Seiji Ozawa, groundbreaking Japanese conductor, dies at 88

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Seiji Ozawa, the shaggy-haired, high-voltage maestro who served as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for almost 30 years and was widely considered the first Asian conductor to win world renown leading a classical orchestra, died Feb. 6 at his home in Tokyo. He was 88. The Seiji Ozawa International Academy Switzerland announced the death on its webpage but did not provide an immediate cause.

Mr. Ozawa, who underwent treatment for esophageal cancer in 2010, had been in fragile health for years. He was expected to conduct the Boston Symphony in July 2016 but pulled out that May because of what was described as a “lack of physical strength.”

It was a melancholy coda for a man who had arrived in Boston in the early 1970s as a long-haired and fashionably clad maestro who exuded youthful energy. He seemed a sharp contrast to the middle-aged, tuxedoed Northern Europeans who had long dominated the podium in classical music.

It was the twilight of the counterculture, Boston was booming, and Mr. Ozawa seemed at home in that most collegiate of college towns, newly awakened from a long period of being considered staid and hidebound. His studiously hip, turtle-necked, love-beaded image (adroitly advanced by the BSO’s public relations department) made him seem a new sort of music director for a new age.

EDIT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2024/02/09/seiji-ozawa-conductor-bso-boston-dead-obituary/

https://wapo.st/49ro85D