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Carole Mikita ReportingKeith Lockhart announced today when he will end his role as music director of the Utah Symphony. We only get to keep him for another two years and then he's off around the world.
He has signed a one-year extension of his contract and announced he will leave at the end of the 2008 - 2009 season.
Keith Lockhart became music director of the Utah Symphony in January of 1998, at the time considered one of the most dynamic young conductors in America. He is credited with attracting top-flight musicians to the orchestra and creating the successful Deer Valley Music Festival.
As you know, the Utah Symphony and Opera merged and Lockhart and also took his talents into the orchestra pit, conducting for the Utah Opera Company.
The Utah Symphony has always shared him with the Boston Pops; he never left his position as music director there where he spends his summers. In 2003 he conducted both the Pops and The Mormon Tabernacle Choir on the Fourth of July.
About today's announcement he said, "It is time for me to focus on aspects of my life for hiwch there has been no room during the last decade."
One aspect is spending more and better time with his family back in Boston.
So the search for a new music director here will now begin. The Board of Trustees will appoint a Search Committee which will begin that search immediately, two years is a good amount of time.
