MIT Professor Marcus Thompson named music director of Boston Chamber Music Society
Cambridge, MA...Internationally acclaimed violist and Marcus
Thompson,
Robert R. Taylor Professor of Music at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, has been
named the new Artistic Director of the Boston
Chamber Music Society. He will succeed Ronald Thomas, who has led
the ensemble since its inception in 1982.
An artist who has achieved rare distinction as both a soloist and
a chamber musician, Thompson has been performing with the
Boston Chamber Music Society since its inception in 1982 and has
been a member musician since 1984. He is a trustee of Project STEP,
a string training and education program for minority students in
the Boston area, and is on the advisory boards of several local performing
arts groups. Thompson has also been on the boards and committees
of numerous national organizations, including the National Endowment
for the Arts, Chamber Music America, and the American Viola Society.
He is also on the faculty of the New England Conservatory of
Music.
The decision to select Thompson as BCMS’s new Artistic
Director was made by the Board of the Boston Chamber Music Society
after an extensive search that attracted applications from 35 distinguished
musicians, including several from Canada and Europe. His unanimous
selection reflects the tremendous esteem in which he is held by the
BCMS Board, by his fellow musicians and by a devoted audience.
“The Board determined that Mr. Thompson’s ideas, deeply
responsive to his performance experience with BCMS and others, formed
a vision for the future that was exciting and compelling. His life-long
commitment to young musicians and young audiences and his passionate
advocacy for the art of chamber music make him the ideal candidate
to lead the Society into its second quarter-century,” said
Stephen Friedlaender, President of the Board of Trustees of the Boston
Chamber Music Society and Chair of the Board of Trustees of the New
England Conservatory.
The Boston Chamber Music Society is one of the few chamber music
groups in the country that is primarily a self-presenting performing
ensemble. Founded in 1982 by Thomas and fellow cellist Bruce
Coppock, along with a number of their passionately enthusiastic young
musicians, BCMS has grown over the last 25 years from playing
a three-concert series to an extensive season of seventeen performances
in recent years, including six pairs of weekend evening concerts
(Fridays at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall and Sundays
at Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre) between October and
May, a special Holiday Concert, and a summer series of four Saturday
evenings at the Longy School of Music in August. During the 2008-2009
season, however, the Jordan Hall concerts have been suspended due
to short-term budgetary constraints.
Thompson, who foresees an expanded artistic and educational
mission with a greater connection of BCMS to the community, has made
it clear that the Society will return to Jordan Hall in the very
near future. He also intends to expand BCMS’s regular season
activities to include concerts in surrounding communities that do
not have their own chamber music series, as well as at educational
institutions throughout the New England region. “I hope to
bring our musicians and their artistry into various public and private
schools throughout the greater Boston area, and to use the BCMS as
a platform for presenting the best of the astonishing young musical
talent to be found in local community music schools and conservatories,” said
Thompson. He also plans to expand the ensemble’s current
roster and announce the appointment of several new member musicians
by the end of this year and he wants to work with the BCMS Board
of Trustees and its Executive Director to modify the Society’s
administrative structure in order to be more responsive to the current
and future needs of the organization.
[Text taken from BCMS press release]
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