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Sorry, conductors. For CIM’s newest ensemble, your services are not required.  

Take heart, though. The objective of the CIM Virtuosi, which launches with a concert Oct. 30 in Mixon Hall, isn’t to dispense with conductors. It’s to prepare students to work with them more effectively, by cultivating the ability to work as a group of 25 or 30.  

“The skills we’re training are actually the perfect practice for playing in an orchestra,” said faculty violinist Todd Phillips, the group’s founder and leader. “These are skills that have to be learned. Everyone has to know how to play together.” 

Phillips knows of what he speaks. Indeed, he knows better than almost anyone. As a member of the renowned Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, he’s been making music at an elite level without a conductor for over 40 years.  

Hence his desire to share that experience with CIM, one of only a few schools in the U.S. with a robust chamber orchestra. The value in expressing an interpretive viewpoint on an orchestral performance is something he’s seen and felt firsthand, and believed in strongly enough to add to the chamber music curriculum.  

Every time Phillips trains students to play without a conductor, “They come back with renewed confidence and enthusiasm, because everybody’s adding something to the pot,” he said. “That feeling of energy and camaraderie is just so infectious.”  

Some of that spirit factored into the group’s name. Of all the monikers suggested by the CIM community, Phillips said the image of the “virtuoso” struck him as the most fitting, given the nature of the enterprise. (Perhaps not coincidentally, a similarly named group represents the Detroit-based Sphinx Organization.) 

“Having no conductor but having the courage and determination to play these challenging pieces, that’s a virtuosic act,” he said. “It’s like performing without a net.” 

Although it contains works by just two composers, the Oct. 30 program touches on much of what listeners can expect when the CIM Virtuosi convene each semester. Mozart’s Divertimento, K. 136, for instance, suggests that Classical-period music will figure prominently, and Tchaikovsky’s Serenade underscores the group’s identity as primarily a string ensemble.  

Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23, meanwhile, which will feature faculty pianist Antonio Pompa-Baldi, points to Phillips’ plan to bring in both students and faculty as guests and to incorporate woodwind and brass players as needed.  

Left unspoken by the Oct. 30 program is the likelihood of Baroque music appearing on the menu, and Phillips’ interest in contemporary music, which the CIM Virtuosi also could play, along with just about anything else.  

At this point, “Everything’s on the table,” Phillips said. “It’s all open.”