Exclusive: Music director to pause conducting
OrchestrasWe hear that the trailblazing conductor Holly Mathieson, who is stepping down after five years as chief of Canada’s Symphony Nova Scotia, has also decided to lay down her baton.
In a letter to donors, the orchestra management confides: ‘Like many people, the pandemic gave Holly a chance to reevaluate. To that end, she plans to take a step back from full-time conducting to expand on arts strategy and governance work, enjoy a slightly more calm and consistent family life, and continue to pursue a lifelong interest in software engineering.’
Mathieson, 42, a New Zealander, is based in Glasgow and has worked with several UK orchestras.
As someone who always wanted to be a conductor since I was at school. And attended the Practical conducting course at Sherborne summer school of music in 2008. I would gladly like to take her place as the conductor.
I saw an extremely gifted young man conducting, who won’t even try to have a professional career, because he is white, not any minority, and just assumes he won’t have a chance at anything. This is the cost of “wokeness.” I mean GIFTED. A naturally expressive, full-bodied serious talent!
Given that the vast, vast majority of professionell conductors in the world are white males, the fear that “he won’t have a chance at anything” seems slightly exaggerated.
Thankyou. Let’s be honest and look at our situation. It is foolish to believe people can be pigeonholed based on class or even culture. I’m black speak several lsnguages and know more about European history architecture, art music painting than white academics. People make their own road when they are given exposure. Many should read studies about the American south and the miseducation ,slighted economic entrenchment and cultural prison that for so long intentionally kept people from fulfilling even the simplest lives!
No Alma. He and you are wrongheaded. Woke is about making sure composers like TanyaLeon and AnthonyDavis get heard.Woke is about letting all who have talent enter a room nit just the Jewish Asian Russian judges students. Now Iceland,NewZealand everyone who works hard has a chance. WOKE IS about seeing reality and all the history not just white people as the be all and inventors. You need to wake up!
Software engineering is a wonder field. We wish her well.
What a loss for us. I hope it goes well for her
Wow! No other words…
Is there a connection?
https://slippedisc.com/2023/10/fired-cellists-friends-picket-opening-concert/
When I think about the arts, I don’t think about software engineering.
Sad to hear this. She conducted a couple of memorable concerts with the Auckland Philharmonia in recent years and I was hoping that she would extend that collaboration. Good luck with the software engineering / development career.
Nobody from nowhere quits the early evening hobby of conducting for software diddling. Now my life is complete. A conductor? No, that’s Muti, Abbado, Gui, DeSabata, Ferro…just to name a few Italians. Clown World.
Music is needed everywhere. And a lot of conductors of smaller orchestras are equally good if not better than the ones you mentioned. They didn’t have the luck of big career breakthrough but are equally passionate, work hard and try to bring music everywhere they can. You dismissing someone just because they are not Muti or Abbado is pathetic. Regarding her career choice, can you blame her? Leading a smaller orchestra involves so much pressure, constant administrative work and by the time you get to the music part of your job, you are completely exhausted and burnt out. You don’t have time for your family. The job doesn’t end when you leave the concert hall or the symphony office because you are constantly called with production questions, asked to fundraise, bowings, sublists and many more and on top of that you have to prepare the music to the highest standards you can. So, yes she is not one of your Italians examples but she is a conductor and if you don’t understand our profession, I suggest you keep your arrogant and incompetent comments for yourself.
The world has changed much since you last paid attention!
How ridiculous. After she took up valuable space, presumably in a conservatory, in a paying job, while men are hungering for any opportunity at all. Giving up music for software is utterly appalling. There must be more to this, like inability, lack of talent, or lack of brains.
What are you talking about? What’s wrong with people these days…I don’t know her at all but how about she worked hard and was paid for this (probably not nearly enough) and then she decided to switch to a job where she actually can have a life and be paid normally? As for the men, here, they can have it now lol
https://slippedisc.com/2023/10/fired-cellists-friends-picket-opening-concert/