Music Center Names New President

The Los Angeles Music Center Board of Directors voted unanimously Monday to name Stephen D. Rountree the new president of the downtown performing arts center.

Rountree has held successive executive positions at the J. Paul Getty Trust for 22 years and is currently its executive vice president and chief operating officer.

He will take over at the Music Center on Nov. 18, succeeding Joanne Kozberg, who has held the president’s job since 1999. She announced her resignation in April, effective as soon as the board found her replacement.

Rountree will take charge of the Music Center a year before its newest venue, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, is scheduled to open.

“For the past 20-plus years, I’ve been involved in the arts in Los Angeles, and, with the opening of Disney Hall and the sort of renaissance downtown, it all seems to come together at the Music Center,” Rountree said Monday. “I think it’s an important juncture in 2002, to figure out how we can make the Music Center relevant and connected to this broad and diverse community.”

On Monday, the board also named John B. Emerson, president of personal investment management for Capital Guardian Trust Company in Los Angeles, the Music Center’s chairman-elect.

Emerson will assume his new post next year, after the September opening of Disney Hall. The current Music Center chairman, Andrea Van de Kamp, will remain in place until then.

Two of the center’s four resident companies, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Master Chorale, will move into Disney Hall when it opens next year. The other two companies, Los Angeles Opera and the Center Theater Group, will continue to present productions in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Ahmanson Theatre and the Mark Taper Forum.