Some eagle-eyed reading by James Bash has come up with the possibility that Seattle Symphony music director Gerard Schwarz could be eyeing a move to the Utah Symphony & Opera. I’m not sure why he’d make this move, unless the lawsuit against the symphony goes against him, but even then he’s got deep pockets galore in Seattle, many powerful friends, a great hall, and as we all know, one at least partially very pissed-off orchestra. As Roger Downey wrote in his Seattle Weekly article of May 2006:
Why, after such long and honorable service, does Schwarz want five more years of the same, in front of a cranky, unfriendly band and with a manager and board visibly looking at their watches? “What else would he do?” says a recently retired Symphony member, never much under the Schwarz spell. “And have you ever been to that mansion he lives in up on Highland drive? It’s expensive being Gerard Schwarz.”
A quarter of a century is a long time to spend in one place, and his options are becoming more and more limited. It doesn’t seem like he’s doing that much international or even domestic guest conducting, or at least it’s no longer at all high profile in nature.