Even in the long hiatus between the ballet season, which ended in May to yield the the Opera summer season, and the December Nutcracker blitz, there is news from San Francisco Ballet, the one about Kochetkova being "official," but the more important one, about Cordula Merks becoming the first S.F. Ballet concertmaster in 40 years, is not — except that it's a-happening.
First: Maria Kochetkova, one of the San Francisco company's top prima ballerinas, will join American Ballet Theatre in September as a principal dancer in New York, but she will remain in the same position here, splitting her time between the two companies. The Russian dancer, 31, joined S.F. Ballet as principal dancer in 2007 and has been serving as guest artist with ABT since 2013.
What's happening in the all-important but covered-in-darkness orchestra pit is that the successor has been found for Roy Malan, who retired in 2014, after 39 distinguished years in the first chair.
Several inquiries to S.F. Ballet Public Relations resulted only in a promise of the appointment being made official "soon," but meanwhile the orchestra musicians came through with the news:
Following a rigorous, two-year search process, the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra is pleased to announce that Cordula Merks, German violinist from the Seattle Symphony, has been appointed Concertmaster. Cordula will be joining the orchestra in December 2015, just in time for Nutcracker season.
There was a large pool of violinists auditioning for the position, six were then selected and invited to play a full set of a ballet program and a recital over last season. Cordula was the last of the six and came out on top.
Merks was born in Germany and spent her childhood in Holland. She started playing the violin at the age of six and was accepted by the Young Talent Department of the Royal Conservatory in The Hague at the age of 12. She holds degrees from the Amsterdam Conservatory and Northern Illinois University.
She joined the first violin section of the Seattle Symphony in May of 2011, where she currently holds the position of assistant concertmaster. Before moving to Seattle, she held concertmaster positions with Germany’s Essen Philharmonic, Bochum Symphony, and Bergische Symphony.
She has served as a guest concertmaster for many orchestras, including the Dresden Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, West German Radio Orchestra, Cologne Opera and Portuguese National Opera. Last summer she played as part of Claudio Abbado’s famous Lucerne Festival Orchestra and toured in Europe as concertmaster of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. Cordula is married to Seattle Symphony contrabassoonist Mike Gamburg, and they have a daughter, Mia.