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Title: Conductor
Company: Boston Philharmonic Orchestra
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Age: 59

Benjamin Zander dreams big dreams. His dream at the moment is to put a recording of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in the hands of every man, woman, and child on Earth.

Why would Zander, world-renowned conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, take on such a grandiose challenge? "To share the most-powerful language ever devised by human beings," Zander says. "We've tamed music so that it's comfortable. Beethoven intended the Fifth Symphony as an attack -- on complacency, on the status quo, on the way people see things. He was shaking his fist at humanity. I want to wake people up to that spirit."

A precocious composer and gifted cellist from around age eight, Zander studied as a child with Benjamin Britten and Imogen Holst in England. Then, beginning at age 15, he spent five years under the tutelage of the great Spanish cellist Gaspar Cassadó. But his inability to develop calluses on his fingertips -- a necessary part of becoming a professional cellist -- forced him into another career. Today Zander has the distinction of conducting an orchestra that was created solely for him. After years at the helm of the Boston Civic Symphony, Zander was fired in 1978 by the symphony's board -- because he had insisted on presenting "difficult" music by such composers as Mahler and Bruckner. The entire orchestra resigned in protest and, with Zander, went on to form the Boston Philharmonic. For the past 27 years, Zander has also led the Youth Philharmonic of the New England Conservatory of Music, where he has been a faculty member for 33 years. He is also a frequent guest conductor of the London Philharmonia.

There's no disputing that Zander is a topflight conductor. But he sees himself more as a teacher than as a maestro. His students include talented young musicians, virtuoso performers, audience members who attend his preconcert talks -- and, increasingly, business leaders. Zander's calendar is packed with presentations at high-profile gatherings like the State of the World Forum and the World Economic Forum (the annual meeting of politicians and CEOs in Davos, Switzerland), and with speeches to giant organizations like British Telecom, IBM, Shell Oil, and NASA. In his passionate, almost savagely energetic monologues, Zander leaps about the stage from his piano to a flip chart and back to the piano. He plays, lectures, spins tales, and pushes his audience to laugh, cry, and sing -- usually Beethoven's "Ode to Joy," in German.

Zander delivers a knockout solo performance. But his provocative ideas about leadership are rooted in a partnership with Rosamund Stone Zander, 56, a family therapist whom he refers to as "the brains behind the enterprise." Although the couple separated 12 years ago, the Zanders have together developed an art that is more inclusive than performance, motivational speaking, or even therapy. It is an art embedded in the spiritual, psychological, and artistic tradition of transformation. It combines the force of music (and the force of Ben's personality) with Roz's genius at creating new definitions (Roz uses the term "distinctions") that allow people to move beyond conventional choices and to find new possibilities in their work and in their life.