Leif Segerstam was not only a personality who always somehow seemed larger than life itself, he often said ‘Leif is Life’. Somehow, when he said it, you knew exactly what he meant.

He took me completely under his wing when I was 19, and for the better part of six years he was a steadfast champion of mine and, importantly, just as steadfast a critic. Leif opened my musical mind. He insisted on mental agility and expected me to be able to speak about all that exists between what he called the 'happenings', or the 'constellations' (what we mortals regard as the notes).

At one point, he brought me to live with him for two months and to assist him at the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra as his assistant when he was Music Director there. Among other duties I assisted him on his complete cycle of Sibelius symphonies (which he had earlier recorded for Ondine Records, one of the reasons I'm so happy to have followed in his footsteps as an Ondine recording artist). I remember seeing him refine the smallest phrase in rehearsal with the Helsinki Philharmonic in Sibelius's Symphony No 6. This was a work both he and the orchestra knew by heart, had recorded, toured, and performed perhaps more than anyone. Yet there he was, refining and refining.

I’ve come to regard the work and role of a proper, 'real' conductor as a kind of warrior chief against mediocrity. Leif inspired me to think this way, and he regarded our art form as one of the last frontiers in the fight against the ever-growing complacency and desire for mediocrity in the world.

Leif experienced enormous difficulty in these last years, certainly as a man who would speak his mind without inhibitions. We live in an age where we speak of 'freedom' but in fact most of us in the classical music world are anything but 'free' to speak either a personal truth or a challenging thought without risk of cancelation. From my first-hand view, if Leif insulted someone or spoke in a way which offended, he would apologize wholeheartedly, and there was nothing about Leif that wasn’t wholehearted.

He couldn’t stand stupidity, ignorance, laziness, or a general lack of curiosity in life. He was exceptional in the truest sense of the word, and he was both unwilling and unable to reduce himself to fit other people’s comforts or inabilities.

I recall one of our intensive lessons on the physicality of conducting, specifically about what to do with the hands. 'One is down, everything else is somewhere else.' Meaning, the first beat of the bar is straight down the middle, and everything else happens everywhere else. This lesson occurred at 7:30am, at his breakfast table before a Die Frau Ohne Schatten rehearsal in Helsinki. Then he proceeded to ask me, with equal intensity, about the philosophical aspects of Strauss and aesthetics of his music. Over breakfast.

This was the thing about studying with Leif as I did, there was no scheduled 'assignment for tomorrow' no 'tomorrow we discuss this work or composer'. He expected my curiosity to run full tilt, non-stop, and that I would be constantly living and breathing our art form. So if he had a rehearsal of Strauss, he simply expected that I would have studied those works at length, knowing I was going to observe him (and I always did!). If he had to teach a class at the Sibelius Academy and I knew they would be covering a Tchaikovsky symphony, I prepared it well because it was all but certain that he would just start speaking about it to me over egg rolls or in a taxi.

He hated false sentimentality, but he was deeply sentimental. A single note expressed without intention could make him furious, a bird singing in the park would make him cry. I felt it must have been hard to be him, in a world which doesn’t really know what to do with highly-sensitive and intelligent people of his kind. In our world, by contrast, brutes can thrive, and if he met any, he would happily and forcefully scream at them at the top of his brillant tenor voice.

Leif was my teacher and he showed me nothing but the deepest love and care a teacher could give. He wasn’t warm and cuddly, but what he gave to me of himself, he gave endlessly, and I was, and am, endlessly grateful. Today I am sad, personally and for all of us, because the world really needs more 'Leif, is Life'.

Robert Treviño's latest recording on Ondine Records, 'Americascapes 2: American Opus', will be released at the beginning of November