The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra (ASO) has fired managing director Robert Clarke, the Adelaide Advertiser reports. He will be succeeded by marketing director Nick Ladd.
Orchestra officials said they were making the change because of frustration with a series of deficits since the ASO was spun off from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 1997.
"Here we are, all these years down the track, and we are producing deficits," chairman John Uhrig said. "We really can't achieve ... high artistic standards and performance reputation if we don't fix the financial side."
The ASO posted a A$295,000 deficit in 2002 and is projecting a A$478,000 budget gap this year.
Clarke told the Advertiser that the orchestra had decided that it "needs a different set of skills."
"I'm interested in the orchestra as an art form, as an arts organisation," he added. "Perhaps the emphasis these days is more on the need to run arts organisations as businesses."
— Ben Mattison
"Orchestra
sacks director as losses mount"
Patrick McDonald - The Advertiser
[Adelaide] - 24 September 2003
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