President and Chief Executive Officer
Welz Kauffman began his position as President and CEO of Ravinia Festival in October 2000. His plans include tapping into the Festival's rich history while looking to its future by expanding programming and reaching new audiences as the park's centennial approaches in 2004.
In his first season of programming Ravinia Festival, the summer of 2001, Kauffman engaged four conductors associated with Chicago's music institutions — Ravinia Festival Music Director Christoph Eschenbach, Chicago Symphony Orchestra Music Director Daniel Barenboim, Lyric Opera Music Director Sir Andrew Davis and CSO Resident Conductor William Eddins — as the only conductors to lead the CSO through Ravinia's 66th season. Barenboim's performances will mark his return to the Festival after a 30-year absence and his first appearances since becoming Music Director of the CSO.
Mr. Kauffman is also inaugurating a music theater initiative that will reach into every aspect of the Festival. The enterprise expands Ravinia Festival's community outreach efforts; creates a new music theater branch of the Steans Institute for Young Artists, through which participants will showcase a world premiere musical; and focuses on the vital role of the orchestra in music theater. This will be demonstrated in the concert staging of Stephen Sondheim's "Sweeney Todd," the first of five Sondheim works to be presented through 2005.
In the same season, Mr. Kauffman will launch "Martinis at the Martin: The Great American Songbook," a new series celebrating America's masters of popular song, featuring Barbara Cook, Patti LuPone and Andrea Marcovicci.
Mr. Kauffman, who studied music at Tanglewood and Occidental College, began his career as an Arts Administrator at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he worked with the Olympic Arts Festival and London's Royal Opera in their first visit to the United States. Subsequently he was Director of Public Affairs at the J. Paul Getty Trust, based in Los Angeles. Mr. Kauffman was General Manager of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra for five years and Artistic Administrator for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, where he worked with Robert Shaw and with former President Jimmy Carter on the arts component of Carter's progressive Atlanta Project. He next served as General Manager of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, where he worked with Christopher Hogwood, Bobby McFerrin and Hugh Wolf. He was named Artistic Administrator of the New York Philharmonic in 1995. At the Philharmonic, Kauffman was the architect of several major festivals, with Music Director Kurt Masur, including those dedicated to the works of Brahms, Beethoven, Gershwin and Weill in addition to the "British" festival and "Completely Copland Festival." These festivals encompassed a wide array of activities, including full orchestra concerts, cabaret evenings, new music and chamber performances, seminars and symposiums. He started the "American Classics" initiative that surveyed 40 years (1930s-'70s) of classic American music, and oversaw the entire production of the performance and recording of Stephen Sondheim's "Sweeney Todd."
Most recently Kauffman returned to the Los Angeles Philharmonic as Director of Artistic Planning, a post from which he supervised all of the orchestra's programming, including its 12-week summer festival at the Hollywood Bowl. Like Ravinia, that festival features wide-ranging musical presentations of jazz and world music in addition to visiting classical artists.
In his first year at Ravinia Festival, Kauffman has dedicated himself to many new initiatives in programming, technology and customer service - especially for the maturing patron, parents with children, and the physically challenged. He has embraced Ravinia Festival's ladder-like approach to developing emerging talent through such programs as the Steans Institute for Young Artists and the Rising Stars concert series.
In addition, Kauffman is committed to developing new audiences as he believes the Festival is uniquely poised to be a listening laboratory for people of all generations.