Conductor on first tour

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32705, 7 September 1971, Page 10

Conductor on first tour

I The Polish-American conductor, Jacques | Singer, described as a “miracle worker” with orchestras, will make his Christchurch debut conducting the N.Z.B.C. 'Symphony Orchestra in the Civic Theatre on September 29.

The next evening he will conduct the orchestra again, this time in the final N.ZB.C. subscription concert of the 1971 season Ainppr hiaHp hie musical debut in the New’ York Town Hall as a violinist'

at the age of 11. He studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, and then at the Juilliard School in New York. In his early teens, he became a member of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Later. Leopold Stokowski, after hearing him conduct in rehearsal, recommended him to the Dallas

Symphony Society. In Dallas, Singer built an orchestra of part-time musicians into one of the country’s finest symphony orchestras. Later he was principal conductor of the Vancouver Symphony and the Buenos Aires Symphony before joining the Portland Symphony, Oregon, in 1962 as musical director and conductor. In the first of his Christchurch concerts Singer will bave as his soloist the X’ en "«? e k , p,an,s l t I ’ A,f l2 d Brendel who wih give the first N.Z.B.C. performance Christchurch of the, Schoenbet « piano Concerto. On September 30 the Eng-

lish soprano and tenor, Maureen Guy and John Mitchinson will join the orchestra in a performance of Mahler’s “Song of the Earth.” Other major works in these two concerts are the Strauss tone poem, “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” and the Mussorgsky-Ravel “Pictures at an Exhibition.”