In Friday’s (7/19) Topeka Capital-Journal (Kansas), Bill Blankenship interviews Kyle Wiley Pickett, the Topeka Symphony Orchestra’s incoming music director, about his inaugural season in 2013-14. “In addition to assuming the helm of the Topeka Symphony Orchestra, Pickett also is the incoming music director of the Springfield Symphony in neighboring Missouri and the outgoing conductor of both the North State Symphony in California and the Juneau Symphony in the Alaska capital…. During this transitional season [at Topeka], Pickett will conduct 28 concerts in a 35-week period…. He and his wife, Alice, and their two sons, Ned, 7, and Grant, 3, will purchase a home [in Springfield, Missouri] but also maintain a residence in Topeka. ‘We’ll really be making joint residency,’ he said.… Pickett said he is looking forward after this season to the 500-mile round-trip commute between Springfield and Topeka versus the 2,700-mile one between Chico, Calif., and Juneau.” In the interview, Pickett promises “there will be no boring concerts” during the season, which comprises five classical programs, a December holiday concert, and a pops concert in March. Season repertoire will include Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, with Topeka Symphony Concertmaster Zsolt Eder as soloist; Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No. 2, with pianist Jon Nakamatsu; and Lowell Liebermann’s Concerto for Clarinet, with Jon Manasse as soloist.
Posted July 19, 2013
