On Feb. 25, the San Francisco Symphony's upcoming season will be announced, Michael Tilson Thomas' 20th as music director. His first few years were different, but the rest — and likely, the next — were on the "balanced" side ... unlike his 27 years at the head of the boldly adventurous New World Symphony, which he founded.
Just picking, at random, from current NWS events, there's a free concert on Feb. 10, with cellist Kevin Kunkel: Martinu, Janácek, and Schulhoff; on Feb. 15 MTT conducts three works by Scelsi, two by Berio (and no Mozart or similar to make the medicine go down); on Feb. 21 a "White Out," with everybody wearing white, the New World Center will be transformed into a late-night lounge with club-style lighting, complete with video projections and a DJ spinning alongside performances by the New World Symphony, including "edgy and award-winning artist Laura" who has performed at Electric Pickle, Bardot and the Vagabond. And so on.
Is Miami that different from San Francisco? Was (at least originally) New World so much less commercially dependent that it could afford to go on its own merry way? The answer is unclear, but whatever the next SFS season will be, I hope it will have at least some highlights like these in Miami (released ahead of information for the full season):
* Anne-Sophie Mutter performs the Berg Violin Concerto and Norbert Moret's En reve (Moret, 1921-1998, was a Swiss composer).
* "Dawn and Siegfried’s Journey" from Wagner’s Götterdämmerung. (MTT conducts opera here — one of his special talents — all too rarely.)
* Thomas Hampson in John Adams’ The Wound Dresser.
* Paula Robison as soloist in Kirchner’s Music for Flute and Orchestra (on a program with a rare Sibelius for MTT, Symphony No. 1).
* Stephane Deneve conducts a French program of Saint-Saens, Honegger, and Poulenc.
* Robert Spano conducts Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, plus Mozart and Brahms.