S.F. Symphony:
Innovative and cool-headed Executive Director Brent Assink to step down after 18 years.
Brent Assink, the San Francisco Symphony’s innovative and cool-headed executive director, will step down in March after 18 years in the position. The transition marks the end of a long period of artistic growth and organizational stability for the organization, punctuated by brief episodes of labor unrest and financial setbacks.
Assink, 61, said in an interview this week that there was no specific impetus behind his decision, and that he had no plans for a new position.
“I’ve often thought that there’s another chapter for me professionally,” he said, “and I’m curious to find out what it is.
“But I don’t spend my time at work thinking about what my next job is going to be. So I felt if in fact there’s something out there waiting for me, it would be good to give notice now so that the board can start the task of finding someone to replace me and provide for a seamless transition.”
Assink is one of the longestserving chief executives of a major symphony orchestra, and an esteemed elder statesman in the orchestral world both in this country and internationally. His
tenure at the organization’s helm — he is only the fourth executive director of the Symphony since the post was created in 1939 — has seen many of the orchestra’s most prominent recent developments.
Among those are the creation of SFS Media, the orchestra’s acclaimed in-house recording label; the launch of the multimedia series “Keeping Score”; an array of invigorated education programs directed at San Francisco’s public schools; the opening of the experimental performance venue Soundbox; and an expanded touring schedule.
Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas, who has been on the podium throughout, credited Assink with helping create an environment where ambitious projects such as the American Mavericks festival or the orchestra’s Grammy-winning recording cycle of the complete Mahler symphonies could come to fruition.
“I’ve always had an awareness of Brent as someone who was a musician himself, with an understanding of everything we do,” he said. “He was interested in doing adventurous projects as well as reaffirming the tradition.”
Assink’s financial stewardship of the organization has faced intermittent headwinds in recent decades. There have been small but recurrent budget deficits, and the crash of 2008 took its toll on the Symphony’s pocketbook in ways that continue to reverberate. A short but fierce strike by the orchestral musicians in 2013 came as another setback.
But Assink points with pride to the success of a capital campaign timed to the Symphony’s centennial season in 2011, a five-year drive meant to raise $100 million to fund the endowment and a range of special projects that wound up bringing in $140 million. And he says relations between the musicians and the management have improved greatly since the last contract negotiation.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t still plenty of problems left to be solved by the next executive director. (In a statement, Board President Sakurako Fisher said an international search was already under way to find Assink’s successor.)
“When people are leaving an organization,” Assink said, “you’ll sometimes see them quoted as saying, ‘I’ve done everything I’ve set out to do.’ And I never believe that for a second.
“So I’ll tell you today: I haven’t done everything I set out to do. And that’s OK. This is an ongoing process that will never be tied up in a neat little bow.”
Like many symphony orchestras across the United States, the San Francisco Symphony faces a constellation of challenges with the shifting behavior of ticket buyers and donors alike. The declining popularity of subscription packages — which for decades provided a comfortably predictable revenue stream for arts organizations — and patrons’ increasing reluctance to commit to entertainment options before the last minute have left companies scrambling to maintain ticket sales.
And the Bay Area in particular has seen the rise of a new generation of potential donors whose commitment to the fine arts may be less strong than that of their parents and grandparents.
One task that is bound to figure prominently on the new director’s to-do list will be reconceiving the traditional concert format for a new era.
“We’ve begun that with different start times, shorter concerts and so on,” Assink says. “But the audience of tomorrow is looking for opportunity to have more context for the music, more connection with the musicians, even their own curation — whatever that looks like. Those are the conversations that we’ll need to be having.”
Assink also sees a need to bring the San Francisco Symphony in line with the city’s own reputation for experimentation and technological innovation.
“We have to find ways to use technology to open up the concert
“He’s one of the very best people you’ll ever meet in this business.” Clive Gillinson, executive director of Carnegie Hall, on S.F. Symphony executive director Brent Assink
experience, to make our walls more permeable. That is not necessarily unique to San Francisco — orchestras everywhere are trying to figure that out — but people look to the San Francisco Symphony to figure it out first, and we’re more than happy to do that.”
There’s still time, though, for Assink to tackle a few remaining projects — chiefly a longrange financial plan that he hopes to hand off to his successor.
“We are still not in as good shape financially as I’d like. My hope is to give the new person a blueprint for a return to stability. They may or may not follow it, but they won’t have to create it from scratch.”
Assink grew up on a small dairy farm in rural Washington, in a community of Dutch immigrants. The church was central to his upbringing, and remains so to this day. He trained as a pianist and organist — at first to accompany church services, and later, thanks to an influential early teacher, with an eye to the broader musical world.
He has done two tours of duty with the Symphony. He arrived in 1990 as general manager — essentially the No. 2 to thenexecutive director Peter Pastreich — and left 3½ years later to head the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, where he had volunteered as a graduate student at the University of Minnesota. He returned to San Francisco in 1999.
“He’s one of the very best people you’ll ever meet in this business,” says Clive Gillinson, the executive director of New York’s Carnegie Hall. “If you made a list of the qualities that have earned him such widespread admiration, integrity comes right at the top.
“He spends a lot of time supporting younger and less experienced managers, and smaller organizations. Some people just concentrate on the success of their own institution, and others look after the future of music. Brent is one of the latter.”
Assink says the decision to leave the Symphony now was motivated in part by a desire to cultivate a new perspective.
“I’ve tried very hard over my career to come in every few months and act as if I’m the brand new executive director — to say, ‘OK, this is where my office is, I get that now.’ You try to keep yourself fresh.
“But you can try as hard as you want, and at some point you’re still the same Brent Assink, still looking at the same things in somewhat the same way. I think organizations benefit from new perspectives, and I also will benefit from being able to take what I’ve learned over a long career in orchestra management to a different situation.” Joshua Kosman is The San Francisco Chronicle’s music critic. Email: jkosman@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JoshuaKosman