“For a pivotal 2016 moment in classical music—and the broader arts world—look to the appointment last month of Debora L. Spar as the first female president of Lincoln Center in New York, ensuring that our country’s three great performing arts centers will be run by women,” writes Mark Swed in Sunday’s (12/18) Los Angeles Times. “Two years ago Deborah F. Rutter became the first female president of Kennedy Center in Washington. Last year Rachel Moore took over the Music Center of Los Angeles. Once Spar moves down Broadway some 50 blocks from Barnard College, where she has been president since 2008, women will preside over a large and influential swath of performing arts. …. Rutter at Kennedy Center has been in her post the longest… She has … appointed an excellent new music director, Gianandrea Noseda, who begins next season” at the National Symphony Orchestra. Also noted are Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla’s appointment as music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in England, Francesca Zambello, who is “breathing new life into Washington National Opera,” and Jenny Bilfield, who “has made Washington Performing Arts one of the liveliest presenting organizations in the country.”
Posted December 19, 2016
Pictured (left to right): Debora L. Spar, Deborah F. Rutter, Rachel Moore
