The Philly Pops is sued by its ex-jazz director, Terell Stafford, even with its own future uncertain

In the latest in a string of financial and legal battles, the Philly Pops is being sued in a federal racketeering lawsuit by its former artistic director of jazz, Terell Stafford, who alleges he wrongfully lost his job and is owed money under his contract.

Stafford, engaged as the Pops’ jazz leader in 2019 and Temple University’s director of jazz studies and chair of instrumental studies, filed the complaint May 22 in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia seeking nearly $3.7 million in damages.

But it’s unclear how much longer there will be a Philly Pops around to sue.

Separately, leaders of the group said this past week that dissolution of the Pops’ parent organization, Encore Series Inc., seems likely.

“As far as I can tell, unless a miracle happens, we’re done,” said Salvatore M. DeBunda, a Pops board member and former chairman. The group previously hoped to raise enough money with its “Save the Pops” campaign to continue operations. “It didn’t happen,” he said.

Even so, “we are still trying to do everything we can to survive,” said DeBunda.

No official action regarding a dissolution has been taken by ESI’s board, he said, adding that he would like to see provisions made in some form for patrons who purchased Philly Pops tickets for performances that never happened.

ESI president and CEO Karen Corbin declined to comment on the future of the company.

In addition to ESI, Stafford’s lawsuit names longtime Pops leader Frank Giordano as a defendant, as well as the Philadelphia Orchestra and Kimmel Center Inc. and its president and CEO, Matías Tarnopolsky. The complaint leans on both the Pops’ year-old lawsuit against POKC — its former landlord — as well as a recent Philadelphia Magazine story detailing the Pops’ organizational plummet. The suit accuses the Pops and POKC of a “conspiracy to monopolize the market for live orchestral music and ‘own jazz in Philly.’”

POKC responded to the suit Friday with a statement saying that it “appears to be driven by Encore Series’ failure to meet its alleged contractual obligations to Mr. Stafford. The additional claims are baseless, and we intend to defend against them vigorously.”

Stafford’s suit further extends the litigious aftermath of the Pops’ collapse. In November 2022, the group led for decades by legendary pianist Peter Nero announced it would shut down at the end of the 2022-23 season. After the Pops reversed that decision, POKC evicted the Pops from its home in Verizon Hall, citing back rent and other unpaid debt. The Pops’ own musicians filed a lawsuit against it for unpaid wages and other obligations.

ESI then sued POKC, citing antitrust violations, claiming that POKC was trying to put the Pops out of business, an allegation POKC has called a “wholly unsupported assertion.”

Most recently, a successor group to the Pops, No Name Pops, announced that it was in talks with Nero’s family to acquire rights to the Philly Pops name, though no deal has been signed, a spokesperson for the new group said.

To settle the matter of money owed to its former musicians, the Pops agreed to pay $300,000 in a stipulation approved in December by the U.S. District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania — but the Pops never made payment, said American Federation of Musicians lawyer Jennifer P. Garner on May 22.

Stafford’s suit says that after the Pops announced it would be folding, the musician lost out on income due under his 2021 and 2022 employment agreements and potential future income, as well as additional compensation promised in connection with work on a Pew-funded project that ultimately failed to happen.

The suit accuses Giordano of “conspiring” with Tarnopolsky to facilitate POKC’s takeover of the Pops’ business, “intentionally misrepresenting the financial condition of the Pops to the board of directors, donors, employees, and the general public in order to fraudulently induce a shutdown of operations, and intentionally misrepresenting the level of support for this decision within the Pops organization.”

Giordano said he had no knowledge of the suit until being called by The Inquirer.

Stafford’s relationship with the Philly Pops grew over a number of years. He once played as a freelance trumpeter with the group, and has recently worked on ambitious artistic and educational projects. He helped the Pops land its first-ever grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts for a program celebrating Philadelphia organ great Shirley Scott, according to the lawsuit. The $318,000 award was rescinded after the Pops collapsed and the program was never produced.

In 2019, the Pops absorbed the Jazz Orchestra of Philadelphia, which Stafford founded in 2013, while naming him the Pops’ artistic director for jazz.

That smaller group had been doing two or three Kimmel concerts and a few other gigs each year and “wasn’t a very lucrative venture” when Stafford began talking to the Pops about a takeover, he told The Inquirer in 2019.

After the Pops “proposed to provide an infrastructure for it, financially and otherwise, my wife and I did a little celebration dance,” Stafford said at the time.

“Basically, the Pops saved the Jazz Orchestra of Philadelphia.”