“Vallejo Symphony musician Kathleen Comalli Dillon blasted the orchestra’s board of directors in a seething letter Tuesday, on the heels of conductor David Ramadanoff’s pending ouster,” reports Richard Freeman in Friday’s (8/22) Times-Herald (Vallejo, California). “Ramadanoff’s 33rd year—starting with one of three seasonal concerts Sept. 2 —will be his last after the board decided it wanted to head in a different direction. ‘I won’t play in the Vallejo Symphony without David’s brilliant and selfless leadership and talent,’ Dillon said. ‘I will leave and so will many, if not most, of the fine players.’ … In an emailed letter to the Times-Herald, the symphony board defended its decision via publicist Tim Zumwalt: ‘The VSO board has a fiduciary responsibility to keep VSO fiscally viable. Rather than face closing our doors, we took the difficult decision to revitalize the orchestra by bringing in new artistic leadership.… This season we have barely sold 90 season subscriptions. If we were to continue down the same road, with the same artistic direction, how could we have lasted?’ ” The article quotes several Vallejo musicians who are upset about the change. The orchestra is conducting a search for a permanent conductor.
Posted August 25, 2014
