In Wednesday’s (4/11) Cleveland.com, Zachary Lewis interviews Carl Topilow, who is stepping down “from the Cleveland Institute of Music. ‘I’m still on a roll,’ said Topilow, the longtime head of the school’s orchestral conducting department. ‘I still love playing. But I think 37 years in one job is an OK track record.’ Initial word of the conductor’s plans to depart came last year. However, the school formally announced the news last week, in time for Topilow’s farewell concert with the CIM Orchestra Wednesday, April 11 at Severance Hall. On that program, the last of an estimated 370 concerts with the CIM Orchestra, he was to perform Dvorák’s Symphony No. 6, the same work he conducted on his first concert with the group in 1981. His decision to leave was gradual, almost two years in the making. He made it … so he might go out on top…. Topilow said he’ll be busier than ever in this early, partial phase of retirement. Even as he sets down his baton at CIM, he plans to take up new projects with the Cleveland Pops and Firelands Symphony Orchestra in Sandusky (which he directs) and spend more time on his blog.”
Posted April 13, 2018
