In Thursday’s (1/7) Santa Barbara Independent (California), Tom Jacobs writes, “In what promises to be a thrilling kickoff to the new year, the Los Angeles Philharmonic travels to the Granada Theatre on Saturday, January 9 … Guest conductor Bramwell Tovey will lead the orchestra in Ralph Vaughan Williams’s ‘London’ Symphony, and Andre Watts will be the soloist in Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2. We thought this would be a good time to check in with Deborah Borda, the orchestra’s president and chief executive officer.” On handling the media attention garnered by new Music Director Gustavo Dudamel, Borda says, “We’ve had to deal with the accusation that we’re creating all this hype around Gustavo. In fact, the press has created the hype. We didn’t ask for a front-page story in the New York Times. We said no to both the Late Show with David Letterman and The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien. … We need to focus on allowing him to be the director of this orchestra, and to blossom as a person and as a musician. When the orchestra goes on its first big national tour with him this year, I don’t want the reviews to read, ‘First you saw Gustavo Dudamel on Letterman, and now you’re seeing him in person.’ I don’t want it to be about that. I want it to be about the serious and brilliant musician that he is.”
Posted January 8, 2010
