Lukas Foss Takes Festival Reins

Lukas Foss, one of the country's foremost conductors and composers, will be the 1997 director of the Music Festival of the Hamptons. Mr. Foss, who spends part of his time in Bridgehampton, with his wife, the artist Cornelia Foss, is the third director in the festival's three-year history. He replaces Jonathan Cohler, a clarinetist and conductor of the Brockton Symphony Orchestra in Massachusetts.

Mr. Foss has conducted most of the world's celebrated orchestras and been the music director of several. He holds 10 honorary degrees, among other distinctions. Called a "New York institution as composer, conductor, and pianist" by James R. Oestreich of The New York Times, he was the sole composer honored during the New York Philharmonic's Composer Week in 1995.

Lawsuit

Mr. Cohler, whom the festival board discharged at the end of last season midway through a two-year contract, has brought a $1 million lawsuit against the festival for payment he claims it owes him for services rendered and for payment he would have received in 1997 under the terms of the contract. He also seeks damages.

"He is owed some money," said Stephen McCabe, the festival's attorney. "The dispute is over how much." Mr. McCabe called Mr. Cohler "an excellent musician," but added that "the board was of the opinion that he didn't perform satisfactorily."

Neither Mr. Cohler nor his attorney was available for comment by press time.

The Natural Thing

Having directed other festivals for years, Mr. Foss said, the festival here "seems like the natural thing to do." He has spent summers on the South Fork for nearly 40 years with his wife. They also live in Manhattan.

"It's going to be very nice," predicted Mr. Foss, who, at 74, said he expected to do this job "for several years."

Mr. Foss teaches at Boston University, where The Star reached him this week. "We plan to have an interesting, adventurous program," he said, including "at least" one of his own compositions - the most likely being "Curriculum Vitae With Time Bomb," a composition for percussion and accordion. It is, the maestro said, "an updated version of the story of my life."

Jennings And Vonnegut

Mr. Foss's assistant, Jeffrey Jones, a former student, will help organize the festival. Among program selections already planned are "Peter and the Wolf," narrated by the news anchor Peter Jennings, who also lives in Bridgehampton, and two perforn Bridgehampton and two performances of Igor Stravinsky's "L'Histoire du Soldat," a parody of the Faust legend - the original as well Kurt Vonnegut's version which, explained the composer, "did away with the devil."

The festival also will continue its Benno Moiseiwitsch piano series, spotlighting different pianists from around the globe. Mr. Moiseiwitsch was the great-uncle of Eleanor Sage Leonard, the festival's founder and president, of Amagansett and New York.

"We had a wonderful response last season," said Ms. Leonard. "We just made it [financially], she said, and "that's the way it's supposed to be.

Long Career

Mr. Foss was born in Berlin and became a naturalized United States citizen in 1942. He was educated at the Lycee Pasteur and Paris Conservatory, and graduated with honors from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. He studied conducting at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood and composition at Yale University, and has been a recipient of both a Pulitzer Traveling Scholarship and Fulbright Scholarship.

A prolific composer, he has created cantatas, operas, symphonies, quartets, quintets, and experimental forms.

The Music Festival of the Hamptons, a nine-day mid-summer event, was launched as the Newport Music Festival of the Hamptons in the summer of 1995, with Dr. Mark Malkovich 3d, the Rhode Island Newport Festival director, as artistic director. More than 25 concerts were presented.

Fewer concerts were offered last summer in a program which included free events for children and the elderly, a benefit performance that offered both klezmer and classical music, and a performance featuring semiprofessional musicians.

Details for the 1997 season will soon be forthcoming, Ms. Leonard said.