Renowned Composer, Castleton Festival Founder, Hylton Center Regular Lorin Maazel Dies

Lorin Maazel, a world-renown composer and founder of the Castleton Festival – a regular performance at the Hylton Performing Arts Center in Manassas – has died.

Maazel, 84, passed away at this Virginia home this morning following a bout with pneumonia, according to the Castleton Festival website.

Maazel on Thursday was scheduled to perform at the Hylton Performing Arts Center alongside Denyce Graves as part of the Castleton Festival. An audience member told Potomac Local News he was unable to conduct to his respiratory issue.

Here’s more in a statement from the festival:

With his wife, Dietlinde Turban Maazel, he founded the Castleton Festival in 2009 and has held annual summer performances and training seminars since then in theatres he built on his Virginia farm. Recognizing the value of mentoring he himself benefited from as a youth, Maestro Maazel established the Castleton Festival with a mission: it would be a “vista-opener,” in his words, to nurture young musicians through mentoring and performing, and would draw audiences to performances showcasing young talent bringing fresh energy to classical music alongside established virtuosos such as Denyce Graves and Sir James Galway to Jeremy Irons and Lady Helen Mirren.

Addressing the audience at the June 28, 2014 opening night of the Castleton Festival, Maestro Maazel described working with the young orchestra and singers as a “more than a labor of love – a labor of joy.”

You can read the full statement on the website.

The Hylton Performing Arts Center posted the following statement to their Facebook page:

All of us at The Hylton Performing Arts Center extend our deepest condolences to the Maazel family and the Castleton Festival on the passing of Maestro Lorin Maazel, a great musician and mentor and partner.