Laura Jackson Conducts Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Ravinia

10 August 2025

Of her transition from the bow to the baton, conductor Laura Jackson admits, “I never thought I would switch, but I did.”

Still, the embers of conducting stirred in Jackson as she played violin in the University of North Carolina School of the Arts orchestra. Back then, the teen from upstate New York was all about becoming the best violinist she could be. Since 2009, she has been music director of the Reno Philharmonic in Nevada; she also guest conducts nationally and internationally. This summer, she will lead the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the Ravinia Festival’s annual Tchaikovsky’s Spectacular on Aug. 3. The all-Tchaikovsky program consists of the composer’s Fourth Symphony, Variations on a Rococo Theme in A Major, Op. 33, with guest cellist Zlatomir Fung, and the 1812 Festival Overture, Op. 49.

A past recipient of the Taki Alsop Fellowship, which aims to mentor, support and promote women conductors as they advance in their professional careers, Jackson has a long bond with Marin Alsop, chief conductor of Ravinia, and president of the Taki Fellowship’s board of directors.

For Jackson, music is personal, sacred, transcendent and fleeting. “It’s the love for the moment when people come together, and they are deeply present with each other, she said in an interview with an NNCSA alumni magazine. "Whenever we make music or whenever we engage in this art form, we are doing exactly that. It brings out our very best.

“We have to be present with each other. We have to listen and respond to each other. There are very few things in our life experience that demand that kind of attention. We don’t have anything visual. There is nothing you can come back and look at tomorrow. We are sending a beautiful sound into the concert hall right now, and you have to be there to experience it right now and to create it. That is what I seek. That is what I hope to create every time I’m on the podium.”

She came to UNCSA from Plattsburgh, New York, as a high school junior. Her violin teacher had been pushing two violin teachers at UNCSA. Though she had a wonderful public school program and a great private teacher, she really needed to be catapulted to the next level to make music her career and to be competitive.

“I had pretty decent fingers as a violinist, but the kind of orchestral experience and the breadth of knowledge that I needed, there was no way I would have gotten that had I stayed in my home community,” she said. Jackson had her sights on playing in Carnegie Hall and playing chamber music. What UNCSA offered her was the orchestral experience and exposure. Inspired by the conductors there, it was at UNCSA she began to fall in love with conducting.

Jackson was amazed not only by the orchestral repertoire but also by "the incredible organism an orchestra is,” she said. “What all the different parts of an orchestra are doing to bring together to create this beautiful sound one after another, one great crescendo, one great climax after another. You know the colors, the mysteries of orchestral music was so fascinating to me, but it was also watching the different interpreters and what they would do with the same orchestra — with all of us and make us sound different. They would push and pull and challenge us in many directions. That is what laid the foundation for me falling in love with orchestra and with interpreting great orchestral music.”

Jackson pursued her undergraduate degree at Indiana University-Bloomington, where she studied violin and conducting. After spending several years as a professional violinist, she started conducting on the side. Later she earned her doctorate in orchestral conducting from the University of Michigan.

“I decided that was where my real opportunities were [in conducting], but also I was better suited for it, she said. "I loved the creative aspect. I loved looking at these great works of genius and the challenge of finding my own voice within them.”