Conductor steps down in Canada
OrchestrasThe Belfast-born conductor Kevin Mallon is stepping down after 14 years in charge of Ottawa’s Thirteen Strings ensemble. It’s an amicable parting after more than 80 concerts together.
Mallon, 61, is also director of the Aradia Ensemble in Toronto and an enterprising force in Canada’s musical life.
Mallon is an interesting bloke. He’ll be more in Europe next year, conducting opera. Not sure Aradia is still going, but he got it a ton of recordings on Naxos, as well as getting Thirteen Strings its first recording with them. So he leaves a mighty legacy, even if the ensembles do not survive.
I can’t comment on Aradia, as I am not nuts about early music purism, but Thirteen Strings definitely deserves to go on. If they have any brains they will appoint Julian Armour, but they have tended to go out to the wider world.