WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP
ARTS
Alice Sauro
Executive Director
Sacramento Philharmonic & Opera
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comstocksmag.com | March 2020
Two deteriorated disks and a pinched nerve in Alice
Sauro’s neck was the beginning of the end of her
decades-long career as a violinist.
“After several years of trying to get better, I decided
not to abuse my body anymore,” she says. While the in-
jury ended her run as a professional musician, it didn’t
stop her career in music. Sauro, a Juliard School alumna
who grew up in Minneapolis, transitioned from being
onstage with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for 20
seasons to working behind the scenes in the adminis-
tration side of the organization. She’s since moved from
Michigan to California and now heads up the Sacra-
mento Philharmonic & Opera.
Sauro became executive director in 2015 after
she and her husband relocated to Sacramento from
Detroit for his job, during what she calls the Philhar-
monic & Opera’s “dark season.” In 2013, the Sacra-
mento Philharmonic merged with the Sacramento
Opera, and by its 2014-15 season, due to a lack of
funds, canceled its concerts.
This wasn’t the first time Sauro saw an orchestra go
through a difficult time, and that was the reason she
was selected for the job. While in management at the
Detroit Symphony, the organization was reeling from
the financial strain of the Great Recession, debt and
musician strikes, resulting in canceled concerts. But
the management partnered with consultants to revive
the symphony, and the same consultants were hired to
work with the Philharmonic & Opera — and they rec-
ommended Sauro for the job of executive director.
“Having been in Detroit in time of great crisis was
a great experience in how to … turn things around,”
she says. The Philharmonic & Opera’s comeback
included pop-up concerts, “a little bit of a fresh look”
with new visual branding and working with her staff
“as a team in a transparent way” and rebuilding trust
in the community.
In June 2015, five months after Sauro joined the
company, it put on its resurrection symphony — ap-
propriately, Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony — and
Sauro says they sold about 1,600 tickets. “By the end
of the first year, spring of 2016, we sold out,” she says.
“Once we laid out that we were coming back with fresh
concerts, people realized they had missed it.”
Giving her staff of eight the opportunity to
be creative was instrumental in their continued
success. “I’m proud of the fact that the quality is
improving all the time,’ she says, “and the audience
responds to that. And we’re selling out concerts. And
that tells me that the work we’re doing is very mean-
ingful to this community.”
“I played all over the world and have done just about
everything I wanted (as a musician),” she says. Having
this other career in music, “I enjoy it just as much.”
by Shoka