Symphony Conductor to Leave Next Year : Arts: Frank Salazar will step down as music director earlier than he had planned. The orchestra’s board wanted a quicker transition.

Frank Salazar, the affable conductor who founded the Ventura County Symphony 29 years ago, will relinquish his baton after the 1991-92 season. The move comes a year sooner than he originally planned, and follows months of debate and uncertainty among symphony supporters.

“I’m not leaving a job. I’m handing over my life’s work,” said Salazar, who will yield the title of music director and become founding music director and conductor emeritus.

“My mission with the symphony has always been to maintain the highest standards in classical music, something that is delicate and vulnerable in today’s cultural atmosphere,” he said. “I urge the public and future audiences to demand that the symphony board be sensitive to that, and not to confuse artistic choice with commercial decisions.”

The 63-year-old Salazar, perhaps the most visible figure in the county’s arts community, is the only leader the orchestra has had. In December he proposed that he retire in 1993. But the symphony’s board wanted a faster transition, said board President Miriam Wille.

Insiders said that for the last year or longer, the orchestra’s creative and administrative sides have been at odds over programming emphasis and the organization’s direction. Wille and Salazar both declined to discuss details, but acknowledged that a rift had grown between Salazar’s supporters and those seeking a rapid passing of the baton.

“I don’t know why he’s leaving now, and I wonder,” said Delores Walker, a viola player with the symphony since 1964.

The board’s three-person negotiating team, aiming to resolve the conflict, last week reached the following agreement with Salazar:

The conductor will leave his job on June 30, 1992, at the conclusion of the orchestra’s 30th season. In addition to his emeritus title, he will have a non-voting seat for life on the symphony board. The symphony’s fledgling endowment fund will be named for him.

Salazar stressed that he is not retiring and said he hopes to continue conducting in Ventura County and elsewhere. He thanked county musicians and audiences for their help in “41 years of building an orchestra.”

The goal of these arrangements is to “soothe fears people may have about Frank not having any outlet as to the development of this orchestra,” said Karine Beesley, executive director of the symphony. “Frank has done an extraordinary thing, developing this orchestra over the past 30 years. And now we’re moving into a new phase.”

Wille said that Salazar had done “a marvelous job,” and that she looked forward to “celebrating our 30th anniversary hand-in-hand, the board and Frank.”

The organization will look “locally and nationally” for a successor to Salazar, Beesley said. She said the job will probably be based on a 20-weeks-per-year contract, which wouldn’t pay enough to serve as a conductor’s sole salary. Throughout his tenure with the symphony, Salazar has been a full-time instructor at Ventura College.

In addition to the transition in musical leadership, symphony officials said, the organization is about to hire its first assistant conductor. That job, a full-time position, will be part of boosting the organization’s educational efforts and further developing pops programming.

The symphony, which carries a $600,000-a-year budget, stages six subscription concerts yearly in the Oxnard Civic Auditorium. It also performs an annual holiday-season production of “The Nutcracker Suite” with the Channel Islands Ballet. On July 4, the orchestra is offering an outdoor pops program in Ojai, with violinist Phil Salazar, son of the conductor, among the guest performers. The symphony’s 1991-92 season opens Oct. 5, with a concert of Spanish music.

Salazar, who grew up in Albuquerque, N.M., studied music at the University of New Mexico, the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome, the Juilliard School of Music in New York and the University of Southern California. He moved to Ventura in 1950, and set about organizing a community orchestra soon after that.

He has been a faculty member of the Ventura College music department since 1956 and will retire from the teaching post next June, at the same time he relinquishes the music director’s position.

Symphony officials said the newly christened Frank Salazar Conductor’s Chair Endowment Fund now includes just $75. But by the end of next year, said Beesley, “we’d like to raise at least $50,000.”