The Symphony can deactivate this mailbox: MaestroSearch@SeattleSymphony.org. They've named 36-year-old Ludovic Morlot to succeed Gerard Schwarz, who's been music director for the past 25 years.
SSO picks a 36-year-old Frenchman
Sher & Schwarz Making a Break for It
Surprising absolutely no one, Intiman Theatre artistic director Bart Sher announced he's decamping for for New York, and will wrap up his term at the end of this 2010. He's more or less gone as of now, though--he's been in New York for his staging of Joe Turner's Come and Gone, and won't direct Othello this summer. He's sending in a Sher stunt-double to fill out his contract. Meanwhile, the search for a new Seattle Symphony music director (Gerard Schwarz steps down at the close of the 2010-11 season) will be headed up by Nancy Evans, who has a page with husband Dan at HistoryLink.org: "Together they personify the term 'power couple' in Washington state."
Seattle Symphony's Gerard Schwarz Lists His Expiration Date
The P-I reports that Seattle Symphony conductor Gerard Schwarz has announced he'll step down at the end of the 2010-11 season. What is that, 25 years as music director? Like his director-doppelganger Speight Jenkins at Seattle Opera, Schwarz arrived in the mid-'80s and built a good-enough-for-Seattle organization into a nationally noticed one, albeit with more of a brash, East coast management style that's kept the orchestra split into friends-of-Gerry and I-spit-on-your-grave factions. We used to truck Gerry around to donor events when they were building Benaroya Hall, and, man, can that guy work a crowd. (However, he also lost a pen we loaned him, so that's a demerit.) He says he'll hang around town and guest conduct--he's also done some composing which we liked quite a bit. All in all, the future looks pretty rosy for the Schwarzes.
Now I'm free. I'm no longer stuck in the corporate machine.
There's nothing that excites Seattlest quite like the firing of a local DJ and the subsequent online airing of the laundry that inevitably occurs. While we apologize for getting this to you at this late date, we enthusiastically invite you to take a peek behind the faceplate and inside the reeking mess that is corporate radio.

