For Fernanda Lastra, music, particularly the community symphony, is about connection.

Lastra is the second candidate in the Great Falls Symphony’s search for a new conductor this season, its’ 67th.

Each of the season’s six concerts will feature a finalist for music director and conductor.

It’s a two year search process that began last season, drawing 238 applications from across the globe, according to Hillary Shepherd, the symphony’s executive director.

Symphony, GFPL partner to offer free tickets to library card holders

The symphony established a 12-person search committee composed of conductors, musicians and those with administration experiences.

They broke into teams of three, with each reviewing about a quarter of the applications, whittling the list down to 13 candidates who were asked to answer a set of questions on video, Shepherd told The Electric this spring.

The full search committee reviewed those responses and further narrowed the list down to six candidates with two alternates.

The top six were scheduled for the season’s concerts and started programming, which “gets perspective of how they thing,” Shepherd said. “Programming is a vessel by which to achieve an artistic vision.”

“Really amazing programs” are planned for the search season and “our community will be involved” through surveys and events, Shepherd said. “It’s going to be a pretty amazing time getting to know everybody. It will be fulfilling and exciting for everybody involved and the community gets a say in making sure the next maestro or maestra is the perfect fit for Great Falls.”

Symphony opens Saturday with first of six maestro candidates

Lastra conducted the Nov. 8 symphony with guest Christine Sherlock on the viola.

Born in Argentina, she’s currently based in Buffalo, N.Y., having served as the assistant conductor for the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra from September 2022 to August 2025, under the mentorship of JoAnn Falletta, who she said is a role model for female conductors.

In looking at symphonies, she saw that Great Falls was interested in community engagement, which resonated with her and her mission in life to share music with everyone.

The youth orchestra particularly caught her interest and “I thought this was incredible, I will apply,” she said.

Arriving in Great Falls for a week of meetings with donors and community groups, as well as rehearsals and a visit to the Great Falls Public Schools orchestras, she said she’d learned some of Great Falls’ history and watched some videos online.

Harville bids farewell to Great Falls Symphony; search for new conductor is underway

If selected for the job, Lastra said she’d love to expand the youth orchestra program, which is already wonderful.

Music and music education are important as activities for all ages to talk about and share as audiences have been dealing with life after the pandemic.

“Little by little I think audiences are coming back,” from the pandemic, Lastra said. “They can come once, but the thing is to come twice.”

“We’re in this culture built on entertainment,” she said, and getting to know an audience helps planning a symphony concert series to create something tailors for them with “a little something for everyone.”

Live music is completely different from anything else available, particularly in an age of artificial intelligence, Lastra said.

“The experience of being present in the same room with people that are offering themselves and putting their art in your hands,” she said. “It’s so human. It’s a good way to be together, sharing the same breath…it’s wonderful. Then you can talk about the concert. With everything technology is taking from us, our human quality of connection, talking and sharing things, little by little, I think we’ll be offering something that wouldn’t be available in other spaces.”

It’s dangerous for society and individual mental health to always stay home on the sofa, not interacting with other humans as we get more aggressive and less empathetic, Lastra said.

Orchestras offer than connection as a place to connect and children need exposure to music, either as an audience or better yet, learning to play an instrument, as they need to experience listening with attention.

“We want them to be emotionally aware and connected and develop their brains,” she said.

Attention is falling apart, even for adults, and for kids born with the screens, it’s even worse.

“Without attention, you can’t do anything,” she said.

Hillary Shepherd, executive director of the symphony, said that much attention is required to play in the symphony.

Musicians practice on their own, then come together under the direction of the conductor for rehearsals before every concert.

Some schools are trying meditation to combat the lack of attention, Lastra said, as “to succeed at school, you need attention.”

In her home country of Argentina, every orchestra is supported by the government, but the downside is the arts are the first cuts when there’s financial trouble and funding is uncertain.

Because it’s government funded, there’s no philanthropy and it’s difficult to convince people to support orchestras.

“There’s no ownership of the local orchestra,” Lastra said.

Her concert, Roots of Expression, featured three pieces with multicultural influences from Peru, Hungary and Russia.

The third piece was Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 and the symphony, conducted by Lastra, received a standing ovation at the end of the evening.

Tchaikovsky’s piece had a theme of fate and “he’s like a poet of sound,” Lastra said.

He was a homosexual in tsarist Russia, which was criminal during much of Tchaikovsky’s lifetime.

It would have been challenging, Lastra said, but “he wanted to create and to put all that on paper and not give up.”

It’s sad, she said, how people are suffering and fighting for many of the same things nearly 200 years later as people condemn the different.

“This is the beauty of being different. Every one of us is different and have something to offer the world,” Lastra said. “Creativity emerges from being different” and “through art, we can learn about other people.”

This season, each candidate is giving a pre-concert talk in the Mansfield Theater at 6:30 p.m. and a no host bar available in the lobby until the concert begins at 7:30 p.m.

After each concert, there’s a meet and greet in the Gibson Room upstairs at the Civic Center.

The next concert is Dec. 7 with Brandon Horrocks.