Richman to Leave Pacific Symphony at End of Season

Lucas Richman, assistant conductor of the Pacific Symphony since 1988, will leave the orchestra at the end of the 1990-91 concert season, officials said Wednesday.

“He’s going to be a hard guy to replace,” said executive director Louis G. Spisto. “He’s done a phenomenal job.”

Spisto said he and Richman agreed a year ago that this season would be Richman’s last. It would be unusual, Spisto said, for a conductor to serve as an assistant for the same orchestra for more than three seasons. Spisto said a successor should be named this summer.

“The experience here has been a wonderful one,” Richman, 27, said Wednesday. “I could not have asked to have worked with a finer orchestra at this point in my life, and it’s exciting to me to have seen the growth that the orchestra has had during the three years that I’ve been here.”

Richman said he now intends to work on a number of composition commissions. He will conduct the orchestra for the last time in a family concert at the Orange County Performing Arts Center on May 11.

A graduate of UCLA and USC, Richman was one of four conductors selected in 1988 by Leonard Bernstein to share the podium for concerts presented in London and Moscow.