In Wednesday’s (4/14) Philadelphia Inquirer, Peter Dobrin reports, “Philadelphia Orchestra president and chief executive officer Allison B. Vulgamore has hired a chief of staff. Ari Solotoff, 29, executive director of the Portland, Maine, Symphony since June 2006, will start as chief of staff and director of planning, a new post, on May 17. ‘The position is part of the senior management team. It’s a collaborator with both the team and with Allison in helping to organize and sequence the many priorities that exist, certainly right now and into the future,’ Solotoff said. … The orchestra has been battling …a financial crisis so severe that officials have suggested the possibility of bankruptcy. New leadership is being put in place. A new board chairman, Richard B. Worley, started this season, and Vulgamore was brought aboard in January. A music director search is under way. Solotoff, an oboist in college, rose in the professional orchestra world in the traditional way, starting as a member of the American Symphony Orchestra League (now League of American Orchestras) Orchestra Management Fellowship Program. He worked at the Louisville Orchestra, where he was chief operating officer, and was executive director of the Pensacola Symphony Orchestra.”
Photo: Ari Solotoff (center) with Portland Symphony Orchestra Artistic Administrator/Orchestra Manager Carolyn Nishon, and Music Director Robert Moody
Posted April 14, 2010
