The Score | Joseph Scafidi December 11, 1920 – August 17, 2015

Joseph Scafidi, an orchestra administrator who spent nearly four decades with the San Francisco Symphony and shepherded it through a period of exponential growth, died August 17 at his home in Sonoma, California. He was 94. A San Francisco native, he began working at the orchestra while still a student at San Francisco State College, then rose through the ranks as assistant manager, general manager, and executive director before retiring in 1978. The organization’s budget grew from $200,000 to more than $4 million during his tenure, and its season from 18 to 52 weeks. Scafidi worked with five music directors at the SFS, and frequently engaged as a guest conductor the man who leads it today, Michael Tilson Thomas. Executive Director Brent Assink noted in a San Francisco Chronicle obituary, “Joe’s personal warmth and love of music was so pervasive that I believe the Symphony’s culture still embodies a part of him to this day.” The Joseph and Pauline Scafidi Chair, honoring him and his wife of 61 years, who died in 2011, endows the SFS’s English horn position.