Can Kim save the LA Phil?

The Los Angeles has been spiralling headless, or worse, since Deborah Borda took a siren call from the New York Philharmonic seven years ago.

Borda’s successor, an Englishman from Seattle, lasted two years. He was followed by an inside promotion, a bullyboy suit who made the working atmosphere at Walt Disney Hall a good deal less agreeable than before. Chad Smith, his name was, and he was duly plucked in 2023 to save the ailing Boston Symphony. For the past nine months, the LA Phil has been run by an interim CEO who awarded new titles and pay hikes to senior VPs and got rid of several loyalists whom he distrusted.

This is the troubled organisation that Kim Noltemy, 55, will inherit in July. Can she turn it around?

Her track record is unblemished. At the Dallas Symphony she handled the Covid crisis with considerable flair while maintaining musical morale and leadership. She arrived as Jaap Van Zweden’s airy music directorship was ending and she replaced him with Fabio Luisi, an intensive, creative conductor who swiftly raised the voltage. Noltemy added the untested Gemma New as principal guest conductor, along with a number of social initiatives. The Dallas Symphony is said to be devastated by her sudden departure (she kept her LA Phil application strictly secret).

In LA she will see out the last two seasons of Gustavo Dudamel who said last night: ‘I look forward to welcoming Kim into our L.A. Phil family. Our extraordinary musicians and organization have shown the world a powerful new vision for what an orchestra can be, and how it can impact the community around it, and I am confident we will continue to push ourselves to even greater heights in the years to come.’

There is no like-for-like replacement for Dudamel. If Noltemy is to succeed, she will have to pull in a range of very different talents in a short space of time and see how they jell with the musicians.  Some of the stronger characters in the orchestra have been drifting away in the past couple of years. The orchestra faces change in every department. It remains to be seen if the new chief can deliver where three others have wantonly failed.