UT Symphony

The UT School of Music has spent the past season auditioning conductors to replace departed-to-Pittsburgh Kevin Noe as the Director of Orchestral Activities. Now, just in time for the school year's end, it has named Gerhardt Zimmermann to the post. The North Carolinean maestro, who's been music director for the Canton Symphony Orchestra in Ohio for 25 years and is also music director for the Breckenridge Music Festival Orchestra in Colorado and conductor laureate of the North Carolina Symphony, made his bid for the job here with a Halloween night concert, conducting the UT Symphony in readings of Poulenc's Organ Concerto and Brahms' Symphony No. 1 (a gig which not only impressed the UT brass but earned the orchestra an Austin Critics Table nod for outstanding symphonic performance). In addition to the orchestras above, Zimmermann has wielded the baton for the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris, the Toronto Symphony, the Calgary Philharmonic, and orchestras in Chicago, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Cleveland, and San Antonio, among many others. He is also a committed advocate for people with disabilities. For more information, visit www.music.utexas.edu.