“Alan Gilbert will step down as music director of the New York Philharmonic in 2017, after eight seasons, the orchestra said on Friday, setting off what promises to be an intense search for a successor to lead the ensemble through the planned renovation of Avery Fisher Hall,” reports Michael Cooper in Friday’s (2/6) New York Times. “Mr. Gilbert, 47, who has brought a spirit of experimentation to the Philharmonic and has been the first native New Yorker to lead it, said in an interview that he had decided to leave then to allow the next music director to build a relationship with concertgoers before construction begins on the hall, which is now expected to start in 2019, moving the orchestra out of its Lincoln Center home for two seasons.… The departure of a Philharmonic music director, and the search for a replacement, is the classical music world’s equivalent of the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary rolled into one.… Matthew VanBesien, the president of the Philharmonic, said he was confident that the orchestra would be able to put a new music director into place by then. ‘We’ve got work to do, and we’re going to get to it, very quickly,’ he said in an interview.”
Posted February 6, 2015
