The Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra, based in New London, has announced the appointment of TOSHIYUKI SHIMADA as its fifth music director, effective July 1. Since 2005 Shimada has been music director of the Yale Symphony Orchestra, a post he will retain. He is also music director laureate of the Portland (Me.) Symphony Orchestra, which he led from 1986 to 2006, and since 2007 has been artistic adviser to the Tulare County Symphony Orchestra in California. Shimada was associate conductor of the Houston Symphony Orchestra for six years beginning in 1981. He has guest conducted numerous orchestras in the U.S. and Europe, and has recorded for Vienna Modern Masters, Capstone Records, Albany Records, and Naxos. His teachers have included Leonard Bernstein, Herbert von Karajan, Herbert Blomstedt, Hans Swarovsky, and Michael Tilson Thomas. Shimada was a finalist in the 1979 Herbert von Karajan Conducting Competition and a conducting fellow at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute in 1983.
Posted June 2, 2009
