Just in: Maestro quits
OrchestrasPress release:
After considerable thought, Maestro Ankush Kumar Bahl has decided that the 2024/25 concert
season will be his final season as Music Director of the Omaha Symphony. He will lead the 24/25
season as planned and will serve as Artistic Partner for the Omaha Symphony in 2025/26 as the
orchestra searches for new artistic leadership.
“While my time in Omaha has been incredibly rewarding, both artistically and personally, I have
decided to step down as Music Director of the Omaha Symphony at the end of this 2024/25
season. I will miss my friends in the orchestra, the administration, and the community
immensely, but this decision will allow me to be more present with my family in Washington DC,
as my children go through a crucial time in their schooling and development. However, I am
very excited to continue our musical relationship and return to Omaha with the title of Artistic
Partner for the 2025/26 season.” – Ankush Bahl
Jennifer Boomgaarden Daoud, President & CEO of the Omaha Symphony, expressed gratitude
for all that Maestro Bahl has accomplished during his tenure: “Joining us in the Omaha
Symphony’s 100th year, Maestro Bahl has led us boldly into our second century! In addition to
creating exciting and innovative concert experiences, recruiting 13 new musicians, establishing
the popular post-concert After Hours series, introducing internationally renowned guest artists
and leading the orchestra in free outdoor concerts for tens of thousands of people in our
community, Maestro Bahl has conducted five World Premiere compositions in Omaha –
including Andy Akiho’s Sculptures, with a live recording that went on to earn three GRAMMY nominations.
Is there perhaps more than meets the eye with this announcement that music director of the Omaha Symphony Ankush Kumar Bahl will be departing the orchestra over the course of the next two seasons?
Perhaps not.
Nevertheless, four full seasons as music director, and one as Artistic Partner (five full seasons), are on the very short side for any tenure of a music director of a US orchestra that has an annual budget of about $8.7 million or more.
Might Ankush Kumar Bahl in some ways not have been the absolute best fit for the orchestra musically? For a longer term (8-10 years)? Who knows.
I am curious who the other finalists were for the music director position at the end of former music director Thomas Wilkins’s tenure during the 2020-2021 season.
One of the candidates to succeed Wilkins likely was Conner Gray Covington, who then was and is a former associate conductor of the Utah Symphony (from 2017-2021), towards the very end of Thierry Fischer’s 14-season tenure as music director of the Utah Symphony.
Although not a conductor who will ever likely lead a “major” US orchestra, Covington would have been a good fit musically and temperamentally for the Omaha Symphony. He is a consistently good conductor across a wide range of repertoire. Might he audition for the music director position with the Omaha Symphony once again?
It would be far more interesting to have the critics of this posting make their own comments rather than just vote it down.
Oh well, such is the nature of online commentary.
Good for him! Omaha is such a depressing and cold place. Surprised he didn’t do it sooner.