“The San Francisco Symphony has named Mark Hanson, CEO of the Houston Symphony, as its new executive director,” writes Joshua Kosman in Friday’s (7/7) San Francisco Chronicle. “On Sept. 1, Hanson will succeed Brent Assink, who stepped down in March after 18 years in the post. Hanson, 43, has spent seven years in Houston, where he has taken vigorous steps to expand the orchestra’s donor and subscriber base and to broaden the orchestra’s profile throughout the community [including] focused outreach efforts to the city’s African American, Hispanic and Asian communities…. He began studying the cello as a youth in Boston, where he attended concerts of the Boston Symphony…. [At] Harvard … he sang in the Glee Club and earned a bachelor’s degree in social studies. He also, he said, discovered an interest in—and a gift for—nonprofit management as the director of a student-run homeless shelter. Hanson enrolled in a management training program overseen by the American Symphony Orchestra League (now the League of American Orchestras), and went on to hold leadership positions with the Rockford (Ill.) Symphony Orchestra, the Knoxville (Tenn.) Symphony and the Milwaukee Symphony before being hired in Houston.”
Posted July 10, 2017
Mark Hanson photo by Oliver Theil
