In Thursday’s (4/8) Journal Sentinel (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) Elaine Schmidt reports that “Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra music director Edo de Waart has accepted the post of music director with the Royal Flanders Philharmonic Orchestra in Antwerp, Belgium … The announcement came on the heels of the announcement last week that de Waart’s contract with the Milwaukee Symphony had been extended through the 2016-17 season. De Waart’s contract with the Belgian orchestra also ends in 2017. The 68-year-old conductor, who recently purchased a condo in Milwaukee, said that dividing his time between the two orchestras will leave him very little time to guest-conduct elsewhere, although he hopes to ‘do something at the Metropolitan Opera, hopefully every second year or so.’ …The conductor, who has appeared with nearly all of the world’s major orchestras since winning the Dimitri Mitropoulos Conducting Competition in 1964, said he’s delighted about working with the two orchestras. ‘The older I get, I have this enormous sense of being blessed,’ he said. ‘Here in the fall and winter of my life, I do what I love to do and I have a wonderful wife and kids. How lucky can you get?’ ”
Posted April 9, 2010
