The four-year extension will keep him at the podium through at least the end of the 2029-30 season.
The conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who has led the Philadelphia Orchestra to accolades and worked to broaden its repertory, including by promoting the music of overlooked composers, has renewed his contract, the orchestra announced on Sunday.
The four-year extension will keep Nézet-Séguin, 47, at the podium through at least the end of the 2029-30 season. As part of the deal, he has been given an expanded title, serving as both music and artistic director of the 123-year-old ensemble.
In an interview, Nézet-Séguin likened his relationship with the orchestra to a “great and healthy marriage.”
“Making music when we know each other, when we love each other, makes a world of difference,” he said. “To see this relationship flourish and expand — I’m very grateful for it.”
Nézet-Séguin, who began his tenure as the orchestra’s eighth music director in 2012, is one of classical music’s busiest conductors. In addition to his post in Philadelphia, he is music director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York and leads the Orchestre Métropolitain of Montreal, where he was born.
Matías Tarnopolsky, the president and chief executive of the orchestra and the Kimmel Center, said Nézet-Séguin was a transformative figure in the orchestra’s history.
“The music they are making together is transcendental — this great orchestra, this extraordinary conductor,” he said. “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts in this relationship.”
Nézet-Séguin has helped guide the orchestra’s recovery from the pandemic, which has brought steep financial losses and resulted in a decline in the number of people attending concerts. (The orchestra lost about $26 million in ticket sales and performance fees after canceling more than 200 concerts at the beginning of the pandemic.)
The orchestra is experimenting with ways of attracting new concertgoers, including by lowering ticket prices and holding performances at different times of the day. Attendance has improved over the past few months, reaching an average of 60 percent capacity so far this season, compared with 66 percent before the pandemic.
As classical music grapples with a history of racial and gender discrimination, Nézet-Séguin has emerged as a champion of overlooked composers. This week, for example, the Philadelphia Orchestra performed the Negro Folk Symphony by William L. Dawson, a Black composer. The orchestra gave the world premiere of the piece in 1934 but, before this week, had only performed it in full on one other occasion.
Nézet-Séguin said that in the coming years he planned to continue to diversify the orchestra’s repertory, which he hopes will help nurture new classical music fans.
“We must listen more to people from communities we want to embrace,” he said. “We must not always impose. We should ask, ‘How can we welcome you?’”
Nézet-Séguin also hopes to raise the orchestra’s profile by leading more tours, including in China and other parts of Asia, as well as in the United States. Last fall, the orchestra canceled a tour of China planned for May, worried that the country’s then-strict coronavirus protocols would create logistical challenges. The tour was meant to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the orchestra’s visit to the country in 1973, when it became the first American ensemble to perform in Communist-led China.
Under Nézet-Séguin, the orchestra has won accolades, including its first-ever Grammy last year, for a recording of two symphonies by Florence Price, the first Black woman to have her music played by a major American orchestra.
Nézet-Séguin will be feted in Philadelphia in the coming days with what the orchestra is calling “Philly Loves Yannick Week.” As part of the festivities, the ensemble has produced a bobblehead modeled on him, complete with his trademark bleached-blond hair and red-soled Christian Louboutin shoes.
He said he could envision many more years in Philadelphia, noting the orchestra’s history of music directors with lengthy tenures, so long as the musicians wanted him and he could keep them stimulated.
“There’s nothing I can do as a conductor if I don’t have my orchestra with me,” he said. “At the end of the day, I’m just the person waving and thinking. In the end they do the music.”
Source: Music - nytimes.com
