. For Michael Nowak, Music Director for the San Luis Obispo Symphony for the past 25 years, these terms are elementary workaday phrases. But when applied to his other career, three to four hours and 200 miles south, they take on a new luster.
Nowak has worked with the Hollywood film industry for more than 30 years, initially playing the viola in movie soundtracks before transitioning to conducting. On April 24, he made his nationwide debut in a different role altogether—that of actor. But that doesn’t mean that he’ll be stepping off his podium. In Joe Wright’s production of The Soloist, starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr., Nowak was tapped to play the role of a harsh ’70s Julliard conductor.
While Nowak was conducting a film soundtrack in Los Angeles, the music contractor approached him with an audition offer. Wright had seen a photograph of Nowak and, according to Nowak, “liked the look of him.” He was invited to read for the part of the conductor. The film was the true-life tale of a musical prodigy (Nathaniel Ayers, played by Foxx) afflicted with schizophrenia and the Los Angeles Times columnist (Steve Lopez, played by Downey Jr.) who befriended him and shared his story with the world. The audition was successful.
“The conductor has no name,” Nowak explained his role. “He’s not Mr. Anybody. He’s just a Julliard conductor. My research was to talk to my friends who were at Julliard in 1970 and 1971 to see what kind of person the conductors were and they were stern. They were not nice folks. They were demanding, uncompromising, and at times, belittling and arrogant.”
Part of preparing for his role meant adjusting to the idea that his purpose was not to create the best possible music while maintaining a positive relationship with his musicians; instead, it was Nowak’s job to be exacting, and even cruel. And to remember his lines, of course, an ambition made all the more difficult by the fact that the film’s writers didn’t have an accurate sense of the jargon utilized during a music rehearsal. Some lines he was able to alter, others remained as originally written. He rehearsed with his daughter in the month leading up to filming; she read Foxx’s lines.
The crew filmed Nowak’s scenes in April of 2008, during a blistering Long Beach heat wave. But because the flashback was set in New York, in November of 1971, attire consisted of turtlenecks, scarves, jackets, sweaters, and as much wool as the costume department could acquire. In addition to remembering lines, Nowak was tasked with guzzling water and preventing sweat from destroying his makeup.
“I was overwhelmed by being so close to Jamie Foxx because he’s such an outstanding actor and he really did a tremendous job playing the role,” said Nowak. “But most of it was tedious, moments of doing the same line over and over and over, somebody comes in and moves a chair or someone says ‘here, move a little to the left.’ And then you had to do it all over again. They filmed behind us. The next day they filmed from the orchestra shooting right at me. Another time they had a camera right behind Jamie Foxx shooting up at me. I mean, they probably had 10, 15 angles of direction.”