Note to Chicago Symphony: Get Hip

[ASUmusicMAN]

Note to Chicago Symphony: Get Hip

By John von Rhein

Chicago Tribune

April 26, 2004

CHICAGO - Echoing his American newspaper colleagues, Chicago Tribune music critic John von Rhein advocates strongly for an American conductor to take over his local orchestra?s podium and to program a diverse range of, especially, contemporary music. Daniel Barenboim will step down in 2006.

Now is the time for the orchestra to engage an American music director, something it has never done in its 112-year history,? writes Von Rhein. ?Ideally that American musician would bring to Chicago a passionate commitment to contemporary music and be able to ignite a similar commitment among audience members.?

Von Rhein names the (lately) usual suspects: David Robertson, Kent Nagano, Robert Spano, Alan Gilbert, Marin Alsop. Then moves to a different age range: David Zinman, Leonard Slatkin, James Conlon.

?Barenboim?s successor must expand the programming and make it more inclusive and appealing to more listeners. Michael Tilson Thomas is doing just that at the San Francisco Symphony,? and has created ?a model of how a progressive-minded American orchestra under a hip, exciting leader has reinvented itself for the new century.

?The Chicago Symphony could do that, too, provided the board disenthralls itself from its long fealty to big-name European heavyweights.?

http://www.musicalamerica.com/ctags/bhChec...6categoryID%3D1

[DudeAsInCool]

Sounds like your type of thinking, ASU :D

[ASUmusicMAN]

Hopefully the fever will spread!