ORCMA Names New Music Director and Conductor
The Oak Ridge Civic Music Association has selected a new music director and conductor of the Oak Ridge Symphony Orchestra and Oak Ridge Chorus for the 2010-2011 season.
Dan Allcott, music director and principal conductor of the Atlanta Ballet since 2000 and director of orchestra studies at Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville, will assume the position in 2010.
He will replace Maestro Cornelia Kodkani-Laemmli, who will conduct her last ORCMA concert on May 1, ending her five concert seasons in Oak Ridge. Kodkani-Laemmli will be relocating to San Francisco, Calif., where her husband works for a pharmaceutical company.
“Dan Allcott is a perfect fit for our arts organization,” said Scott Eddlemon, president of the ORCMA board of directors and ORSO’s principal timpanist.
“The board approved Maestro Allcott unanimously. He will bring to the ORCMA program the experience, expertise, and enthusiasm that the Oak Ridge community and surrounding area expect.”
“I am pleased to have the opportunity to take the Oak Ridge Symphony Orchestra and Chorus to the next level,” Allcott said. “I felt an immediate chemistry with the musicians and the ORCMA board when I met with them.
“I welcome the challenge to make Oak Ridge’s professional orchestra and chorus of talented volunteers among the best of small-city musical groups in the country.”
Allcott was studying at Indiana University for a doctorate in conducting and teaching it as an associate instructor when the Atlanta Ballet hired him in spring 2000.
According to John McFall, artistic director of the Atlanta Ballet, “Dan not only revitalized the Atlanta Ballet Orchestra but also led daring collaborations with the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church Choir, Indigo Girls, Michael O’Neal Singers and many other non-traditional ballet partners.”
Susan Elliott, writing for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, remarked, “Dan Allcott deserves major credit for metamorphosing the Atlanta Ballet Orchestra.”
Allcott will conduct his final performance as music director of the Atlanta Ballet in February 2010. Since joining the company, he has conducted more than 300 performances.
Allcott has conducted the Indianapolis and Dallas symphony orchestras, as well as regional orchestras and educational orchestras. This fall he made his conducting debut with the Asheville Lyric Opera in its production of Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro.”
A well-known educator in this state, he is president-elect of the Tennessee Chapter of American String Teachers Association. He has conducted festival orchestras throughout the state and for the Governor’s School for the Arts.
Since 2003 Allcott has been music director of the Bryan Symphony Orchestra at Tennessee Tech. With the Bryan Symphony, he has re-instituted annual education concerts for fourth-grade students and produced four staged operatic productions.
Allcott studied conducting and cello performance at the world-famous Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. While there he acquired additional conducting experience as associate conductor and director of education with the Columbus Indiana Philharmonic and conducting fellow of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.
In August of 1998 he was named the first Herbert von Karajan American Austrian Foundation conducting fellow at the Salzburg Festival.