Ken david masur biography of albert

Since , Ken-David Masur has been the principal conductor of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the pre-professional training ensemble founded in by Frederick Stock, the second music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Masur will be featured in that capacity Feb.

14 when he leads the Civic in a program titled “In Times of War,” featuring the Overture () by Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz and Leoš Janáček’s rhapsody for orchestra, Taras Bulba ().

But Masur also has an active career that keeps him busy elsewhere, starting with his responsibilities as music director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, which began in the pandemic-shortened season.

“I was joking that this is my third season but hopefully, my first full season with the orchestra,” he said.

The season is the MSO’s first in the new Bradley Symphony Center. The orchestra spent $90 million to convert the former Warner Grand Theatre, a movie palace, into a 1,seat concert hall and add a two-story adjacent glass pavilion.

To mark the milestone, PBS presented a live national broadcast of the Milwaukee Symphony on Oct. 2.

“I think Bradley Symphony Center is now one of the great concert halls in the country,” Masur said. He praised the architects and construction team that worked on the transformation, especially the Connecticut-based acoustical firm Akustiks, which has consulted on projects such as David Geffen Hall in New York City and Schermerhorn Symphony Hall in Nashville.

After graduating and studying voice in Germany, he found a niche as a choir conductor, which started his current career path; his full-time job is as the associate conductor of the Boston Symphony. “Working with choirs for me is always a great joy,” he said. “I look for those opportunities.”.

“[They] did a tremendous job of creating an extraordinary acoustic instrument that makes the orchestra just blossom and have a wonderful warmth of sound and [of allowing] the audience to feel extremely close and connected to what’s happening on stage,” Masur said.

The renovated hall even includes a loft for a future pipe organ, an amenity that the orchestra was not able include at this stage.

“It’s been a great dream for many people here for a long time,” Masur said. “For me to come to into this process as it was nearing completion and now to fill it with ideas has been very satisfying already.”

Although the Milwaukee Symphony has not typically been considered a major U.S. ensemble, Masur calls it one of the “great orchestras” with which he has performed in his career.

He pointed to a recent program that featured Britten’s Violin Concerto and noted soloist Agustin Hadelich, who has performed several times with the Milwaukee Symphony. “He is always amazed at what this orchestra can do,” Masur said, “and we have a lot of musicians who come through and say the same thing.”

His predecessor, Edo de Waart, who held the top artistic post from through , established a high level of playing, and Masur has built on that artistic success.

“I look forward to the things that we can do, everything from new works and new commissions to all the great big repertoire that we’re poised to show for the first time in our new home.”

Masur typically leads nine to 10 weeks of subscription concerts annually with the MSO, but for this special season in the new concert hall, he has augmented his schedule, kicking off the orchestra’s pops series and conducting Handel’s Messiah.

Like many conductors, Masur supplements his permanent posts with guest engagements elsewhere.

Those assignments largely dried up during the coronavirus shutdown but began to pick up last year, when he made his debuts with the San Francisco Symphony and the Minnesota Orchestra.

Biography of albert einstein Hailed as “fearless, bold, and a life-force” (San Diego Union-Tribune) and “a brilliant and commanding conductor with unmistakable charisma” (Leipzig Volkszeitung), Ken-David Masur is celebrating his sixth season as Music Director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and Principal Conductor of the Chicago Symphony’s Civic Orchestra.

The latter appearance was part of the orchestra’s summer festival overseen by pianist Jon Kimura Parker, who was named the Minnesota Orchestra’s creative partner in September

Later this season, Masur will join the Baltimore Symphony, Warsaw Philharmonic and Rochester (N.Y.) Symphony. “I always look forward to the large range [of ensembles],” he said, “and seeing how different orchestras respond to a similar or sometimes the same program that you may do elsewhere.”

If his last name seems familiar, there’s a reason.

He is the son of Kurt Masur, the famed German maestro who boosted the international reputation of Germany’s Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra as kapellmeister from through and served for 11 years as music director of the New York Philharmonic. His mother is soprano Tomoko Sakurai.

Born in Leipzig in , Ken-David Masur sang with the Gewandhaus Children’s Choir.

Ken-David Masur (born [1]) is a German-born American conductor. Born in Leipzig of Japanese and German ancestry, Masur is the son of conductor Kurt Masur and Masur's third wife, the soprano Tomoko Sakurai. He began piano studies at age 6. Masur was also a boy soprano, and sang with the Gewandhaus Children's Choir at age 9. [2].

He went on to study voice in Berlin before coming to the United States, when his father took up his post in New York. Ken-David graduated from Columbia University in and served as assistant conductor of the Orchestre National de France in

Since , Masur’s career has largely been centered in the United States.

That year he took what might have seemed an unlikely position — resident conductor of a relatively little-known orchestra — the San Antonio (Texas) Symphony. The post offered two things he was seeking: abundant podium time and a chance to work with Larry Rachleff, then the orchestra’s music director, whom Masur calls one of the “great American pedagogues.”

“In terms of my artistic growth and what I was looking for,” he said, “I preferred to have a position like that where I was doing something like 70 or 80 performances a year in front of an orchestra and was doing a lot of things for the first time and where I was prone to make, I’m sure, rookie mistakes.”

Masur went on to become assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in and was later named associate conductor.

Another of Masur’s musical pursuits is New York’s Chelsea Music Festival, which he founded in with his wife, pianist Melinda Lee Masur, a member of the music faculty at Boston University. The two serve as artistic directors of the event, which typically runs for two weeks in June and combines the musical, culinary and visual arts.

More than often-emerging composers have been involved with the festival, which has had annual themes such as Newton’s law of gravity and the passage of time.

The event didn’t occur in because of COVID, and it presented streamed films of previous offerings in “But this year, we are hoping the festival can happen in person,” Masur said.

After securing his post with the Milwaukee Symphony, Masur moved with his wife and three children to the Wisconsin city.

Ken david masur biography of albert Ken-David Masur (born [1]) is a German-born American conductor. Born in Leipzig of Japanese and German ancestry, Masur is the son of conductor Kurt Masur and Masur's third wife, the soprano Tomoko Sakurai. He began piano studies at age 6. Masur was also a boy soprano, and sang with the Gewandhaus Children's Choir at age 9. [2].

“We decided we wanted to be here, and to witness as much as we can during this change in time, where the downtown is really seeing a great transformation.”

They spend their summers at the Tanglewood Music Festival in Lenox, Mass, where Lee Masur serves as director of piano chamber music for the Tanglewood Institute, and Masur often has conducting duties.

This year, he will lead Tanglewood’s gala tribute to celebrated composer-conductor John Williams, who marked his 90th birthday on Feb. 8. “Everybody young and old loves him dearly, and he has been a wonderful colleague and supporter of mine, and I am so grateful,” Masur said.

On whether his long-term goal is a music directorship with one of the world’s top orchestras, he said, “Absolutely not.” He explained that he follows his father’s advice and makes a point of being grateful for and focused on what he is doing now.

“I don’t look at any station that I’m at as a steppingstone hopefully to finally be reaching this or that,” he said, “but making where you are a truly life-changing experience in the moment for the communities and orchestras that you get to serve.”