High-profile artistic director will lead The Seasons' festival

The Seasons just got one big step closer to its somewhat unimaginable goal of becoming one of the premier music halls in the country.

Friday, the non-profit perform-ance hall, built out of a former church, announced Daron Hagen as the artistic director of The Seasons' Fall Side-By-Side Music Festival. Usually held in late September or early October, the festival includes concerts by top name jazz and classical musicians, a composers' workshop led by Hagen -- a new addition to this past fall's festival -- and other educational outreach events.

"I'm walking on air," said Seasons president Pat Strosahl. "It's a step that's coming faster than I thought it would.

"It just opens up the world to you," he added.

Hagen's exact role as artistic director for the fall festival is still in the planning stages. The position hasn't existed before.

"We are meeting this week to determine how wide-ranging my role will be," Hagen said. "It will begin with the fall festival and expand only as appropriate."

An acclaimed contem-porary American composer with an international reputation, the 47-year-old Hagen is as unassuming and personable as he is enthralling, not to mention well-connected in the music world.

"I have always prided myself on being excellent -- and unpretentious," he said Friday.

Based in New York City, Hagen has repeatedly said he goes any where "the dream is being dreamt," and that includes Yakima. He finds a kindred soul in Strosahl and his dream for The Seasons.

"Pat and I were just simpatico," he said. "That's how it happened. We kept talking and never disagreed."

A student of Leonard Bernstein, Hagen estab-lished his career and reputation throughout the 1980s with performances by the Philadelphia Orchestra and New York Philharmonic, among many others, and earned numerous prestigious awards. The Madison (Wis.) Opera premiered his first major opera, "Shining Brow," in 1992.

This past October, the Yakima Symphony Orchestra performed the professional orchestral premiere of Hagen's "Triple Concerto: Orpheus and Eurydice," a piece originally commissioned by several youth orchestras. The following day, the Seattle-based Finisterra Piano Trio, who have spent the past couple of years as The Seasons' artists-in-residence, premiered Hagen's one-act chamber opera "Cradle Song." The Seattle Opera will debut his mainstage opera "Amelia" in 2010.

The Seasons also announced Kelly Allen as its managing director. In the new, full-time position, the 48-year-old Allen will be responsible for the day-to-day operations of The Seasons, as well as fundraising and volunteer coordination.

Allen recently moved to Yakima from Wenatchee, where she sold underwriting for Northwest Public Radio. She's previously worked in public relations and marketing for the Intiman Theater in Seattle, the Pantages Theater in Tacoma and the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven, Conn.

* Kim Nowacki can be reached at 577-7680 or knowacki@yakimaherald.com.