Louis Langree to Become Music Director of the Mostly Mozart Festival.

Entertainment Editors

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 11, 2002

The Mostly Mozart Festival has appointed the French conductor Louis Langree as its new Music Director, effective summer 2003, it was announced today by Jane S. Moss, Vice President of Programming for Lincoln Center and director of the Mostly Mozart Festival.

His three-year contract extends through September 1, 2005. Mr. Langree succeeds Gerard Schwarz whose eighteen-year term as Music Director concluded with the 2001 festival. Mr. Langree has conducted the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra three times since 1998, and in 2002 appeared in the festival leading the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. For the 2003 edition of Mostly Mozart, he will lead the orchestra two of the four weeks of the festival.

As Music Director of the festival, Maestro Langree's responsibilities will include the development and supervision of the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra and its programs, as well as the selection of all visiting artists and ensembles. In addition, he will work, in collaboration with Ms. Moss, on the creation and implementation of future directions and initiatives for the festival.

Reynold Levy, President of Lincoln Center said, "We are very pleased that Maestro Langree is Mostly Mozart's new Music Director. His high standards of performance, his gifts as a conductor, and his warm rapport with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra bode well for an exciting tenure. We warmly welcome Maestro Langree."

Louis Langree, who is 41, is rapidly establishing a reputation as one of Europe's finest and most versatile conductors. He is currently in his last season as Music Director of the Glyndebourne Touring Opera. He works regularly at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, where he has conducted Mozart's Don Giovanni, Marriage of Figaro, and Cosi fan tutte, all with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and Beethoven's Fidelio with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Mr. Langree is also the Music Director of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Liege, a post he assumed in 2001, and was previously the Music Director of the Opera National de Lyon.

Maestro Langree stated, "I am honored that I was selected to lead this important New York musical institution, and I look forward to working closely with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra. I am eager to offer New York audiences performances and experiences of this magnificent repertoire that is so close to my heart. I also look forward to developing future priorities for Mostly Mozart with Jane Moss and extending the festival's programmatic reach and impact."

Now in its 36th year, the Mostly Mozart Festival was launched as an experiment in 1966 as Midsummer Serenades: A Mozart Festival. This country's first indoor music festival devoted its first two seasons exclusively to the music of Mozart. Now a New York institution, the Festival has broadened its focus to include works by Bach, Handel, Schubert, Haydn, Beethoven and others. In recent seasons, the Mostly Mozart Festival expanded into four venues, and now includes significant baroque and early music presentations featuring some of the world's outstanding period instrument ensembles.

The Mostly Mozart Festival is sponsored by The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation and Jerome L. Greene Foundation. The Festival's corporate sponsor is Fleet.

The Mostly Mozart Festival is also made possible by Mrs. William H. Mann, the Hess Foundation, Inc., The Eleanor Naylor Dana Charitable Trust, The Shubert Foundation, Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, Charles E. Culpeper Foundation, S.H. and Helen R. Scheuer Family Foundation, E. Nakamichi Foundation, Friends of Mostly Mozart, and New York State Council on the Arts.