Listen to about 15 seconds of this podcast, and you’ll hear a joy in Kristen Blodgette’s voice that tells you she’s doing exactly what she was meant to do.

Her love of music and interpreting music for composers, musicians and actors is so obvious, you can see why she got her first MD job having never MD’ed before (true story). And to watch her conduct a show is like watching LeBron James play basketball or Tiger Woods play golf. It’s a show unto itself.

It’s easy to understand why the world’s (!) best, including Andrew Lloyd Webber and Josh Groban want Kristen in their musical corner.

Kristen is the first MD we’ve had on the podcast, so I took this opportunity to learn more about the gig and her rise to the top, including . . .

• Her definition of what a Musical Director does.
• How she cold-called the Conductor of A Chorus Line at the theater, during the show, to try to get a meeting (and how it’s a shame that courage comes so easily when we’re young).
• The craft of turning non-singers into singers.
• What she thinks about the shrinking Broadway orchestras, including how Phantom has changed since it began.
• Why she doesn’t write . . . and how that lack-of-desire has made her an even better MD.

Kristen could have been a classical pianist, and while she downplays how good she was as a player in this podcast, something tells me she could be quite the name in that world right now.

We’re so lucky she came into ours instead.

Listen to it on iTunes here. (And if you like the podcast, give it a great review while you’re there!)

Download it here.