OSO Board Chairman Walt Wyler came to the podium at the beginning of this morning’s rehearsal to announce the news that music director Carlos Kalmar has been offered, and has accepted, a four-year contract extension that will bring his tenure through the 2012-2013 season.

It’s good news for the orchestra because it will ensure artistic stability, and in the words of Walt Wyler, will enable Calmar and our new president, Elaine Calder, to bring their collaboration to full fruition over the next four years.

The other factor in this extension is that is also gives the orchestra time to deepen connections with past or future guest conductors who might be considered to succeed Kalmar in the future.

Given the dearth of high quality conductors in this country, it pays to have time to do proper research and build relationships, so that when Carlos moves on up the ladder to a bigger orchestra, we’ll have several candidates in hand and who are familiar both to the organization and audiences, that might either step in in an advisory capacity or be hired as a music director designate.

It’s very good news for the OSO - we’re lucky to have Carlos, and with all of the financial instability that we face over the next few years, having a steady hand at the artistic reins will be vital.

I’ve been reading the discussion boards over at MyAuditions.com with interest over the past year. There have been a few auditions (flute in Detroit and harp in Cleveland are the most recent controversial examples) that have either drawn many, many applicants but not hired someone, or else they have hired someone who was already in the orchestra - in some cases without advancing anyone from the preliminary rounds.

There are the usual aspersions cast regarding the fact that the audition may have been fixed, that it’s defrauding the applicants if the orchestra clearly intends only to hire from within and not from the cattle-call pool of unscreened applicants.

I doubt that’s ever the case. If it is, it’s exceedingly rare.

Why? [Read more →]

Hopefully by Friday the 11th I’ll have a couple audio clips up of my favorite moments in this weekend’s OSO concert.  Particularly in the concert suite drawn from Strauss’ magnificent and magical opera Der Rosenkavalier - I think that I’ve got the single most sublime note in the entire piece (but I’m just a little biased).  

Stay tuned…