Barnaby Kerekes

Toronto, August 31, 2026

Dear Ms. McGregor, Ms. Peloso, and the Search Committee,

It is with great enthusiasm that I submit my candidacy for President and Chief Executive Officer of the Vancouver Symphony Society. The VSO is where my musical life began in earnest: I earned my Bachelor of Music at UBC studying with Douglas Sparkes, the VSO’s Bass Trombonist, was mentored by Gordon Cherry the VSO’s principal Trombonist, and performed with the Orchestra by invitation in 2005. I spent my student years working front-of-house at the Chan Centre, organized my own youth orchestra performances, and have become a passionate educator. My experience covers a tremendous range of what it means to bring performances to life. My time in Vancouver taught me what a great orchestra can mean — and does mean — to the people of its city. The opportunity to serve that institution now, at a moment when it is asking searching questions about the future, is one I approach with great curiosity and excitement.

For the past 23 years I have built and led the ABC Academy of Music in Toronto — growing it from an $8,000 first year to a quarter-million-dollar operation, from 4 teachers to 20, from under 50 students to 200 across 11 locations, through the 2008 recession and a global pandemic, without interruption and without debt. I know precisely what it takes to run a music school as a growth engine rather than a cost centre: curriculum acquisition and licensing, retention economics (we sustain 70–80% year-over-year), targeted marketing with measured outcomes, and the disciplined transition from credit-based to cash-positive operations. The position identifies the VSO School of Music — nearly 3,000 students strong — as a strategic lever with untapped potential. Building exactly that, from nothing, has been my life’s work and your view of its potential is aligned with mine.

I am equally a musician who has sat inside orchestras — as a member of the National Youth Orchestra of Canada, the Vancouver Philharmonic, and the Brampton Symphony, and across contract work with orchestras throughout British Columbia and Ontario. I have held musicians’ union membership, worked in the unionized environment of the Chan Centre, and served a term there in temporary management on contract — so a collective agreement is familiar ground to me from both sides of the table. I have lived the musician’s side of the stage, and I have spent two decades as an employer of musicians whose trust I have had to build, earn, and keep. Building and maintaining this cohesion between musicians, management, and boards is not an abstraction to me; it is the daily craft of leading people whose work is their identity. I bring a practical, multi-stakeholder understanding and a genuine willingness to work with every side at the table.

In recent years I have also founded and led the development of a software platform that runs music-education businesses end to end — scheduling, enrolment, billing, and client communication. That work has made me fluent in the data-informed, digitally capable leadership the position calls for, and it shapes how I would approach audience development, donor stewardship, and the School’s growth: measure honestly, test cheaply, scale what works. In the last 18 months this has also pivoted hard to leveraging the power of emergent AI tools to tremendously accelerate development, streamline business operations, and to enhance and expedite planning across strategy, finances, and a range of other areas. I believe these tools can change how arts organizations plan, market, and operate — and having already led that change in my own organizations, I am deeply enthusiastic about empowering the VSO to lead with it too: letting technology carry the routine work machines do well so more of everyone’s time goes to music, audiences, and real relationships that make people connect and stay.

Whatever chapter the committee envisions next, it will be built on trust — trust I am absolutely confident I can earn. I already come to that work wholeheartedly and stay through the hard parts, where I have found my most creative solutions tend to be born. I have never stopped studying my craft, and the question I most want to keep learning about is this one: how can we make orchestral music find its way into the daily lives of regular people — not as a special event, but as something that makes life better every day. That is the most exciting work I can imagine an orchestra doing.

I would be delighted to speak with you and the committee. Thank you for your time and kind consideration.

Barnaby Kerekes