St.Clair Contract Extended

Pacific Symphony music director Carl St.Clair will stay at the helm of the county’s most prestigious orchestra through 2001, officials announced Monday.

St.Clair’s current contract, which runs through the 1997-98 season, has been extended for three years. The extension marks his third contract since coming aboard in 1990.

“I’m very happy being here for the next three years past this contract,” St.Clair, 45, said Monday. “With the appointment of our new concertmaster [Kevin Connolly] and five new violinists, and the approach of the millennium, and all the wonderful projects we have planned, I feel a new beginning is happening.”

Said orchestra executive director Louis G. Spisto on Monday: “We’re particularly pleased to have Carl’s leadership through the year 2001. We will continue to build on the many artistic successes we’ve had over the past several seasons.”

The orchestra plans several artistic projects surrounding the turn of the century, Spisto said. Details will be announced soon.

A former assistant conductor at the Boston Symphony, St.Clair took over the Pacific after auditioning during the orchestra’s two-year search for a successor to founding music director Keith Clark.

A Texas native, St.Clair studied music at the University of Texas and at Southern Illinois University, where he also taught. He subsequently taught at the University of Michigan before leaving for his Boston appointment in 1986. In addition to Pacific Symphony, he has served as music director of the Ann Arbor (Mich.) Symphony and the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra of Ithaca, N.Y.

In the past few years, he has guest-conducted the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, plus orchestras in Germany, Israel and South America. He was recently named permanent guest conductor of the Stuttgart Radio Orchestra.

St.Clair’s future guest-conducting stints will include the San Francisco, Atlanta and Utah symphonies, as well as other orchestras.

Under his leadership, the Pacific has recorded two CDs for Sony Classical, including Eliot Goldenthal’s “Fire Water Paper: A Vietnam Oratorio,” which the orchestra commissioned in 1993 and premiered in 1995, and an album of music by Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, scheduled for release this fall. He also has led the orchestra in a 1994 recording of music by American composer John Corigliano and Pacific composer-in-residence Frank Ticheli for Koch International.

St.Clair is recording a series of all 12 symphonies by Brazilian composer Hector Villa-Lobos with the Stuttgart Radio Orchestra for CPO Records, a European label. Symphonies Nos. 6 and 8, the first disc in the group, is scheduled for release next year.