Welcome back, dear friends. I hope the last year has treated you well. It’s good to be with you again.

With the Los Angeles Philharmonic back at the Hollywood Bowl and their summer classical music subscription season officially kicking off tonight, I wanted to start the latest edition of this regular “Comings and Goings” series and analysis by talking about conductors.

It’s been over a year since Gustavo Dudamel announced he’d be leaving his post as Music and Artistic Director of the orchestra, and the LA Phil is no closer to narrowing down a list of potential replacements.

Much of this is because the person who would be leading the search, new President & CEO Kim Noltemy, has been in her job for exactly one day. In addition, when her very visible predecessor, Chad Smith, announced in May 2023 that he’d be leaving to take the top job at the Boston Symphony later that year, he was supposed to stick around for a few months as a consultant. Yet few people, if any, saw Mr. Smith at Walt Disney Concert Hall or Hollywood Bowl concerts again after the announcement. Interim chief Daniel Song has been a capable caretaker during this interregnum but there haven’t been any indications over the past year that he’s moved the process along.

Of course, these things take time. Any guest conductor of note who’d be a potential music director candidate would have his or her schedule booked two or three years in advance, so any heavy hitters wouldn’t be expected to be on the LA Phil podium until 2025 at the soonest. So I’d argue that somebody (*cough* Chad Smith *cough cough*) should have done the math and realized Dudamel had been around long enough that he’d want to leave (or maybe that the orchestra would want him to leave), and therefore start the process of looking for and nurturing relationships with potential music directors years ago, like before there was a global pandemic.

Alas, we can’t change the past, and Ms. Noltemy has her work cut out for her. So for the rest of this post, let’s talk about who could be a candidate, and more importantly, who should be a candidate to be the orchestra’s next music director, all while realizing that the elements that would make for “the right candidate” in 2026 or soon after are very different than in 2007 when Mr. Dudamel was picked for this job.

The short version: If I ruled the world, I’d put Esa-Pekka Salonen mostly in charge while I took my time to find the right permanent replacement. While I’m doing that, I’d nurture relationships with the best of the up-and-coming talent so that when the next opening happens, they already know how to swim rather than throwing them into the deep end of the pool by hiring them too soon and praying they’re the next Michael Phelps or Katie Ledecky.

There is, of course, a longer version. I’ve had a year to watch what’s been going on and to think about other potential candidates without saying anything until now, so strap in.

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Before we start naming names, let’s quickly talk about what the LA Phil would want out of an ideal candidate. We should start with what any major American orchestra would want out of its music director. After all, the local band hasn’t been the only one in search of a top stick, so competition is inevitable. When the Chicago Symphony tapped young Finn Klaus Mäkelä to be their next MD, Emily Hogstad recently wrote on her wonderful site, Song of the Lark: “Remember: an American music director is only a conductor in his spare time. First, he is a fundraiser, a psychologist, a detective, a scholar, a gladiator, a mediator, an inspiration, a party guest, a punching bag, a schmoozer, a showman, and a symbol. Oftentimes, what he does on the podium is of secondary (or, depending on the day, tertiary) importance.”

Her point is very well taken, though I’d put it somewhat differently. When picking the ideal music director, skills conducting an orchestra — your orchestra — is absolutely necessary but hardly sufficient. It seems obvious, yet the problem with many orchestras is that their musicians will prioritize the podium performance while administrators focus on PR impact. In 21st century America, with most orchestras fighting to remain relevant let alone solvent, the challenge isn’t so much who gets final say or which is more important but rather what ratios to allocate to one versus the other for a given city to make all of its critical constituents — musicians, administrators, donors, subscribers, casual attendees, staff, volunteers — happy enough to keep the doors open. Hopefully along the way, you can manage to make music that is somewhere between good and life-changing.

So here are the generic elements for any good Music Director

• Need to have
  • Conducting chops with core rep: ability to stand on the podium and conduct Mozart to Mahler and everyone in between. You know, the stuff most of America thinks of when you say “orchestral music.” Do it well enough to not be a liability in the box office or to piss off musicians on stage.
  • Not do or have done something worthy of being cancelled: a sliding scale depending on era and community standards, but despite their skills with the baton, some people aren’t getting the big chair in an American orchestra these days because of outright bad or even questionable things they’ve done
  • A willingness to do at least some fundraising
  • Management skills: effectively hire musicians, fulfill other off-podium requirements enough so the orchestra isn’t dysfunctional because of them
• Prefer to have
  • Artistic vision
  • Leadership skills: more than just management skills. Having interpersonal skills to cajole, convince, and/or command musicians, administration, donors to doing what he or she thinks is right off the podium to get the needed results on the podium to implement said artistic vision
  • An established relationship with the orchestra: Sometimes, lightning can strike and conductor and orchestra can fall in love at first sight. And “sometimes” is poor justification for making such a thing the default expectation in any kind of relationship. Better to have dated for a while, maybe even been established friends, before tying the knot.
  • PR appeal: The stereotype used to be a grey-haired European dude. It has recently become the 20- or 30-something wunderkind conductor who looks good on social media. Yuja Wang has a penchant for tiny body-con dresses and 120mm stiletto heels. Whatever works to get the eyeballs on the orchestra and butts in the seats, mission accomplished.
• Other considerations
  • Connection to the community: Esa-Pekka Salonen made LA his primary residence and considered himself an Angeleno during his tenure here. Carl St.Clair got the Pacific Symphony job because of his willingness to move to Orange County. Other examples exist across the country at orchestras big and small. It’s related to but distinct from PR appeal.
  • Checking a diversity box: I know, some stakeholders want this to be in one of the other sections above. And with some orchestras in some communities, it will be. For my money, I don’t care what the person on the podium looks like or with whom they sleep, I just need them to make really good music; if they also happen to be the first [insert unique intersectionality here] at this or any other orchestra, wonderful.

If you’re the LA Phil, that list merely a good start. With an orchestra that’s grown in stature over the past 20 years to have the highest revenues, command some of the highest musician salaries, and aspirations to be mentioned in the same breadth of the best orchestras of the world, the “artistic vision,” “leadership skills,” and “an established relationship with the orchestra” should be in the Need to have section. A commitment to new music — at least a nominal one — is also a must. Ditto for education of young musicians. And let’s add the desire to fly out to the West Coast and stay here for big chunks of time, a non-trivial consideration for any conductor wanting/needing to take frequent gigs in Europe, which is pretty much ALL of them.

But most of all — please, God and Kim Noltemy, hear my prayer — the next Los Angeles Philharmonic Music Director should have already been a successful music director of an American orchestra. Really. The days of giving a promising young conductor a $Multi-Million salary while they’re doing on-the-job training should be over, right?

Yeah, I know, Zubin Mehta, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Gustavo Dudamel all grew into the role and eventually established themselves among the top tier of global conductors while being MD in LA, and our beloved local Philharmonic got the benefit of being early adopters. But the orchestra has grown in stature and ability since then. Moreover, while Ms. Noltemy certainly has a track record as a capable administrator, she does not (yet) have the experience, influence, and gravitas of prior LA Phil impresarios Ernest Fleischmann and Deborah Borda that could make-up for any leadership deficiencies a young music director may have.

And yeah, I know, the CSO just hired the 20-something Mr. Mäkelä. Of course, their most recent prior music director was *checks notes* Riccardo f-ing Muti, who not only was Music Director of the Philadelphia Orchestra for 12 years but also Principal Conductor at the Philharmonia and Music Director of La Scala for nearly two decades before accepting the job in the Windy City. Preceding Mr. Muti was Daniel Barenboim and Georg Solti, neither of whom were fresh faced up-and-comers when taking the job, so I think we can give Chicago a pass for going with the “flashy young hire” this time.

So who actually fits all of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s likely needs and wants and could step in immediately after Mr. Dudamel steps down in 2026?

No one.

Sorry, but that’s the reality. If you truly want someone with the combination of resume, charisma, leadership qualities, artistic vision, schmoozing skills, affinity for living composers, established relationship with the orchestra, advocate for the next generation of musicians, and stick technique, who also happens to have been a Music Director at a Top 25 US orchestra who is willing to frequently travel west of The 101 and also not be a “White male” (in whatever way you choose to define that), you’re totally out of luck.

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Alright then. Who hits almost all of those criteria? There is one glaringly obvious person: Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Somehow, the good folks at the San Francisco Symphony have managed to alienate him to the point that only four years into what had seemed like a dream partnership, Mr. Salonen loudly proclaimed he would leave the orchestra when his current contract expires in 2025. Despite justified hand wringing by SFS musicians and protests by fans, SFS administrators certainly sound like they’re already moving on.

Here in LA, the orchestra (still) LOVES its former MD and current Conductor Laureate. When Mr. Salonen returns to Walt Disney Concert Hall, the performances are stellar and the ovations are loud and enthusiastic. In addition to the 2-4 weeks he spends with the LA Phil, he also has a job at The Colburn School, so he is already in town more than any other guest conductor. Aside from some people caring that E-P is a proverbial pale-skinned penis person, he literally checks every single box you’d want. And to that point, no city home to a major orchestra is more proudly “woke” than San Francisco, yet even they don’t care that he’s melanin challenged and hews to XY chromosome conventions, and if he changed his mind, there would be much rejoicing at Davies Symphony Hall.

If Mr. Salonen were offered the LA Phil’s Music Director chair (again) and he wanted to take it (again), very few people would complain, especially considering the lack of obvious alternatives.

But having a v2.0 of “Esa-Pekka Salonen, Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic” is less than ideal. Expectations would be absurdly high, and it’s rare that any leader can recapture prior glory, let alone recreate previous successes — I’m looking at you, John Robinson at USC and Bob Iger at Disney, among others. I realize the LA Phil likes to do things that haven’t been done before, but setting precedents for the sake of doing so is a dubious strategy.

A better idea is to follow precedent — in this case, the Chicago Symphony in the mid 2000s. In 2004, Daniel Barenboim announced he’d step down as Music Director in 2006. There were many candidates, but no obvious heir apparents. As Mr. Barenboim’s tenure was winding down, Bernard Haitink guest conducted the orchestra to rave reviews. He was offered the music directorship and rejected it, citing his age as an impediment. So the orchestra instead offered him the title of Principal Conductor with basically 6-8 weeks of concerts and privileges to approve the hiring decisions without the other off-podium obligations of a music director. Mr. Haitink accepted and signed a 4-year contract, allowing the orchestra to continue its search. For good measure, they got Pierre Boulez, who had been Principal Guest Conductor since 1995, to take the new title of Conductor Emeritus, filling another 3-4 weeks on the calendar. The orchestra eventually talked Mr. Muti into guest conducting in 2007, his first time at the CSO since 1973. After flirtations with the New York Philharmonic, Mr. Muti decided to accept the Chicago job in 2008 with his tenure officially beginning in 2010.

For those of you who don’t like doing math, that’s 6 years between Mr. Barenboim announcing his departure to Mr. Muti officially taking over. During that time, Messrs. Haitink and Boulez kept the orchestra in tip-top shape. While the CSO didn’t necessarily move forward during those years, it certainly didn’t backslide. When Mr. Muti took over, the Chicago Symphony was as excellent as it ever was.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic is in the perfect position to replicate this by putting Mr. Salonen nominally in charge between 2026 and 2029. They don’t even have to give him a new title, just keep him as Conductor Laureate with a commitment to increase his conducting to 6-8 weeks and a pay raise to go along with it. He gets to lead an orchestra that is still in good shape, with musicians who play great for him, in a concert hall he adores, and with an administration and board that appreciates him and his likely willing to fund some avant-garde projects he had wanted to do in San Francisco. Meanwhile, he avoids the administrative burden of being Music Director, maintaining more time than he had at the SFS to compose and guest conduct elsewhere.

At the same time, the LA Phil and Ms. Noltemy get some breathing room to find the right long-term replacement. They get a proven conductor who can reinvigorate an orchestra that has been in a bit of programatic and even technical rut under Mr. Dudamel since the pandemic (much more on that for another day). And with Mr. Mehta already being the LA Phil’s Conductor Emeritus, they even have a direct equivalent to the CSO’s use of Mr. Boulez.

Sounds like a win-win scenario to me. Please make it happen, Ms. Noltemy. For all of our sakes. Please.

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Now that we’ve got that settled, the big question still remains: which conductors could be — should be — candidates for Music Director?

(Note: I’m mentioning who should be candidates, not who should get the job. Again, there’s no one who I favor right now. I’m willing to bet a whole lot of money that people with more influential opinions than me feel the same way.)

Let’s start with this: of the current guest conductors appearing with the LA Phil over the next year at the Hollywood Bowl and Walt Disney Concert Hall, exactly one person — ONLY ONE (thanks again, Chad Smith) — not named Esa-Pekka Salonen comes anywhere close to having the desired MD attributes: Paavo Järvi.

• The Estonian-American was a conducting fellow of Leonard Bernstein at the much-admired and too-short-lived Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute, after which he held a couple of European positions before having solid tenure at the helm of the Cincinnati Symphony between 2001 and 2011. During most of that time, he was a regular guest conductor in Los Angeles, receiving reviews that leaned positive if not overwhelming so. Since then, he’s focused his career in Europe, holding important posts in Paris and Tokyo among other cities, and is currently Chief Conductor at the Tonhalle Orchestra of Zurich. He was named “Artist of the Year” by both Gramophone and Diaposon magazines in 2016 as his tenure atop the Orchestre de Paris was ending.
• Mr. Järvi’s last time leading the LA Phil was in April 2006 with a Rachmaninoff program for which Chris Pasles of the Los Angeles Times had many good things to say despite not finding the concert “revelatory” in its totality: of Vocalise, “Järvi allowed more moodiness and flexible phrasing;” regarding the 2nd Symphony, “There was special clarity in the Scherzo . . . and impressive attention to all the movements’ on-the-dot endings.” He returned to Southern California in 2007 with the Cincinnati Symphony at the original Segerstrom Hall in Costa Mesa, getting a uniformly glowing review by Mark Swed at the Los Angeles Times.
• Seventeen years is quite a long time since Mr. Järvi’s last appearance and he’s had some noteworthy successes since then. I look forward to seeing and hearing what he does when he returns in February 2025 with a program of works by Bacewicz, Ravel, and Brahms.

Of the guest conductors currently on the slate for the coming 12 months who have never been an American MD, one name is perhaps in the running: Philippe Jordan. He is currently General Music Director at the Vienna State Opera and before that was Music Director of the Paris Opera for 12 years. Mr. Jordan now seems to be making a concerted push to increase his exposure in the U.S., and he has been a regular guest with the LA Phil since his debut a few years ago. He returns to WDCH in January 2025 for a program of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky. His prior programs have also been filled with other core repertoire composers (Borodin, Bruckner, Dvorak, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Straus), so perhaps he has no desire to feed this orchestra’s appetite for more contemporary pieces. If not, he’s welcome to be a regular guest.

Beyond Messrs. Jarvi and Jordan, Ms. Noltemy should also give invitations to Andris Nelsons and Franz Welser-Möst, current Music Directors of the Boston Symphony and Cleveland Orchestra, respectively.

• Both of them have signaled that they’re on the way out of their current gigs:
  • Mr. Welser-Möst announced he’ll be done after the 2026-2027 season
  • Mr. Nelsons is on an automatically renewing year-to-year contract which either he or the BSO can end when they wish.
  • The last (and only?) time Mr. Nelsons conducted the LA Phil was at the Bowl on July 13, 2008.
  • Mr. Welser-Möst made annual appearches with the orchestra for a few years right before he took over the podium in Cleveland in 2002, and his last time in front of the LA Phil was in that same year after he started his new job — and before WDCH had even opened.
  • I know each of them have their share of harsh criticism (someone doesn’t get a nickname like “Frankly Worst-than-Most” just because it’s catchy), but you can say the same thing of Mr. Dudamel (or even Mr. Salonen).
• Both have done the job at a high level at two of the world’s best orchestras.
  • Mr. Welser-Most will have been in Cleveland for 25 years at the end of his contract. You don’t make it that long with the orchestra of George Szell and Christoph von Dohnanyi if you suck.
  • Mr. Nelson’s tenure in Boston has been shorter, but given the BSO’s connections to Tanglewood and the Boston Pops, there are greater similarities between that orchestra and the LA Phil than any other US orchestra, so that’s non-trivial. Additionally, Ms. Noltemy spent the bulk of her career at the BSO, and her tenure and Mr. Nelson’s overlapped by four years, so they know each other.

Invite them in. If there isn’t chemistry, no harm, no foul. If there is, make them say no. And if they say yes, you’re sitting pretty.

And while were at the whole “call them and make them say ‘no'” strategy, go ahead and reach out to Simon Rattle and offer him a massive pile of money. Because you have nothing to lose if/when he laughs in your face and so much to gain if you manage to pull off a decades-longed-for miracle of getting him here full-time. Yeah, I know he’s never held the big job in any US orchestra, but he’s the biggest, easiest, and quickest “take” of anybody whose ever been around the LA Phil.

Some other people to invite for a look: Gianandrea Noseda (currently Music Director, National Symphony, Washington, D.C.), Fabio Luisi (currently Music Director, Dallas Symphony, and formerly Principal Conductor, the MET Opera Orchestra), and if his contract will allow, Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Remember, I’m not itching to offer any of them the job, I just want to check them out.

A few conductors who’ve been around enough that if they were “The One,” there’d be more buzz (in no particular order): David Robertson, Ludovic Morlot, Marin Alsop, Stéphane Denève, and Lionel Bringuier.

While we’re at it, here’s a few names I’m willing to pass on despite their resumes based on a preponderance of negative buzz about their *ahem* challenging interpersonal skills (in no particular order): Nathalie Stutzmann (currently Atlanta Symphony MD, previously Principal Guest Conductor of the Philadelphia), Jaap van Zweden (formerly MD of NY Phil and Dallas Symphony).

Some people are asking, “Why not Susanna Mälkki?” Indeed, the LA Phil’s former Principal Guest Conductor has been on many Music Director watch lists for a while, and some well-known music critics named her as the likely successor to Mr. Dudamel when he announced his move to New York. Well, from a practical standpoint, if she were going to be “The One,” she would’ve been given the job already. That she hasn’t can be chalked up to a lack of chemistry with the orchestra’s musicians and a decidedly mixed track record.

Others are asking, “Why not Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla?” Unlike Ms. Mälkki, MGT seemed to have genuine chemistry with the orchestra. But she has zero experience being Music Director of an American orchestra of any kind, let alone a big one. Just as importantly, she seems much more interested in focusing on her budding family than in pressing an international conducting career as indicated by her willingness to step away from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra despite success there. Maybe she’ll be the next-next Music Director in Los Angeles. But not anytime soon.

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I mentioned the importance of precedents that have worked. Let me throw one more out for your — and perhaps Ms. Noltemy’s — consideration . . .

Zubin Mehta began his tenure as the Music Director of the LA Phil in the early 1960s as much talked-about 20-something. By the time he announced he was leaving for the New York Philharmonic, he was a 42-year old bonafide global star who had reputation among certain circles as conducting slick concerts that lacked depth. . . . [Allow me to pause here while you consider how uncanny the parallels to Gustavo Dudamel are] . . .

When it was time to replace Mr. Mehta, Ernest Fleischmann, then the LA Phil’s Executive Director, went in the complete opposite direction, persuading the legendary Carlo Maria Giulini to take over. But he didn’t stop there: within a few years, he named then up-and-comers Simon Rattle and Michael Tilson Thomas as Principal Guest Conductors.

Let’s do that now too: while we’re giving Mr. Salonen most of the time on the podium after 2026 and searching for a full-time MD, find someone who brings something different than Mr. Dudamel or Mr. Salonen. Let’s also plan on naming a couple of youngish Principal Guest Conductors who could become eventual Music Directors.

Three names top that list for me:

• Elim Chan: the Hong Kong native has been an annual visitor since she was a Dudamel Fellow in the 2016/2017 season. She has a clear, easy to follow and expressive baton technique, and her interpretations have been somewhere between solid and interesting — and most importantly, they keep getting better. It’s a matter of when, not if, she gets to helm a U.S. orchestra. She’s on the podium at the Hollywood Bowl tonight doing Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. If the reviews from her NY Phil debut earlier this year or even this 5-year old recording with the Rotterdam Philharmonic is any indication, we’re in for a treat.
• Ryan Bancroft: the Lakewood, California native and CalArts grad made his LA Phil debut at the Bowl last year with Entr’acte by Caroline Shaw, Beethoven’s 4th Piano Concerto, and Elgar’s Enigma Variations. It wasn’t necessarily a program that jumped off the page, but the performance was really good, particularly given the rather unforgiving rehearsal and performance conditions at the Bowl. REALLY good. . . . Okay, not light-your-hair-on-fire impressive like the Bowl debut that rocketed Mr. Dudamel to stardom, but impressive enough that I and other people I trust talked about it with unanimous praise. I’m glad to see that he’s back at the Bowl this summer with an even-more challenging program of the Shostakovich 10th Symphony paired with the Prokofiev 3rd Piano Concerto (Denis Kozhukhin is the piano soloist), and then a week at Walt Disney Concert Hall featuring a U.S. premiere by Anders Hillborg, the Mozart 24th Piano Concerto (Yeol Eum Son, piano), and Nielsen’s 4th Symphony, The Inextinguishable. Yes, please.
• Teddy Abrams: he’s another California native (Berkeley), was Assistant Conductor of the Detroit Symphony, and is currently Music Director of the Louisville Orchestra. He’s a composer in his own right and has a penchant for new music in general. This August, he conducts an all-Stravinsky concert including The Rite of Spring at the Bowl. He’ll be on the WDCH podium in April 2025 doing The Observatory by Caroline Shaw (an LA Phil commission), the Gershwin Piano Concerto in F (Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano), and Also Sprach Zarathustra by Strauss. That’s a fun sounding pair of concerts. His prior appearances have been equally interesting.

I look forward to seeing these three often and maybe, possibly, get titles of some kind here in Los Angeles eventually.

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Photo credits:

• Kim Noltemy: courtesy of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association
• Esa-Pekka Salonen: courtesy of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association
• Paavo Järvi: photo by Kaupo Kikas
• Philippe Jordan: photo by Peter Mayr
• Andris Nelsons: photo by Marco Borggreve
• Elim Chan: photo by Simon Pauly
• Ryan Bancroft: photo by Benjamin Ealovega
• Teddy Abrams: photo by Jon Cherry