James was recently asked by WQXR’s James Bennett II to consider what career path he might have chosen if not conducting:

“There’s something magical about watching a conductor at work — how they internalize the work before them in all its component parts, in turn uniting the ensemble and bringing the music to life. It seems an almost superhuman effort. But conductors are human too, and like the rest of us, sometimes they think about what else they might have done instead of walking onto a podium with their baton.

We asked eleven of them what other career paths they might have taken. Here’s what they had to say.

James Conlon: LA Opera, RAI National Symphony Orchestra

Conductor James Conlon (Dan Steinberg/LA Opera)

I decided I wanted to conduct when I was 13 years old and I never seriously considered any other profession. Had I considered another path, I probably would have been a writer. But the good thing is, in recent years, I have learned that I can actually do both!”

Click here to read the full story on WQXR.