We’ve missed hearing the Las Vegas Philharmonic play Reynolds Hall inside the Smith Center, and we’re eager to see the symphony orchestra take the stage again later this year. In the meantime, we caught up with violinist De Ann Letourneau, the Phil’s concertmaster for more than 20 years.
The Wisconsin native got her first professional job at 16 with the Duluth Superior Symphony, and she’s had an in-demand career for over four decades since. Letourneau chatted with the Weekly about life offstage and some of the memorable highlights of her illustrious career, including traveling and performing with Celine Dion for nine years.
What has the past year been like for you? It has been very interesting. I told my husband that this is the first time in probably over 40 years that I have not had something onstage. That part as a performer has been really hard. But [other] things have gone really well. We have three girls. Our oldest is a second-year art student at UNLV; our 16-year-old is a junior at LVA, a violinist; and our youngest is an eighth-grader, a competitive dancer. When everything shut down, all the taekwondo, all the dancing, all the driving here and there all kind of just stopped. So we were home, and it really made for some good family time that I don’t think we would have had [otherwise].
Tell us about your role as concertmaster for the Philharmonic. I look at the concertmaster’s role as being almost like the assistant conductor. I look at my role as leadership in the organization from the players’ point of view. My job, literally, is to make sure the bowing reflects what the conductor would like. Our bowings are similar to our speaking voice, and the volume or the timbre or how short or long we play something—the right hand to me equals the voice of a singer, the way you talk when you speak, the way you read out loud. And for me, the left hand, which technically plays all the notes, is like the words in a script that someone is reading. Everyone will read the same script, but they’re going to read it differently depending on their voice, or how they create the sounds, and that’s our right hand. So for me, choosing a bowing chooses the sound and the voice of the orchestra.
I also believe that my job, just like [conductor] Donato [Cabrera], is in the public at large, because I’m the most visual. People see me, I walk out differently, a lot of times I’m up there as a soloist. I’m recognized a lot in the community, so I feel like it’s an important role to be an ambassador for the arts and for the Philharmonic.
You’ve been with the Phil for decades. How has the organization changed during your tenure? I’ve been in this organization well over 30 years. We’ve gone through three different conductors—we started out with Harold Weller, then we had David Itkin and now we have Donato. Each one of those conductors brought something different. Think of it as having a different chef in the kitchen; you still can cook the dish, but if we’re playing the Tchaikovsky Overture, Donato approaches differently than David did, and David approached it differently than Hal did. My role is to be a chameleon, to work with whoever is our artistic vision on the podium, so it makes it really, really fun.
In addition to your work with the Philharmonic, you’ve worked with some big stars in the music business. Drop some names for us. I’m the associate concertmaster of Andrea Bocelli’s touring orchestra. We play when he does his West Coast tour, and if he comes to MGM, if it’s not conflicting with the Philharmonic, I play that tour. … I’ve worked with Barbra Streisand, Elton John, Harry Connick Jr., Metallica, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Bruno Mars … I played the national anthem at a [Vegas Golden] Knights game—no one in the history of the NHL has ever done anything like the violin.
Do you have a favorite celebrity you’ve worked with over the years? [With] the kind of iconic power and work ethic Celine Dion has, it’s so fun to watch the genius happen and to be right there as it’s happening. She and I had a whole different connection, because we were both working moms. We talked about our kids, and we talked about her philosophy about schools. I mean, she was just like another mom. That stood out to me not because she’s Celine Dion the icon, but because she is Celine Dion the mom and a singer. What I remember about her is the way she treats her musicians, the way she treats her fans, the way she treats her kids. She’s a hero in my book.
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