oboeinsight

Nicholas McGegan, Music Director for the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale (PBO), has announced that he will retire from his leadership post at America’s preeminent period performance ensemble after the 2019-20 Season; at that time, he will have guided the organization for 35 years. He will be designated Music Director Laureate in recognition of his many contributions to the Orchestra at the beginning of the 2020-21 season. At the time of this announcement, the organization’s Board of Directors, led by President Kay Sprinkel Grace, and institutional leadership will convene to begin the search for a new Music Director to build upon McGegan’s legacy of programming and presenting period music at the highest level of artistic integrity.

“Nicholas McGegan has led Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra for 35 years. We have benefitted from the strength of his programmatic vision, energy, and aptitude for making historic performances accessible to broader audiences,” said the ensemble’s Board of Directors president Kay Sprinkel Grace. “He has embraced and advanced our mission throughout his decades of leadership of Philharmonia, and his passion for everything from early music to new works continues to propel Philharmonia to new heights. We look forward to having him remain an integral part of our future.”

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I just landed here and read this news:

Oboist Allan Vogel, a member of the USC Thornton Winds & Percussion faculty, has retired as principal oboe with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO) after 44 years with the ensemble. Called “an aristocrat of his instrument, an oboe virtuoso with few equals,” by the Los Angeles Times, Vogel joined LACO in 1972 and was appointed principal oboe in 1974.

An instrumental figure in LACO’s Baroque Conversations concert series, which he said had “brought me some of the most meaningful moments of my career,” Vogel was featured as a soloist at the March 24th concert, which included Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F major, a work he had performed with the orchestra 19 times previously.

Wow … 44 years! That’s a good long time to play in a group, don’t you think? (Of course I guess I’m nearing that as well … go figure. I began with San Jose Symphony which has since morphed into Symphony Silicon Valley in 1975.)

for quite some time. Still, it’s a huge announcement.

THE METROPOLITAN OPERA announced today that James Levine, the company’s music director since 1976, will retire at the end of the company’s current season owing to health reasons.
Capping an historic tenure of more than four decades that saw Levine conduct more than 2,500 performances of no fewer than eighty-five different operas—far exceeding any conductor in Metropolitan Opera history—the maestro will assume the new position of Music Director Emeritus next season, the Met announced. Levine will continue as the artistic leader of the Met’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, and will still conduct some Met performances, but today’s announcement acknowledged the degree to which the progression of Levine’s Parkinson’s disease had made “it increasingly difficult for him to conduct a full schedule of Met performances.” Levine has struggled in recent years with the symptoms of the disease as well as other health issues, including kidney cancer and a spinal injury that left him partially paralyzed and resulted in his withdrawal from performances during the company’s 2011-12 season as well as the cancellation of appearances during the 2012-13 season. This season, Levine withdrew from the company’s new production of Lulu, opting to shepherd his resources in preparation for the company’s revival of Tannhäuser.

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The great Austrian conductor and early-music pioneer Nikolaus Harnoncourt announced his retirement this weekend, as he celebrated his 86th birthday.

Mr. Harnoncourt — who founded the Concentus Musicus Wien in 1953, teamed up with Gustav Leonhardt to record nearly 200 of Johann Sebastian Bach’s cantatas for Teldec, and became a much-sought-after conductor of later music as well — announced his retirement in a handwritten note, copies of which were placed in the programs at a Concentus Musicus concert in Vienna.

“Dear audience,” Mr. Harnoncourt wrote in the letter, which was in German. “My bodily strength requires me to cancel my future plans.”

He wrote of the “unbelievably deep relationship has developed between us on the stage and you in the hall,” added that “we have become a happy community of pioneers,” and urged audiences to remain faithful to that spirit.

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Humbert “Bert” Lucarelli, renowned oboist and professor of oboe at The Hartt School, will retire at the end of the 2014–2015 academic year after 47 years of teaching. Lucarelli joined The Hartt School’s instrumental music faculty in 1968.

Lucarelli remains a highly acclaimed oboe teacher who, in addition to his teaching at The Hartt School, has taught master classes for students all over the world. “Teaching is pivotal to my life in music,” he said recently. Lucarelli’s former students have gone on to hold prominent positions in orchestras all around the world. Throughout his lengthy tenure at Hartt, he also taught at a number of other colleges and universities, summer festivals, and oboe camps.

Lucarelli is not only a highly regarded oboe teacher but also a renowned performer, cited by The New York Times as “America’s leading oboe recitalist.” He has appeared extensively as a soloist with internationally known orchestras and chamber music groups throughout the United States, South America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. Lucarelli also has performed and recorded with some of the world’s leading conductors, including Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Fiedler, Kirill Kondrashin, Josef Krips, James Levine, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Artur Rodzinski, Sir Georg Solti, Leopold Stokowski, and Igor Stravinsky. Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award winning composer John Corigliano wrote an Oboe Concerto for him.

Lucarelli appears on recordings for Koch International, Vox, BMG Classics, Well-Tempered, Stradivari, and Special Music.

He is the recipient of a Solo Recitalist Fellowship, Consortium Commissioning and Music Recording Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and recently has been named an Honorary Member of The International Double Reed Society.

Lucarelli earned a Bachelor of Music degree from Chicago Musical College of Roosevelt University.

“Bert Lucarelli will forever be remembered as one of our very best artist/teachers,” said Hartt School Acting Dean T. Clark Saunders. “He inspired a great number of Hartt students to go on to highly successful performing and teaching careers.”

A search for Lucarelli’s replacement will begin immediately.

Found here.