Friday, June 23, 2017

Orchestra Executive Merry-Go-Round

Yesterday, Drew McManus had an article at Adaptistration about current vacancies, and recently-filled vacancies, in the executive suites of various American orchestras.
  1. Brent Assink's departure from the San Francisco Symphony after many successful years of financial and (mostly) labor stability. 
  2. Rita Shapiro's departure from the NSO in Washington, DC. She has been replaced by Gary Ginstling, formerly an executive at SFS, a good hire.
  3. Matthew VanBesien left the NY Philharmonic, which then managed the fantastic coup of luring Deborah Borda back to NY from the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
  4. Of course, this leaves a huge gap at the LA Phil, but they've got two excellent internal candidates in Gail Samuel and Chad Smith, and the orchestra should just promote one of them.
  5. Most recently, Allison Vulgamore is out at the Philadelphia Orchestra at the end of this year. It's about time: she was terrible for the Atlanta Symphony (and so was her successor there) and she happily led the Philly into bankruptcy.
My current nightmare: LA or SF hires Allison Vulgamore. Please, no. You had really good things going with Assink and Borda. Keep the streak going.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

My guess is that Vulgamore will land somewhere cushy if she can sell the narrative that she led the orchestra out of bankruptcy while obfuscating the fact she led the orchestra into bankruptcy.

Lisa Hirsch said...

I seriously hope not.