(Revised) NEWS AND LINKS: Jorge Mester named artistic director of Young Musicians Foundation

By Robert D. Thomas
Music Critic
Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News

The revision is to correct the location of the Nov. 6 concert.

Jorge Mester, who for 25 years was music director of the Pasadena Symphony, has been named artistic director of the Young Musicians Foundation and its Debut Orchestra. The 76-year-old Mester (pictured left) will continue in his current positions as Music Director of the Louisville Symphony and Naples (Fla.) Philharmonic, although the Louisville ensemble is embroiled in a major financial struggle at the moment.

Founded in 1955 and based in Los Angeles, the YMF is one of the nation’s top pre-professional training orchestras. Its list of former music directors includes such illustrious names as André Previn, Myung-Whun Chung and Michael Tilson Thomas.

Last week, the its most recent maestro, Case Scaglione, was named an assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic, joining Joshua Weilerstein, who was a Dudamel Fellow with the Los Angeles Philharmonic last year, in that post assisting Music Director Alan Gilbert (MORE).

Scaglione’s YMF predecessor, Sean Newhouse, is now assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony. Last season he won praise from audiences and critics alike when he stepped in on two hours notice to replace James Levine and conduct Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 with the BSO (MORE).

Thus, Mester (who has served on the YMF Advisory Board for 12 years) takes his new position at a propitious time for the organization. He will help select and mentor the YMF’s next music director (it’s usually a three-year appointment) and is preparing an expanded conductor program where he will serve as a mentor for those people, as well. He will also supervise auditions for the orchestra’s new musicians next month.

It’s a role for which Mester is eminently suited. He headed the conducting program at The Juilliard School in New York City in the 1980s, taught conducting at the USC Thornton School of Music, and was the Aspen Festival’s artistic director for many years (he is now conductor laureate there). Several conductors heading orchestras today, including JoAnn Falletta (Buffalo Philharmonic), count Mester as a mentor. During his time with the Pasadena Symphony, he also introduced to local audiences a number of young artists who have gone on to major careers, perhaps most notably the violinist Midori.

In addition to his shepherding and teaching work, Mester will conduct one of the YMF’s six free concerts during the upcoming season, leading the orchestra in John Adams’ Shaker Loops and Bizet’s Symphony in C Major at 6 p.m. on Nov. 6 at the Los Angeles County Art Museum's Bing Theater.

• Read Janette Williams' article in the Pasadena Star-News HERE.
• The YMF media release is HERE.
• The 2011-2012 YMF Debut Orchestra season is HERE.
___________

(c) Copyright 2011, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.