Alfred Savia tells how he started in his school band and wound up working with Indianapolis and Evansville orchestras.

You may think classical music and conducting are boring. Think again.

"Most likely, someone who feels that way just has not given it a chance," says Alfred Savia, the 38-year-old associate conductor of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. "Just give it a chance and most people come to like it."

From classical to rock, Savia respects all forms of music. Even though his job entails mainly classical music, such as Mozart and Beethoven, he believes that it is no better than any other style.

"If someone is trying to make a statement through rock music, if they're trying to say something and they're serious about it, I think that's wonderful."

You would think that someone who has dedicated his career to making and performing music would be constantly attentive to music. Wrong again.

"I don't listen to a lot of music, period," Savia says. "I don't even listen to a lot of classical music."

He doesn't have the time. He is always at work studying, practicing or performing.

"For every minute that I'm on the podium conducting, I'm probably spending several hours studying that music in order to learn it and get it into my head," Savia says.

Music just comes naturally to Savia. When he was in sixth grade, he started playing the clarinet. Unlike many of his schoolmates, he kept with it. While in high school in Livingston, N.J., he had his first conducting experience, as the band's student conductor.

Savia's parents encouraged him to become a doctor or a lawyer because of his high SAT scores.

"I had an absolute driving desire to be a musician. At the time, it didn't matter what form, whether it was as a clarinetist . . . or a conductor."

When Savia finally decided on conducting, he studied at Butler University and with Werner Mueller, head of conducting at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City.

Coming "home" to Indiana

After conducting orchestras throughout the United States, including a 1988 guest appearance conducting the ISO, he set his sights on returning to Indiana, landing a job in 1989 as music director of the Evansville Philharmonic.

A year later, after looking at more than 150 applicants, the ISO Board of Directors chose Savia as the new associate conductor. He continues his job at Evansville.

Today he does almost all of the ISO's summer concerts, including the Symphony on the Prairie concerts and the free noontime concerts Downtown in the Circle Theatre.

During the winter, he conducts one of the classical series, several of the pops concerts, the Target Family Series and youth programs.

"Then, in the weeks that I'm not here doing that, I'm in Evansville, and I conduct most of the concerts of that orchestra," says Savia.

Savia has to study all the music played by the ISO in case Raymond Leppard, the ISO's music director and principal conductor, is sick.

To do all this, you might think Savia needs an immense amount of knowledge about music. And you'd be right.

He says you need to know how to play and how music is composed.

Good musicianship comes first

"What's important is that you study an instrument very well. Because I think it would be very difficult to stand up in front of an orchestra if you didn't have the ability and confidence in yourself to sit and play yourself at the level that they are playing."

You also need to learn some piano before you can begin conducting, he says.

"You have to have the tools to know how to (analyze a symphony), and that requires a lot of keyboard skills."

In addition, a conductor benefits from knowing music theory, which is the ability to take a piece of music and understand the concepts of the time and place in which it was written.

"You have to be able to put yourself in the position of the composer," says Savia. "You know, why did he put this note here this way; how did he construct the symphony?"

Savia uses all these skills to try to put together a masterpiece of musical sounds. He told us nothing is better than a perfect performance.

"When everything is working well, all of the pieces are in place, the orchestra is playing well and you're having a good performance, there is absolutely nothing like it.

"There's something very unearthly about (conducting). It's very close to a spiritual experience _ just a musical experience of the highest level."

Savia encourages anyone who has a love of music and a desire to conduct or perform to go for it.

"If you don't have the drive, the dedication, the passionate love of music, then I would advise you to pursue another career," he said. "You'll make a lot more money and you won't have the frustration."