Sidlin Replacing Mechetti at S.D. Symphony

Murry Sidlin, a nationally recognized music educator, will assume the principal duties of San Diego Symphony resident conductor Fabio Mechetti, who is stepping down at the end of the current season, the symphony announced Wednesday.

Mechetti, who is 30, said that greater opportunities on the East Coast offer more in terms of career challenges and musical fulfillment. In addition to his San Diego post, he is an assistant conductor at the National Symphony in Washington, D.C.

Sidlin, who is finishing his last season as musical director of the Long Beach Symphony, gained wide exposure for his musical education skills through a series of television programs for school-age children that he produced for the Public Broadcasting Service. He will conduct nine programs next year in San Diego, including three for schoolchildren.

San Diego Symphony music administrator Edmundo Diaz del Campo said Sidlin was chosen specifically for his skill with children and his “magnetism” with audiences in general. Sidlin will also conduct a new family series of concerts and a new series of “classic hits.” Diaz del Campo said the symphony does not plan to fill the position of resident conductor, although Sidlin will discharge most of the assignments that went with the post.

Mechetti’s chief assignments have been to conduct a series of young people’s concerts and an array of experimental “cocktail,” “coffee,” and “international” concerts. These concerts, which require only one or two rehearsals, afforded relatively little opportunity for him to work with the orchestra, he said.

The cocktail series will be dropped next year in favor of a new “hit classics” series, a symphony spokesman said, adding that the complete season schedule will be announced later this month.

Mechetti will spend more time at the National Symphony, where he works under the tutelage of gifted music director Mstislav Rostropovich, honored this season as Musician of the Year by Musical America magazine.

“The amount of work I will be doing with the National Symphony plus other conducting work will make it difficult to do both jobs,” Mechetti said by telephone Wednesday. “The only thing I’ve missed a little bit (in San Diego) was to have more opportunities to work with the orchestra in a serious way.” He said he has enjoyed the friendships he has found in San Diego and looks forward to conducting here in the future.

Symphony Executive director Wesley O. Brustad is in Europe, observing and interviewing potential replacements for music director David Atherton, who resigned a year ago during the symphony’s labor strife.