Reputation and recommendations aren’t enough. Recordings aren’t sufficient, either. For the people responsible for bring the best in performing arts to Pittsburgh, there’s no substitute for the live experience.

That’s why Pittsburgh’s artistic leaders spend one to three months a year on the road looking for new talent to delight audiences at home.

“There’s a visceral connection in a live performance that is simply impossible to achieve in any recorded medium,” Paul Organisak, executive director of Pittsburgh Dance Council and vice president for programming for Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, says. “We’re working in the live arts. It has to be experienced live. We’re not presenting recorded dance.”

Hit and miss

Scouting, in the arts no less than sports, is a chancy proposition.

Christopher Hahn, Pittsburgh Opera’s general director, decided to bring Ricky Ian Gordon’s opera “The Grapes of Wrath” to Pittsburgh in November 2008 after catching the world premiere in New York City. He hired Jean-Luc Tingaud to conduct Francis Poulenc’s “Dialogues of the Carmelites,” this season’s final opera, only after seeing him conduct “Carmen” in Palm Springs, Fla.

But “you never really know,” Bob Moir, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s vice president for artistic planning, says. He’s gone to Europe to check out a single conductor, on the recommendation of someone whose opinion he’d learned to respect, but had not engaged the artist. Fortunately, it was in the dead of winter and the flight was cheap.

“There’s an alchemy, which is often called chemistry (between conductors and orchestra musicians). A conductor could be liked very much by one orchestra and not another,” Moir says. “When I go to check out a conductor, sometimes I look at them from the point of view: Am I enjoying this concert• But also: do I think our orchestra would appreciate having this man or woman on the podium for a week?”

Technology’s place

Recordings and the internet help artistic planners in two ways — deciding what to go see and helping out in those last-minute crises that can ruin their digestion and sleep.

“Nowadays you can find practically anybody on YouTube if you’re trying to find the right kind of singer or pianist when you have a cancellation with three-days notice before the first rehearsal,” says Moir. “It’s also possible for someone in Europe to post a recording of an aria on a website and give you the password.

“There’s no 100-percent substitute for hearing a person live; but, often, these technological means can help us make a decision whether we need to, or want to, hear them live,”he says.

For more visual performances, recordings are even less helpful.

“Of all the (art) forms that I deal with, dance is the most important to see live,” Organisak says. “It simply does not translate sufficiently to DVD. I use them to see what looks interesting enough that I should check it out. I make a concerted effort to see every dance company I present. I do commit to the new, but in most cases I’ve seen the show before I bring it here.”

The home run

Moir’s best road trip may have been in 2003, when he went to hear a new and promising conductor leading the Chicago Symphony.

“I was told that I should check him out by Mariss Jansons,” Moir says. “Mariss was very honest. He told me he’d never heard Manfred (Honeck) conduct, but knew the Oslo Philharmonic (in Norway) liked him so much they made him principal guest conductor.”

After Moir heard Honeck with the Chicago Symphony, they began talks about his Pittsburgh Symphony debut, which took place in May 2006.

Honeck’s artistic vitality and rapport with the musicians of the Pittsburgh Symphony at his debut was so electric that people at Heinz Hall immediately began thinking music director. Honeck was quickly reengaged to confirm that the alchemy was no flash in the pan.

The rest is history that is still unfolding. Honeck was named music director in January 2007 and began his tenure in September 2008. He’ll be music director here until at least 2016.

On the road

Artistic scouting trips involve much more than sitting in a seat in a theater or concert hall. Days are filled with meetings and networking.

Moir’s trips often involve advance work for tours, meetings with artists and/or their agents, as well as concerts. His trip to Europe in January included two lengthy meetings at airports with Honeck.

Organisak says his time on the road feels like 24-hour days.

“One of the most valuable things I get out of travel, asides from seeing the shows myself, is hearing about them, so I get a double impact,” he says. “One of the presenters I met in Madrid last year told me about a Polish dance program she had just seen that I hope to bring here. That’s the way the world works — word of mouth. There’s an international circuit of dance curators, my colleagues, who travel constantly.”

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