By Megan Venable
Meet Brian Salesky. He’s currently the Executive and Artistic Director of Amadeus Concert Ensemble, former Executive and Artistic Director of Knoxville Opera, and has conducted musical events around the world. He can also trace his love of opera to a precise experience as an eight-year-old boy.
While watching the Disney movie Fantasia, an animated musical anthology of classical music, young Salesky watched Mickey Mouse approach the conductor at the conclusion of the movie and shake his hand in appreciation. “It was that moment it clicked for me that it was ok to love classical music,” he says. “I have been playing piano since I was three, but seeing Mickey as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice became my happy place.”
This love of classical music and Disney came full circle for Salesky early in his career when he approached Walt Disney Studios and proposed a sequel for Fantasia. He put it together with music and storylines and served as a music consultant for Fantasia 2000. Salesky spent a year traveling back and forth across the country, conducting matinees on Sunday and jumping on a plane to be in Burbank, California, on Monday morning only to hop on a red-eye mid-week to be home to conduct on the weekend. “It was a fantasy come true for me,” he says.
His love of performing arts started at a very young age, and his mother was his first piano teacher. “My parents were really fanatics about everything to do with the arts,” Salesky says. “I caught the bug myself, and I went into the business.” Growing up in New York City also brought the arts directly into Salesky’s backyard, and he spent his childhood taking lessons backstage at the Metropolitan Opera. “I was fortunate to have parents insisting on taking me to all performances,” he says. “The Met was my playground.”
Salesky’s wife, Diana, is an accomplished musician as well, and the two met in NYC working together with New York City Opera. Their efforts are truly a family business as his father-in-law and brother-in-law are also conductors. He gives all credit to Diana for the Amadeus Concert Ensemble as she started it with a small ensemble at the Ossoli Club. It was a natural progression as it extended into a larger project for East Tennessee. “We never charge for anything we produce. It’s our pleasure and privilege to contribute to the community this way,” he says of the Amadeus Concert Ensemble.
He credits the very many significant mentors he has met along the way, and he is flattered that they think so well of him to share their incredible body of knowledge with him. “Their generous welcoming of me into their lives in the midst of their legendary careers, sharing their knowledge, guiding me along my pathway and showing me how to be a better person outside of a career, all contributed to my personal and professional journey,” Salesky says. “Like all of our departed loved ones, their presence is always with me.”
He intends to continue doing good work with good people to make people happy and touch others with the miracle of performing arts. “Whatever I do, I do at the highest quality possible,” Salesky says. “On my tombstone it will say ‘This guy is passionate.’”