Posted on Thu, Jan. 8, 2009
If the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts could be said to have a voice, much of it has been supplied by programming czar Mervon Mehta. Yesterday the Kimmel announced that Mehta's eighth season of importing symphony orchestras, dance companies, jazz bands and world music groups, plus staging the center's signature all-night Summer Solstice festivities, will be his last.
Mehta will depart Feb. 24 - the same day the Vienna Philharmonic plays at Kimmel under his father Zubin Mehta - for Toronto, where he'll run the Royal Conservatory's new Telus Centre for Performance and Learning.
"You don't want to repeat yourself," Mehta explained yesterday. "After eight seasons of curating Kimmel Center Presents, maybe both sides need a fresh set of eyes and challenges. Previous to this, I spent eight years booking the Ravinia Festival [in Chicago]. Maybe I have the eight-year itch."
Officially titled vice president of programming and education since arriving at Kimmel in 2002, Mehta will be replaced by Tom Warner, who was among the Kimmel's earliest hires, starting there in 1999, two years before the center opened. Says Mehta, "He's been my right hand and taste barometer for the eight seasons . . .."
Kimmel's Broadway and family entertainment operations - touring shows at the Academy of Music and Forrest Theater - will be handled by Matthew Wolf, who will assume the title managing director, theatrical presentations on Jan. 20.
Mehta's attraction to the north was in part prompted by having lived in Montreal and Toronto (he's a Canadian citizen), and in part by the opportunity to create a new niche in the large, cosmopolitan city.
In contrast to some of the substantial classical venues that already exist in Toronto, the 120-year-old Royal Conservatory of Music is currently building the 1,140-seat Koerner Hall. The hall's size means that the venue won't be havens for superstars.
"Yo-Yo Ma is not going to play there," said Mehta, "but names like Andras Schiff, a pianist who should be heard, is the kind of artist who will play there, as well as world music artists too big to play clubs. Bella Fleck has already accepted a date from me."
He praised Kimmel president and CEO Anne Ewers for putting the arts center on stable financial ground and said he told her that the career decision was a tough one. But he said Ewer's predecessor, Janice Price, a Canadian who now runs the Luminato Festival in Toronto, assured him that attitudes there have become more receptive to returning native sons. Though he was born in Vienna, Mehta grew up in Montreal, where his father was music director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, and he spent a decade as a working actor in Toronto.
For all his classical upbringing, his tastes are eclectic: Some of his favorite Kimmel achievements are the summertime Global Grooves Dance Parties as well as the Fresh Ink new music series, which featured a newly commissioned violin work by Jennifer Higdon that has been nominated for a Grammy Award.
"We've had seasons when we couldn't do what we wanted purely for financial consideration . . . but I think I've been able to bring in an array of concerts and genres all at a very high level," he said. "Hopefully, we didn't dumb down, but gave people what they wanted, while pushing them in different directions."
Contact David Stearns at dstearns@phillynews.com.
Flourish
today's 