Keith Clark Resigns as Pacific Symphony Director

Three days after narrowly voting not to extend his contract, the board of the Pacific Symphony announced Keith Clark’s resignation Thursday as music director of the orchestra he founded nine years ago. The resignation, the board said, will take effect at the end of the 1988-’89 season.

Board president John Evans said that Clark was not “forced out.”

A search committee, he said, will be formed “within a week” to find a replacement for Clark.

Reached in Czechoslovakia where he has been recording with the Radio Symphony of Bratislava, Clark refused all comment. As recently as Wednesday, he had promised to fight any attempts to oust him.

The board, which had been extremely secretive about the matter since taking its vote at a closed meeting Monday night, issued a statement late Thursday announcing that Clark “has resigned his post” and expressing its appreciation of the work he has done in Orange County.

Tension had been growing between Clark and board members who had said privately that the orchestra had outgrown the musical and administrative abilities of its founder and that, as one source said Thursday, “he was arrogant and temperamental.”

Monday, according to a board member who asked not to be identified, the board voted 12 to 11 against renewing Clark’s contract when it expires in August.

When the action was made public Wednesday, Clark said: “If I felt that there was not significant support for my leadership, I would resign. I would not wish to stay. But I think the support is there.”

From Czechoslovakia Thursday, Clark refused to confirm that he had resigned or to discuss any aspects of the matter until next week, when his recording sessions there are completed.

“It’s two or three in the morning here,” Clark said. “I’m going back to bed.”

A source close to the board said “the die was really cast last summer” when the board asked Clark to sign a contract for the first time in the orchestra’s history, and decided to make it for only one year.

“The group that was against him finally won the battle,” the source said.

Woodard said Thursday that he was among those who voted against extending the contract. “I felt it was time for Keith to go,” he said.

“Keith took the orchestra through the rough years where he had to lick stamps one moment and conduct the orchestra the next.”

Raymond J. Ikola, a former board chairman and current member, disagreed with Woodard.

“It would be a tragic mistake if Clark should leave,” Ikola said. “It would result from a lack of recognition of what Keith has meant to this community and of the contributions that he could continue to make.”

Evans said Clark will conduct six of nine concerts in the classical subscription series of the orchestra’s 1988-’89, 10th anniversary season.

Clark, 42, was principal guest conductor of the Vienna Chamber Orchestra before he founded the Pacific Symphony with, as he recalled last year, “a grant of $2,000 and plans on my kitchen table.” Now its annual budget has reached $3 million and it plays regularly at the $72-million Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Though praised by his supporters as a tireless promoter of music in Orange County, Clark has been criticized for trying to handle both administrative and musical duties. The time he has spent on administrative tasks sometimes left him unprepared at rehearsals and performances, musicians have said.

Staff writers Allan Jalon and Randy Lewis contributed to this story.