“The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra is selecting a music director to conduct the symphony to the next level, as it prepares to move into expansive new digs. Fifty years ago? Same thing,” writes Chris Foran in Tuesday’s (9/25) Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “The MSO planned to move into the Performing Arts Center on Water Street when it was completed at the end of 1968, and wanted someone who could light a fire under the orchestra … naming Kenneth Schermerhorn as… music director… Schermerhorn told reporters he had plans to turn the Performing Arts Center into a cultural destination…. On Schermerhorn’s opening night as conductor, Sept. 28, 1968, at the Pabst Theater, he didn’t disappoint…. The MSO during his 12-year tenure had its first U.S. tour, made its first recordings and played Carnegie Hall for the first time, among other accomplishments. Schermerhorn told the Sentinel’s Nancy Miller in … 1988, … ‘It was a good orchestra when I came here, but a much better one when I left.’ ” A search is currently underway for a replacement for Edo de Waart, who stepped down as music director in 2017. The orchestra plans to move into the renovated Warner Grand Theatre in 2020.
Posted September 26, 2018
