Krol leaves BSO for Emmanuel
Patricia Krol is the new executive director of Emmanuel Music, starting next week.
For the last 25 years, Krol has worked for the Boston Symphony Orchestra in a variety of positions, most recently as director of volunteer services, coordinating the efforts of more than 1,500 BSO volunteer workers.
Krol succeeds Leonard Matczynski, who has held the dual positions of executive director and artistic administrator at Emmanuel for decades; Matczynski remains as artistic administrator.
Krol was a pianist and organist in her hometown, Greenfield. When she was still teaching music at the Timilty School in Roxbury, she started to work for the BSO's summer program ``Days in the Arts," which introduces inner-city children to classical music at Tanglewood.
Later she directed youth activities for the BSO, leaving the organization for six years in the '90s to run Project STEP, a string-training program for minorities.
``This is a calculated career move for me," Krol said this week. ``I have always wanted to run an orchestra -- and Emmanuel has both an orchestra and a choir. It is a well-run organization that has the respect of the entire community. I felt the fit was right, and I am very happy that the artistic director Craig Smith, Lenny Matczynski, and the chairman of the board, Joan Nordell, felt so, too."
Krol hits the ground running, as Emmanuel Music's first Sunday Bach cantata performance is Sept. 22 and the first major concert opera, Handel's ``Orlando," is Oct. 28, with the series of concerts featuring the complete songs, piano music, and chamber music of Robert Schumann resuming Nov. 5.
Kane comes to PALS from Spivey Hall Young Artists, a children's chorus that is in residence at Clayton State University in Morrow, Ga. She has also been the conductor of an adult chorus, Schola Cantorum, in nearby Atlanta.
In 1990, Simpson founded PALS as a voluntary after-school program at the W.H. Lincoln School in Brookline. Each year the program teaches music and singing to about 130 children age 7 through 14. The group is best known for its many collaborations with other organizations, among them the BSO, with which it will appear in three programs next season. Simpson remains onboard as artistic director emeritus .
The first production it brought here was Puccini's ``Turandot ," and the excellent tenor who sang Calaf, Roumen Doikov, became a local favorite. He returned in subsequent seasons to sing in ``Aida," ``Il Trovatore," and ``Rigoletto."
Following the death of his wife three years ago, Doikov withdrew from touring, but now he has decided to rejoin his old colleagues. He will sing ``Nessun dorma " again when the company brings a new production of ``Turandot " to the Cutler Majestic next February.
Two sopranos will alternate in the killer title role: Victoria Litherland, who has sung at the Metropolitan Opera, and Susan Marie Pierson, who has specialized in the major heavyweight Wagner and Strauss heroines in North America, Finland, and Germany.
Longtime followers of student opera may recall Pierson at Boston University in the 1970s when she sang an exquisite performance of the title role in Massenet's ``Manon." Her professional career went into orbit a few years later when she won the Pavarotti Competition and sang in a televised production of ``Un Ballo in Maschera" opposite Luciano Pavarotti himself.
