Payare, the energetic new music director of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, is proving to be anything but boring
The amplified acoustics were terrible, but who cared? Payare, a willowy 41-year-old Venezuelan with a formidable shock of curly hair, led the orchestra in a set of crowd-pleasing highlights from Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Manuel de Falla and Alberto Ginastera. The crowd, seated nearby in plastic chairs or standing farther afield, ate it up. At times Payare is a fastidious conductor who gives precise direction with quick, tidy hand gestures.
Dutoit stormed out of Montreal in 2002, declaring he’d had it with the musicians’ union. It emerged later that the union had had it with Dutoit, and with what would today be called a toxic work environment. Dark years ensued, including a five-month strike. But the OSM managed to find another artistically serious and charismatic leader, the Californian Kent Nagano, who became the music director in 2006. Nagano had made his career in Germany.
As a successor to Dutoit and Nagano, Payare seems a bit slight. He’s a largely unknown quantity in the music world. The orchestras he’s led—Belfast, San Diego—are fine bands, but you don’t build a global reputation in such outposts. To the OSM, this was actually part of the appeal. Madeleine Careau, the OSM’s CEO—its chief administrator since the Dutoit days—reminded me that Dutoit was 37 when he came to Montreal, Nagano 48. Neither was widely considered a star then either.