THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, July 11, 1995 TAG: 9507110372
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B8 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: PEOPLE
LENGTH: Short : 50 lines
Virginia Symphony music director JoAnn Falletta brought down the house - or at least a little part of it - at a music festival Saturday. During a concert with the Boston University Tanglewood Institute Young Artists Orchestra, a light fixture plummeted from the ceiling of the Seiji Ozawa Concert Hall in Lenox, Mass.
``It was actually scary,'' Falletta said Monday. ``The light fixture fell from four stories up in probably the only spot where a kid was not sitting. It fell inches away from the first stands of second violins and violas. They didn't let it rattle 'em. It was amazing.''
The orchestra completed Stravinsky's ``Firebird Suite'' without incident, and a New York Times critic reported that ``the talented high-school-age players, under Ms. Falletta's steady hand, learned a grown-up lesson in carrying on through adversity.''
This was not Falletta's first brush with concert-hall disaster. A stage in Oregon once caught fire after a concert. And during her debut with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the orchestra pit elevator switched on in a Verdi overture, taking her, the first violins and cellos 15 feet into the depths.
``They didn't miss a beat, didn't smile, kept on playing and finished together,'' she said.
Falletta is in Brevard, N.C., this week, auditioning to become the new leader of the Brevard Music Center, succeeding longtime artistic director Henry Janiec. On Sunday she will conduct a concert featuring The King's Singers and music of Tchaikovsky and Mozart.
Brevard, a festival and training center for young musicians, is not necessarily a safe haven for conductors. One of Falletta's rivals for the position, Lawrence Leighton Smith, recently re-injured a broken knee broke his leg on a Brevard tennis court. - Staff writer Mark Mobley ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
File Photo
During a New England concert, JoAnn Falletta - music director of the
Virginia Symphony - conducted the orchestra to complete Stravinsky's
``Firebird Suite'' without pause when a light fixture plummeted from
the ceiling.
by CNB