Second US orchestra chief goes walkabout
mainDeborah Borda is vacating the helm of the LA Phil this fall to teach college at Harvard Business School.
She is, as always, a trendsetter.
Now Anne Parsons has told Detroit Symphony she’s taking a sabbatical.
She sure needs one after pulling the orch out of dire straits, but we can’t have all the world’s orch managers walking off the job at the same time, can we?
When the cat’s away…
Story here.
It looks very much as if the sabbatical is almost over, and the sky has not fallen.
Do you actually READ the stories you comment on?
It’s not that unusual. Peter Pastreich took a six-month sabbatical while at the San Francisco Symphony; Andrew Shaw did the same while running Toronto. It helps to have a deep staff that knows what they’re doing, of course, as well as a good board chair.
And the better the chair, the more they should be able to pick talented people and put together a structure than can survive a vacation, too. That’s part of the skill set that makes a good leader. A leader who builds a team that can’t cope without 24/7 supervision isn’t a good leader.