A Conversation with Assistant Conductor Monica Chen

The 2025/26 season marks Monica Chen’s third year as Assistant Conductor with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, where she’s become a familiar face both on and off the podium. Currently on a break, enjoying time with family (and her favourite Taiwanese food), Monica sat down with me for a fascinating dive into the world of conducting.

We started with a big-picture question: what’s something people might not realize about what you do?

“I’d say it’s like a medical residency—I practically live at the Concert Hall. I’m always present, even for concerts I don’t conduct. There’s a lot of studying to keep up with the amount of music I need to cover adequately.

Right now, I’m preparing How to Train Your Dragon, and just by looking at the score, I’m estimating I’ll probably spend at least 70 hours on it (on the low side). Once I’ve finished studying a movie score, I can play the movie without the music and still hear the full soundtrack in my head, exactly as it’s supposed to be, and know what’s happening at any given moment.”

That led me to wonder: when you’re working on a new piece of music, what does your process look like?

“Generally, I start with a big-picture understanding, then zoom in to look at the small details, and then zoom back out to see how those details fit into the big picture. Big, little, big.

The goal is to learn what the music actually is—every single note that every person is playing at all times, for all 70 people in the orchestra, across 25 or so different parts. I have a system of checks I use to keep myself on track, because it’s really easy to get stuck on one dot on the page and spend an hour obsessing over it. It could be one tiny thing out of 200 pages.”

Does your understanding evolve as you dig deeper, listen to recordings, or experience it in rehearsals?

“Yes, I start to see patterns. I think the more I study, the more I understand which rabbit holes are actually useful to go down. I’m learning what will have the most impact on the final result because if you try to focus on everything, you get nothing done.

You also understand the musical arc. It’s like in writing where you have the hero’s journey or narrative structure. You have that in music too. You start to know the structure, the emotional shape, the sound, colour, texture, and pacing. You just have to hold all of that in your head.”

This season, you’ll be conducting everything from movie scores to Classics. Which concerts are you most excited about?

“Definitely How to Train Your Dragon and The Music of Studio Ghibli. Those are the two I pitched to the organization, and I’m really happy they took them on. Honestly, they’re kind of bucket list concerts for me. If I was to retire after this season, I’d be happy. [laughs] That’s how much they mean to me.

I think the biggest challenge for me will be Echoes of Italy, because it’s my first Classics concert as part of a WSO season. Most of what I’ve done so far has been Pops. And when I do conduct Classics, it’s usually with the university orchestra. But this is different, it’s Classics with a professional orchestra.”

At that point, we started talking about the physicality of conducting. I asked how much attention she pays to her body and movement while she’s on the podium.

“When you’re an early conductor, you think a lot about how you’re moving. At the beginning, everything feels awkward, ‘What do I do with my shoulder? What are my legs doing?’ It’s the same as when you’re learning violin: ‘How do I hold the bow? How do I make this sound?’ But once you get past a certain level, you’re not thinking about that anymore. You just grab the bow and go.

I’d say its less about movement, and more about what sound you want to achieve. The visual aspect is less important than the energy behind it. I always say—it’s like Avatar: The Last Airbender. [laughs] Conducting is energy bending and time bending. That’s a really good way of putting it. You’re bending energy across the orchestra, and you’re bending time. It’s this give and take between energies. It doesn’t look like Harry Potter, but it kind of feels like Avatar.”

So is it more mentally demanding than physically tiring?

“It’s very mentally demanding. My teacher always says, if you make a mistake, 95% of the time, it’s a brain mistake, not a physical one.

Whenever I conduct, I feel like my brain is dialled up to 120% the entire time. You’re absorbing so many different channels of information, and sound is happening in the moment. You have to process it across three time zones:

1. What’s happening right now.
2. What happened in the past that I need to fix or think about.
3. What’s coming in the future that I need to show or prepare for.”

All that, plus bending time and energy…

“Exactly!”

We talked a bit about mentors. Monica’s worked closely with both Music Director Daniel Raiskin and former Associate Conductor Julian Pellicano. I asked if she’d picked up any useful habits or frameworks from them.

“I guess there’s not one big thing, it’s more like so many small things. Every rehearsal, I come away having learned something new. One piece of advice from Julian that really helped is this: on average, one minute of music equals one hour of studying. If it’s an average-difficulty score, that’s the ratio. If it’s harder, it might double. That framework has been really useful for me in terms of planning and building a realistic study schedule.”

Do you have you have any pre-performance routines that help you feel ready?

“Not really. I had one as a string player because the physical use of your body as a musician is more prone to accidental little twitches, you know? Something just slightly off by a millimetre can affect your playing.

But with conducting, the information doesn’t change. The information in your head doesn’t suddenly disappear the next day—at least not at this age! [laughs] So what’s more important to me now is that my mind is well-rested.”

Before we wrapped up, I asked if there’s a composer or a specific work that she dreams of conducting someday.

“Yes. There’s actually a very specific work I want to conduct by Mendelssohn. Maybe in the future…”

Avi Bhatt (he/him) is the Communications Specialist for the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.