The Atlanta Boy Choir, which had been without an artistic director since July 14, when it fired David White, its conductor of the past eight years, has named Fletcher Wolfe, its founding director and conductor emeritus, to lead the group again for one year or until a permanent replacement is hired.
The choir on Wednesday sent the boys’ parents and its donors an e-mail announcing Wolfe’s return.
Wolfe’s re-hire is an attempt, say board members, to heal the rift with boy choir parents after a bitter clash between White, 45, and the board of trustees. The organization is $250,000 in the red; to cover its debt and keep the doors open, the organization has taken out a line of credit on its historic mansion on Ponce de Leon Avenue.
The board charges White with financial irresponsibility — of committing the organization to performances and tours that it couldn’t afford. White accepts no blame and faults the board for not raising the necessary funds.
Some of the young singers’ parents felt betrayed by the organization or White and, with partisan fury, fired off e-mails and Facebook messages at each other and the board. After he was terminated, White and his supporters began to organize a rival group, the Georgia Boy Choir. Its leaders plan an “informational meeting,” scheduled for Aug. 24.
In Wednesday’s e-mail to parents, Wolfe wrote: “Never a day goes by that one of our boys [now grown men] call to let me know what they are doing and most recently, because of the events which have happened, have encouraged me to return to the helm of the choir until we decide on the permanent director.”
At 72, Wolfe has offered his services to the Atlanta Boy Choir pro bono and will bring back his old team. His assistant will be Lawrence Weaver, a Morehouse graduate and another boy choir veteran who had joined when it was one of the few racially integrated youth organizations in the city. Weaver will also work pro bono.
In a paid position, pianist Robert Henry will return as staff accompanist. Henry has performed with the Atlanta Symphony and teaches at Kennesaw State University.
International travel is often seen as a perk — for parents and their sons — of singing in the boy choir and Wolfe has a summer 2010 tour to Britain in the planning stages. (White’s planned Atlanta Boy Choir tour to China, despite the debt, was the event that prompted the board to fire him.)
After retiring from the Atlanta Boy Choir in 2001, Wolfe moved to Texas to start a choir in San Antonio.
“I decided I didn’t want to hang around and hinder [White’s] arrival with comparisons,” recalled Wolfe, reached at his home in Sky Valley in the North Georgia mountains, where he and his wife have lived in full retirement for three years. “This [boy choir] blow-up is sad but it had to happen to make a clean break [with White]. We’ll do what it takes to get things back in the order they were when I left.”
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