“For decades, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s all-volunteer group of singers, dazzled audiences with its performances, delivering masterful renditions of intricate scores in German, Czech, Latin, and French—almost always from memory,” writes Malcolm Gay in Thursday’s (6/27) Boston Globe. “But discordant notes are sounding after the chorus’s new conductor, James Burton, [forced] out a large swath of singers, including many of the group’s most senior members. Burton, named Tanglewood Festival Chorus conductor and Boston Symphony Orchestra choral director last year, imposed what singers called a daunting re-audition process, with tests that included advanced music theory. According to several members who’ve tabulated the losses, roughly 70 choristers have resigned, retired, or been cut amid a recent re-audition cycle—the first of several Burton has planned for the ensemble’s nearly 300 members. The BSO, which called the auditions ‘a private, internal matter, with each audition handled with the utmost confidentiality,’ declined to give an official tally of all the singers who are leaving but said that 39 had decided to ‘step down’ instead of auditioning.” The chorus was founded by John Oliver in 1970; Oliver led the group until retiring in 2015.
Posted June 29, 2018
