In a move that will realign the region’s arts community, Allison Vulgamore, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s president and CEO since 1993, told the board Monday that she’ll not renew her contract when it expires in June.
In an often tearful interview in offices at the Woodruff Arts Center, the orchestra’s parent institution, Vulgamore, 51, spoke today of the “very personal decision” to depart an organization with nationally recognized accomplishments but also substantial business left unfinished.
“It’s common for an executive director to help set the path in motion to be artistically and financially solid, but to move on before it comes to fruition,” she said. “I’ve been so fortunate to have seen this growth here across my 16-year tenure.”
Insider sources from the Philadelphia Orchestra, one of America’s fabled “big five” ensembles, suggest Vulgamore will be named that world-famous orchestra’s new boss as soon as Wednesday. Vulgamore’s ASO contract spells out that she can depart before June without penalty.
Vulgamore says she first floated the idea of leaving last spring.
In a statement Tuesday, ASO board Chairman Ben Johnson said, “This is a decision that we have unsuccessfully sought to have her reconsider.”
ASO principal percussionist Thomas Sherwood, who joined the symphony in 2000 and is one of two musicians on the ASO board, said flatly, “I’ll miss her.
“Her philosophy about what an orchestra should play and how it should function had a lot to do with how successful we’ve been,” Sherwood said. “How many other orchestras are playing John Adams or Osvaldo Golijov operas? She put a lot of time and energy into her relationships with the organization, and it’s pretty rare for a musician to be able to speak his mind with management.”
Under Vulgamore's entrepreneurial leadership, the ASO grew into the largest arts organization in the Southeast and moved to a higher tier among American orchestras. The organization increased its annual budget to $45.5 million, up from $15.8 million; doubled its endowment (before the current recession it peaked above $80 million); opened the income-generating, 12,000-seat Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre in the northern suburb of Alpharetta; helped create the minority-centered Talent Development Program; purchased SDA Associates, a California telemarketing firm, to increase earned income; and helped send the acclaimed ASO Chorus to perform with the Berlin Philharmonic in Germany, effectively giving the chorus a reputation apart from the orchestra's.
She also helped hire celebrated conductors Robert Spano and Donald Runnicles and, adding herself in the mix, formed a three-headed “artistic triumvirate” that has been much analyzed by arts organizations across the country and critically praised in New York and other culture capitals.
In a statement, music director Spano called her “a marvelous colleague.”
“In the world of symphonic music, Allison Vulgamore is a giant,” he said.
Yet the ASO, as percussionist Sherwood puts it, “still doesn’t have the financial stability and community support we’d expect of a city with the wealth and prominence like Atlanta’s. I don’t know if one executive director can change that culture, but it hasn’t happened.”
“Several times along the way we could have faltered,” Vulgamore said Tuesday, recalling the ASO musicians strike in the 1990s and the bitter clash with then-music director Yoel Levi. The conductor’s noisy departure in 2000, after 12 years, included charges from his supporters that the ASO administration was anti-Semitic and incompetent.
Vulgamore now terms these as “growing pains.”
“When I came to [the ASO], for 18 months there had been no communication between the board and musician,” she recalled.
In the intervening years, she said, “we’ve built a lifestyle of engagement at all levels of the organization and a sense of ownership from everybody. It was hard-earned, but it is who we’ve become.”
But the most glaring shortcoming of the past 16 years concerns the arts center’s decrepit 1968 Symphony Hall, often described as among the worst concert venues for any major orchestra in America. During Vulgamore’s tenure, the orchestra planned a $300 million, state-of-the-art Symphony Center, designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava on a 14th Street site in Midtown. An initial flurry of donations, spearheaded by Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, brought in just $114 million. That unsuccessful campaign has since closed; under a new plan instigated by Woodruff Arts Center CEO Joseph Bankoff, a new ASO hall will be located on the plaza adjacent to the Memorial Arts Building. The current Symphony Hall will be gutted.
Another aspect of Vulgamore’s legacy with the ASO, said Drew McManus, an orchestral consultant based in Chicago, is the trend for nonprofit arts executives to maximize their compensation packages.
According to the Woodruff Arts Center’s 990 Internal Revenue Service tax form, Vulgamore’s total compensation for the 2007-08 season (the most recent available) was $628,593. That’s a jump up from $466,094 one year earlier, according to tax forms.
In 2007, McManus ranked Vulgamore the fifth-highest-paid orchestral executive in the U.S. (By way of comparison, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s former executive, James Undercoffer, earned $383,000 in 2006-07.)
Sticking with Atlanta and Philadelphia for comparison’s sake, McManus pointed out that salaries for the unionized musicians is reversed. ASO musicians’ base pay for 2008-09 was $75,920. At the Philadelphia Orchestra, it was $124,800.
“The new economy’s executive mentality [for orchestral managers] is to keep costs low and you’re rewarded with the difference in savings,” McManus said.
Said Johnson, the ASO board chairman, “We look forward to finding appropriate ways to celebrate [Vulgamore’s] time and achievements with us over the coming weeks and months.”
He said a search committee will be formed in the coming weeks to find her successor.
Pierre Ruhe blogs about classical music at ArtsCriticATL.com.
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