S.F. Performances:
Founder Ruth Felt, above, is stepping down after 36 years at helm.
For the past 36 years, Ruth Felt has been shepherding the world’s most prominent performing artists — classical and jazz singers, instrumentalists, chamber ensembles, dance companies and more — through the theaters and concert halls of the Bay Area. As the founder and president of San Francisco Performances, Felt has made the city a welcoming venue for a wide range of performers, and helped cement the city’s international reputation as a hub of artistic activity.
But now, she says, it’s time to retire and pass the organization she created to a new pair of hands.
Felt, 76, will step down in fall 2016, leaving an operation that has been both artistically important and fiscally sound. The roster of artists who have passed through on her watch is astonishing in its breadth and variety — from cellist Yo-Yo Ma to the Paul Taylor Dance Company,
and from baritone Thomas Hampson to jazz great Wynton Marsalis.
She’s done it without straining the organization’s annual operating budget of $3 million — the company has finished in the black the last two seasons, Felt says, and has a comfortable endowment. And she’s found a deft balance between traditional offerings and more adventurous fare.
“Ruth has wonderful musical and creative judgment, which opens the door to tremendous artistic conversations,” said Matías Tarnopolsky, the director of Cal Performances. “Her visionary leadership has enriched the cultural life of the Bay Area immeasurably. As a colleague, I’m really going to miss her.”
Felt’s decision to retire has been in the works for about two years, she said during a recent interview in her downtown San Francisco office — but contingency planning for a handoff goes back much further.
A plan in place
“I had a plan in place as far back as 1999, she said. “I always wanted to be transparent about leadership succession, especially when it comes to the founder of an organization. I wasn’t intending to go anywhere, but I wanted a plan in place, both for strategic reasons and for emergencies.”
As usual for arts organizations that plan far ahead, Felt has already plotted out the schedule for the 2016-17 season, as well as a good portion of 2017-18. The board of directors has formed a search committee to find a successor.
Felt formed San Francisco Performances in 1979, when she was on staff at the San Francisco Opera. The plan from the beginning was to correct some of the more obvious gaps in the cultural landscape.
“I had been working in the presenting program at UCLA,” she recalled, “and I had a passion for the more intimate arts forms — which I still do.
“I saw that in San Francisco there was very little presentation of chamber music and vocal recitals. I loved contemporary dance, and there wasn’t a theater in San Francisco really suitable. And I’d always been a big jazz fan, and of course SFJazz didn’t exist then. So that was the artistic mission.”
6 concerts in 1st season
The first season, in 1980, was a six-concert affair, with pianist André Watts — a longtime booster of the organization — donating his services in a recital in Davies Symphony Hall to lead off the series. In the decades since then, the schedule has burgeoned to include more than 40 concerts and recitals annually.
Of course, the artistic and economic landscape has also changed in that time.
Just ‘play the game’
“We’re very aware of the number of things going on that people can choose from and that compete with what we do,” Felt said. “Somebody once told me when I was young, ‘Ruth, don’t play the competition, play the game.’ I took that to mean that you should focus on what you do and don’t obsess too much about the other guy.”
One of the trademarks of Felt’s programming has been the long and sustained relationships she’s formed with favorite performers, bringing them back repeatedly so that San Francisco comes to feel like a second home. In some cases, the incentive has been as much economic as artistic.
“When we presented (baritone) Tom Hampson in recital for the first time, it sold out, and it was a great event,” she recalled. “I wanted to bring him back, and he wanted to come back, but I told him there was no way I could afford his fee.
“It was one of our board members who had the idea of offering him something like a sports contract. We would commit to engaging him every year for five years, and pay him the same fee. For him, that meant a commitment to be able to present a song recital, which he can’t do just anywhere.”
Other performers have found San Francisco Performances a fertile venue for ambitious programming projects, such as the current series of recitals by violinist Jennifer Koh and pianist Shai Wosner that combines Beethoven’s sonatas with newly commissioned pieces that respond to them.
And Felt has been active in spearheading arts education and outreach programs, including a joint residency program with San Francisco State University that sends the Alexander String Quartet, as well as other visiting artists, into local schools. It’s something she never anticipated when she started San Francisco Performances.
Had to step up
“That was not part of my thinking at all, that it would be the responsibility of the professional arts world to undertake arts education. But as it disappeared from the school curriculum, it all of a sudden landed on all of us, and we had to open our eyes and step up.”
As for the upcoming chapter in San Francisco Performances’ history, that’s a decision that Felt says she will largely stay out of.
“I’m trying to make sure we don’t fall victim to what’s called the founder’s curse. When I started the organization people would say, ‘Why not call it Ruth Felt Presents’? But I never wanted the organization to be about me.”
So while the next president plans a new round of vocal recitals and dance concerts, Felt — who lives alone in her house in the Upper Haight — expects to pursue some pleasures that have fallen by the wayside over the years.
She’s going to travel, take tango lessons, visit with her stepson and his family in New York. She’s even planning to work on her billiards game.
“I’m just leaving it kind of open. But I know my attitudes and interests will sustain me.”