Greater Akron Musical Association, parent organization to the Akron Symphony, has selected PHIL WALZ as the orchestra’s executive director, effective in July 2009. He succeeds MARGO SNIDER, who last year announced her intention to step down at the end of her current contract. Walz has worked most recently as director of development for the Island Institute in Rockland, Maine; as executive director of the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts; and as director of development for Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. Walz has also served as executive director of the New Hampshire Music Festival and as assistant/acting manager of the New Hampshire Symphony Orchestra. In 1985 he was awarded the League of American Orchestras’ Helen Thompson Award for outstanding service as an early-career orchestra manager. Walz began his professional training as a concert pianist.
Posted May 12, 2009
DONATO CABRERA has been appointed assistant conductor of the San Francisco Symphony and Wattis Foundation Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, effective in September 2009. Currently an assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and San Francisco Ballet, Cabrera made his SFS debut as a guest conductor in April of this year. He has also worked with musicians of the SFSYO in rehearsal and as a judge in its annual concerto competition. This spring he was one of eight conductors participating in the League of American Orchestras’ Bruno Walter National Conductor Preview in Nashville. From 2002 to 2008 Cabrera was associate conductor of the San Francisco Opera. He is a co-founder and past music director of the American Contemporary Music Ensemble, and has served as assistant conductor of the Ravinia, Aspen, and Spoleto (Italy) festivals and as resident conductor at Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara. Cabrera holds degrees from the University of Nevada and the University of Illinois; he has also pursued graduate studies in conducting at Indiana University and the Manhattan School of Music. 
The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra has announced the appointment of ILYA FINKELSHTEYN as principal cello, effective with the 2009-10 season. He is currently principal cello of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, a post to which he was appointed in 2002 by then-Music Director Yuri Temirkanov. A winner of numerous cello competitions, Finkelshteyn has appeared as soloist with the Baltimore, Saint Louis, and Detroit symphony orchestras, as well as the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, Saint Paul Civic Orchestra, Peninsula Music Festival Orchestra, National Repertory Orchestra, and Juilliard Orchestra. Following studies in his native Russia at the Special Music School of St. Petersburg Conservatory he emigrated to the U.S., where he spent a year at the University of Minnesota School of Music and six years at The Juilliard School.