‘Star Wars’ Maestro Anthony Parnther on His Carnegie Hall Debut With All-Black Orchestra

Anthony Parnther was on a mission. When chatting via Zoom in late March, the conductor and bassoonist was calling in from a hotel room in Kansas City. “I actually came up here to buy a very specific contrabassoon, which is sitting right over there,” he said, pointing to the cumbersome woodwind behind him. “I grabbed it this morning and I’ll be heading back to L.A. with it now.” As soon as he returned, Parnther would play the instrument on the score for the highly anticipated Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi (premiering May 27).

The contrabassoon seems especially fitting: It looks like a Star Wars weapon, and its tone is as deep and otherworldly as Jabba the Hutt’s voice.

“He is mesmerizing, on the podium and in real life,” says Lee Koonce, president and artistic director of Gateways Music Festival. “He is like a force of nature. He’s this enormous presence. And many people have worked with him in Hollywood. A lot of our musicians played in Black Panther [Parnther is conducting performances of Göransson’s score for the Marvel film at concert halls around the country]. So they knew him. They knew his work. They knew his work ethics, they knew this high level of musicianship. And so he was the musicians first choice.”

The program, which Parnther inherited from Morgan, will include works by Brahms, as well as the late composers George Walker and Florence Price. Carnegie Hall’s 2021-22 Perspectives artist — and recent Album of the Year Grammy winner — Jon Batiste will join the orchestra on piano for the premiere of his new work “I Can.”

In our conversation, Parnther charted his journey from Lynchburg to Hollywood, shared his impressions of the piece’s he’ll conduct in New York, and expressed his dismay about the dearth of openings for Black American classical musicians: “The difference between privilege and underprivilege is opportunity.”