Philadelphia Orchestra and Ensemble Arts is losing its leader to the New York Philharmonic

Matías Tarnopolsky, president and CEO of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Ensemble Arts, is resigning to take up the leadership of the New York Philharmonic.

Tarnopolsky has been in the Philadelphia post for nearly 6½ years, and in that time he oversaw a period of profound change — from doing away with the formal attire orchestra musicians wore on stage, to shepherding a merger of the orchestra with its landlord, the Kimmel Center.

The Buenos Aires-born, London-raised arts leader had a string of more ambitious projects planned or underway — major renovations and an even more major fundraising campaign — and was in the middle of a five-year contract. But various factors made it the right move at the right time, he said on Sunday.

Tarnopolsky called the job “an incredible opportunity” to put together three elements — “a tremendous orchestra, a beautiful new concert hall, and the start of a fantastic visionary music and artistic director in Gustavo Dudamel. So the chance to be there on the ground floor and author a new chapter in New York is something ultimately I couldn’t resist.”

New York is familiar terrain to Tarnopolsky. He was vice president of artistic planning at the Philharmonic from 2005-09. “I invited Gustavo Dudamel for his first engagement in New York, so there is something of a full-circle moment.”

He takes up the new post Jan. 1.

“He’s done a great job here,” said Ralph W. Muller, chair of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Ensemble Arts board. “He and Yannick [Nézet-Séguin, the orchestra’s music and artistic director] are a great team and I hoped he would have stayed a lot longer. I led the search that brought him here, and in the first week of the search he was immediately identified as the rising star in the country. I will miss him a lot.”

Nézet-Séguin said in a statement that he was grateful for the part Tarnopolsky had played in the orchestra’s success, but added that his bond with the musicians of the orchestra “is stronger than ever and we are looking forward to many more years of sharing music of the highest caliber with audiences at home and around the world, in collaboration with the outstanding board and management team.”

Philadelphia Orchestra and Ensemble Arts executive director Ryan Fleur will serve as interim president and CEO while the organization conducts a national search, which Muller said he expects will take three or four months. “There are three people we know about already,” he said. In the meantime, “the executive team is very strong and we have full confidence in them,” Muller said.

Tarnopolsky was chosen for the new job for his “incredible amount of experience and sophistication in the music world,” said New York Philharmonic board cochairman Peter W. May, and because of his relationship with Dudamel. “That is an extremely important part of the equation, and I think Gustavo is very excited about him.”

Dudamel fully takes over at the start of the 2026-27 season, likely bringing the ensemble the kind of attendance bounce that comes with a new podium personality. “New York is very much still in a honeymoon phase after the opening of the hall, and we need to keep up that momentum,” said Tarnopolsky, adding that it was too soon to discuss specific plans and priorities in the new job.

Though he won’t be running an entire arts center in New York, Tarnopolsky will face many of the same challenges he is leaving behind in Philadelphia, like — most notably — filling seats and coffers. After a $550 million renovation, New York’s Avery Fisher Hall reopened in 2022 as David Geffen Hall. With 2,200 seats, it is slightly smaller than Marian Anderson Hall (at about 2,500). The New York hall has been filled to an average of 87% of paid capacity so far this season, a Philharmonic spokesperson said.

May also cited Tarnopolsky’s fundraising success in Philadelphia as part of his appeal. The Philharmonic has launched a new campaign, the Dudamel Visionary Fund, to go toward endowment and “to make sure we can launch Gustavo with all the new ideas he has,” said May. He declined to specify a dollar goal, “but it’s large. We’ve raised probably 40% of it.”

Tarnopolsky became president and CEO of the Philadelphia Orchestra in August 2018, After he and Kimmel Center chief Anne Ewers successfully guided a merger in 2021, Tarnopolsky continued on as head of the combined corporation. He earned $978,363 in 2022, according to tax returns.

The orchestra had come out of bankruptcy six years before his arrival, and Tarnopolsky, perhaps more than any predecessor in recent memory, remade the organization.

He proved an adept fundraiser. In 2019, the orchestra received its largest-ever gift: $50 million for endowment plus $5 million toward general operating costs from an anonymous couple. When Leslie Anne Miller and Richard B. Worley gifted $25 million (made public in February 2024), it was Tarnopolsky who raised the idea with them of putting the name of Philadelphia contralto and civil rights figure Marian Anderson on the orchestra’s hall instead of those of the donors.

Many of the changes instituted by Tarnopolsky and his leadership team were aimed at making the orchestra more responsive to a changing world. When George Floyd was murdered and in the days of national protest afterward, the orchestra postponed its planned online gala, and quickly assembled a conversation on racial injustice. “It just doesn’t feel right to do a joyful celebratory event,” said Tarnopolsky at the time. “We need to do something to respond to the moment, reflect, and listen deeply.”

At a concert a week after the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, Tarnopolsky and Nézet-Séguin spoke to the orchestra audience about the “powerful bonds” the ensemble had forged on its 2018 tour of Israel and a performance there at the Oasis of Peace that brought together Jews and Arabs.

Under his leadership, the orchestra did away with the annual Academy of Music Anniversary Concert and Ball, a tradition dating to 1957, and he moved the ensemble out of its white-tie and tails and formal concert dress into sleeker, more modern black attire.

Orchestra programs guided by Tarnopolsky, Nézet-Séguin, and chief programming officer Jeremy Rothman became both more topical, with new works on social and environmental themes; as well as more popular, with an increasing number of movie-related and live-to-screen film scores.

The orchestra responded to the pandemic by putting its concerts online in a “digital stage” series. Tarnopolsky said that the trauma of the COVID-19 years factored into his decision to take the New York post, since it offered a chance to turn the page on a difficult era.

“Personally speaking, I don’t think I’ve fully recovered from the COVID moment. I was in front of this [computer] screen seven days a week, 12 hours a day wondering if the organization would be here the next day.”

But the orchestra rebounded. Marian Anderson Hall was about 80% full in the 2023-24 season — higher than the pre-pandemic capacity of 69% in 2018-19 on about the same number of concerts. Nearly a third of the orchestra’s downtown concerts last season sold out.

Post-COVID, ambitious initiatives at the combined orchestra-arts center organization resumed, some of which Tarnopolsky now leaves unfinished. Renovations are underway at the Miller Theater, with more planned. Major work at the Academy of Music continues. A cafe that enlivened the Kimmel Center closed in January after only a year in operation, and a replacement has not yet opened.

“I wouldn’t say the work is unfinished,” said Muller. Fundraising for a major as-yet-unannounced comprehensive campaign has gone well, he said. “The day-to-day operations, Ryan [Fleur, executive director] has really been the person doing that for a number of years. That will keep going quite smoothly.”

“Those projects are not solely resting on my shoulders. They’re on the shoulders of the staff team, the board as well,” said Tarnopolsky. “And there is momentum behind them, structures in place. So those projects are ongoing and will continue.”

Part of his reasoning in taking the new job, he said, was that matters at the Philadelphia Orchestra and Ensemble Arts “are in a good place and are in the institutional DNA.”