Archive for June, 2010

SEATTLE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA NAMES LUDOVIC MORLOT MUSIC DIRECTOR DESIGNATE

Assumes Music Director Post in 2011–2012 Season

Gerard Schwarz Becomes Conductor Laureate in 2011–2012

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Seattle Symphony Orchestra Board of Directors Chair Leslie Jackson Chihuly and Interim Executive Director Mark McCampbell announced today that French conductor Ludovic Morlot has been named Music Director Designate, beginning in the 2010–2011 season, to assume the role of Music Director at the beginning of the 2011–2012 season with an initial six-year contract. Seattle Symphony’s current Music Director Gerard Schwarz, who has held that role since 1985, will assume the title of Conductor Laureate after his final season in 2010–2011.
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Seattle Gets a Maestro of Skill and Luck

Daniel J. Wakin

The road to conducting fame can follow many routes but usually has one or two crucial elements: a lucky last-minute substitution at a major orchestra; an influential mentor; reasonable doses of talent and charisma. All of those came together for the young Frenchman Ludovic Morlot, who will become the next music director of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra.

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Rising French star Ludovic Morlot chosen to replace Schwarz at Seattle Symphony

By Melinda Bargreen, Special to The Seattle Times

It’s official: The Seattle Symphony Orchestra’s baton will be passed to a 36-year-old French maestro, Ludovic Morlot, when Gerard Schwarz steps down from the music directorship a year from now.

Morlot assumes the title of “music director designate” this fall, at the beginning of the 2010-11 concert season, and becomes music director a year later, when he starts an initial six-year contract.

Schwarz, music director of the symphony since 1985, assumes the title of conductor laureate in the summer of 2011, when his current contract expires.

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Morlot to Seattle

By Alex Ross

Ludovic Morlot, the incisive thirty-six-year-old French conductor who has made several notable appearances with the New York Philharmonic in the past four years, will be the next music director of the Seattle Symphony, according to an announcement that came over the wires a few minutes ago. A generational turnover at American orchestras continues: two weeks ago, the thirty-five-year-old Yannick Nézet-Séguin was chosen to take the reins of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Both appointments seem sound choices for ensembles that have gone through lean years: Seattle has long been treading water under the artistically uneven Gerard Schwarz, while the fabulous Philadelphians have experienced a well-publicized bout of financial, administrative, and artistic turmoil. If Nézet-Séguin has the edge in charisma, Morlot seems livelier in his tastes, having delivered lucid, vivid accounts of dense modern scores such as Tristan Murail’s Gondwana. At Mostly Mozart this summer he will lead the International Contemporary Ensemble in a program of Purcell, Bach, Benjamin, Birtwistle, and Lachenmann; at Tanglewood he’ll conduct Golijov’s Three Songs. Seattle, no less than Los Angeles or New York, has a huge potential audience for adventurous programming — Morlot’s task is to make the connection.

Read Alex’s blog at The Rest Is Noise.

Now you can listen to the recorded live broadcast of Ludovic’s June 11th concert at Cite de la Musique in Paris with Ensemble Intercontemporain! The program included works by Scelsi, Murail and Pintscher.

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RLPO play French Impressions at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall

It was the last concert of the Philharmonic’s main season and it produced a bit of a mixed bag of musical goodies.

Drawing heavily on French musical influences, with a bit of Barber thrown in for good measure, many of the pieces were evocations of balmy Mediterranean locations, perfectly suitable for an unusually sticky summer evening in Liverpool.

It’s hard to say which was the most attractive piece on the programme.

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