Incoming Music Director Jonathon Heyward, at far right, with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra last summer. The ensemble will now be called the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center. Photo by Lawrence Sumulong/Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
In Monday’s (2/5) New York Times, Javier C. Hernández writes, “Last summer, Lincoln Center bid farewell to the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, a fixture of the city’s cultural scene since 1973, saying it was time to reimagine the ensemble for a modern and more inclusive age. On Monday, the center offered a preview of its plans. While the ensemble will remain the same in size and membership, it now has a new name, a new music director and a program aimed at drawing more diverse audiences to classical music. The Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center, as the ensemble is now called, will convene in July for its first season under the rising conductor Jonathon Heyward, as part of the center’s Summer for the City festival. Heyward said … that he wanted to maintain the orchestra’s innovative spirit…. The lineup … includes a world premiere by the composer Hannah Kendall; the North American premiere of Huang Ruo’s ‘City of Floating Sounds’; and classics by Beethoven, Haydn and … Mozart. There will also be … a ‘Symphony of Choice’ concert in which audience members will … construct the program by voting, as well as an augmented-reality exhibition about mental health and Schumann.”
