In March 2026, the Boston Globe published an investigation into the internal culture of the Boston Symphony Orchestra under its new president and CEO, Chad Smith. The newspaper reported that current and former employees described his management as creating an atmosphere of "fear, intimidation, and ridicule."
This was not a surprise to the people who had worked with him before.
At the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where Smith spent twenty years before coming to Boston, colleagues told Slippedisc — the most widely read classical music news site in the world — that he was "cold and distant, petty and cruel" and that "many of the staff and the orchestra were overjoyed that he was leaving."
At the BSO, the musicians who met with him three weeks after he helped fire their Grammy-winning conductor reported that he demonstrated an "inability to articulate any artistic vision" and that they received "no reassurance that there is a path to rebuilding trust."
This is a profile of Chad Smith based entirely on the public record — his own statements, official filings, and the words of the people who have worked alongside him. Every quote is attributed. Every claim is sourced. We have not editorialized. We have not needed to.
Before Boston
Chad Smith grew up in Pennsylvania. His mother was a schoolteacher who played piano. He studied European History at Tufts and Vocal Performance at the New England Conservatory. He was a Fellow at the BSO's own Tanglewood Music Center. He is a trained baritone.
He began his career in 2000 with Michael Tilson Thomas at the New World Symphony in Miami. In 2002, he joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he would spend the next two decades. He started in programming — the Green Umbrella new music series, classical programming at the Hollywood Bowl. By 2006, he was Vice President of Artistic Planning. By 2015, Chief Operating Officer. In October 2019, he was named CEO.
His official LA Phil biography states that he "invested in visionary programs to foster a culturally diverse talent pipeline and expand new audiences." He led a Centennial Season that included 54 commissions, music by 22 women composers and 27 composers of color. He oversaw the YOLA program, which provides free instruments and music training to approximately 1,700 young people in underserved LA communities. He launched a Centennial Campaign with a goal exceeding $500 million.
Musical America named him one of their "30 Professionals of the Year" in 2016. In the language of institutional press releases, his tenure was a triumph.
That is the version of Chad Smith that the BSO board hired. It is not the version that the people who worked with him describe.
What They Said at the LA Phil
When Smith's departure for Boston was announced in May 2023, Norman Lebrecht — the most widely read classical music journalist in the world — reported on Slippedisc that "Smith has a reputation at the LA Phil for high-handedness with staff members."
Then Slippedisc's readers responded. The following statements were published in the comments section of the site — a forum where classical music professionals routinely post, often under pseudonyms, because the industry is small enough that public criticism can end careers. The claims below are unverified but consistent with Lebrecht's own reporting:
"Heavy-handedness with staff is a comic understatement for those of us who have had the thoroughly-earned displeasure of working with him."
"Cold and distant, petty and cruel."
"Many of the staff and the orchestra were overjoyed that he was leaving."
"Cruel and haughty."
"Never bothered to greet us in the hallways."
One commenter reported that Smith announced his departure from the LA Phil via Zoom — without appearing in person to say goodbye.
Another noted that the LA Phil orchestra had rejected his contract proposals.
Anonymous comments are worth exactly what they cost. But when they align with the findings of the Boston Globe's own reporting — "fear, intimidation, and ridicule" — and with the on-the-record assessment of the most prominent classical music journalist in the world, they form a pattern that is difficult to dismiss.
Lebrecht, reflecting in March 2026 after the Nelsons firing, put it more directly: Smith was "known for high-handedness and staff harassment" at the LA Phil.
The Gail Samuel Pattern
Smith was not the first LA Phil executive recruited to transform the BSO. He was the second.
Gail Samuel served 25 years in senior leadership at the Los Angeles Philharmonic before being appointed the BSO's first female president in February 2021. She lasted eighteen months.
The Berkshire Eagle's Clarence Fanto reported the inside story: Samuel's hand-picked appointee, Asadour Santourian — the newly created Vice President of the Tanglewood Music Center & Learning — was investigated by the BSO's own HR department for "bullying staff members and pressuring them to resign." Staff described the atmosphere under Samuel and Santourian as "toxic." Santourian resigned before facing a negative ruling. Samuel followed him out the door in December 2022.
Samuel's compensation for her partial final year at the BSO was ,706$1,706,083 — recorded on the FY2024 Form 990, likely including severance. For an eighteen-month tenure that ended with an HR investigation into her appointee's bullying, this is a remarkable sum.
Her departure statement was a masterwork of corporate euphemism: "After navigating the profoundly complicated re-opening matters and having successfully laid the groundwork for continued evolution at the BSO, I have decided to step down."
After Samuel left, the BSO appointed Jeffrey D. Dunn as interim president. He held the position from January 2023 until Smith arrived in the fall.
The board — led by Barbara Hostetter — had hired one executive from the LA Phil. It failed. The response was to hire another one.
Lebrecht observed at the time: "If Boston found Samuel hard to bear, Smith has a reputation at the LA Phil for high-handedness with staff members."
The board hired him anyway.
What He Did First
Smith arrived in the fall of 2023 with, by his own account, a mandate to transform the institution. In a Tufts Daily interview, he described the challenges facing the BSO in language drawn from the corporate-strategy playbook: "The headwinds against classical music and performing arts are significant."
His first major structural move came in January 2024, when the BSO announced that Andris Nelsons' contract would shift from a fixed-term agreement to a "rolling" or "evergreen" arrangement. The announcement was framed publicly as a vote of confidence — an indefinite extension.
In practice, it was the opposite.
A fixed-term contract requires an institution to wait until the term expires to part ways. A rolling contract can be terminated at any time with notice. By converting Nelsons' contract, Smith and the board eliminated the structural protection that had secured the music director's position. They replaced a wall with a door.
Fourteen months later, they walked through it.
At the same time as the contract change, Smith named Nelsons "Head of Conducting at Tanglewood" — a new title that, in retrospect, appears designed to soften the eventual departure announcement by preserving a Tanglewood connection.
He also announced Carlos Simon as the BSO's inaugural Composer Chair, created a BSO Humanities Institute, and expanded diversity pipeline programs. These were the visible moves. The contract restructuring was the consequential one.
The Diversity Mandate
Chad Smith's career at the LA Phil was built, in significant part, on diversity programming. His official BSO biography states that he "invested in visionary programs to foster a culturally diverse talent pipeline and expand new audiences." This is the language the BSO board used to describe what they were hiring.
The record at the LA Phil is specific.
Smith's Centennial Season in 2018-19 featured music by 22 women composers, 27 composers of color, and 6 women conductors — numbers the LA Phil publicized heavily. He oversaw the creation of an entirely new executive position: Chief Talent & Equity Officer, filled by Emanuel Maxwell in 2021. The same year, Renae Williams Niles was hired as Chief Content and Engagement Officer to guide DEI goals. The LA Phil's own press materials described these hires as advancing "new perspectives, new voices, and new works."
At the BSO, Smith continued the pattern. He expanded the Susan W. Paine Resident Fellows Program, which the BSO describes as presenting "rising musicians from historically unrepresented backgrounds with valuable professional experience." He deepened partnerships with Project STEP, a diversity pipeline program. He named Carlos Simon — a prominent Black American composer, curator, and activist — as the BSO's inaugural Composer Chair.
None of this is hidden. It is on the BSO's website. It is in Smith's official biography. It is the stated reason the board hired him.
The question the musicians and critics have raised — without necessarily using these terms — is whether this institutional priority came at the expense of the artistic partnership that had produced Grammy Awards, audience recovery, and the deepest musician loyalty the BSO had seen in a generation.
The Boston Globe reported that BSO musicians believe "the goal of the new management and the new board, since Barbara Hostetter took over, has been to change the entire Boston symphony" — and that Smith was hired "for the purpose of changing the whole profile of the Boston symphony."
"Changing the whole profile" is a phrase worth pausing on. It does not mean improving Beethoven. It does not mean fixing the roof. It means making the institution into something fundamentally different from what it is.
Andris Nelsons — a Latvian trained in the European conducting tradition — represented the old profile. He championed diverse programming: his final season included two world premieres by Carlos Simon, five premiere commissions total. But he also represented continuity with the Austro-Germanic symphonic canon that made the BSO one of the great orchestras of the world.
The Globe reported that when asked about Nelsons' alleged lack of "cultural sensitivity," the specific incident cited was a 2017 comment in which Nelsons said classical music's sexual harassment problem was "artificially exaggerated." The comment was tone-deaf. It was also made nine years before he was fired.
Smith told the New York Times: "We are, like many arts organizations, facing an inflection point where what has worked in the past is not working going forward."
The musicians heard something different. Their assessment, reported after the March 19 meeting: "Their explanation for everything was, basically, we're running deficits. What they're saying is the first and best way to balance the budget is to get rid of Andris."
The musicians did not say the word "DEI." They said the word "deficits." The board did not say the word "DEI" either. They said "future vision."
Neither side has named the thing that the evidence — the hires, the programs, the language, the pattern — points toward. The public record names it for them.
The Friday Email
On March 6, 2026, at 3:45 p.m. on a Friday afternoon — the hour traditionally reserved for announcements that institutions hope will be buried by the weekend — the BSO issued a statement:
"The decision to not renew his contract was made by the BSO's Board of Trustees because, beyond our shared desire to ensure our orchestra continues to perform at the highest levels, the BSO and Andris Nelsons were not aligned on future vision."
Seven words of explanation: "not aligned on future vision." No further detail was provided.
The announcement was made via email. The musicians were not consulted. Principal Flutist Lorna McGhee told Slippedisc they were "brutally blindsided."
Three weeks earlier, the Recording Academy had awarded the BSO and Nelsons the Grammy for Best Orchestral Performance — for Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie. The same month, they won four additional Grammys for the complete Shostakovich symphony cycle with Deutsche Grammophon. Nelsons' final season included five premiere commissions, two by Composer Chair Carlos Simon.
The board fired the most decorated conductor in the BSO's modern history via email on a Friday evening and offered seven words of explanation.
When asked about the timing and method, Smith told the Boston Globe: the dismissal "rolled out in the way that it had to roll out."
What the Musicians Said
The BSO's Players Committee — speaking for the orchestra's approximately 92 musicians — released a unanimous statement two days later:
"We strongly oppose the decision by the Board of Trustees to end the appointment of Maestro Nelsons. The musicians believe in Andris's vision for the future."
Principal Flutist Lorna McGhee did not stop at the official statement. Her words, reported across multiple outlets, constitute the most devastating public assessment a principal player has made of an orchestra's leadership in recent memory:
"The decision not to renew Andris' tenure is a form of artistic suicide."
"All I can see is a power play."
"There is a fundamental lack of common decency in not including musicians."
"I find myself at this juncture now questioning whether coming to Boston was the right decision."
She compared the firing to "firing Karajan from the Berlin Philharmonic."
Double bassist Tom Van Dyck wrote a letter directly to Barbara Hostetter and the board. It included the following:
"In the past five years, this tradition has been replaced with what appears to be both personal and professional ambition."
"The breakdown in trust that has resulted from this action is in all likelihood irreparable."
"The Board has been derelict in their duties."
Van Dyck attributed the BSO's financial difficulties to "marketing and the C-suite, not on Andris Nelsons." He noted that the $90 million in deferred maintenance cited by the board is a facilities issue unrelated to any conductor.
Principal Oboist John Ferrillo asked: "Why does it feel like such a violation? It is because this is our house that has been violated."
The Meeting That Changed Nothing
On March 19, 2026, the musicians met with Chad Smith and fifteen trustees. The Players Committee described the encounter publicly:
"The meeting was very difficult and ultimately frustrating."
"The lack of response to, or acknowledgment of institution-wide dysfunction, the inability to articulate any artistic vision, and the lack of accountability for managerial failure that led to the crisis, all went unaddressed."
"We received no reassurance that there is a path to rebuilding trust."
"Their explanation for everything was, basically, we're running deficits. What they're saying is the first and best way to balance the budget is to get rid of Andris."
The musicians asked the board to articulate the "future vision" that required Nelsons' removal. The board did not provide one. Three weeks after the firing, the people responsible for it still could not explain what they wanted instead.
What the Boston Globe Found
The Boston Globe published an investigation into the BSO's internal culture under Smith's leadership. The findings, based on interviews with current and former employees, were reported as follows:
Current and former BSO employees described Smith's management as creating an environment of "fear, intimidation, and ridicule."
Smith allegedly "humiliated" employees.
An orchestra member recalled that Smith "threw Tony [Fogg] under the bus" — referring to Anthony Fogg, the BSO's longtime Artistic Administrator, whose retirement was announced in February 2026. Fogg had served the BSO for decades. Lebrecht called him "the stabiliser."
A former staffer reported "repeatedly witnessing" Fogg "berated or belittled" by Smith in meetings.
Smith did not directly address these allegations. He told the Globe he had joined the BSO "at a period of real transition."
The Vision That Nobody Has Seen
The board's letter to subscribers cited a "strategic framework" built around three pillars: "Programming, partnerships, and place."
A BSO spokesperson expanded this to: "Programming that honors our core repertoire while welcoming new and broader audiences, deeper community partnerships and overdue investments in our facilities."
When pressed for specifics, none were provided.
Smith told the Tufts Daily that "we have to be both the Museum of Modern Art and the Gardener and the MFA. We have to be a humanities program at a university." He told WCRB: "If we don't believe that the greatest music and the greatest performances are still to come, then why are we doing this?"
These are sentences that sound meaningful until you ask what they mean for the Boston Symphony Orchestra's next season. They do not answer the question that every musician, donor, subscriber, and critic has asked: if Nelsons was not aligned with the "future vision," what is the future vision?
The musicians stated after the March 19 meeting that the board was unable to "articulate any artistic vision." Multiple critics have noted that the strategic framework consists of abstract language. The Berkshire Eagle editorial board called the decision "opaque and capricious" and said the leadership "still has some explaining to do."
A Slippedisc commenter summarized: "Nothing concrete on programming. These are all buzzwords."
The BSO reportedly conducted an 18-month strategic planning process engaging trustees, staff, civic leaders, and community partners. It produced a new mission statement, vision statement, value statement, and strategic pillars.
The musicians say they have never seen the document.
The Money
Chad Smith's compensation for fiscal year 2024 — his first year at the BSO, and likely a partial year — was $368,806, according to the BSO's IRS Form 990 filed with ProPublica.
For comparison: that same year, Gail Samuel — who had already departed — received $1,706$1,706,083, a figure that likely includes severance or a buyout. The total executive compensation line for FY2024 was $2,726,120.
Smith's full-year compensation will appear on the FY2025 filing. The BSO provides first-class or charter travel to key employees, as noted in Schedule J of the 990.
Andris Nelsons — the man Smith helped remove — received more than $1.7 million the same year. The musicians who opposed Nelsons' removal earn a base salary that, before the pandemic, was $162,000 — near the bottom of the Big Five orchestras, despite the BSO having the largest endowment of any American orchestra at $618 million in net assets.
What He Said About Trust
On March 27, 2026, three weeks after the firing, Smith gave an interview to the Boston Globe in which he acknowledged what was already obvious:
"We have a lot of work to do to rebuild trust with the musicians."
The same day, the musicians released their own statement:
"We received no reassurance that there is a path to rebuilding trust."
Smith also told the Globe: "The board made a deliberate decision about the future of the BSO, and that is entirely what we have to focus on."
The phrasing is instructive. Not "a difficult decision." Not "a painful decision." A "deliberate" decision — a word that emphasizes intention, not regret. And the instruction to "focus on" it — as though the controversy is a distraction from the work rather than a consequence of it.
The Record
Here is what the public record shows about Chad Smith's tenure at institutions:
At the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he spent twenty years, colleagues described him as "cold and distant, petty and cruel." Staff were "overjoyed" when he left. He announced his departure via Zoom. The orchestra rejected his contract proposals. Norman Lebrecht reported a reputation for "high-handedness and staff harassment."
At the Boston Symphony Orchestra, where he has been president since fall 2023, he changed the music director's contract from fixed-term to rolling — then used the flexibility to remove him. The Boston Globe found employees describing an atmosphere of "fear, intimidation, and ridicule." He was unable to articulate an artistic vision to the musicians in a formal meeting. He fired a Grammy-winning conductor via email on a Friday evening and offered seven words of explanation.
The musicians' assessment, issued publicly: "institution-wide dysfunction," "inability to articulate any artistic vision," "lack of accountability for managerial failure."
Lorna McGhee's assessment: "artistic suicide."
Tom Van Dyck's assessment: "The breakdown in trust is in all likelihood irreparable."
Smith's assessment: "We have a lot of work to do to rebuild trust."
The musicians' response: "We received no reassurance that there is a path to rebuilding trust."
Still There
Chad Smith remains the Julian and Eunice Cohen President and CEO of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Barbara Hostetter remains Chair of the Board of Trustees. Andris Nelsons is scheduled to depart after the 2027 Tanglewood season.
The "future vision" has not been published. The strategic plan has not been shared with the musicians. No successor conductor has been named.
A petition on Change.org demanding a public town hall on the BSO's future has been circulating since March 26. Red rose brooches have appeared outside Symphony Hall — a quiet protest by subscribers who want their orchestra back.
The next concert is Saturday. The musicians will play. The audience will listen. And the man in the corner office will continue to believe that the greatest classical music has yet to be written — while the people who actually make the music wonder if he knows what it sounds like.
All quotes and claims in this article are drawn from: the Boston Globe, WBUR, the Berkshire Eagle, Slippedisc, Arts Fuse, WCRB, the Tufts Daily, BSO official statements, IRS Form 990 filings (ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, EIN 04-2103550), BSO Players Committee statements, and on-the-record interviews by named sources. No anonymous allegations by the author have been included.
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