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The Utah Symphony & Opera announced Wednesday that music director Keith Lockhart will leave his post at the end of the 2008-09 season, a year after his current contract expires.
Lockhart, who has headed the Utah Symphony since 1998, says he wants to pursue other interests, including a wider range of guest conducting opportunities in the U.S. and abroad. He is still conductor of the Boston Pops, a post he has held since 1995.
Lockhart's Utah contract, which pays him $285,000 this season, expires in 2008, but he will stay another year while the organization searches for his replacement. He will become artistic director emeritus for the US&O after his last season as music director.
He declined interview requests on Wednesday. In a news release issued by the US&O, Lockhart said it has been "an honor and a privilege" to work with the organization - but it's time to move on.
"I am a firm believer in the energy and innovation that new relationships bring, both to leaders and the institutions they serve. Though the job of music director is richly rewarding, it is also extremely time-consuming and emotionally draining when done well," Lockhart said. "It is time for me to focus on aspects of my life for which there has been no room during the last decade; in particular, I look forward to re-establishing my guest conducting presence, particularly in Europe, and to spending more and better time with my family."
Lockhart and violinist Lucia Lin are divorced. Their 3-year-old son, Aaron, lives in Boston with Lin.
Gene Pack, who hosted classical-music programming on Salt Lake City public radio for decades, says Lockhart's tenure "hasn't been perfect, but he's tried a lot of things that no one has done before. . . . I think he's a good musician, and I think he's had wonderful ideals for the orchestra. I don't know that he's always achieved those ideals."
Lockhart is the orchestra's sixth music director since its founding in 1940. Lynnette Stewart, a violinist and head of the musicians' orchestra committee, has played with the orchestra since 1969, when the legendary Maurice Abravanel was at the helm. "There are really important transitional times, and this was one of those times," Stewart said.
The orchestra has struggled financially in recent years and is in the middle of a recovery program. Some patrons have been perturbed by what they see as Lockhart's lack of community involvement; a professional consultant's study in 2005 said Lockhart needed to be more engaged with the orchestra.
That consultant was hired when orchestra musicians and others complained about financial mismanagement. In the two years after the Utah Symphony and Utah Opera merged in 2002, the organization ran up deficits totaling $3.4 million. In 2005, it crafted a plan to return to solvency, and the belt-tightening plus increased ticket sales and donations are paying off, said Anne Ewers, US&O's chief executive officer: The US&O has exceeded revenue and ticketing goals, resulting in smaller budget shortfalls than expected over the past two years.
Ewers said Lockhart was a valuable partner in the organization's restructuring. "He gets the big picture, and his business acumen was very critical as we created the financial restabilization plan."
When Lockhart came to Utah, he was known for his youth (he is now 47) and charm (his new personal Web site, which shows him in a black T-shirt and leather pants, sells T-shirts and heart-shaped key chains bearing his signature). He is also known for a fluid, energetic conducting style.
"When they hired him, what they hoped to get was a shot of glamour," Pack said. But Lockhart's biggest successes, he believes, were not a result of glamour but of good musicianship; he points to performances of Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem" and "the best [Berlioz] 'Symphonie fantastique' I've ever heard" as some of Lockhart's triumphs.
This is the year's second announcement of a high-profile departure from a major Utah arts organization; Ballet West artistic director Jonas Kåge resigned in May. Kåge said he was forced out with a year still left on his contract, and he and Ballet West wrangled over his severance package for weeks last summer. Ewers says the Utah Symphony's transition will be much smoother. "This is nothing like that situation. This is Keith's decision," she said.
'It will be four or five years'
* Keith Lockhart was hired as music director of the Utah Symphony in 1998. Highlights of his tenure include a European tour in 2005, its first in 19 years, which brought critical success. The orchestra released its first recording with Lockhart, "Symphonic Dances," in April 2006. Lockhart has also continued a Utah Symphony tradition of conducting Mahler symphonies.
* The Utah Symphony is forming a search committee to seek a replacement. Because programming is planned two years in advance and potential candidates will have responsibilities to wrap up before coming to Utah full time, it likely will be a while before a new music director takes over fully.
* That time frame is not unusual for a major orchestra. "It will be four or five years before everything is really in place," said Patricia A. Richards, chairwoman of the US&O board of trustees.