Pat Posey has held senior artistic and administrative leadership positions at two of the world’s preeminent training programs for classical musicians, and helped to produce major festivals and performances on four continents.
From 2012-2018, Posey served as Vice President for Artistic Planning and Educational Programs at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California. During this time he directed the Academy’s artistic and educational vision through a period of organizational renaissance that saw remarkable success by multiple markers including heightened regard and awareness among international artists and peer festivals, increased fellow application numbers, strengthened community engagement and ticket sales, and glowing press attention, all of which helped to increase fundraising and expand organizational capacity. He was chiefly responsible for selecting artists and repertoire for the festival and producing over 200 public events per summer, as well as designing and implementing a performance-based curriculum for the Academy’s musicians. In all aspects he worked closely with faculty, administration, and the board of directors, and appeared as a public face of the Academy’s programming in pre-concert and other public talks and interviews in the press.
As an ambassador to peer organizations, he frequently traveled nationally and internationally during non-summer months to develop and maintain key relationships and recruit fellows and faculty. His stewardship of developing programs included major partnerships that brought the New York Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestra to Santa Barbara and sent Academy fellows to perform with those orchestras in their home cities, as well as the launch of a composer residency program which brought over 20 composers to the festival to present, perform and coach their works along Academy fellows and faculty.
Prior to joining the Music Academy, he spent multiple years as Director of Orchestral Activities and Planning at The Juilliard School in New York. In this capacity he was chiefly responsible for all artistic planning and curricular oversight of the Juilliard Orchestra program. Working closely with two directors of orchestral and conducting studies, James DePreist and Alan Gilbert, Provost and Dean Ara Guzelimian, Juilliard faculty, and other team members he engaged guest conductors, selected repertoire, and oversaw casting for upwards of fourteen symphonic concerts and ten new music concerts each season, as well as multiple opera and dance events co-produced with those departments. Academically he was responsible for grading over 350 students each year, and sat on several committees which tracked and evaluated student progress. During this time he traveled with the orchestra extensively, including major tours of China, Europe, and the US.
In demand as a consultant and freelancer, he was the musical producer for the second YouTube Symphony project which brought nearly one hundred musicians together from around the world to Sydney, Australia. Under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas, they embarked on a week of performances in six different venues in and around the iconic Sydney Opera House. He also held summer positions at the Aspen Music Festival and School and Brevard Music Festival, and served for several seasons as the orchestra librarian for the Stamford Symphony and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s.