UNITED STATES NEWS

Pintscher to become Kansas City Symphony music director

May 9, 2023, 8:02 AM

Matthias Pintscher will become music director of the Kansas City Symphony for the 2024-25 season, offered the job just five days after conducting the orchestra for the first time.

His appointment on a five-year contract was announced Tuesday. The 52-year-old had not led the orchestra or been to Kansas City until arriving for rehearsals two days ahead of concerts from March 3-5.

“It didn’t feel like a debut, didn’t feel like a first encounter,” Pintscher said in a telephone interview. “It was spontaneous, inspired. They cared so much about the colors and everyone was so tuned into enhancing the phrasing and articulation. They were so responding to my gestures, to my eyes.”

Pintscher, who also is a composer, is committing 10 weeks per season to the orchestra, of which eight or nine will be leading concerts and at least one devoted to community work. He will succeed Michael Stern, who ends a 19-year tenure with the 2023-24 season.

“It was really just that instant chemistry that we saw on the podium from our musicians, from our audience, from him,” Kansas City Symphony President Danny Beckley said. “We had seen probably 20-plus conductors prior to Matthias, and we had some really good weeks with people, but none of them have had that level of just chemistry.”

Pintscher conducted György Ligeti’s “San Francisco Polyphony,” Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major and “Rapsodie espagnole” and Scriabin’s “The Poem of Ecstasy” in his March program. He was in New York on March 6 when Beckley called him.

“This is going to knock your socks of,” Beckley remembered saying. “We would like you to be our next music director.”

Pintscher’s time in Kansas City will replace his current commitment to Paris’ Ensemble Intercontemporain, where he has been music director since 2013-14 in a tenure that runs through the current season.

Beckley said the Kansas City Symphony experienced a drop of about 25% in ticket sales at 1,600-seat Helzberg Hall after the pandemic, similar to many U.S. institutions, but said figures had started to rebound.

A leadership role in a U.S. orchestra usually involves significant financial planning. After Pintscher’s first concert there, he had dinner with donors and musicians at Farina, a restaurant owned by William M. Lyons, the symphony’s board chair from 2013-19.

”I have not been actively involved in major fundraising, how it will be now, but I’m a people person. I love to connect,” Pintscher said. “I’m actually hungry and curious to meet the people in Kansas City, and I met quite a lot of them already because the board of the symphony consists of lots of donors and their friends. So I think it was a good start. I also really felt the entire trust from the board.”

Pintscher lives in New York and anticipates continuing to compose mostly during summers. Pintscher said musicians in the orchestra asked if they could play one of his works but he said he wants to concentrate on conducting first and his programming one of his compositions likely would wait until at least his third season.

His leadership role with the Paris orchestra has given him perspective.

“If a wolf leads a pack, he leads it from behind because he sees better what is going on,” Pintscher said. “I always like that image: you monitor, you supervise, you listen.”

United States News

Associated Press

Former top Ohio utility regulator surrenders in $60 million bribery scheme linked to energy bill

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio’s former top utility regulator surrendered Monday in connection with a $60 million bribery scheme related to a legislative bailout for two Ohio nuclear power plants that has already resulted in a 20-year prison sentence for a former state House speaker. Sam Randazzo, former chair of the Public Utilities Commission of […]

31 minutes ago

Associated Press

Fire blamed on e-bike battery kills 1, injures 6 in Bronx apartment building

NEW YORK (AP) — One person was killed and six others were injured when a fire blamed on an electric bicycle battery tore through a New York City apartment, officials said Monday. The fire started at around 7 p.m. Sunday in a 10th-floor apartment in a public housing complex in the Bronx, a Fire Department […]

2 hours ago

FILE - Office of Management and Budget director Shalanda Young speaks about the possible government...

Associated Press

White House warns Congress the US is out of money, nearly out of time to avoid ‘kneecap’ to Ukraine

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration on Monday sent Congress an urgent warning about the need to approve tens of billions of dollars in military and economic assistance to Ukraine, saying Kyiv’s war effort to defend itself from Russia’s invasion may grind to a halt without it. In a letter to House and Senate leaders […]

6 hours ago

Associated Press

Shooting at home in Washington state kills 5 including the suspected shooter, report says

ORCHARDS, Wash. (AP) — Five people were killed in a shooting at a Washington state home and the deceased included the suspected shooter, authorities said. Officers found the bodies inside a home in Orchards, Washington, following a call around 1 p.m. Sunday, the Clark County Sheriff’s Office said late Sunday. A family member received a […]

8 hours ago

Associated Press

Israel orders evacuations as it widens offensive but Palestinians are running out of places to go

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel’s military renewed calls Monday for mass evacuations from the southern town of Khan Younis, where tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have sought refuge in recent weeks, as it widened its ground offensive and bombarded targets across the Gaza Strip. The expanded operations, following the expiration of a […]

9 hours ago

The Salt Lake Temple in Salt Lake City is shown on April 18, 2019. A top Mormon church official lea...

Associated Press

Takeaways from The AP’s investigation into the Mormon church’s handling of sex abuse cases

HAILEY, Idaho (AP) — Paul Rytting had been director of the Risk Management Division at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for around 15 years when a 31-year-old church member told him that her father, a former bishop, had sexually abused her when she was a child. Rytting flew from church headquarters in […]

11 hours ago

Sponsored Articles

(KTAR News Graphic)...

KTAR launches online holiday auction benefitting Boys & Girls Clubs of the Valley

KTAR is teaming up with The Boys & Girls Clubs of the Valley for a holiday auction benefitting thousands of Valley kids.

...

Midwestern University

Midwestern University: innovating Arizona health care education

Midwestern University’s Glendale Campus near Loop 101 and 59th Avenue is an established leader in health care education and one of Arizona’s largest and most valuable health care resources.

...

SCHWARTZ LASER EYE CENTER

Key dates for Arizona sports fans to look forward to this fall

Fall brings new beginnings in different ways for Arizona’s professional sports teams like the Cardinals and Coyotes.

Pintscher to become Kansas City Symphony music director