Long Beach Symphony selects new music director

Long Beach Symphony officials aounced this morning that after a two-year search a new conductor and musical director has been selected.

Maestro Eckart Preu, who closed the season in June with a night of music from the Romantic period as a guest conductor, will take the helm of the orchestra begiing in the 2017-18 season.

“This is a wonderful moment, a very happy moment for me,” said the German-born conductor during an aouncement luncheon today at the Boathouse on the Bay, which was attended by invited guests that included Symphony board members, musicians and politicians such as Mayor Robert Garcia.

“I’m super excited, or as super excited as a German can get,” Preu joked as the audience of less than 100 people laughed and applauded.

Preu’s wife and two young daughters were also in attendance.

Garcia, who stood next to the conductor during the aouncement along with Irv Miller, the Symphony board president, offered a toast to welcome Preu to Long Beach.

“Lets do a great toast here to our new maestro and his family as we welcome them to our Long Beach family of musicians, of supporters and community members, and we’re all very proud and we look forward to the years ahead,” Garcia said.

‘The perfect match’

Kelly Ruggirello, the executive director of the Symphony, said Preu was a perfect fit for the 82-year-old organization.

“We couldn’t be more excited having found Eckart,” she said.

“Everything just fit. We just knew that he was the perfect match for Long Beach, for the Long Beach Symphony, for the board and most importantly for the musicians,” she added.

The search began when longtime conductor Enrique Arturo Diemecke decided to step down at the end of the 2013-14 season.

That led to a two year interview process that included nine guest conductors who took the stage in hopes of earning the job of musical director.

The position will ultimately put Preu in charge of programing and conducting all six Classical Series concerts, Youth Concerts and one Pops! concert.

Referring to Preu’s season closing concert, Ruggirello said, “He inspired the musicians to play the passages in different ways, to look at it in a different way and that’s exactly the kind of person we want on the podium. Somebody who will inspire with his ideas, with his vision.”

Road to Long Beach

Preu, who is currently the music director of the Spokane Symphony in Washington and the Stamford Symphony in Coecticut, began his musical journey at the age of 10 when he was enrolled in the Dresden Kreuzchor, one of the world’s oldest boys’ choirs and boarding schools.

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He eventually earned a masters degree in conducting from the Hochschule fur Musik in Weimar and then went on to serve as music director of the Orchestre International de Paris in France from 1993-95.

His other previous posts include Music Director of the Norwalk Youth Symphony in Coecticut and Principal Conductor of the New Amsterdam Symphony in New York.

“I wanted a new challenge,” Preu said. “I wanted to be with an organization where the orchestra was really good, where I felt musically it could be a memorable and exciting collaboration. I felt when I came here that these musicians are really exceptional and it would be something very thrilling,” he said.

Long Beach audiences will get a chance to see Preu conduct again when he returns to direct on February 4 as part of the 2016-17 season, which will include five other guest conductors.

The baton will be all his starting in the 2017-18 season under a three-year contract.

“Our contract is a minimum of three years, but we see a long future with Eckart,” Ruggirello said.