Appointments and Executive Changes

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Television

      As Pat Sajak Leaves ‘Wheel of Fortune,’ a Look Back at Memorable Moments

      by

      The host departs this week after more than four decades leading one of the most watched shows on syndicated American TV.Since 1981, Pat Sajak has anchored “Wheel of Fortune” with an affable and even disposition. On Friday, viewers will see him give the big wheel his final spin, capping one of the most impressive runs in television history — and the longest ever for a game show host.Sajak, 77, announced his retirement last year. In an interview with his daughter, Maggie, that aired Monday on “Good Morning America,” he said he felt “surprisingly OK” going into his final week. The farewell episode was filmed in early April.“I do know that somewhere along the line, we became more than a popular show, we became part of the popular culture, and more importantly, we became part of people’s lives,” he said. “And that’s been awfully gratifying.”“Wheel of Fortune,” which debuted in 1975 with Chuck Woolery as its host, became a hallmark of family-friendly programming — a game show where everyone regardless of age or background could watch and play along, with Sajak as its trusted conductor. Perhaps fittingly, Ryan Seacrest, who rose to fame as the good-natured host of “American Idol,” will take the reins from Sajak when the show returns for Season 42 in September.It remains among the most watched syndicated shows on American TV. As of last year, it was still drawing more than nine million viewers daily, second only to “Jeopardy!” for syndicated shows. In the mid-1980s, more than 40 million viewers tuned in daily.As Sajak’s era ends, here’s a look back at the show’s legacy, impact and memorable moments.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Jaap van Zweden’s Brief, Fraught Time Atop the New York Philharmonic

      by

      On a balmy spring morning, after a breakfast of coffee and plain yogurt at a luxury Manhattan hotel, Jaap van Zweden grabbed his bag of conducting batons and scores by Mozart and Gubaidulina and set out for Lincoln Center through the wilds of Central Park.“I love the air, I love the trees,” he said. “Everybody can do whatever they want here. This is freedom, absolute freedom.”Van Zweden, 63, will leave the New York Philharmonic this summer after six seasons as its music director, the shortest tenure of any maestro since Pierre Boulez, the eminent French composer and conductor who led the Philharmonic in the 1970s. Van Zweden helped the orchestra emerge from the turbulence of the pandemic; shepherded it through a trying, nomadic season when its home, David Geffen Hall, was undergoing a $550 million renovation; and led the orchestra when it reopened the sparkling, reimagined hall ahead of schedule, to the delight of musicians and audiences.But throughout his tenure, van Zweden, an intense, exacting maestro from Amsterdam, faced persistent questions about whether he had the star power, creative drive and strong connection to New York needed to lead the Philharmonic.During the pandemic, he spent more than a year at home in the Netherlands, which fractured his nascent relationship with the ensemble. And in 2021, he announced that he would step down from his post, far earlier than many people expected.Van Zweden said he felt no other Philharmonic music director had faced such profound challenges.“We had to start all over again,” he said. “I feel like we are still in the process of getting to know each other.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      Brooke Shields Elected President of Stage Actors’ Union

      by

      She takes office immediately. The previous leader of Actors’ Equity, Kate Shindle, had been president since 2015, and did not run again.Brooke Shields, the model-turned-actor who has starred in films, on television and onstage, has been elected as the next president of Actors’ Equity Association, the labor union representing stage actors and stage managers.Shields, 58, will take office immediately. She succeeds Kate Shindle, who had been the union’s president since 2015, and announced last month that she would not seek re-election.The position of Equity president is a volunteer job, and Shields was elected to a four-year term. There have been a number of other well-known performers who have served in the post previously, including Burgess Meredith, Ellen Burstyn, Colleen Dewhurst and Ron Silver.Shields won the election with about half the vote; the balance was split between two Equity vice presidents, Erin Maureen Koster and Wydetta Carter. Her victory was reported by the newsletter Broadway Journal and announced by the union on Friday; a union spokesman said she was not available for an interview.In a campaign video posted on YouTube, Shields said that among her priorities would be lobbying for greater government funding for the arts. “I understand the real need to support live theater, and I have a history of being able to open doors and of being able to help,” she said.Equity has about 51,000 members, and represents them in contract negotiations around the country. Just last week, the union won the right to represent a variety of performers at Disneyland, so the union will now need to try to bargain for a contract for those workers.The union is negotiating for a new contract for Off Broadway workers, and it is at odds with the Broadway League over a new contract governing developmental work — how performers are compensated when participating in workshops for shows in development. Equity has threatened that its members would stop working on those developmental projects if a deal is not reached by mid-June.Shields became famous through films like “Pretty Baby” and “The Blue Lagoon” and by modeling, notably for Calvin Klein. She has appeared in five Broadway musicals, always as a replacement: “Grease,” “Chicago,” “Cabaret,” “Wonderful Town” and “The Addams Family,” as well as a handful of Off Broadway shows.Her early career, and the problematic ways in which she was sexualized as a child and adolescent, was the subject of a documentary last year. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Barbara Hannigan, Daring Singer and Maestro, to Lead Iceland Symphony

      by

      Hannigan, the rare artist to have a career as a soprano and a conductor, will assume a full-time conducting post for the first time.Barbara Hannigan, a daring singer and maestro who has built a reputation for innovative programming, will become the chief conductor and artistic director of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra in 2026, the ensemble announced on Wednesday.It will be the first full-time conducting post for Hannigan, 53, a rare artist who began her career as a soprano but in recent years has made a name as a conductor.Hannigan said in an interview that she was drawn to the inventiveness of the Iceland Symphony, which she first conducted in 2022 in a program of Ives, Schoenberg, Berg and Gershwin.“These people are working in a kind of shimmering creative realm that resonates very much with my own,” she said. “I realized I could do things with them and ask things of them that they took so naturally.”Lara Soley Johannsdottir, the Iceland Symphony’s managing director, called Hannigan a “one-of-a-kind” artist. In a statement, Johannsdottir said, “Experiencing the trust between her and the musicians and how they create and go on an adventure together is extremely inspiring.”Hannigan will lead the ensemble for an initial three-year term, succeeding Eva Ollikainen, a Finnish conductor whose tenure began in 2020. The Iceland Symphony announced last month that Ollikainen had decided to leave her post when her contract expires at the end of the 2025-26 season.Hannigan, who was born in Canada, emerged on the cultural scene as a soprano. But in 2011, when she was 40, she began a career as a conductor, appearing with top ensembles like the London Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and the Cleveland Orchestra. Since 2019, she has served as principal guest conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra in Sweden.She has become known for virtuosic performances in which she both sings and conducts from the podium. In April, for example, she led the Iceland Symphony in a performance of Poulenc’s one-act opera for soprano and orchestra “La Voix Humaine,” singing the soprano part.Hannigan said she was eager to record and tour with the Iceland Symphony and that she would work to champion Icelandic composers. She said the orchestra would also commission works that would allow her to sing and conduct on occasion.“The orchestra is very adventurous,” she said, “and so is the audience.”Hannigan, who is currently at work on a recital program featuring Scriabin, Messiaen and Zorn, said that she would continue to perform widely as a soprano. She said that she never envisioned taking a full-time conducting post but felt a special connection to the Iceland Symphony, calling it “one of the most creative orchestras out there.”“I know they are going to enrich my life a lot,” she said, “and I hope that I am enriching the artistic life in Iceland.” More

    • 88 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Can Marin Alsop Shatter Another Glass Ceiling?

      by

      Alsop has had enviable success, and was the first female conductor to lead a top American orchestra. She wants to take another step up.Marin Alsop’s conducting students were taking turns on the podium recently in a rehearsal room at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore. They waved their batons in front of an imaginary orchestra, practicing Stravinsky’s notoriously complex “The Rite of Spring.”Some conductors teach in poetry: what a piece means, how a certain sound should feel. Alsop, who spent untold hours at Meyerhoff Hall during her 14 years as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, a tenure that ended in 2021, teaches in technical, tangible details.In a measure with 11 beats, she suggested using the last as a pickup to the following bar, to give the players an extra bit of clarity. She flagged trouble spots: a transition that was “usually too loud, too fast, too soon,” and a moment when the winds tend to come in just after the strings, rather than in unison.“You’re not accompanying,” she told a rising maestro who seemed to be giving an invisible musician too much leeway. “You’re in charge.”At 67, Alsop is, in many ways, in charge. Last month, she made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera, conducting a new production of John Adams’s “El Niño.” Next season, she will lead the Berlin Philharmonic, perhaps the world’s pre-eminent orchestra, for the first time.She recently recorded Mahler’s Ninth Symphony with her ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra at the storied Musikverein, an experience that brought Leonard Bernstein, one of her mentors, to mind.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Kim Noltemy, Orchestra Veteran, Is Tapped to Lead L.A. Philharmonic

      by

      Noltemy, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s chief executive, will take the helm of the Philharmonic as it searches for its next music director.The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s history of inventive programming and strong finances have made it the envy of orchestras around the United States.But recently, the ensemble has been going through a period of abrupt change. Chad Smith, the ensemble’s former president and chief executive, left last year to run the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Gustavo Dudamel, its celebrated music and artistic director, will depart for the New York Philharmonic in 2026.On Wednesday, though, the orchestra said it had found a leader who can help put it back on track. Kim Noltemy, a veteran administrator, will become the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s next president and chief executive, starting in July.Noltemy, 55, who has led the Dallas Symphony Orchestra since 2018, said that she hoped to build on the Philharmonic’s legacy of innovation.“The potential for the Los Angeles Philharmonic to grow, thrive and make a huge impact in changing how people think about music and how music affects their lives is enormous,” she said in an interview.Thomas L. Beckmen, the chairman of the Philharmonic’s board of directors, said that Noltemy rose to the top of the list of candidates because of her experience. Before Dallas, she held leadership posts at the Boston Symphony Orchestra.“Of all the people we interviewed, she was the most prepared,” Beckmen said in an interview. “Sometimes, I thought she knew more about us than I knew about us.”Noltemy will face several immediate challenges, including helping to find a successor to Dudamel, one of the world’s most in-demand maestros, who has led the ensemble since 2009 and has been a key force behind its box-office success and expansive music education programs.Beckmen said the search could take “a couple years more, or maybe longer,” but that he was confident the orchestra could find someone who would be a draw like Dudamel.“Dudamel is great, and so is the orchestra here in L.A., which is, if not the best, certainly at the top of the field,” he said. “That’s not going away.”Asked whether the ensemble was interested in appointing a woman, Beckmen declined to comment. (Across the United States, women remain considerably underrepresented among music directors at top orchestras.)Noltemy said that “all talented conductors” would be considered, regardless of gender or race. “This orchestra,” she added, “is really so focused on the idea that the L.A. Phil has to represent its community, and its community is incredibly diverse.”Dudamel said in a statement on Wednesday that he looked forward to “welcoming Kim into our L.A. Phil family.”“Our extraordinary musicians and organization have shown the world a powerful new vision for what an orchestra can be, and how it can impact the community around it,” he said. “I am confident we will continue to push ourselves to even greater heights in the years to come.”In Dallas, Noltemy has built a reputation as a community-focused leader. She has expanded music education programs and worked to increase civic pride in the ensemble, including by staging more small-scale performances outside the concert hall.During her tenure, the orchestra has hired more women and people of color as conductors, composers and guest performers. The administrative staff has also grown more diverse; women make up a majority of the senior leadership team.In Los Angeles, Noltemy said, she would work to expand the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles, known as YOLA, which Dudamel helped start, and which is modeled on El Sistema, the Venezuelan social and artistic movement. She is also eager for the Philharmonic to play a prominent role when Los Angeles hosts the Summer Olympics in 2028.The Philharmonic in a relatively strong position compared with other American orchestras. As of March, it was averaging about 89 percent attendance, back to where it was before the pandemic, even as the number of subscribers has fallen to 6,409, from 8,791.Noltemy follows in a line of pathbreaking chief executives. Ernest Fleischmann, who led the orchestra from 1969 to 1998, revitalized its lucrative summer programming at the Hollywood Bowl, fought to build Disney Hall and hired a young Esa-Pekka Salonen to be its music director. Deborah Borda, who led the orchestra from 2000 to 2017, built on those successes, opening the hall, hiring Dudamel, fostering ties with the city and championing new music. Smith, a protégé of Borda’s, helped drive the orchestra’s unconventional approach to programming.Beckmen said that he hoped Noltemy would serve for a decade or longer. She would like to stay until she retires.“The Los Angeles Philharmonic has long been the most amazing and interesting place,” she said. “I see this as the culmination of my career.” More

    • 100 Shares139 Views

      in Music

      Cristian Macelaru, Decorated Maestro, to Lead Cincinnati Symphony

      by

      He will begin a four-year term as the orchestra’s music director in the 2025-26 season, succeeding Louis Langrée.The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, which has a history of attracting top conductors, including Fritz Reiner and Leopold Stokowski, announced on Wednesday that its next music director would be Cristian Macelaru, a Romanian-born maestro who has helped champion music education.Macelaru, 44, will begin a four-year term as music director in Cincinnati in the 2025-26 season and become music director designate in September, the ensemble said. Macelaru, who holds prestigious posts in Europe, leading both the Orchestre National de France and the WDR Sinfonieorchester in Cologne, Germany, will succeed the veteran conductor Louis Langrée, the ensemble’s leader since 2013.Macelaru said he felt a sense of possibility with the orchestra and the community.“This was the one orchestra I really wanted to be with in America,” he said in a telephone interview from China, where he was leading a tour with the WDR Sinfonieorchester.Macelaru has often spoken of making classical music accessible to a broader audience, and said he hoped to help expand music education efforts in Cincinnati.“I’m very disappointed when I see so many orchestras and colleagues who feel that the music should speak for itself,” he said. “We have to tell people why this music is so beautiful and how they can discover even more beauty in it. I have done this all my life. And now I feel like I have a platform that is even more evident and more visible to be able to spread this message.”Jonathan Martin, the Cincinnati Symphony’s president and chief executive, said in an interview that the orchestra’s leaders were impressed not only by Macelaru’s conducting talents but also by his desire to help expand the orchestra’s presence in the community.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      La Scala Opera Taps Fortunato Ortombina to Succeed Dominique Meyer

      by

      Fortunato Ortombina, the general director of Teatro La Fenice, Venice’s opera house, will succeed Dominique Meyer, a respected French impresario.The Teatro alla Scala in Milan, one of the world’s most prestigious and storied opera houses, announced Tuesday that its next leader would be Fortunato Ortombina, who is currently general director of Venice’s opera house, Teatro La Fenice.Ortombina will succeed Dominique Meyer, a respected French impresario who has run La Scala since 2020 and who previously led the Vienna State Opera. The appointment of Ortombina comes as Italy’s current national government has made it clear that it favors homegrown talent over foreigners at major cultural posts.“A decision has finally been reached,” Mayor Giuseppe Sala of Milan, who is the chairman of the foundation that runs the opera house, said Tuesday after a board meeting. The appointment of Ortombina ended months of speculation and whispers in the opera world.Italy’s culture minister, Gennaro Sangiuliano, enthusiastically welcomed the appointment on Tuesday. “After three foreign general directors, Stéphane Lissner, Alexander Pereira and Dominique Meyer, an Italian returns to La Scala,” he said in a statement, which noted that the practice of Italian opera singing had recently been added to UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage list.Ortombina’s appointment was unanimous, Sala said Tuesday. It was widely expected, and followed months of rejected candidates, crossed vetoes pitting board members against lawmakers at the local and national levels, and even a new law instituting age limits for theater leaders that critics said was intended to oust the foreigners who hold such posts.The haggling had risked putting politics and vested interests ahead of the theater’s artistic legacy, said Alberto Mattioli, an opera critic who recently published a book about Italy’s opera houses and their history. “It’s all been a power game” over appointments, while omitting discussion of cultural policy or a vision for the theater and its “core business, opera,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More