Meticulous musician

"Every conductor has his own individual sound. Even with your eyes closed you can tell whether it’s the sound of Herbert von Karajan or Zubin Mehta,” says Adil Mehta of South Orange County, California. No relation to Zubin, he nonetheless attended the American Youth Symphony Orchestra rehearsals, knew well its aging founder Mehelli Mehta and says he often drove the musician there.

"Mehelli Mehta was very passionate about his music. He didn’t mince his words. Sometimes it was embarrassing when he was screaming at his students. But there were times when his orchestra performed better than the Los Angeles Philharmonic,” recalls Adil. A big fan of von Karajan, he concedes that Zubin will rank among the great conductors of all time.

In Bombay to celebrate the golden wedding anniversary of his parents Sam and Zarine Mehta towards the end of 2006, Adil, a conductor himself, said he was surveying the possibility of bringing an orchestra to Bombay, but found that unless it was one of the very big names in the western music world, neither the National Centre for the Performing Arts nor the Mehelli Mehta Foundation would commit to sponsoring a show. As for bringing the musicians here, it would be entirely his responsibility to fly them across and provide for their accommodation – something that major corporations undertook in the case of the big guns.

There are a lot of small opera companies in Los Angeles (LA) where Adil says he is invited to conduct. "There is a winter season and a summer season at the Hollywood Bowl” and Adil, who has a masters degree in instrumental conducting from the California State University in LA, participates in three to four events each year. He recalls he had had to wait two-and-a-half years before he got his admission to the university course. He has also been studying conducting privately, attending workshops in various parts of the world. He surprises us by stating, "I would like to turn it into my primary occupation,” adding, "I have started my own ensemble called California Chamber Ensemble.”

Adil Mehta: seeking sponsors

The diminutive, middle-aged man says he has been earning his bread and butter for the past 20 years running a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) repair station based on the airport, and has specialized in the repair of aircraft ‘governors.’ A small unit attached to the engine which regulates the speed of the engine by changing the propeller pitch, he says these governors only go onto piston engine (propeller) aircraft of private planes and those of flying schools; he is not into turbo engine governors. Even so, considerable responsibility and paperwork is involved.

With a degree in physics from Wilson College, an advanced German language certificate from Bombay’s Max Mueller Bhavan and further technology savvy from a course at Los Angeles Northrop University, Adil had initially wanted to be a pilot but poor eyesight had eliminated that possibility. With his working knowledge of aviation maintenance, Adil advises us against flying low cost airlines. "It is scary because of the kind of maintenance standards they have, cutting costs wherever possible. Airlines from China, Korea have been given bad marks by the FAA.” He says he also avoids domestic carriers because they employ "neophyte pilots who make stupid mistakes” leading to crashes. "It is mostly pilot error and bad maintenance that lead to plane crashes,” he reiterates.

A traditionalist to the core, Adil Mehta says he is against intercommunity marriage but nonetheless married Ukranian Viki Ryabov three months ago though he had first met her in Germany several years earlier, because he says he "had absolutely no choice except to marry a non-Parsi or stay single…It is very sad that people are not wanting to get married. But even when they do, they don’t know how to go about it.” He relates the frustrations of looking for a Parsi bride at long distance. "People refuse to release their daughters’ pictures… I’ve been battling this for almost 20 years… Most women don’t want to put their picture on the website; and when they do, it’s one taken 20 years ago! People fly halfway across the world and don’t even know what the other person looks like!” He is indignant about parents who have interviewed him, asking questions like "What do you cook at home? Do you have your own flat?” He says he has received nasty e-mails and been branded "shallow” for wanting to be friends to start with.

He is bothered about the Parsi community getting smaller and smaller; at the sight of old Parsis who cannot look after themselves in Udvada; at the prospect of new cosmopolitan buildings overwhelming the old Parsi habitat. Nor does he approve that "people who don’t want to follow the traditions and customs want to get other people into their fold.” According to him, "good thoughts, good words, good deeds is not all. Religion is something different — prayers, traditions, rituals. If you don’t follow those, you are a good person but not a Zoroastrian!”

Adil believes in the dakhmas, is willing to "go with the traditionalists until, some day, they say it’s not working. I don’t like change, especially change for convenience.” Viki hadn’t accompanied him to India because, Adil mentioned, she is yet to complete formalities to be able to reenter the US. He expects her to accept and appreciate all the restrictions imposed on a non-Parsi for religious purposes. He says she "respects the religion’s demands, has done a lot of research on Zoroastrianism, knows more than me. She has linked the ancient Zoroastrian people with the Slavs…The more she researches into Zoroastrianism, the more she likes it.” It is understood that their children, if any, will be raised as Parsi Zoroastrians, he claims.

At the time when Adil spoke to Parsiana the Zoroastrian Orchestra had not been worked into the XIV North American Congress program. In a subsequent e-mail he notes that there was no response to his offer to join the event when he mailed the organizers on reading an online ad. But he adds, "I probably would not have been able to go anyway because I am in the midst of preparing for my graduation concert in the fall. It will be the opera Carmen by Bizet. Right now I am in the initial stages of organizing everything, auditioning the singers, getting some of them to improve their French diction and so on… and some preliminary chorus rehearsals will be next October.”

He had been a part of the Zoroastrian Orchestra in the Houston congress in 2000 and so was able to share some of the hassles that went into the organizing of it: "There are not enough Parsi musicians to make up the orchestra. Moreover, there are those who feel that a couple of months of violin lessons are enough to enable a person to join an orchestra…It is very expensive to hire people from the local orchestra.”

Even at the best of times, it is a frustrating exercise getting 40 musicians together, and in the case of an opera, six to seven singers. "Coordination takes an enormous amount of time. Rehearsals may take about five to six weeks and only three of them will be with the orchestra. The rest of the time it’s the singers with the piano,” an instrument Adil plays.

Though he has been in the US since 1984, Adil says he never wanted to be a part of management committees of Zoroastrian associations. He is a member of the Zoroastrian Association of California (ZAC) and the Traditional Mazdasni Zarthoshti Anjuman (TMZA). "I only want to get into things I can do properly,” he asserts. He has kept in touch with several Parsi families. Ervad Jal Birdie of TMZA has performed jashans at his home. But by and large the community is too spread out to maintain physical contact.

Apart from the aviation business and conducting, Adil enjoys traveling, reading — fiction with an accent on aviation and stories about World Wars I and II as well as a bit of metaphysics. His love for animals had him breeding tropical fish as a hobby when he was in Bombay. Later he found a Sunday job with a place that imported tropical fish and for 14 years he continued at it. "It is easy to tell the sex of certain fish. The males are usually smaller and more colorful; the females heavier with a bigger belly and not much color. There are the ‘Livebearers’ which spawn live baby fish which are easy to breed. The others lay eggs,” he gives us a quick resume of the thrills of keeping fish. He likes dogs and cats too but there is no one to look after them when he travels and though he has a big backyard where he lives, a 45-minue drive out of LA, the wildlife in the area — coyotes, rattlesnakes, raccoons, etc pose a danger to domestic pets. Personally, he enjoys the wildlife around him.

Music however remains Adil’s outstanding interest. We learn a spot of musical history. "In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a conductor freely made changes in the works he was performing, and in so doing put his own stamp on them. Notes were changed, instrumentation was changed, tempi were changed and even additional passages were sometimes written into the work being performed,” he tells us, adding, " Indeed this was considered desirable, and a conductor attempting to perform a work just as it was written would be considered inept. Beginning with ArturoToscanini, this approach to performance changed. Toscanini was known to be meticulous about performing exactly as per the composer’s wishes. Conductors nowadays strive to be as truthful to a composer’s intentions as possible.”

Adil wants to "try and educate the non-musical public into conducting and why it is easy to fake conducting. Good musicians can know the worth of a conductor very fast. He conducts with his ears and eyes: a conductor can change the sound of the music if he is communicating properly with the orchestra…” Adil hopes that the right people in Bombay will become aware that "there is another Parsi conductor besides Zubin Mehta,” and he would very much like to find sponsors to enable him to bring his ensemble to Bombay for a couple of performances, maybe non-traditional performances such as "operas in concert form…I don’t think anyone would be disappointed,” he adds.