Friday, September 25, 2009

Passing 'the newspaper test'


As the Utah Symphony announced the appointment of the Swiss conductor Thierry Fischer as its new music director, the chairman of the search committee listed three standard gauges of desirability in a maestro – conducting talent, organizational leadership mettle, commitment to the community – and a fourth that you rarely see acknowledged in public: "the ability to 'pass the newspaper test,' in that he [is] a person of integrity who wouldn't some morning appear on the front page in a scandal," David Burger and Catherine Reese Newton report in The Salt Lake Tribune:

http://www.sltrib.com/arts/ci_13410800