Tucson Symphony Orchestra tapped a nationally known arts transition leader to fill in as president and CEO while the orchestra searches for someone to replace Thomas McKinney.
The appointment of Santa Barbara-based veteran arts leader and coach Kathryn R. Martin to interim president and CEO comes less than a month after McKinney left the TSO job to take a similar position with Tucson Interfaith Community Services. Martin arrived in Tucson on Friday and could be in the job as long as a year, she and TSO officials said.
Martin comes to the orchestra at “a very exciting time,” TSO Board Chairwoman Autumn van den Berg said in a written release. The board this season signed a three-year contract with the musicians and extended Music Director José Luis Gomez’s contract through 2024, she said.
TSO is Martin’s 10th stop in a career devoted to helping arts organizations and leaders “see possibilities that they do not see yet,” Martin said from home in Santa Barbara, California, the day before she arrived in Tucson. She described her primary mission as helping arts organizations “go from Point A to their extraordinary Point B,” but just what that will mean in Tucson is yet to be determined.
“Right now in Tucson, the board has strategically invested in an extraordinary music director José Luis Gomez, and they have strategically invested in the heart and soul of the orchestra, the musicians. How can we continue the momentum?” she said. “We are moving forward. That is my job. That’s how I look at it, to make sure that they have everything that they need to continue the momentum.”
“My mission is to help the leaders and these organizations see possibilities that they do not see yet,” she added. “Sometimes they see them and sometimes they don’t and that’s what’s really exhilarating for me. I see the possibilities and I help them see them,” from increasing ticket sales to community outreach to increasing the donor base.
Martin said her first priority is to get to know the orchestra and the community, which she was introduced to when she visited Tucson in mid-March. During her visit, she attended the TSO’s “Mahler Symphony No. 5” concert featuring trumpeter Conrad Jones and pianist Joyce Yang.
“I was sitting next to this couple and before the piece was ending, they were almost sitting on their hands trying not to jump up,” Martin recalled. “I haven’t experienced that in a long time. That was my evidence of, ‘Wow there is something here.’”
Martin, the mother of two adult children, will commute to Tucson from her California home, where she sits on the boards of the Association of California Symphony Orchestras and Santa Barbara Symphony — one of the organizations where she served as an interim executive director. Also on her résumé: Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts in Milwaukee and the Linda Pace Foundation in Texas.
