Lidiya Yankovskaya. Photo courtesy of Karen Almond.
In Monday’s (8/4) WBEZ (Chicago), Hannah Edgar writes, “Among the ranks of classical musicians leaving the United States, there will soon be another name: Lidiya Yankovskaya, the former Chicago Opera Theater music director who is a familiar presence on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra podium. Around the time Yankovskaya conducts the CSO and violinist Ray Chen at Ravinia on Saturday … her things will be … en route to London, where Yankovskaya is moving with her family. Yankovskaya, 39, who has made Chicago her home base since 2017, is among a growing list of classical musicians moving overseas, where she says cultural institutions are supported by a robust public funding apparatus … Yankovskaya’s departure comes at a moment when Trump 2.0 policies are rippling through the arts, from cancellations of federal grants through the National Endowment for the Arts to Trump’s sudden dismissal of board members at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts…. Yankovskaya emphasized that several nonpolitical factors are driving her relocation to the U.K., too. For one, she’s already conducting a great deal in Europe … In the U.S. broadly, she has more projects in store with the Refugee Orchestra Project, an ensemble she founded at the peak of the Syrian refugee crisis, in 2016.”
