photo: Wendy Edelstein/UC Berkeley
In most welcome news today, our dear friend Matías Tarnopolsky, 39, was named to head Cal Performances, the major performing arts presenting program of the University of California at Berkeley. This historic and top-level entity, now wrapping up its 103rd (!) season, is the largest performing arts presenter in Northern California. Under the past 23 years of leadership by conductor and arts administrator Robert Cole, Cal Performances seasons grew to encompass 80 programs in 130 performances each year with an annual budget of $14 million.
We first met Matías in the 1990s in London when, precocious chap that he was, he was already doing new music work with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Singers and then we were thrilled when he and his other half Birgit Hottenrott came to Chicago when Matías joined the artistic staff of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1999. In Chicago he worked closely with both Daniel Barenboim and Pierre Boulez and with visiting conductors and artists with a particular emphasis on modern and contemporary works. With former CSO composer-in-residence Augusta Read Thomas, Matías launched the enviable CSO MusicNOW series a decade ago, a program that has brought dozens of living composers to Chicago and increased the regular audience for new music almost tenfold.
Birgit and Matías were married at The Arts Club of Chicago (with a string quintet that included CSO concertmaster Robert Chen and Pinchas Zukerman), and their wonderful twins, Sofia and Tomás, were born here, so it was with a sense of excitement for Matías but with heavy hearts that we bid them "adieu" when Matías decamped for the artistic planning job at the New York Philharmonic three years ago.
In New York, Matías played an increasingly important role in bringing contemporary music and new approaches back under the Philharmonic's mandate. He played a major part, with his boss, Zarin Mehta, in running the process that led to the appointment of the young American conductor Alan Gilbert as the Phil's next music director and worked closely with Gilbert planning the ambitious 2009-2010 season announced earlier this year as well as other longer-term artistic initiatives.
Born in Buenos Aires to a family of East European Jewish origins, Matías grew up in North London, went to school with British composition Wunderkind Thomas Adès, and earned both his bachelor's and master's degrees in music and musicology from King's College London. He is one of the most thoughtful, intelligent, curious, insightful, articulate, warm, and humble people in the world of music administration and he has absolutely superb taste in music and performance as well. Now he gets to spread his wings and run an organization himself, get to know more about the dance (he worked on some great collaborations with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago while at the CSO), have a chance to get back to the theatre, rub shoulders with more writers and academics, and toss out his and his family's winter clothes and commuter train tickets.
The Philharmonic will have its work cut out for it in replacing him as Zarin Mehta noted in a beautiful tribute to Matías's work there. But the mark he made there is a lasting one with Gilbert's appointment and the needed shift in programming that move brings to Lincoln Center.
The picture above, which accompanied UC Berkeley's official announcement of Matiás's appointment, cleverly illustrates one of the few areas he will have to adjust: his personal costuming. (Cal Performances seems to have updated the release to include a handsome, more formal shot of Matías with arms crossed, in front of Zellerbach Hall -- see below.) It was also kind of neat to read that Matías's new position was announced by Berkeley's chancellor, Robert Birgeneau, who, as a physicist at MIT, supervised my best friend Kenny Blum's post-doc many years ago.
I can't wait to visit Matías, Birgit, Sofia, and Tomás, and sit outside with them at the Hearst Greek Theatre to watch whatever amazing things Matías and his new Cal colleagues have brought to the Berkeley Hills.
photo: Kat Wade
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