“After spending last season trying out candidates, Orchestra 2001 says it has hired a new artistic director: Jayce Ogren,” writes Peter Dobrin in Friday’s (7/8) Philadelphia Inquirer. “He starts the job at the group’s concerts in late October. His initial contract is for two years.” Ogren “said he was drawn to this position because he loves contemporary music, and that presenting ‘engaging, important works in a great city’ was enticing. ‘It’s a chance for me to make some dreams come true in working with composers, concert formats and interdisciplinary collaborations I’ve been thinking of for years,’ he said.” Ogren is “in many ways a departure from his predecessor, Swarthmore College professor James Freeman, who founded the contemporary music group in 1988.… Ogren, 37, has had an international [conducting] career often focused well outside of new music.… But he has also worked extensively in new music—with premieres of works by Rufus Wainwright, Nico Muhly and Jack Perla—and is a composer himself.” A former assistant conductor at the Cleveland Orchestra, he holds a bachelor’s degree in composition from St. Olaf College, a master’s in conducting from New England Conservatory, and a conducting diploma from Stockholm’s Royal College of Music.
Posted July 13, 2016
