Sidlin to Replace Mechetti on San Diego Podium

Murry Sidlin, outgoing music director of the Long Beach Symphony, 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, 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 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, 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.

Symphony Executive director Wesley O. Brustad is in Europe.