By Robert D. Thomas
Music Critic
Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily
News
The revision is to correct the location of the Nov. 6 concert.
Jorge Mester, who for 25 years was music director of the Pasadena
Symphony, has been named artistic director of the Young Musicians Foundation and
its Debut Orchestra. The 76-year-old Mester will continue in his current
positions as Music Director of the Louisville Symphony and Naples (Fla.)
Philharmonic, although the Louisville ensemble is embroiled in a major
financial struggle at the moment.
Founded in 1955 and based in Los Angeles, the YMF is one of
the nation’s top pre-professional training orchestras. Its list of former music
directors includes such illustrious names as Andr Previn, Myung-Whun Chung and
Michael Tilson Thomas.
Last week, the its most recent maestro, Case Scaglione, was
named an assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic, joining Joshua
Weilerstein, who was a Dudamel Fellow with the Los Angeles Philharmonic last
year, in that post assisting Music Director Alan Gilbert (MORE).
Scaglione’s YMF predecessor, Sean Newhouse, is now assistant
conductor of the Boston Symphony. Last season he won praise from audiences and
critics alike when he stepped in on two hours notice to replace James Levine
and conduct Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 with the BSO (MORE).
Thus, Mester (who has served on the YMF Advisory Board for
12 years) takes his new position at a propitious time for the organization. He
will help select and mentor the YMF’s next music director (it’s usually a
three-year appointment) and is preparing an expanded conductor program where he
will serve as a mentor for those people, as well. He will also supervise
auditions for the orchestra’s new musicians next month.
It’s a role for which Mester is eminently suited. He headed
the conducting program at The Juilliard School in New York City in the 1980s, taught
conducting at the USC Thornton School of Music, and was the Aspen Festival’s
artistic director for many years (he is now conductor laureate there). Several
conductors heading orchestras today, including JoAnn Falletta (Buffalo
Philharmonic) count Mester as a mentor. During his time with the Pasadena
Symphony, he also introduced to local audiences a number of young artists who
have gone on to major careers, perhaps most notably the violinist Midori.
In addition to his shepherding and teaching work, Mester
will conduct one of the YMF’s six free concerts during the upcoming season,
leading the orchestra in John Adams’ Shaker
Loops and Bizet’s Symphony in C Major at 6 p.m. on Nov. 6 at the Los Angeles County Art Museum’s Bing Theater.
Read Janette Williams’ article in the Pasadena Star-News HERE.
The YMF media release is HERE.
The 2011-2012 YMF Debut Orchestra season is HERE.
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(c) Copyright 2011, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved.
Portions may be quoted with attribution.
