The Score| Krishna Thiagarajan: Seattle Symphony’s New President and CEO

The Seattle Symphony has appointed Krishna Thiagarajan president and CEO. He succeeds Simon Woods, who became CEO of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in January. Thiagarajan was most recently chief executive of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, where accomplishments included increasing the number of performances, raising average attendance figures, and growth in earned and contributed income. Previously, Thiagarajan served as executive director of the New York-based Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, where he was responsible for increasing audiences, including sold-out performances at Carnegie Hall; commissioning new work; touring the orchestra to Japan, Colombia, and Europe; and overseeing Orpheus’s first self-produced recording. Prior to that, Thiagarajan was president of New Jersey’s Symphony in C and senior director of artistic operations for the Rochester (NY) Philharmonic Orchestra. Born in Germany, Thiagarajan trained as a pianist and performed widely. He graduated from Indiana University with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music, and received a doctorate from the University of Maryland, College Park, studying with pianists Santiago Rodriguez and André Watts.