In Monday’s (9/7) San Jose Mercury News (California), Richard Scheinin writes, “A changing of the guard is under way this fall at a bevy of Bay Area arts group—including San Francisco Opera, the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra and Cal Performances, to name three with national cachet. … The most striking change may be at San Francisco Opera, where Nicola Luisotti, a live wire from Tuscany, is the new music director and principal conductor—‘a lightning bolt,’ according to David Gockley, the company’s general manager since 2006. … At the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, maestro Kent Nagano, who led the orchestra for 31 years while building his own international career, has been replaced by 32-year-old Joana Carneiro, a native of Lisbon, Portugal, who was but a baby when Nagano arrived in Berkeley. She comes, like Luisotti, with a growing reputation for irresistible enthusiasm on the podium. … For her first program, Oct. 15 at Zellerbach Hall, Carneiro has programmed works by two Berkeley-based composers—Pulitzer Prize-winner John Adams, and Gabriela Lena Frank, the orchestra’s new creative adviser. The conductor is topping them off with a masterwork, Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra.”
Posted September 8, 2009
