San Antonio Symphony News and Archive

Symphony selects executive director




By Mike Greenberg

from the San Antonio Express News 5/19/99



The San Antonio Symphony found its new executive director outside the loop of professional orchestra managers, but inside Loop 410.

John Binkley, a locally based independent producer of television drama for children, started work Tuesday as the symphony's executive director.

Tuesday also brought a flurry of positive news about the symphony, which came close to bankruptcy last year.

According to board chairman Charles Lutz:

• An anonymous endowment gift of $500,000 has met the matching requirement for the first year of a five-year, $2.5 million endowment challenge grant from the Kronkosky Charitable Foundation.
• Another new endowment gift will yield $150,000 a year for 20 years.
• The symphony expects to close its fiscal year in the black May 31.
• The symphony's financial functions have been contracted to the Arthur Andersen sccounting firm.

Musicians and contributors have complained that the symphony's in-house financial operations had been in disarray.

The post of executive director had been vacant since last December, when David Schillhammer resigned after five years on the job.

Binkley represents a sharp contrast with his predecessor.

Schillhammer still was in his 20s when he was appointed excutive director in 1993, but he came to San Antonio with experience as manager of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.

Binkley is 57 and has no experience in orchestra management.

Since 1971, he has worked full-time in children's television. In 1979 he established an independant production company, B&G Communications Inc., whose projects have included "Fifteen," a children's dramatic series that was Nickelodeon's highest-rated program in 1991.

He also wrote, produced and directed "No Adults Allowed," the top-rated chldren's program for ITV in England in 1984.

In San Antonio, where Binkley has lived since 1987, he has directed drama and writing projects for children at Nimitz Middle School and the Bexar County Juvenile Detention Center.

Binkley's lack of orchestral management experience does not bother Lutz.

"Having chaired the board and been intimately involved with the organization during a period of crisis, I am persuaded that what we most need is someone with a strong background inmanagement, inorganizational structure, in financial management," Lutz said.

Marilyn Rife, the symphony's principal percussionist and a memeber of the executive-director search committee, said of Binkley: "He strikes me as am incredibly gifted individual, one who can navigate between the creative side of the arts and the financial side."

Binkley said his near-term objective is to solidify an "alliance" among the symphony's supporters, musicians and staff.

"When that alliance is in place and there's the stability and morale you need to support the artistic end, the financial support will follow," Binkley said.

"I believe the resources exist in this community to support the artistic work. I think there may be individuals or businesses that have not felt confidence in the long-term stability of the organization."

"If we can create a more stable organization, more supporters will step up to the plate," Binkley said.



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