Gail Samuel, new president and CEO of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Photo credit: Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff
“With just days left before the Boston Symphony Orchestra launches its upcoming season Thursday, Gail Samuel is getting ready for an opening night like no other,” writes Malcolm Gay in Tuesday’s (9/28) Boston Globe. “Not only will it be the first time the orchestra has performed for a live Boston audience in roughly 18 months, but it will also mark the first time Samuel, just three months into her tenure as the BSO’s new chief executive, will see the orchestra she runs perform at Symphony Hall…. A California native who spent 25 years at the Los Angeles Philharmonic … Samuel, the first woman to be named president and CEO of the 140-year-old orchestra, takes the reins at a critical moment…. Like so many arts organizations, the BSO suffered mightily during the pandemic…. The organization’s fundamentals remain sound…. Perhaps the greater challenge facing the orchestra is … the question of how the BSO will attract a younger, more diverse audience without alienating its traditional base…. [Samuel says] that one of the main questions facing the BSO as it reemerges in a world transformed by the pandemic and concurrent racial justice movement is ‘what we want to look like going forward.’ ”
