Of course there's "sort of" to reading music! My sight-reading skills are.. I dunno... reliable. I've been doing it since 3rd grade so I trust myself, but I make mistakes and haven't done anything professional in years.
But I can't do it on a uke because I haven't done my scales like a good girl. So yeah, that's sort-of. I can read the notes on the page and tell him what to do with them though. What is HIS experience that makes him the conductor? Any degree in music at all, any extensive professional experience.... No? Then he can back the hell off then. But then a professional would have already done just that.
So he says that you're supposed to follow strictly what's on the page. Ok, then let's think about that. These songs are often rewritten by arrangers. Some are better than others. Usually in these easy type arrangements, it's not exactly true to the song as your ear remembers it. But ya know that sheet music is the most handy for _changing_ the music. You see what's on the page, and you hear everyone wants to play it a different way and you see yourself that it sounds better, and so everyone picks up a pencil and marks that bit to reflect the change.
Then when you're playing it again, everyone does it the same way because they all brought their pencils and all wrote it down.
I mean come on! Most conductors would yell about not having the pencil more than anything else!
What happens when this guy comes across a cadenza? Will his head just explode?