MUSIC DIRECTOR CANDIDATE CARLOS KALMAR
INVITED TO RETURN FOR FEB. 2-4 CLASSICAL SERIES
Search Committee votes to bring Kalmar back sooner rather than later following rave reviews from orchestra musicians, the audience and the community
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Portland, Ore. ... As a result of his highly successful October debut with the Oregon Symphony, Music Director Candidate Carlos Kalmar - currently the Principal Conductor for Chicago's Grant Park Music Festival - will return to Portland Feb. 2-4, 2002, to conduct three ODS Health Plans Classical Bravo concerts.

"This is a case of knowing that Maestro Kalmar's first musical experience with the orchestra was extremely positive; the orchestra would like to get to know him better," said Symphony President Tony Woodcock. The invitation for Kalmar to return was unanimously extended by the Music Director Search Committee, consisting of a majority of orchestra musicians, after considering feedback from the entire orchestra and the Symphony audience following his October concerts. According to David Stabler, classical music critic of The Oregonian, Kalmar "brought the orchestra to a dazzling height."

In order to allow Kalmar to return, Music Director James DePreist has "graciously agreed to a change in this season's schedule," said Woodcock. DePreist, who was scheduled to conduct the Feb. 2-4 series, will instead conduct an additional subscription week in the 2002-2003 season, he added. "I am pleased to be able to have this work out," said DePreist.

The Persichetti Symphony No. 4, which had been scheduled for the February concert, will now be performed and recorded with DePreist in June. Replacing the Persichetti on the February program will be Dvorak's Symphony No. 7. The Korngold Violin Concerto, featuring Concertmaster Michael Foxman, remains as scheduled, as does Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from "West Side Story."

Kalmar was the second of six music director candidates to appear in the 2001-2002 season, the second year of the search.

Carlos Kalmar

Carlos Kalmar is the newly appointed Music Director of the Grant Park Music Festival, a post he assumed during the 2000 summer season. Also in 2000 he began his music directorship of Vienna Tonkünstlerorchester. During his career, he has been music director of the Hamburg Symphony, Stuttgart Philharmonic, and since 1996, Anhaltisches Theater in Dessau, Germany. His ever-increasing guest conducting engagements of symphony and opera, throughout Europe and North America include appearances with Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Radio Symphony, Philharmonische Staatsorchester of Bremen, Bochum Symphony, Dortmund Philharmonic, NDR Radio Orchestra of Hanover, National Orchestra of Spain, ORT Orchestra of Florence, Hamburg State Opera, Vienna State Opera, Zurich Opera House, National Opera of Brussels, among others.

In addition to his music directorship at Grant Park, Mr. Kalmar returns to North America for guest engagements every season, conduction such orchestras as the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, Buffalo Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, Jacksonville (Florida) Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Vancouver Symphony, and the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa. Many of the orchestras have invited him for the second and third times.

John von Rhein of the Chicago Tribune writes of Kalmar, "In the Germanic works which rounded out the program, Beethoven's Creatures of Prometheus Overture and the Brahms Symphony No. 1, Kalmar impressed as a sensitive, probing and communicative young conductor the orchestra world should be paying serious attention to-and undoubtedly will before long."

Carlos Kalmar was born in 1958 of Austrian parents in Montevideo, Uruguay. He showed an interest in music at an early age. He began studying violin at age six and by age fifteen, his musical development led him to the Vienna Academy of Music where he studied conducting with Karl Österreicher. Mr. Kalmar resides in Vienna with his wife and two daughters.