Ed Cumming in action.

This past week, and the reason for a drop in posts (by the way, anytime you see these lacunae, please assume I am either on vacation or really busy! Other than that, I do like to post several times a week), I was in Denver for the National Performing Arts Convention. More specifically, I was there to help to run the Music Critics Association of North America, which held its own annual meeting there. What a gorgeous city. I will blog more about events there later, and write a travel story. But I wanted to mention that, coming out of a nice performance by the Colorado Symphony one night that I ran into two fellows I used to see together all of the time: Ed Cumming and Lucas Richman.

Lucas Richman relaxed.

They were both staff conductors of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (largely under Mariss Jansons), with both rising to the highest rank of resident conductor. Both have taken the experience and sprung to some choice jobs: Cumming leading the Hartford Symphony and Richman the Knoxville Symphony. They have never looked better to me; happiness, apparently, is being in control of your own orchestra, though both had a fine time in Pittsburgh.

Where staff conductors end up is one of the many measures of a great orchestra, and I don't think this is the last place either will have the opportunity to go to, if they wish.