Slatkin gets Detroit gig

Leonard Slatkin, music director of the National Symphony in Washington, D.C., has been appointed music director of the Detroit Symphony beginning in 2008, the orchestra announced Monday.

Slatkin, who completed a three-year term in September as the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s first principal guest conductor at the Hollywood Bowl, will conclude his 12-year tenure in Washington at the end of the 2007-08 season. He is also conductor laureate of the St. Louis Symphony, music advisor to the Nashville Symphony and principal guest conductor of the Royal Philharmonic in London. In 2008, he will additionally become principal guest conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony.

Slatkin’s three-year appointment in Detroit ends a five-year search for a successor to Neeme Jarvi, who announced in 2002 that he would step down at the end of the 2004-05 season after 15 years in the post.

-- Chris Pasles