Dallas Symphony Names CEO

Michelle Miller Burns, president and CEO of the Minnesota Orchestra, is to take the same position with the Dallas Symphony as of September 23. She succeeds Kim Noltemy, who was announced in May as the new president and CEO of the Los Angeles Philharmonic as of July. Noltemy in turn succeeded Chad Smith, now the top administrator for the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

That the search for Noltemy’s successor has been so quick for such a high profile position is hardly surprising: Prior to her six-year stint in Minnesota, Burns was COO of the Dallas Symphony, where she started as VP of Development in 2015 and quickly worked her way to executive VP for institutional advancement and COO from 2017-18.

Her background also includes development positions in Chicago with the Newbury Library and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Burns’s track record in Minnesota is impressive and includes increases in earned and contributed revenue; creating a new model for the orchestra’s summer programming; hiring and successfully transitioning Danish conductor Thomas Søndergård, a relative unknown in this country, as music director starting in fall 2023; and negotiating a new musicians’ contract that extends to 2026. She is also credited with the launch of This Is Minnesota Orchestra, a livestream, television, and radio series that won an Upper Midwest Emmy Award in 2022.

In her comments she noted that her tenure with the DSO marked her first senior leadership role in the field, and that she was “delighted to return….The work that is being done on stage with the orchestra and Music Director Fabio Luisi is being recognized around the world, and I look forward [to continuing] to strengthen the DSO’s impact in Dallas and beyond.”

Burns holds a BM in arts management from Northwestern University and attended the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

The DSO is the largest performing arts organization in the Southwest and made major strides in artistry and community and educational programing under Noltemy’s leadership.