Top Posts Filled at Two O.C. Art Organizations : Culture: Performing Arts Center, Philharmonic Society turn to Alaska, San Diego for new administrators.

The director of the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts and a San Diego Symphony official were selected Thursday to run two of Orange County’s premier art organizations.

The Orange County Performing Arts Center picked a 43-year-old administrator who grew up in a theatrical family in Washington state and ran theaters there and in Illinois before overseeing the launch of the now 5-year-old center in Anchorage.

Meanwhile, the Orange County Philharmonic Society selected as director of development a 46-year- old French horn player-turned-executive who ran orchestras in Florida and New York before going to San Diego.

The announcements apparently came coincidentally on Thursday from two groups that have feuded publicly in the past year over the kind of programming offered at the $73-million center, the county’s most celebrated hall.

“There’s a real opportunity for two people who are new to the scene to find their way together,” said Philharmonic Society board President Steven A. Lupinacci. “That can only bode well for everybody.”

The Philharmonic Society and other groups rent the center for concerts and opera; the center itself presents mostly ballet and Broadway musicals.

As the new executive director of the Philharmonic Society, which brings in the major touring orchestras and chamber groups that play at the center and the Irvine Barclay Theatre, Dean Corey will replace Erich A. Vollmer, who left early this year to run the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.

At the Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, Tom Tomlinson will succeed outgoing President and Chief Operating Officer Thomas R. Kendrick, who last month announced his decision to retire effective Sept. 30. Kendrick has supervised overall operation of the center since the opening seven years ago and has booked its ballet and Broadway series.

Tomlinson’s salary was not disclosed. Last year, Kendrick received compensation and benefits totaling $189,697. General Manager Judy O’Dea Morr, who is married to Kendrick and who is also retiring, was paid $106,844. The total was among the highest paid to an arts administrative team in the country.

Businessman Timothy L. Strader, who chaired the center’s search committee, called Tomlinson “a team player with a proven track record (as) a successful performing arts manager.”

Tomlinson has been executive director of the $70-million Alaska center since it opened in 1988. Before that, he was chief executive officer of the Rialto Square Theatre in Joliet, Ill.; managing director of the Pantages Center for the Performing Arts in Tacoma, Wash., and executive manager of the Capitol Theatre in Yakima, Wash.

Strader declined to say how many people applied or were interviewed for the position. “We undertook a study, we came up with what we thought were the best candidates, we interviewed those people and are very pleased with that choice,” he said Thursday. “He’s an experienced arts administrator, with marketing, fund-raising, administrative and presentational skills.”

Tomlinson said Thursday that he expects to arrive in Orange County at the end of this month, in time to attend the Joffrey Ballet’s performances at the center July 27-29. Any decision about a new general manager or other administrative changes will come later, officials said.

The center is a privately built and run facility encompassing a 2,994-seat multipurpose hall and a 299-seat rehearsal space used occasionally for small-scale performances. The center’s major tenants are the Philharmonic Society; the Pacific Symphony, an orchestra based in Santa Ana; Opera Pacific, which presents operas and sometimes produces its own, and two local chorales.

The Alaska center, built by the city of Anchorage but run under contract by a nonprofit corporation, consists of a 2,146-seat multipurpose hall plus 750-seat and 350-seat theaters that are home to seven regional performing and presenting groups.

Tomlinson acknowledges that “dealing with a single-venue facility, as opposed to multi-venue facility, is going to be a challenge.” He said it is “too early to assess” what changes, if any, he might make at the center.

The overall budgets of the two facilities are comparable: $17.9 million for the Orange County center, $15 million for Alaska’s. But fund-raising needs are significantly different: the Orange County center raises about $5 million annually to make up the difference between expenses and earned income (ticket sales, rental fees).

Tomlinson said the nonprofit group that operates the Alaska center only has to raise about $500,000 a year to make ends meet. The major difference, he said, is that the Alaska center does fewer of its own presentations.

Warren Sumners, president of the Cincinnati Assn. for the Performing Arts and former head of a national association of performing arts administrators, said he thinks “Orange County has made a very good choice” in Tomlinson.

“I think Tomlinson is the kind who always wants to see what’s new and emerging. He’s very skilled at that,” said Sumners, who became acquainted with Tomlinson in the early 1980s when both served on the board of the international Assn. of Performing Arts Presenters.

“Anchorage is not the cutting edge,” said Sumners, who was born and grew up in Orange County, “but Tomlinson has done a lot with what he had.”

In selecting Corey, the Philharmonic Society picked from a field of 30 candidates, according to board President Lupinacci. “Dean combines a tremendous musical background with hands-on experience and a hands-on track record of fund-raising,” he said. Corey’s salary was not disclosed.

Corey has been director of development for the financially troubled San Diego Symphony since 1990. A graduate of Yale University, he has also been president and chief executive officer of the Rochester (N.Y.) Philharmonic and executive director of the Jacksonville (Fla.) Symphony. He was trained as a French horn player, has performed with the New York City Ballet Orchestra and has taught at the University of Texas at Arlington.

Corey’s duties will include managing, planning and fund-raising for the debt-plagued organization and, Lupinacci added, “getting to know the new management at the (Performing Arts) Center.”

“I’m very excited about coming there,” Corey said Thursday on the phone from his office in San Diego. Asked his plans for the organization, he said: “Without being evasive, there’s a lot to be discovered. Basically, it’s important that the programs and the orchestra are as fine as we can get, and there should be a relationship between seasons, so that audiences are intrigued to keep coming back to get more and more.”

* AN ATTITUDE SHIFT?: What the new leadership might mean to Orange County. A26