In Friday’s (5/8) Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock), Eric E. Harrison reports, “Christina Littlejohn, executive director of the Pensacola (Fla.) Symphony Orchestra, will become the new executive director of the Arkansas Symphony on June 8. Littlejohn is replacing Galen Wixson, who left the orchestra in March to become executive director of the Austin (Texas) Symphony. … A seven-member search committee, led by symphony board member T. Martin Davis, picked Littlejohn after a nationwide search. Littlejohn will preside over the final stage of the orchestra’s conductor search. Music Director David Itkin is vacating his post at the end of the 2009-10 season. … Before arriving at Pensacola, she was director of residencies for the Cleveland Orchestra, establishing a successful winter residency for that orchestra in Miami. As chief executive officer of the Mobile (Ala.) Symphony from 1995-2006, she led its transition from a presenting organization for touring orchestras to a professional, Mobile-based symphony orchestra while increasing the organization’s annual operating budget from $225,000 in the 1995-96 season to $1.25 million in 2006. In 2001, the League of American Orchestras gave her the Helen M. Thompson Award for extraordinary early-career managers.”
Posted May 11, 2009
