Goodbye Mostly Mozart, Hello Lincoln Center Festival Orchestra

Last summer, Lincoln Center said goodbye to the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, a fixture on the city's cultural scene since 1973, saying it was time to reimagine the ensemble for a modern and more inclusive era.

On Monday, the center gave a preview of its plans. Although the ensemble remains the same in size and composition, it now has a new name, a new music director and a program aimed at attracting a more diverse audience to classical music.

The Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center, as the ensemble is now known, will convene for its inaugural season in July under the baton of emerging conductor Jonathon Heyward as part of the center's Summer for the City festival.

Heyward said in an interview that he wanted to maintain the orchestra's innovative spirit.

“It's not like I'm completely reinventing the wheel,” he said. “We are simply continuing in a way that is very much in line with a previous legacy of the orchestra.”

This summer's line-up includes a world premiere by composer Hannah Kendall; the North American premiere of Huang Ruo's “City of Floating Sounds”; and classics by Beethoven, Haydn and, yes, even a little Mozart.

There will also be offerings aimed at attracting new people to Lincoln Center, including a “Symphony of Choice” concert in which audience members can curate the program by voting, as well as an augmented reality exhibit on mental health and Schumann, who suffered from depression.

The changes reflect the recent effort under Henry Timms, president and CEO of Lincoln Center, to appeal to a younger and also more diverse audience. These efforts have led to some broader complaints from audience members and music critics, who say the center isn't doing enough to promote classical music – once a regular feature of the summer season and festivals, but significantly reduced in recent years.

The Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra was loved by many classical fans, but its future became hazy during the pandemic. The Mostly Mozart Festival and several other mentioned festivals at Lincoln Center had their final seasons in 2019, before the pandemic. They were replaced in 2022 by Summer for the City, featuring a wider variety of genres including pop music, social dance and comedy.

The orchestra's music director, Louis Langrée, who helped cement the ensemble's reputation as an acclaimed interpreter of Mozart's music and classical repertoire, left last year after more than two decades at the helm.

Last year, the center announced his successor: Heyward, 31, the first black music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

There are some signs that the ensemble's audience is starting to change: Last summer, about 59 percent of attendees at Mostly Mozart concerts had never previously reserved a ticket to a Lincoln Center performance. Tickets for the festival orchestra's concerts this summer, which will take place in the newly renovated David Geffen Hall, are offered on a choose-what-you-pay basis, starting at $5.

Shanta Thake, Lincoln Center's artistic director, said in an interview that the center aimed to “really open this up to large parts of New York City that previously couldn't come to concerts.”

“We want to make sure our audiences feel as involved in this conversation as these composers do,” she added.

Much of the upcoming season will be focused on forging new connections with audiences.

For Huang's 'City of Floating Sounds', audience members can use an app to hear music samples in the city before attending the live performance.

The exhibition on mental health and Schumann is billed as an immersive experience that explores the composer's struggles and his admiration for Bach's music. Heyward said he was keen to show “how the power of music can really just be a vehicle through very dark and difficult times.”

'Symphony of Choice', which opens the season on July 20, invites spectators to put together a concert by voting on different symphonic fragments. Heyward said he had been intrigued by the idea for years.

“I've always been so fascinated by how we can make the audience feel like there's a sense of ownership in the evening – that they've come to help create what's being performed,” he said.

Mozart will be seen in early August during two concerts, including the overture to his opera 'Le Nozze di Figaro', the 'Haffner' symphony and other works. Heyward said the ensemble would maintain its relationship with the composer.

“Mozart will always be a big part of the orchestra and the identity of the orchestra,” he said. “That cannot be taken away.”