“As the season opens this week with Edo de Waart conducting Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra hopes to move past the past and embrace the future,” writes Graydon Royce in Saturday’s (8/31) Star Tribune (Minneapolis). “The orchestra seems eager to shake off last year with a new leadership team. Two come from the musician ranks, and the president—Bruce Coppock—returns to restart a tenure that was halted in 2008 by illness.… Certainly, not all musicians are gung-ho after losing six months of salary and then accepting double-digit cuts…. ‘It’s obviously a very personal question of how much you can put the past behind you,’ said Kyu-Young Kim, principal second violinist, who left for the New York Philharmonic during the lockout but returned to become the SPCO’s senior director of artistic planning. ‘Great music will buoy everyone’s spirits.’… Kim’s presence, along with that of retired violinist Tom Kornacker, is intended to bring the musicians’ perspective to the administration. As special assistant to Coppock, Kornacker initially is charged with auditioning new players to fill nine vacancies—to bring the number of musicians up to 28.… ‘I’m optimistic,’ said bassoonist Chuck Ullery, who could have retired but decided to stay with the SPCO. ‘There are always people who think it can be better. I sit next to people with whom I disagree fundamentally about the business, but we play great together. It’s a very professional situation.’”
Posted September 3, 2013
