Appointments and Executive Changes

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      Vince McMahon Steps Down From W.W.E. Amid Misconduct Investigation

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      Vince McMahon, a longtime executive for World Wrestling Entertainment who led professional wrestling from a sideshow curiosity into a mainstream phenomenon, has stepped down as chairman and chief executive while the company’s board investigates allegations of misconduct against him, the company said on Friday.Stephanie McMahon, his daughter, will take over as interim chief executive and chairwoman, the company said in a statement. Mr. McMahon will remain involved with W.W.E.’s creative content and “remains committed to cooperating with the review underway,” the company said.“I have pledged my complete cooperation to the investigation by the Special Committee, and I will do everything possible to support the investigation,” Mr. McMahon said in a statement. “I have also pledged to accept the findings and outcome of the investigation, whatever they are.”Mr. McMahon briefly appeared on “Friday Night SmackDown” at the beginning of the show. He stepped into the ring to applause.“I’m here simply to remind you of the four words we just saw,” Mr. McMahon told the crowd, referring to the W.W.E. signature at the beginning of the broadcast. “Those four words are ‘then, now, forever,’ and the most important word is ‘together.’ Welcome to SmackDown.”Mr. McMahon then dropped a microphone and stepped out of the ring, high-fiving fans as he left.On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Mr. McMahon agreed to pay a secret $3 million settlement to an employee with whom he was said to have had an affair, and that the board had been investigating since April. The investigation unearthed other nondisclosure agreements involving claims of misconduct by Mr. McMahon, The Journal reported.A lawyer for Mr. McMahon told The Journal that the employee had not made any claims of harassment against Mr. McMahon and that he used personal funds to pay the settlement.Far from an anonymous executive, Mr. McMahon is among the most recognizable faces of professional wrestling, adopting a swagger-filled public persona who is often at the center of the on-screen action. Since taking over his father’s wrestling company in 1982, Mr. McMahon has presided over its ascent into a cultural giant, with more than $1 billion in revenue in 2021. W.W.E’s programs are aired in 30 languages and are distributed through NBCUniversal and Fox Sports, among others.The company said it had hired independent legal counsel to conduct the investigation, and would also work with an independent organization to review the company’s compliance program, human resources function and overall culture.Jesus Jiménez More

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      New York Philharmonic Chooses Arts Veteran as Leader

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      Gary Ginstling, executive director of the National Symphony Orchestra, will replace Deborah Borda as the orchestra’s president and chief executive next year.Come this fall, the New York Philharmonic will have a transformed home, when David Geffen Hall reopens after a $550 million renovation. In the not-so-distant future, the orchestra will also get a new music director to replace its departing conductor.On Friday, the orchestra announced another change: Gary Ginstling, the executive director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, will next year replace Deborah Borda, a revered, dynamic figure at the Philharmonic, as its president and chief executive.The appointment signals the start of a new era for the Philharmonic, America’s oldest symphony orchestra, which is working to attract new audiences as it recovers from the turmoil of the coronavirus pandemic. While the orchestra seems to have weathered the worst of the crisis, the pandemic has brought fresh urgency to questions about changing audience habits and expanding into the digital sphere.Ginstling, who will join the Philharmonic this fall as executive director before succeeding Borda next year, said he wanted to seize on the momentum of the Geffen Hall renovation.“This is a singular moment in time when the orchestra is coming out of a really difficult period,” he said in an interview. “This new home is going to be really transformational for the musicians, for the public, for orchestras everywhere and for the city. There’s a chance for the Philharmonic to make the most of this moment and set itself up for long-term success.”The appointment marks a generational shift at the Philharmonic. Ginstling, 56, will take the reins from Borda, 72, who led the Philharmonic in the 1990s and returned in 2017 to shepherd the long-delayed renovation of Geffen Hall. The return of Borda, one of the nation’s most successful arts administrators, who in the interim helped transform the Los Angeles Philharmonic into one of the country’s premier ensembles — moving it into a new home, stabilizing its shaky finances and appointing Gustavo Dudamel as its music director — was considered a coup for the orchestra, which at the time was struggling with deficits and fund-raising troubles.Borda said that with the hall reopening and the orchestra on firmer financial footing after the long pandemic shutdown, she felt it was time to step aside. She will leave her post on June 30, 2023, but stay on as an adviser to Ginstling and the Philharmonic’s board, assisting with fund-raising and other matters.Deborah Borda at the Philharmonic’s opening concert of the season in September 2021 at Alice Tully Hall.Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times“Those of us in my generation, we’ve done our best, but it’s time to really support and introduce a new generation of leadership who will bring new ideas about everything,” she said in an interview. “This was the right time.”Borda began working with the board last year to find a successor. They were looking for a leader who could help guide the institution in a time of momentous transitions. After interviewing five candidates, the Philharmonic in May offered the job to Ginstling, who has managed orchestras in Cleveland, Indianapolis and Washington D.C.“We wanted somebody who had the experience, but who was also young enough to have a long runway,” Peter W. May, co-chairman of the Philharmonic’s board, said in an interview. “He also impressed us in the way he’s done outreach in the community.”After joining the National Symphony Orchestra in 2017, Ginstling experimented with new ways of reaching audiences, including by holding concerts in a 6,000-seat arena designed for rock music. He was credited with helping drive up ticket sales, subscriptions and donations. He worked closely with Gianandrea Noseda, the music director of the National Symphony, whose contract there was recently extended through the end of the 2026-2027 season.In New York, Ginstling will face familiar challenges. Even before the pandemic, managing orchestras was difficult. Labor costs have risen. Ticket sales have declined as the old model of selling season subscriptions has died out. Robust fund-raising has become essential, as donations make up an ever larger share of orchestra budgets.The pandemic put new strains on the Philharmonic, which was forced to cancel its 2020-21 season, lay off staff and slash its musicians’ salaries by 25 percent. (The Philharmonic announced this week that it would soon reverse those cuts.)For all its devastation, the pandemic also brought an opportunity, allowing the orchestra to speed up the renovation schedule by a year and a half (the hall is now set to open on Oct. 7). Over the past year, the orchestra has been without a permanent home, roving among several different theaters, many of them smaller than Geffen.Ginstling, a clarinetist who has degrees from Yale, Juilliard and the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles, said he would continue the Philharmonic’s efforts to present a diverse roster of composers and conductors.“If we are in a post-Covid world, and I’m not sure whether we are yet,” he said, “the biggest challenges are rebuilding audiences and then finding ways to connect with our communities and in new and different ways.”The Philharmonic is just beginning its search for a conductor to replace Jaap van Zweden, its maestro since 2018, who announced unexpectedly in September that he would step down at the end of the 2023-24 season. Conductors like Dudamel, Susanna Mälkki and Santtu-Matias Rouvali, among others, have been mentioned as possible contenders, though the field remains open.It is unclear whether the search will conclude before the end of Borda’s tenure. She said she was proceeding “full steam ahead” and would continue to offer advice if it is needed.In a statement, van Zweden, who last year said he would leave the orchestra because the pandemic had made him rethink his life and priorities, praised Borda’s stewardship of the orchestra.“The future and security of this orchestra is very important to me, and I am grateful to Deborah for leading with me from a position of strength,” he said. “I really look forward to welcoming Gary and to working with him.”The appointment is something of a homecoming for Ginstling, who grew up in New Jersey, the son of a Juilliard-trained pianist and a tax lawyer. His parents subscribed to Philharmonic concerts and he attended concerts featuring giants like Leonard Bernstein and Zubin Mehta. He took up the clarinet in elementary school and later studied with a Philharmonic player.“I’ve long had a deep love and passion for orchestras and orchestral music,” he said, “and that really started with the New York Philharmonic.” More

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      A Conductor’s Tumultuous, Invaluable Tenure Ends in Minnesota

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      After 19 years, Osmo Vänskä is leaving a Minnesota Orchestra that once again stands proud after a nearly disastrous lockout.MINNEAPOLIS — Osmo Vänskä has said goodbye to the Minnesota Orchestra once before. But this time, it’s for real.In October 2013, at the nadir of one of the darkest periods any major American orchestra has faced, Vänskä resigned in protest over a lockout that was diminishing — and would come close to destroying — this ensemble, which he had spent a decade drilling to perfection as its music director.A few days later, blazing a trail for conductors to side openly with their players during labor strife, he led three concerts with the orchestra’s musicians, whose management had exiled them from their own hall. Vänskä asked the adoring audience members to withhold their ovations after his encore of Sibelius’s “Valse Triste,” a dance with death that he led in fury. He left in silence, and to tears.Eight seasons later, any tears at his departure will be because of his triumph.The Minnesota Orchestra stands proud again. That lockout ended shortly after Vänskä’s angry resignation, and he returned in April 2014, as if by popular acclamation. After 19 years as the ensemble’s conductor, he bids farewell with Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 at Orchestra Hall here on Sunday.“I don’t want to say this is a happy family, because there is not a happy family in the world,” Vänskä, 69, said jokingly during an interview last week. “But it is as happy as it is possible to have.”His departure is a moment to take stock of why his tenure, one of the most tumultuous in the history of American orchestras, has been so important.Vänskä conducting the orchestra on June 2 in a program that ended with Jaakko Kuusisto’s Symphony.Travis AndersonBorn and trained in Finland, Vänskä, a dynamic podium presence, arrived in Minneapolis in 2003, declaring that he would make the Minnesotans “the best orchestra in this country in four or five years.” He pursued that ambition with an intensity that he now admits was too aggressively intolerant of imperfections in rehearsal. But there was a time around a decade ago when critics habitually hailed the ensemble as one of the greatest in the country — or anywhere — for its willingness to take risks, its rhythmic verve, its crisp articulation and its unanimity of purpose.Ask Vänskä — who led the orchestra on a diplomatic mission to Cuba in 2015 and a pioneering tour to South Africa in 2018 — what he is most proud of, and he lauds the musicians for always playing, he said, as though their work is about “more than getting a paycheck.”Consult the recorded legacy he has left with the BIS label, one at least equal in stature to those of predecessors including Dimitri Mitropoulos and Antal Dorati, and it would be difficult to disagree. If Vänskä’s Mahler cycle misfired in symphonies that need more extroversion than reserve, it also includes a Tenth that is among the most convincing available. His Sibelius remains admired, richer than his taut, biting earlier set with the Lahti Symphony. His enthralling Beethoven still sounds as fresh as it did when it first came out, and remains arguably the finest such survey of the century so far.These are signal achievements, but Vänskä’s time in charge has been about more than the pursuit of musical excellence. There was ample proof of that, though, in a concert here on June 2 that ended with the premiere of his friend Jaakko Kuusisto’s Symphony — an unsparing, frightening reflection on mortality that was left unfinished at Kuusisto’s death in February from a brain tumor and completed by his brother, Pekka.Now, after a lockout and a pandemic lockdown, what seems to matter more than national or international acclaim is that the ensemble tries to be the best it can be for this city, which Vänskä — with Erin Keefe, his wife of seven years and the orchestra’s concertmaster — will continue to call home.“We are stronger when a crisis comes if we are connected to this community,” he said. “We have to be there for this community, and then they will take care of us.”Being there requires first of all that the Minnesota Orchestra continues to exist, an imperative that was once not as obvious as it should have been. “We have to be there for this community,” Vänskä said, “and then they will take care of us.”Jenn Ackerman for The New York TimesAlthough the ensemble’s underlying finances have improved since the lockout, its chief executive Michelle Miller Burns said, it continues to face the sobering constraints familiar to many orchestras. Even before pandemic restrictions ravaged its income in the last two years, the balanced budgets that had steadily built confidence after 2014 had yielded to a record deficit of $8.8 million in 2019 — a reminder of grimmer times.The spirit and structures of transparency, consultation and collaboration that emerged from the lockout served the orchestra then and during the pandemic. In September 2020, the musicians willingly took a temporary 25 percent pay cut to help right the finances, and no full-time administrative staff were laid off. Vänskä chose to forgo 35 percent of his salary.Despite the pain, no major problems are expected in coming negotiations over the musicians’ contract, which expires in August. The financial plan remains to try to raise revenue, rather than impose cuts.“Every decision we make, we are making it together,” said Sam Bergman, a violist and the chair of the orchestra committee. “There is a greater trust level than there would be if it was just decisions handed down from on high.”Much of that collaborative impulse has come from the musicians, as well as Burns and her predecessor, Kevin Smith, but Bergman said that Vänskä had also taken a leading role in helping to foster a healthy culture at the orchestra, not least in an artistic planning process that includes musicians more meaningfully, such as in auditions and repertory choices.“When you have musicians and an administration that want a collaborative working model, a music director who is too easily threatened could potentially be a huge impediment,” Bergman said. “He has embraced the idea that the musicians need to take some ownership of the organization, and to lead in the way that we interface with the community. And he didn’t have to do that.”That has been particularly true of the players’ efforts to address racism in classical music and beyond. Their work predated the murder of George Floyd here in May 2020, Bergman said, but intensified after it. The issue struck even closer to home in February, when Minneapolis Police Department officers fatally shot Amir Locke in an apartment across the street from the stage door.Concerts that included Joel Thompson’s “The Seven Last Words of the Unarmed” in May came with an exhibition mounted in conjunction with the George Floyd Global Memorial; after Locke’s name was spray painted onto Orchestra Hall during protests, the administration invited teen artists to commemorate him more formally.Among other initiatives, the orchestra has also started a musician-led project to record works by Black composers, including Margaret Bonds and Ulysses Kay, that have not received professional recordings. And it continues to work with the Sphinx Organization, three of whose affiliates held one-year positions in the strings this season, and whose Virtuosi ensemble shared the stage last week.Vänskä at the June 2 Minnesota Orchestra performance in Minneapolis, where he plans to continue living after stepping down as music director.Travis AndersonAll this is intended to be just a beginning, though one that goes further than the token efforts of many other orchestras. Laurie Greeno, a former co-chair of Orchestrate Excellence — one of the two main community groups that sprang up during the lockout — and who later joined the board of directors, said the board was eager to diversify a roster that remains 84 percent white.“If you look at just the demographics out 30 years,” Greeno said, “this organization will not exist if it’s not relevant.”Vänskä, for his part, has embraced this agenda in planning recent seasons; subscription programs in Minnesota now routinely include at least one work by a composer of color.“We cannot say that this is our style, and we just play this and that,” he said of the inherited canon, and insisted that elevating underrepresented composers does not mean compromising on quality or taking a box-office risk. “No. We have to change.”Vänskä’s blend of musical ability and steadfast local commitment will make him difficult to replace. He will serve as conductor laureate, but the organization remains in no hurry to confirm his successor, four years after he announced that he would leave.“Someone who is going to really embrace what and who this orchestra is, is really important,” Burns said of the search committee’s priorities. “I think that is going to be well indicated by how engaged and active in this community our next music director is.”The roster for next season offers few clues. Fabien Gabel and Dima Slobodeniouk have been mentioned in rapidly changing lists of candidates in the local press. Otherwise, there is a blend of experienced hands like Donald Runnicles, midcareer maestros like Thomas Sondergard and Pablo Heras-Casado, and younger possibilities, including Dalia Stasevska and Ryan Bancroft, a Californian who, at 32, was recently announced as the chief conductor of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic.Vänskä has no immediate plans to raise another orchestra to the heights that he insists on. His brief dalliance as music director of the troubled Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra ends this year, and he is in no rush to find a new long-term post.“The orchestra must be ready to work hard,” he said of any potential music directorship. “There are orchestras that don’t want to work, and we both start to hate each other pretty soon. The good thing is that it is not a must for me to get a new job. I can guest conduct until it comes to the end.”He continued: “That’s the only thing I can do, to make music. If I stopped right now, I would go mad in a month.” More

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      Wes Jackson to Be the Next President of the Brooklyn Nonprofit BRIC

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      Wes Jackson, a music business entrepreneur, will lead the Brooklyn nonprofit arts organization beginning in July.Wes Jackson, a music business entrepreneur, will be the next president of BRIC, the nonprofit arts organization announced Tuesday. He will begin his new role July 18.He succeeds Kristina Newman-Scott, who led BRIC for three years, and guided it through the first year of the coronavirus pandemic before stepping down last August.BRIC presents cultural programming in Brooklyn. It is perhaps best known for its annual summer concert series, the BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival, at Prospect Park. This year, it includes free concerts by the reggae band Third World, the rapper Vic Mensa and the Nigerian Afropop artist Yemi Alade, as well as performances by the actor John Cameron Mitchell (“Hedwig and the Angry Inch”) and the comedian Bridget Everett (of HBO’s “Somebody Somewhere”).Jackson, 48, who serves as the director of a business program designed for professionals in the creative arts at Emerson College in Boston, began his career producing concerts for groups like the Dave Matthews Band and the Roots before starting his promotions company, Seven Heads Entertainment, which he later expanded into an independent record label and management company.In 2005, he founded the Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival, which has hosted performances by Jay-Z, Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar, and he has served as the event’s executive director for 15 years. “When you’re running a small shop, you’ve got your hands in everything,” Jackson said of leading the hip-hop festival. “Now I have people who can help, and I can dedicate my energy to thinking 10 to 20 years down the line, to turning Celebrate Brooklyn into something that rivals South by Southwest, Coachella.”BRIC, which has a 2022 budget of $16 million to $20 million, will present a bigger stage. Jackson’s predecessor, Newman-Scott, led the reimagining of the organization’s annual music festival as a virtual event in 2020, as well as the start of One Brooklyn TV, which broadcasts educational programming on weekdays during the school year in partnership with New York City’s Department of Education.Jackson said he wanted to continue to find ways to serve people in Brooklyn who may not be able to or want to gather in person, as well as those outside New York.“What we’ve learned through Covid is that now we’re national and international,” Jackson said. “There’s a tremendous upside to raising that level of educational play for an online audience.”Jackson, who grew up in the Bronx, earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Virginia and a master’s in Media Studies from the New School. He moved to Brooklyn about 25 years ago, where he has continued to live with his family while commuting to Boston. More

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      Robert Ainsley Is Named Glimmerglass Festival Director

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      Robert Ainsley, a champion of new American opera, takes the reins from Francesca Zambello. He said the festival would continue to showcase work that tells “everyone’s story.”The Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, N.Y., announced on Wednesday that it has named Robert Ainsley as it next artistic and general director, giving the festival a new leader as it moves toward its 50th season, in 2025.Ainsley most recently served as the director of the Cafritz Young Artists program at the Washington National Opera and of the American Opera Initiative where, over a span of six years, he commissioned, developed and premiered more than 30 new operas and other works. He has also held leadership positions at the Portland Opera, Minnesota Opera and Opera Theater of Saint Louis and has worked at other summer music festivals.He succeeds Francesca Zambello, who led Glimmerglass, a summer festival of opera and theater, for more than a decade. In an interview, Ainsley said he was committed to building on Zambello’s efforts to “make this an art form for everyone — telling everyone’s story and trying to ensure everyone has agency in how those stories are told.”“She’s really built something that is inclusive and representative of the diversity of America today,” Ainsley said. “And that’s something I really want to carry on and make a central part of our mission.”Robert Ainsley, the new artistic and general director of the Glimmerglass Festival.Arielle DonesonHe also said he was dedicated to ensuring that the festival has a balance of everything from 17th-century opera to musical theater to the kinds of new works and formats he has championed in previous jobs.Glimmerglass has offered new productions and other stagings of opera and musical theater in Cooperstown every summer since 1975.“The intense experience of drawing so many people together from all over the country and all over the world is what makes a festival very special,” Ainsley said. “But what Glimmerglass has is the best bits of all of the summer programs.”In a news release, Zambello called Ainsley “a wonderful artist” who will bring “excellent vision and leadership” to a time of transition for the company. Robert Nelson, the chair of the Glimmerglass Festival board of trustees, said Ainsley “is perfectly poised to lead the Glimmerglass Festival into its next era.”Ainsley said he was eager to get to Cooperstown to become part of the community there.“When an institution gets me, they get all of me,” he said. “Bringing people together of all backgrounds and creating something wonderful is what has made Glimmerglass special, and that’s definitely what I want to do with it.” More

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      in Theater

      New York Theater Workshop Names Patricia McGregor as Artistic Director

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      The freelance director will succeed James Nicola, who has led the Off Broadway nonprofit since 1988.Patricia McGregor, a freelance director who has worked Off Broadway and around the country, has been named the next artistic director of New York Theater Workshop, a midsize nonprofit with an outsize track record of producing important work.McGregor, 44, will succeed James C. Nicola, who has served as the theater’s artistic director since 1988. Nicola, 71, announced last year that he would step down this summer; he is being honored next month with a special Tony Award in recognition of his successful tenure.New York Theater Workshop, founded in 1979 and located in the East Village, has a long track record of discovering, developing and supporting new plays and musicals, but it will forever be known as the birthplace of one huge hit, “Rent,” which opened there in 1996 and, after transferring to Broadway, spun off royalties for years that helped the theater flourish.The theater has had several other notable Broadway transfers, including the Tony-winning musicals “Once” and “Hadestown,” as well as the acclaimed plays “Slave Play” and “What the Constitution Means to Me.” It has also staged a large volume of adventurous work that has remained downtown; among the artists who have worked there often are the writers Tony Kushner, Caryl Churchill and Mfoniso Udofia and the directors Ivo van Hove, Sam Gold, Lileana Blain-Cruz and Rachel Chavkin. (Chavkin was one of two leaders of the artistic director search committee.)McGregor has been affiliated with New York Theater Workshop as a “usual suspect,” which is the theater’s term for artists with whom it maintains an ongoing connection. She plans to assume the artistic director position in August; Nicola has programmed next season, including revivals of “Merrily We Roll Along” starring Daniel Radcliffe and “Three Sisters” starring Greta Gerwig and Oscar Isaac. McGregor will choose the programming starting in the fall of 2023.And what will her programming look like? “Visceral, relevant, challenging, joyful, delightful,” she said. “And really looking at fusions of form.”Her directing career has focused on new American plays, but she said she also has an affection for classics (she directed a mobile unit production of “Hamlet” for the Public Theater in 2016) and musicals (she worked as an associate director of “Fela!” on Broadway). Among her New York credits was a 2012 production of Katori Hall’s “Hurt Village” at Signature Theater; she is currently finishing work on three projects, including an oratorio about gentrification, called “Place,” at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, a production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the Old Globe in San Diego, and her first feature film, “1660 Vine,” about social media influencers.McGregor was born in St. Croix, the largest of the United States Virgin Islands, and moved frequently as a child, living in Hawaii, California, Illinois and Florida. Her father, who is from St. Croix, is a fisherman and engineer who served in the Navy, and her mother, born in England, is an artist, teacher and union organizer; when she assumes her new role McGregor will become one of only a handful of Black women serving as artistic directors of nonprofit theaters in New York City.“I have a pretty broad range of lived experiences racially, economically and geographically,” she said. “I think a lot about the Workshop being both hyperlocal in its roots and international in its reach, and that feels very aligned with my lived experience and appetite to know about and engage with the world.”McGregor said she embraced theater as a middle school student in Florida, where she first encountered Shakespeare in a theater class. “I loved it,” she said. “I had seen a production of ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ in this terrible-acoustics auditorium, and there was something both athletic and magical. I said, ‘I can tap into this.’”She studied theater at Southern Methodist University in Texas, and then studied directing at the Yale School of Drama. She lived in New York off and on for 16 years; she has spent the last seven years in California, and now lives in San Diego, where her husband, Freedome Bradley-Ballentine, is an associate artistic director at the Old Globe; they have two young children.Working with her sister, Paloma, she co-founded an organization called Angela’s Pulse to produce performance work that highlights stories about Black people. She has also worked with Arts in the Armed Forces, an organization founded by the actors Adam Driver and Joanne Tucker.“My mom said, ‘What tools do you have to build the world that you want?’” she said in an interview. “And the tool that I have is being an artist and being a community builder through art.”New York Theater Workshop has a staff of about 45 people and an annual budget projected at $10 million next year. The organization has three buildings on East 4th Street, including a 199-seat mainstage theater and a smaller venue that can accommodate up to 74 patrons.McGregor said she views the leadership transition as a “baton pass,” noting that she already knows many people who work at the organization. She said among her priorities will be broadening the theater’s audience. “If there’s one thing I want to revolutionize, it’s that point of accessibility and welcoming,” she said. “It’s not a quick ‘We send you a flier and you come to the show.’ It’s a long-term process.” More

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      Citing Ukraine War, an American Resigns From Russia’s Mariinsky

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      “There’s no way I could ever be in denial of what is happening,” said the conductor Gavriel Heine, a fixture at the prestigious Russian theater.The American conductor Gavriel Heine has been a fixture at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia, for 15 years. He has led hundreds of performances of classics like “Swan Lake” and “The Rite of Spring.” And he has done so as a protégé of the company’s leader: Valery Gergiev.On Saturday, Mr. Heine went yet again to the Mariinsky, but not for an evening at the podium. He was there to inform Mr. Gergiev — a longtime friend and supporter of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — that he was resigning from his post as one of the state-run theater’s resident conductors. Mr. Heine gathered his possessions, including a few white bow ties and scores for “La Bohème” and “The Turn of the Screw,” and prepared to leave the country.Mr. Heine, 47, had been increasingly disturbed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “There’s no way I could ever be in denial of what is happening in Ukraine,” he said during a series of interviews over the past week. “Russia is not a place where I want to raise my son. It’s not a place where I want my wife to be anymore. It’s not a place I want to be anymore.”His resignation comes as the war continues to upend performing arts. Cultural institutions in Europe and North America, vowing not to hire performers who support Mr. Putin, have severed ties with some artists — most notably Mr. Gergiev — as well as orchestras, theaters and ballet companies. Many artists, citing the invasion, have canceled appearances in Russia.Mr. Gergiev, the theater’s general and artistic director, was once one of the world’s busiest conductors, but his international career has crumbled. Carnegie Hall, for example, canceled a pair of concerts of the Mariinsky Orchestra under his baton that had been planned for May, after he had been dropped from a series of Vienna Philharmonic performances in February. He has returned in recent weeks to St. Petersburg to focus on that company and his domestic cultural empire, which encompasses several stages, thousands of employees and tens of millions of dollars in state financing.Valery Gergiev, a mentor of Mr. Heine’s and a longtime friend and supporter of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.James Hill for The New York TimesMr. Heine found Mr. Gergiev at the Mariinsky on Saturday, where he was leading rehearsals and performances of Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung” and Verdi’s “Attila.” He described repeatedly trying to catch his mentor backstage to inform him of his resignation, finally cornering him in an elevator.It was a quick conversation: five minutes while Mr. Gergiev was rushing to a meeting. Mr. Heine said that Mr. Gergiev seemed surprised but accepted his decision.“He was very nice to me,” Mr. Heine said. “He gave me a handshake and a hug and wished me well. And of course I thanked him for giving me such a huge chance pretty early in my career.”The two conductors also spoke about recent tensions between Russia and the West. Mr. Gergiev — who was fired from engagements in the United States and Europe, as well as from the podium of the Munich Philharmonic, over his refusal to publicly condemn the war — defended his decision, saying that he was not a child, Mr. Heine recalled.The Mariinsky declined to comment on Monday, and said it could not yet confirm Mr. Heine’s resignation. However, the company removed Mr. Heine’s biography from its website Monday evening.Mr. Heine’s departure from the Mariinsky is an unexpected conclusion to his three-decade career in Russia, where he studied with renowned teachers and rose to become a conductor at one of the country’s most prestigious houses. And his exit is another blow to Russian cultural institutions, which are grappling with boycotts and cancellations by foreign groups as the country’s arts increasingly turn inward under Mr. Putin. Mr. Gergiev remains a critical figure in Mr. Putin’s campaign. Mr. Putin, during a televised meeting last month, asked Mr. Gergiev whether he was interested in the idea of uniting the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow with the Mariinsky, an arrangement that would take Russia back to the days of the czars.“Russia is just going to be more and more closed,” said Simon Morrison, a music professor at Princeton University. “It’s going to revert more and more to its own true self, harsh as that might seem — a sealed-off, angry, paranoid and resentful feudal realm.”Mr. Heine, who grew up in Cherry Hill, N.J., became interested in Russian culture as a teenager. He accompanied his mother, a pianist, to a performance in Moscow, and while there took cello lessons with a professor at the Moscow Conservatory.After high school, he returned to Russia for language and cultural studies. In 1998, he became one of the Moscow Conservatory’s first American graduates, then began to study with the eminent Russian conductor Ilya Musin, who also taught Mr. Gergiev.Mr. Heine leading the Mariinsky’s orchestra in 2017.Irina TumineneHis break came in 2007, when Mr. Heine approached Mr. Gergiev during a rehearsal in Philadelphia and asked him whether the Mariinsky had any openings. Mr. Heine was invited to make his debut at the theater later that year with Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro,” and soon began to lead performances there regularly. In 2009, he was named a resident conductor.During his time at the Mariinsky, Mr. Heine was at the podium for over 850 performances and watched as the company grew in power and size under Mr. Gergiev. The arts and the state, Mr. Heine said he came to understand, were inexorably linked in Russia. He was in the theater on two occasions when Mr. Putin, the house’s main benefactor, appeared for awards ceremonies and other events.“I just assumed that culture is a priority for this government, for whatever reason,” he said. “And they feel very strongly about it, and that’s the relationship.”How the Ukraine War Is Affecting the Cultural WorldCard 1 of 6Gavriel Heine. More

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      Outspoken Composer to Lead International Contemporary Ensemble

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      George E. Lewis, a Columbia scholar who has documented how Black composers have been excluded from experimental music, will lead the renowned group.A composer and scholar who has spoken forcefully about the exclusion of Black artists from experimental music will lead the renowned International Contemporary Ensemble, the group announced on Friday.George E. Lewis, a professor of music at Columbia University known for his groundbreaking work in electronics, will take the helm as artistic director later this month. Lewis, 69, a trombonist and frequent collaborator with the ensemble, will be the first Black leader in its 21-year history. He said in an interview that he hoped to bring more of a multicultural focus to one of New York’s premier new music groups, and to feature a wider variety of artists.“I’m looking to bring newer people who happen to have great ideas, but who might be overlooked by other ensembles or institutions, to the forefront so they can be noticed by everybody,” Lewis said. “It’s a sense of widening the community.”Lewis is an influential voice in the effort to “decolonize” classical music, at a time when the field is reckoning with questions about racial injustice and a legacy of exclusion.“The composers and improvisers are not the ones producing the sounds of colonialism,” he wrote in a recent essay. “Rather, it is the music curators and institutions who have been composing and improvising colonialism.”Lewis has called on music schools to recruit more young composers who belong to racial and ethnic minority groups. He has also said that ensembles should commission more works from composers of color.“There is no reason why major music institutions that tout themselves as international should continue to present all-white programs,” he wrote in the essay.The International Contemporary Ensemble, with its 35 members, has long been an important outlet for modern composers — including Lewis, long revered among avant-garde jazz fans. In 2011, the ensemble premiered his “The Will to Adorn,” inspired by a Zora Neale Hurston essay and also the title of a 2017 album of his works made by the ensemble.Lewis will replace Ross Karre, a percussionist who after five years as artistic director is stepping down to take a teaching position at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. The ensemble was co-founded and led for years by the flutist Claire Chase.The group’s leaders said Lewis, a board member since 2018, had long had an outsize influence on their work.“George’s impact on this ensemble is almost immeasurable,” Rebekah Heller, a bassoonist and board member, said in a statement. “His voice and his vision have been quietly shaping the musical direction of our collective.”Lewis said he hoped to help the ensemble move beyond rigid notions of genre, in part by encouraging artists to listen to each other through improvisation.“At a certain point, classical music becomes so fluid that it becomes like a permeable membrane where you start to realize that it’s a point of connection rather than a set of practices or a set of received histories,” he said. “It’s something that accretes and accumulates new information, rather than something that excludes or does gatekeeping.” More