In Saturday’s (9/26) Daily News (Genesee/Wyoming/Orleans counties, N.Y.), Matt Krueger writes that following the departure last season of longtime music director Rafaele Ponti at New York’s Genesee Symphony Orchestra, “Beginning tomorrow, four hopefuls will do their best to impress not only the GSO Board of Directors, but the musicians, the audience, and the community. They are S. Shade Zajac, Yunn-Shan Ma, Bryan Eckenrode, and Nick DelBello. Each will conduct a concert this season…. ‘We’re looking at criteria that the conductor has to relate to the orchestra, he has to relate to the audience, and he has to relate to the board,’ said GSO President Paul Saskowski, a member of the committee that will select the conductor…. ‘He must be able to do community events. … It’s part of this orchestra’s mission to preserve symphonic music and to give people a venue to listen to it.’ ” Candidates were selected “from a field of 35 would-be conductors who applied for the position. The GSO’s selection committee interviewed a dozen candidates … before asking the four finalists to prepare a concert for this season, the group’s 69th.” The article includes brief bios for each of the candidates.
Posted September 28, 2015
