ArtsWatch

She was the youngest-ever winner of the Naumburg International Cello Competition’s first prize. She was good enough for an Avery Fisher Grant. She was sufficiently nimble in the orchestral realm to serve as associate principal cellist of the New York Philharmonic for seven years. But after one season in Philadelphia, she’s outta here.
Philadelphia Orchestra principal cellist Hai-Ye Ni was not awarded tenure by a panel of colleagues in the orchestra, and now she is leaving. The Chinese-born cellist will play through the end of the season at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, an orchestra spokeswoman confirmed.
(That’s about the time the collective bargaining agreement expires for all the ensemble’s musicians. Contract negotiations continue.)
Almost all new members of the orchestra are subject to a one-year probation period, but it is highly unusual not to award tenure. At the end of the orchestra’s U.S. tour, virtuoso tuba player Carol Jantsch and principal hornist Jennifer Montone passed probation. Montone has given up her principal horn spot in the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra after hedging bets and splitting time between the two ensembles for a season.
But Ni - who started training in her native Shanghai, eventually moving on to an obscure conservatory in New York called the Juilliard School – resigned from the New York Phil in December, a Philharmonic spokesman said.
Who is next up in Philadelphia’s apparently treacherous principal cello chair?
No decisions have been made about a new principal, an acting principal, or even whether auditions will be held. “It’s up in the air, and there is no timetable,” said orchestra spokeswoman Katherine Blodgett.
Despite the school-of-hard-knocks treatment Ni got from colleagues, if auditions for the orchestra’s principal cello job are held, it’s likely they will draw a flock of hopefuls from Los Angeles to New York, and from within the orchestra’s own section.