Timothy Mangan reports in Wednesday’s (9/18) Orange County Register (California), “Carl St.Clair, now in his 24th season as music director of the Pacific Symphony, has accepted a one-year appointment as music director of the National Symphony Orchestra of Costa Rica. The position is for calendar year 2014 and will not affect his contract with the Orange County orchestra. ‘I have enjoyed a growing relationship with the National Symphony,’ St.Clair said in a statement. ‘They are a wonderful orchestra, and I admire how passionately committed they are to their mission of engaging their nation in this great art form.’ ” Mangan notes that for St.Clair, a resident of Laguna Beach, California, the Costa Rica music directorship “meshes well with his schedule here. It’s only a five-hour flight from Los Angeles, and the orchestra’s schedule is heaviest in the summer months, when his performance schedule is lighter in Orange County.… St.Clair says he hopes to develop a new training program for young conductors with the orchestra, cultivate Costa Rican composers and take the orchestra into parts of the country that have little access to orchestral music.”
Posted September 19, 2013
