Category: Who’s In

San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra has announced the appointment of PETER PASTREICH as executive director, effective June 1. He assumes the Robert A. Birman Executive Director Chair, named for his immediate predecessor, who left the orchestra last summer to become chief operating officer of the Louisville Orchestra and was recently promoted to chief executive officer there. Pastreich, a 40-year veteran in the orchestra management field, served as executive director of the San Francisco Symphony from 1978 to 1999, and had previously worked as executive director of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. For the last decade he has been active as a consultant and teacher of management. He has played a leading role in the League of American Orchestras’ Essentials of Orchestra Management course since its inception in 2000, and was one of the architects of the League’s Orchestra Management Fellowship Program, inaugurated in 1979. The League presented him with its Gold Baton Award in 1999, and the same year he was made a chevalier des arts et des lettres by the French government. A native of Brooklyn, Pastreich began his management career by organizing a 1959 European tour by the Yale University Band during his undergraduate years at that institution. He discovered the profession of orchestra management the following year, when, as a medical student and part-time manager of the Village Civic Symphony in New York City, he attended the League’s course in orchestra management.

Photo of Peter Pastreich by Jamie Whittington   

Posted May 22, 2009

Robert J. Birgeneau, chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, has announced the appointment of MATÍAS TARNOPOLSKY as director of the presenting organization Cal Performances, effective August 10, 2009. Since January 2006 Tarnopolsky has served as vice president, artistic planning, at the New York Philharmonic. He had previously spent seven years at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, first as director of programming and then as senior director of artistic planning. From 1997 to 1999 he was a producer for the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Singers. Born in Buenos Aires and raised in London, Tarnopolsky pursued early studies in piano, conducting and clarinet before going on to King’s College at the University of London, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in music and a master’s in musicology.   

Tarnopolsky photo by Kat Wade

Post May 21, 2009

BOBBY TUDOR has been elected president of the Houston Symphony Society for a two-year term beginning June 1, 2009. Tudor is chairman and CEO of the energy investment and merchant banking firm Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. LLC, and was previously a partner with Goldman Sachs & Co. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and legal studies from Rice University and a J.D. degree from Tulane Law School.

Posted May 21, 2009

RACHELLE ROE has joined the staff of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as director of public relations. She served most recently as director of public affairs for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and from 1999 to 2007 was associate director of public relations for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association and Hollywood Bowl. Roe has also held key public relations positions with Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and Shuman Associates in New York City, as well as with the Celebrity Series in Boston. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in flute performance, and spent many years as a freelance musician.

Posted May 21, 2009

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra has announced the appointment of STEVEN M. KOEHLER as president and chief operating officer of  SD&A Teleservices, Inc., effective June 1. He succeeds PAUL S. PAPICH, who led the firm for the last decade. Koehler was most recently executive vice president, operations, of the information technology support company Partners Consulting Services. Prior to that, he was group vice president of K-Force Professional Staffing. SD&A, based in Los Angeles, provides fund-raising and marketing services to orchestras and other performing organizations through widely dispersed call centers housed on client premises; it was purchased in 2004 by the Robert W. Woodruff Arts Center on behalf of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, one of the Arts Center’s operating divisions.  

Posted May 21, 2009

The Walden School has announced the appointment of JOAN TOWER and STEPHEN JAFFE as composers-in-residence for its 2009 International Summer Music Camp and Festival in Dublin, New Hampshire. Both are experienced teachers, Tower having served as professor of music at Bard College since 1972 and Jaffe currently affiliated with Duke University as a professor of composition. Also announced by the Walden School was a new collaboration between its Teacher Training Institute and Oberlin Conservatory of Music at Oberlin College. As part of Oberlin’s Master of Music Teaching degree program, Walden faculty members PATRICIA PLUDE and TOM LOPEZ will offer a one-week course presenting the school’s innovative approach to teaching the fundamentals of music, which emphasizes improvisation and composition.  

Posted May 21, 2009

The Cleveland Orchestra has announced the appointment of LYLE STEELMAN as assistant principal trumpet and SHACHAR ISRAEL as assistant principal trombone. They will make their first appearances in these roles on July 29 and August 10, respectively, during the orchestra’s 2009 Blossom Festival season. Steelman, who will hold the James P. and Dolores D. Storer Chair, has performed with The Cleveland Orchestra as substitute trumpet since 2005, and for the past three years has served as principal trumpet of the Charlotte (N.C.) Symphony Orchestra. From 2004 to 2006 he played second trumpet in the Richmond (Va.) Symphony. A native of Cleveland, Steelman graduated from Baldwin-Wallace College Conservatory of Music (Berea, Ohio) and earned a master’s degree from Southern Methodist University. He received further training in Colorado’s National Repertory Orchestra, where he served as principal trumpet. Israel is currently principal trombone in the Hartford Symphony, and from 2004 to 2008 held that post in New Jersey’s Haddonfield Symphony Orchestra (now known as Symphony in C). He has performed and recorded with Canadian Brass and appeared as soloist with New York City’s Jupiter Symphony Players. Israel holds a bachelor’s degree from the Curtis Institute of Music and a master’s from The Juilliard School.

Posted May 19, 2009

The West Michigan Symphony, based in Muskegon and known until this spring as the West Shore Symphony Orchestra, has announced a five-year renewal of SCOTT SPECK’s contract as music director. Speck, who has led the orchestra since 2002, is also music director of Alabama’s Mobile Symphony and conductor of the Washington (D.C.) Ballet. He has served in key leadership roles with the Honolulu Symphony, Los Angeles Opera, and San Francisco Ballet, and has appeared as guest conductor with the China Film Philharmonic in Beijing. Speck is co-author of three books in the best-selling “Dummies” series, one each on classical music, opera, and ballet.   

Posted May 15, 2009

Michigan’s Adrian Symphony Orchestra has appointed KENNETH FUCHS composer in residence through the 2009-10 season. Under Music Director John Thomas Dodson the orchestra premiered two Fuchs compositions on April 26 of this year, Discover the Wild (an overture for orchestra) and American Rhapsody (a romance for violin and orchestra). World premieres of three other works by Fuchs will occur during his residency: Concerto Grosso for String Quartet and String Orchestra (May 29-30, 2009), Atlantic Riband (October 24, 2009), and the viola concerto Divinum Mysterium (April 10, 2010).   

Posted May 15, 2009

BERNARD RUBENSTEIN, music director of the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony Orchestra, has signed a three-year renewal of his contract that extends his tenure with the orchestra through the 2011-12 season. The FMSO, which serves the area encompassing Fargo, N.D., and Moorhead, Minn., has been led by Rubenstein since 2003. A resident of Santa Fe, he served previously as music director of the Tulsa Philharmonic and Santa Fe Symphony, as a conductor at the Santa Fe Opera, and as associate conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Rubenstein has guest conducted orchestras and opera companies in such U.S. cities as Chicago, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, and Los Angeles, and for the past seven years has traveled annually to Cuba for conducting engagements with Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional in Havana and Orquesta Sinfonica de Oriente in Santiago de Cuba.

Posted May 15, 2009