The Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra will need a new chief executive. President and CEO Keith Cerny is leaving in January 2027 to take a chief executive post at an arts organization outside Texas, the orchestra announced Oct. 23. The announcement did not name his new employer.
Cerny has run the orchestra for eight years. He arrived in January 2019 after roughly eight months leading Calgary Opera in Canada, and before that he was in charge of The Dallas Opera from 2010 to 2017, according to CultureMap Fort Worth's account of the orchestra's release.
The orchestra has formed a search committee and says it will start looking for a successor right away. Board chair Mercedes T. Bass said the group wants someone with substantial experience as a CEO to work alongside the administrative staff and Music Director Robert Spano.
What the orchestra credits to his tenure
In its release, the orchestra pointed to several developments under Cerny:
- Artistic leadership: He worked with Bass to recruit Spano, a four-time Grammy winner, after the departure of longtime music director Miguel Harth-Bedoya, and British conductor Dame Jane Glover became principal guest conductor.
- Pandemic finances: The orchestra says it kept performing live and kept full pay and benefits for musicians and staff during the COVID-19 pandemic, while finishing those three years with a $330,000 surplus.
- Board and donors: A recruiting push that began in the 2024-25 season added 50 people to the board, which now has 83 members. Giving by board members other than Bass has more than quadrupled since then, the orchestra says.
- Programming: Partnerships with the Kimbell Art Museum, the Sid Richardson Museum, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and several Dallas dance and theater companies; a series called "Theater of a Concert" that adds dance, projections, actors and singers to symphonic programs; and a reshaped Pops schedule that adds concerts that make money and restructures or drops ones that lose it.
