MA Top 30 Professional: David Fisk

President & CEO
Charlotte Symphony Orchestra

When David Fisk took the reins in 2020, the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra faced an accumulated deficit amid a spiraling pandemic. Five years later, it is enjoying unprecedented artistic and financial success and new levels of interaction with its community.

Fisk’s first major accomplishment, after guiding the orchestra through the pandemic with a new strategic plan, was naming Trinidadian-Canadian conductor Kwamé Ryan as music director, in late 2023. The widely heralded appointment signaled a new era at the institution, one of creativity, boldness, and outreach. Ryan boasts experience in community development as well as in major opera houses and concert halls; he is also onetime general music director of Freiburg Opera and music/artistic director of the National Orchestra of Bordeaux Aquitaine.

On the heels of Ryan’s appointment came the completion of a $50 million fundraising campaign, the largest in the orchestra’s history. This also resulted in a tripling of the endowment, from $12 million to over $40 million.

The momentum has not waned; recent successes under Fisk and Ryan include the launch of a mobile stage called the CSO Roadshow, an immersive, multi-media educational program based on John Luther Adams’s Become Ocean. The two have also established a fund-raising program to purchase and repair instruments for
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. 

The CSO is riding high, fueled by a spirit of innovation and a renewed commitment to accessibility. “We’ll keep building on this work,” says Fisk, “using community engagement and our presence in neighborhoods across Charlotte to raise awareness…and attract audiences to our varied programming.”