“As you descend the Penn Station escalator to Track 3 for New Jersey Transit, your eyes are ambushed by an ad with a blazing headline: ‘The man. The myth. The Yannick,’ ” writes David Patrick Stearns in Thursday’s (6/30) Philadelphia Inquirer. “There he is, Philadelphia Orchestra music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, in a raspberry pink vest, baton in hand, and head somewhere in heaven…. Nézet-Séguin was appointed to the Metropolitan Opera only on June 2. But what might seem like a miraculously timed advertising strategy was a happy accident. It’s New York Penn Station Domination—an ad campaign created by the nonprofit Visit Philadelphia. It includes 264 placements, 20 of which involve the Philadelphia Orchestra. These, in turn, come in two forms, one devoted to Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the other with the orchestra onstage at the Kimmel Center, stamped with the slogan ‘Brotherly Love Sounds Better With a Symphony.’ … ‘It’s already bringing people to Philadelphia,’ said Meryl Levitz, Visit Philadelphia president and CEO. ‘Sometimes you just need a final invitation.’ ” Said Philadelphia Orchestra violinist Davyd Booth, “Yannick is now one of the most famous classical musicians in the United States. He should be all over the place, all the time.”
Posted June 30, 2016
