Music Director

They come together in harmony. Velma Simmons, the Philadelphia School District music director, leads the Philadelphia High School Choir during rehearsal at the Academy of Music. Last evening's Philadelphia High School Music Festival featured a choir, orchestra and symphony band made up of students from the city's public and private high schools.

James R. "Budd" Ellison, 53, of Wynnefield Heights, longtime music director for singer Patti LaBelle, died of prostate cancer Oct. 26 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Ellison joined LaBelle's band as a 19-year-old musician who had cowritten a song that was eventually recorded by the singer's girl group Labelle. "What Can I Do for You" was on the trio's album Nightbird and was one of several songs cowritten by Mr. Ellison during his 33-year tenure with Patti LaBelle as a composer, arranger, producer and music director.

When Philadelphia Singers founder and music director Michael Korn died in 1991 at age 44, no one could imagine the group continuing. But it did; in fact, his successor, David Hayes, has now been at the helm longer than Korn was. And as Hayes clocks more than two decades in the job, he is asking the board to start envisioning a future without him. Hayes told his singers Monday night that the 2014-15 season will be his last. A search committee for his successor will be formed, a board member said.

In a week that includes the festive occasions of Purim and St. Patrick's Day, folks in Haddonfield have an added occasion to celebrate - Mayor John J. Tarditi Jr. has proclaimed the next seven days "Haddonfield Symphony Week. " Culminating Saturday in the Haddonfield Memorial High School auditorium with the annual "Pops Night at the Symphony" concert, the observance is a tribute not only to the musicians, but also to longtime music director and conductor Arthur Cohn, who announced his retirement this year.

So here are the lessons learned by the Philadelphia Orchestra in the wily pursuit of music directors and other acts of senseless hope: You can't impose love on a loveless marriage. If you hire a 70-year-old music director, you might want to work quickly to find his successor. And if your orchestra is not in perpetual music-director search mode, you're living dangerously. The Philadelphia Orchestra's future would be clearer had its immediate past leadership really understood all this six years ago before Christoph Eschenbach was named, 13 years ago when Wolfgang Sawallisch started the job, and at every point since Eugene Ormandy faded from the scene.

AS THE Quaker City String Band rehearsed the wooden soldier march of its latest routine on a chilly December evening, Jim Fox Jr. blended right into the horde of saxophonists playing through "Teddy Bears' Picnic" and "When Johnny Comes Marching Home. " But despite being one alto among many, Fox is responsible for an outsized portion of the cacophony being raised on the second floor of the venerable Mummers band's South Philly clubhouse. Probably half of the Quaker City saxophonists wouldn't be there on New Year's Day if it weren't for Fox. That's literally the case for two of them, Fox's college-age sons, who are carrying on the family tradition.

Joseph H. Kluger, the Philadelphia Orchestra's general manager, yesterday was named executive director to replace Stephen Sell, who died Friday of lung cancer. Theodore A. Burtis, president of the Philadelphia Orchestra Association, made the announcement after an orchestra board meeting. Kluger had served as Sell's second-in-command since joining the orchestra as general manager in 1985. The new executive director "knows well the qualities of this great orchestra and the human and artistic needs of our musicians," music director Riccardo Muti said in a statement from Japan, where the orchestra is on tour.

Long one of Philadelphia's proudest exports, classical music keeps flowing out beyond the city limits - more than ever, in fact, despite reports that this particular corner of the recording industry is dying or dead. Even longtime Philadelphia Orchestra music director Eugene Ormandy, who is indisputably dead, isn't acting that way, to judge from his presence on the Europe-based Pristine Classical website, which specializes in historical recordings. "He doesn't sell spectacularly as [Arturo]

Only three days after the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra ended a lingering labor dispute, conductor Hugh Wolff announced yesterday that he would not return as music director when his contract expires next year. Wolff, the Harvard-trained Wunderkind who has shaped a lackluster ensemble into a top-ranked regional orchestra over the last six years, took pains at a news conference to emphasize that his decision was not related to the musicians' contract or the symphony's troubled finances.

The Philadelphia Orchestra burned through a lot of music-director prospects last season. At the outset, in September, the roster brimmed with nearly a half-dozen conductors whose reputations or previous visits raised expectations. Then they conducted here. And that was that. Among players, the tantalizing rumor is circulating that the candidate pool has been winnowed down to one: God. With such Talent not on the roster at CAMI or any of the other classical-talent agencies, the orchestra might think back a mere five years for a reality check to the conductor before last.