After pursuing a career as a freelance violinist and educator, Laura Jackson decided to go back to school and study conducting. 

 “I risked everything,” Jackson, the new conductor of the Madison Symphony Orchestra, told the audience at a Madison welcome reception on July 16. “When I told my parents I wanted to be a conductor, I might as well have said I want to go to Hollywood and be an actor, but they were generous and patient.” She would go on to receive a master’s degree and DMA in orchestral conducting from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Jackson, who was appointed music director in July, is the first woman to hold the position in the symphony’s 100-year history. John DeMain, who held the directorship for 32 years, tells Isthmus he is excited about his successor. “She’s a dynamic personality, so I think she’s going to be great, and the community is just going to love her.”

Jackson will conduct her first concerts of the season in Overture Hall Nov. 6-8. (She will fully take over as music director at the beginning of the 2027-2028 season.)

On the program are two great works of Russian Romanticism: Rachmaninoff’s lush Piano Concerto No. 2, with pianist Joyce Yang, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4. “Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony is incredibly dramatic and exciting, even for somebody who has never been to a symphonic concert before,” says Jackson in a phone interview. Rachmaninoff’s piano concerto is sometimes called  “Rocky 2” (think Rocky Balboa) because of the great technical and physical demands placed on the pianist.

Jackson’s November concert also features Carlos Simon’s AMEN!, a work from 2017 that recreates the atmosphere of an African American Pentecostal church service.

“For anybody who wants to meet me and try the symphony out, November is a wonderful time to come,” says Jackson.

In our interview, Jackson looked back on the path that brought her to the MSO.

“My earliest influence to become a musician was my family experiences because my dad, even though he was a scientist, was an avid amateur musician and my very earliest experiences were making music with him,” she says. “The first instrument I ever played was the ukulele and he would play guitar. We would sit on the back porch in the summer and play songs together and sing and my uncle would play the banjo.”

Jackson fondly remembers singing in the church choir with her dad. “I got to sing major choral pieces like the Brahms Requiem and Handel’s Messiah and I had a public school program that put a violin in my hands in fourth grade,” she says. Her parents also paid for private violin lessons.

For the last two years of high school, Jackson attended a boarding school then called the North Carolina School of the Arts. There, she was drawn to conducting. “I was fascinated by what the oboe was doing, what the timpani was doing, and then I wanted to look at whole scores and think about how to interpret them,” she says. Jackson went on to receive an undergraduate degree with a focus on violin and conducting from Indiana University, before her graduate studies in orchestral conducting. 

Jackson says she continues to learn by listening to other conductors. “I love the way one person does rhythm and another does sound, and the rubato technique [a temporary speeding up or slowing down of the tempo for artistic effect] of another conductor.” She likes how conductors shape and mold the sound differently with their gestures.  “It’s like chefs for different types of cuisine.”

Jackson will also continue as music director of the Reno Philharmonic, a position she has held since 2009. She says that it is quite common these days for a music director to have more than one orchestra. “Reno’s season is smaller than Madison’s, so they work together very well.” In Reno, she has garnered a reputation for championing living composers and commissioning and presenting their work. She is also a mentor to women conductors and a promoter of young composers.

Currently Jackson is planning for MSO’s 2027/2028 season, working with executive director Robert Reed to “identify captivating artists,” she says.

Jackson hopes to build on DeMain’s work and that of the MSO team to introduce the symphony to people of all ages, careers, and backgrounds, including those with no background in symphonic music. “Learning what works in a particular place is what I love about being a music director,” says Jackson. “It requires getting to know the people in the community, the orchestra, the performance venue, and the history of what has worked well in the past,” she says. “In the end, programming is like designing a perfectly tailored bespoke suit.”

Jackson has in the past adopted creative ways of involving the community with the symphony, like a day when she lets children conduct the orchestra, or when business leaders both conduct and play in the orchestra so they experience how it feels to follow as well as give directions. 

Jackson says that a symphony orchestra is for the community it serves. “It is a huge honor and responsibility and gift to have the opportunity to further connect the friendships between the Madison Symphony and the wonderful people of the community. I can’t wait to do that.”