“Spoleto Festival USA has announced the appointment of its new general director,” writes Maura Hogan in Tuesday’s (7/13) Post and Courier (SC). “Mena Mark Hanna … succeeds Nigel Redden, who last year announced his retirement…. Hanna will begin his new role in October … An arts administrator, musicologist, educator and composer, Hanna … has held leadership and educator roles in arts organizations based in the United States, at … Houston Grand Opera, [and] internationally…. Hanna’s … love of opera and deep understanding of classical music, two hallmarks of the festival, resonated strongly with the search committee…. [Hanna] comes to Spoleto from Berlin’s Barenboim-Said Akademie,” where he was founding dean and professor of musicology and composition and championed “the music of emerging and established composers…. Born in London and raised in New Jersey, he is a first-generation American of Coptic Egyptian descent…. He is a graduate of Temple University … [and] received a Ph.D. from Merton College, Oxford, England, where he studied musicology and music composition.” Says Hanna, “Art uplifts, art confronts, art provides catharsis…. It’s through the varieties of different artistic expression that we can understand the other—that ‘they’ are not so different from ‘us.’ ”
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