Boston keeps buying British batons
NewsThe Handel and Haydn Society, America’s oldest concert organisation, has named the British conductor, cellist and keyboardist Jonathan Cohen as its 15th artistic director. He succeds Harry Christophers, equally British, who stepped down in 2021 after 15 years.
Cohen, a Mancunian, is founder of the Arcangelo Ensemble, music director of Quebec’s Les Violons du Roy and artistic partner of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.
Boston, which founded the H&H in 1815 while Napoleon was riding to Waterloo, is lucky to catch the busy Cohen.
Seems that little tea-party misunderstanding is all water under the docks now.
Further back, of course, the H&H were led by the late Chris Hogwood, so the British baton connection is firmly established in Boston
….and after him, it was Grant Llewellyn!
Why all this worrying about where a conductor, singer, or instrumentalist comes from? Music is an international language. Who cares.
American musicians who can’t get a job care. It is not international. Try and get a job abroad.
There are plenty of American instrumentalists and singers in German orchestras and on opera stages. According to your logic we should fire them. Is that really what you want?
There’s hardly an excuse for this, when there are so many brilliant American talents. I know a young man who, educated in London, is a naturally gifted conductor. But, being white, he is convinced he has zero chance at any career at all. And we are deprived of his genius. Glen Cortese is an example of a talented conductor who, after a strong start, has had his career stall at the regional level.