Just in: The LSO recruits two leaders
OrchestrasThe London Symphony Orchestra has engaged Benjamin Marquise Gilmore and Andrej Power as leders (concertmasters) from August.
Gilmore (pic), 35, is presently concertmaster of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the Philharmonia Orchestra in London. He is the grandson of the Russian-Dutch conductor Lev Markiz.
Andrej Power, 35, has been concertmaster of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra since 2014. He will divide his time between Sweden and the UK.
Enjoyed watching them both. Fine players. But I hope this doesn’t mean their superb leader, Roman Simovic, who increasingly is off playing solo gigs, is leaving. It’ll be a great loss.
This is the press release with a photo of both new leaders: https://lso.co.uk/whats-on/alwaysplaying/read/1941-welcome-to-benjamin-andrej-our-newest-members.html
It is instructive that in the LSO press release there is absolutely no mention of the fact that Benjamin Marquise Gilmore is still currently one of the Philharmonia Orchestra’s two joint concertmasters. Gilmore may well have personal reasons for his departure from one London orchestra to another (it seems to be something of an epidemic at the moment, given the amount of flitting to and fro, pinching and luring that is going on), but it is less than fair to airbrush out of the release all reference to the one orchestra that helped him raise his London profile and therefore saleability.
It is stated very clearly? Read his biog
Sadly, this is not the first time that postings on this website have been doctored after the event. We even had a concert review not so long ago where it was clear that the reviewer hadn’t actually been in the audience since last-minute replacements in the roster of artists hadn’t even registered (subsequently altered!). The original biography posted on the LSO website carried no reference to Mr Gilmore’s position in the Philharmonia Orchestra. I would not otherwise have pointed this out. Presumably, the biography must have been cleared with Mr Gilmore before the announcement was made, If he, or the LSO, have since realised their omission, so much the better. But one should not pretend that the original postings were not changed. It’s bad enough that we now have a public climate in which it is so easy to pretend or to obscure, in this field and in others, instead of presenting the public with all the facts from the get-go.
This was an entirely clerical error to do with the fact that I was late updating my bio, which I hadn’t done in a while. I have loved my time with the Philharmonia and it will be mentioned in all future bios.
Interesting because there have been open only one Leader position (Gordan Nicolitch’s chair) so does it mean that Gilmore and Power share this position 50-50 and Roman Simovic is other Leader with 100 % ?
And I also noticed that LSO was also looking another Co-Leader (No 2 / associate concertmaster) to sharing Job with Carmine Lauri.
A bit complicated to understand but huge congrats! Both are extremely talented leaders and surely good matches to LSO
Why didn´t they just promote Clare? She is a superb player and a winning personality.
Perhaps M(r)s Duckworth didn’t take part to an audition. Usually all promotions to higher positions go through the audition process
I get that Stockholm and London aren’t that far apart by air, but having a CM/Leader serve two major orchestras in two countries – even if each is normally a job shared with others and time isn’t really an issue – just strikes me as wrong.