In Monday’s (4/13) Arizona Daily Star (Tucson), Cathalena Burch writes that on Monday, the Tucson Desert Song Festival, in its third year, “named George Hanson as the festival’s first-ever director beginning July 1—the day after Hanson’s contract with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra wraps up. Hanson last month performed his final concert as the TSO’s music director, a position he held for 19 years. ‘It’s a big step for us. It’s a measure of the fact that artistically this has grown a lot faster than we thought it would,’ said [Jack] Forsythe, the festival’s founder and board president. The board gave Hanson a three-year contract…. The festival, held for three weekends beginning in late January, provides funding to bring in up-and-coming singers … Participating groups include the TSO, Tucson Guitar Society, Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, the University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music and True Concord Voices and Orchestra…. Under Hanson’s baton, the TSO has mounted … events including Verdi’s Requiem at the inaugural festival in 2013 and Berlioz’s ‘The Damnation of Faust’ in 2014. This year, the TSO presented … the chamber version of Mahler’s ‘Das Lied von der Erde,’ a work it will remount in the full orchestral version for the 2016 festival.”
Posted April 16, 2015
