Cleveland Orch sign NY agent
mainThe Cleveland Orchestra has recruited Opus 3 artists manager Ilya Gidalevich as its Artistic Administrator. Ilya presently looks after such artists as Conrad Tao, Eugene Tzigane, Miguel Harth-Bedoya and Les Violons du Roy, as well as a range of singers.
Before joining Opus 3, Ilya worked for Goldman Sachs. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from Yale with majors in Music and Political Science. He was born in Odessa, Ukraine and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. He joins Cleveland next month.
He left Goldman Sachs for the music business? That’s nuts!
Seconded! As soon as I saw that my mind starting buzzing. To start with, I’m wondering whether he learnt more in the way of his concept and his tools of artist management at university or at Goldman Sachs. Given the predominance of outfits such as ICA in these days, I wonder if the ways of artist management and of money management are so very different. Perhaps not, and that is not a happy thought. But now he’s to be Artistic Administrator at Cleveland, and I rather think the part of his mind moulded at GS will predominate.I just muse on this and wait with interest to see how he performs.
If you know the hierarchy in Cleveland, he is only support staff to the Director of Artistic Planning. That is all.
You are assuming he “Left” voluntarily. It makes no sense to move from GS to go make 1/4th of the $$ in Opus3 (as I know their pay structure to be)
They hired someone who has never worked for an orchestra? “Looking after” Conrad Tao has nothing to do with running an orchestra.
After the leadership exhibited yearly in LAO and the type of retarded “monkey sees monkey does” attitude of 99% of administrators, 1) not being a musician and 2) no “experience” running an lrchestra is precisely what the arts need.
Theres enough BS and incompetence out there as it is. Some Banking rigour would serve any institution very well, specially in the arts
Ilya Gidalevich made enough money at GS so now he can devote to his passion. Being born in Odessa he might inherit mercurial spirit and artistic talent.Good choice and bon chance!
Your concerns here would seem valid but if you had worked with him youd know that Ilya is extraordinarily musical and has switched because he wants to be even closer to the arts. We don’t have to be cynical about everyone always. He managed me for a good while and he’s a great, great guy – on a human and musical level
Thank you for adding this. I actually had in mind that this might be the case, and after I posted my earlier comment I wished I had said that it was a possibility. His move, after all, cannot be explained in monetary terms, and there are people who will forgo more lucrative jobs in order to be near something they love — to some extent this is true in all the arts and used to be true with books. And there are fields to which some people feel a calling, though the idea of a vocation has rather faded over the past 35 years or so.