Playing to His Strengths

23-year-old director brings new energy to a Fla. symphony

At the Pensacola Symphony Orchestra’s weekly staff meeting, Ari B. Solotoff, the group’s executive director,

runs through his agenda items — marked “really big stuff,” “big stuff,” and “stuff.” More tickets need to be sold for a fund-raising dinner featuring Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Calls to Mr. Solotoff from volunteers should be rerouted to another staff member to help free his time for other things. A series of marketing changes will be put into place next year.

“Is that OK?” he asks at one point. The staff members nod. “Cool.”

The five women — who jokingly refer to themselves as “Ari’s angels” — busily take notes, unfazed by the fact that their boss, at 23, is the youngest person in the room.

While it is not unheard-of for such a young person to head an orchestra, it is still so rare that the examples are noteworthy. In Pensacola, the symphony has found that hiring a young director has brought new energy to its administrative efforts at a far lower cost than it would have taken to hire someone with more expertise. Nevertheless, Mr. Solotoff and others who have started top executive jobs soon after college say that their employers need to realize it will take a young leader a while to master all the complexities of serving as chief executive.

Making Changes

During his first year in the job, Mr. Solotoff has racked up some successes at the symphony, which has a $700,000 budget and holds 18 performances a year. He has increased revenue from a direct-mail appeal, improved the efficiency of ticket sales, and hired two key employees, one of whom replaced a top official that Mr. Solotoff didn’t think had the right skills for the job.

Kenneth Cole, chairman of the orchestra’s board and an assistant vice president at Merrill Lynch, says Mr. Solotoff’s age gave the board pause at first. “I have penny loafers older than he is,” he jokes. Mr. Solotoff, who majored in classical languages at the University of California at Berkeley, also had little formal management or fund-raising training.

After spending five minutes with Mr. Solotoff, however, Mr. Cole says any doubts he had faded away, and the symphony’s board decided to pick Mr. Solotoff over 40 other applicants for the job. “He is wise beyond his years, and he is genuine, and that comes across whether you are young or old,” he says. The board was also impressed that Mr. Solotoff had worked short stints at four orchestras while participating in a prestigious management fellowship program.

Peter Rubardt, the symphony’s music director, says the organization’s stable fiscal situation made it easier for the Pensacola Symphony to take a risk on an untested leader than it might be for other groups that have been struggling with government cutbacks and the turbulent economy.

“There is no deficit, no labor dispute, no bad local economy,” he says. “It was not worth paying the premium for someone with experience.” Mr. Solotoff earns $42,500 annually.

Mr. Rubardt says the symphony’s gamble on Mr. Solotoff’s abilities has paid off. “Ari just has a very natural gift for this job,” he says.

Mr. Rubardt can take credit for finding Mr. Solotoff: He suggested to the symphony’s search committee that they call the American Symphony Orchestra League, the organizer of Mr. Solotoff’s yearlong management fellowship program, and ask to review résumés of the current fellows. Mr. Cole and others on the committee interviewed two fellows by phone, and then invited Mr. Solotoff to interview in person. By the end of his first visit to Pensacola, Mr. Solotoff had a job offer in hand.

Leslie Wild Swensen, vice president for donor relations at the Pittsburgh Symphony, who supervised Mr. Solotoff during part of his fellowship, which ran from June 2002 to June 2003, believes both Mr. Solotoff and the Pensacola Symphony will benefit from the arrangement. “For him at his age to have the experience he is getting is just one way to skin the cat,” she says. “He is going far.”

Learning Patience

Still, others who worked with Mr. Solotoff during his fellowship year say that while he is very mature and organized for his age, he needs to hone some management skills, such as how to be more patient when tackling long-term goals and to loosen his control over meetings and projects.

Mr. Solotoff agrees with the criticisms. He is aware that along with learning how to run an orchestra, he is also learning how to be the boss, which often means not being the most popular person in the room. A key challenge, he says, has been figuring out when to make decisions himself and when to decide by consensus.

“I’m used to being a diplomat — I grew up in a divorced home,” says Mr. Solotoff. “I always want people to walk away feeling good about things, so it’s a new thing for me to say, ‘It’s OK if you disagree.’”

Focus on Fund Raising

A wiry native of Great Neck, N.Y., who once considered a career as a professional oboist, Mr. Solotoff says he felt confident that, despite his age, he could do the job. “You manage through your strengths,” he says. Mine are “the people stuff, listening a lot and remembering things and paying attention to detail,” as well as “having a vision of how I think things can be and laying out the steps so that we can get there.”

Mr. Solotoff had his work cut out for him when he arrived in Pensacola in July, just on the heels of tropical storm Bill. The symphony was in the middle of a capital campaign scheduled to conclude in December 2004. The symphony has not yet announced a campaign goal, but so far it has raised nearly $1.5-million for the organization’s endowment and programs, such as a new chamber-music series. Some of the money has already been used to pay for some basic expenses, including buying new music stands and percussion instruments for the musicians so they no longer have to borrow materials.

“When I was down here interviewing for the job, one board member told me, ‘We want you to be a fund raiser, a fund raiser, and a fund raiser.’ So it was pretty clear what the job description was,” says Mr. Solotoff.

His job often includes joining other Pensacola Symphony officials on visits to people who have the potential to make large donations to the campaign. Since Mr. Solotoff arrived, he, Mr. Rubardt, and the symphony’s volunteers have attracted campaign gifts worth $835,000.

Mr. Cole, the board chairman, says Mr. Solotoff’s likable personality and ability to quickly match names with faces have helped him win the confidence of donors easily. Recalling a welcome dinner held shortly after Mr. Solotoff took the job, Mr. Cole says Mr. Solotoff was on a first-name basis with many of the 70 guests by the time he bid them good night. “I don’t know many 23-year-olds who are as polished,” says Mr. Cole.

In addition, Mr. Solotoff quickly revamped an August direct-mail appeal for the annual fund that increased its revenue more than tenfold, to $20,000.

Previously the postcard appeal had simply reminded people that the deadline was near to make a gift that would be acknowledged in the symphony’s annual program book. At Mr. Solotoff’s direction, this year’s postcard was made bigger and bright yellow, with a note to donors saying that “the contributions we receive are wisely used and greatly appreciated.” The postcard also included a box for donors to check to show how much they planned to give.

In his push to increase gifts from individuals, who provide less than 10 percent of the symphony’s budget, Mr. Solotoff urged the group’s 36 board members, who are asked to donate $100 annually, to contribute more themselves. “The board sets the tone in every way, including financially, and if they are not willing to give, then how can they go out and expect others to do the same?” he says.

In next year’s budget, Mr. Solotoff included a line item anticipating a total of $25,000 from the board members, an increase of $5,000 from the previous year. Putting the item in the budget, says Mr. Solotoff, makes the board’s responsibility to give “crystal clear.”

Mr. Solotoff also encouraged the symphony to introduce special benefits associated with the size of a donor’s gift. For example, next year a gift of $1,000 will enable a donor to give 10 concert tickets to a charity of his or her choice, so the charity can decide who will use the seats, and receive an invitation to a post-concert dinner with a guest artist.

Next on Mr. Solotoff’s fund-raising to-do list: Increase corporate donations by revamping the group’s sponsorship program so that companies can be recognized even when they make donations of less than $2,500 annually, which is now the lowest amount companies can contribute if they want to be publicly acknowledged.

He also wants to increase ticket sales. Plans include adding a flexible subscription program for next year designed to attract single-ticket buyers.

Public Image

In addition to raising dollars, Mr. Solotoff hopes to raise the symphony’s profile among staff members and outsiders. He says that upon arriving at the symphony’s office, housed in a quaint building in the historic quarter of the city, he was struck by the outdated computers and some of the furniture, which looked like it came from a garage sale.

“What kind of a message does that send to patrons who come into our office, to our volunteers, to board members, to the employee who is sitting there working?” he asks. “If our goal now is to be raising significant amounts of money for the orchestra and building relationships with people who operate in an environment that is very professional — and they do think about the details — it behooves us to do the same.”

Mr. Solotoff solicited a local furniture company, Contract Resource, for a gift, and now the office is on its way to having new tables, desks, and chairs. He estimates the donated items are worth at least $10,000.

He also decided to use part of a recent bequest to the symphony to purchase several new computers for staff members. He does his own work, however, using his personal laptop computer and printer because he says he would rather use his own equipment than spend time raising the money to buy it.

The ultimate goal, says Mr. Solotoff, is to transform the office into a place where people immediately think of music as soon as they walk in. He wants to hang pictures of performers on the walls and would like to invite symphony musicians to visit the office to play music or talk about the concerts with staff members as a way to build a connection between the administrative and creative sides of the organization. “It’s so easy to forget we are here to celebrate and bring music to the community,” he says.

Mr. Solotoff has also worked hard to forge bonds with the symphony’s musicians by attending every rehearsal and making himself available for their comments and complaints.

“The players appreciate the fact that he is not an administrator who is off somewhere in an office making decisions that affect us but doesn’t know anything about us,” says Richard Glaze, the symphony’s principal clarinetist. “Ari is really listening.”

In Mr. Solotoff’s own spacious office, he rearranged the desk’s location from in front of the doorway to a corner to make it feel less like “coming in to talk to your parents.”

All of the changes are part of a larger plan to transform the 78-year-old group into a more professionally organized entity. Mr. Solotoff says the small details really matter. For example, he insists that Mr. Rubardt’s name and title as music director always appear below the symphony name in printed materials because it adds a note of consistency to the orchestra’s public image. In addition, he says, Mr. Rubardt is the symphony’s most visible artistic symbol, so having his name appear alongside the symphony’s on fund-raising or other publicity materials helps remind the public and donors of the fine musical product the symphony is producing.

Recruiting Employees

While Mr. Solotoff pays attention to the small details, he is putting a lot of energy into assembling a staff of people who have the skills to help the symphony grow.

Mr. Solotoff persuaded the board to create a new position, patron-services manager, to keep track of phone calls from sponsors and volunteers, sell tickets to people who call the office, and manage the group’s relationship with the Saenger Theatre, where the orchestra performs 11 concerts a year. By delegating these tasks to the person he hired, Kimberly A. Baker, Mr. Solotoff has been able to spend more time meeting with donors outside the office.

One of his hardest tasks so far has been deciding to ask the organization’s marketing and community-relations manager to leave because he felt her skills didn’t match the symphony’s needs. It took Mr. Solotoff a long time — too long, he says now — to make that decision because he wasn’t sure how many of the employee’s shortcomings were due to his own inexperience as a manager.

“I reached a point where I realized that in the end this was going to be better for everyone,” he says. “I didn’t think my demands, my expectations were so high that they weren’t achievable.”

Dottie Balchunas, the former marketing and community-relations manager, says she has no ill feelings toward Mr. Solotoff or the symphony, whose performances she still attends.

“He wanted someone who knew how to evaluate financial criteria better than I did,” says Ms. Balchunas, whose background is in public relations and advertising. “It was an absolutely mutual decision” to leave.

The new marketing and public-relations director, Charlie M. Goldberg, started in March.

Mr. Solotoff now wants to outline job duties for each of the organization’s five full-time and five part-time employees so it is clear who handles each task, such as making weekly bank deposits and ensuring that donor-acknowledgment letters are mailed. “It’s those little things that keep trapping us from moving ahead, because we never actually take time to stop and fix them,” he says.

And Mr. Solotoff is trying to better manage his own time as well and reduce the number of weekends he takes work home with him. For example, he now signs letters in the morning and replies to most e-mail messages in the afternoon instead of dealing with every issue as it arises. He hopes setting a schedule for himself will trickle down to other staff members, and improve the office’s overall efficiency.

Support From Peers

To help him navigate staffing and other challenges, Mr. Solotoff often turns to the people he met through his fellowship with the American Symphony Orchestra League. The fellowship program, which accepts a handful of applicants a year, is designed to further careers in management through practical experience at a variety of orchestras.

During his fellowship, Mr. Solotoff worked at the Aspen Chamber Symphony at the Aspen Music Festival & School, in Colorado; the Pacific Symphony Orchestra, in Santa Ana, Calif.; the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra; and the Pittsburgh Symphony.

In his apartment, he has a shelf of notebooks filled with observations and sample documents detailing how the groups handled their finances, fund raising, marketing, education programs, and board management, which he often refers to for Pensacola’s needs.

Particularly helpful has been advice from John E. Forsyte, president of the Pacific Symphony Orchestra, who was himself a 23-year-old executive director of a symphony 16 years ago. Among his suggestions: Immediately develop a strong relationship with board members and make sure you have made yourself replaceable by the time you leave.

Mr. Solotoff says he is unsure whether he will directly follow in Mr. Forsyte’s footsteps and seek leadership jobs at larger and larger orchestras. First, he wants to attend business school and fill in the finance-related gaps of his formal education. Yet Mr. Solotoff says other people may be better at predicting his future than he is. “I remember having a conversation with my uncle my senior year of high school and he said to me, ‘Well, you like music and you like business. Why not the music business?’” recalls Mr. Solotoff. “At the time I was like, ‘Whatever.’ And lo and behold.”

THE PENSACOLA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

History: Founded in 1926, the 77-member Pensacola Symphony Orchestra reaches 30,000 patrons and 13,000 students each year.

Finances and sources of funds: The symphony has an annual budget of $700,000. Fifty-five percent of the budget comes from ticket sales and 45 percent from contributions from individuals, corporations, foundations, and government grants.

Key officials: Ari B. Solotoff, executive director; Kenneth Cole, chairman of the board of directors.

Contact information: P.O. Box 1752, Pensacola, Fla. 32591; (850) 435-2533.

Web site: http://www.pensacolasymphony.com