STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

Alasdair Neale will soon have a longer commute when it comes time to take up the baton for the Sun Valley Music Festival’s summer and winter seasons.

Neale, 59, and his husband have decided to relocate to Paris in two years’ time to live in the City of Lights.

It will afford him the opportunity to be closer to his mother in Edinburgh, Scotland, where Neale was born and raised. And it will give him a chance to enjoy a city he has known and loved for two decades.

Neale told the San Francisco Chronicle that relocating to Paris would be “deliciously practical,” as he could get up any morning, throw a few things in a bag, get a taxi to the airport and be at his mother’s house in time for a cup of coffee.

“The pandemic has shifted my goals and dreams, as it has for so many this past year,” Neale said in a written statement. “My husband and I have done a lot of soul-searching and imagining what the next chapter of our lives will be, and together we have decided to move to Paris to be closer to the European side of our family and to experience new adventures in the City of Lights. At the same time, I am thrilled that the Sun Valley Music Festival will continue to play a central part of my life as it has for the last 27 years.”

Neale will step down as music director for the Marin Symphony at the end of the 2022-23 season. He will end his role as music director of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, which he joined in 2019, one year later.

Neale formerly served as associate conductor of the San Francisco Symphony and music director of the Sun Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, which performed around the world in Amsterdam, Vienna, Copenhagen and, yes, Paris.

He appears on the Bay Brass recording “Sound the Bells,” which was nominated for a Grammy for Best Small Ensemble performance.