Tri-Cities Opera soon will be seeing a leadership change.
The company’s general and artistic director, Susan S. Ashbaker, is assuming expanded duties at Westminster Choir College at Ryder University in Princeton, N.J., and therefore is resigning from part of her TCO position.
Ashbaker, who has been an adjunct professor at Westminster, has accepted a position as an associate professor to run the college’s opera activities. She will remain the artistic director at TCO, but a new executive director will be sought immediately, according to a TCO press release today (Aug. 2).
“Susan has made an incredible impact on TCO in the four years that she’s been here. She has transformed the company in every way imaginable,” said TCO Board of Director’s Chairman Michael Bogdasarian in the press release.
Ashbaker. who joined TCO in August 2014, will continue full-time with the company through August.  In a statement, she said, “I have loved my time at Tri-Cities Opera and found the work rewarding and the community warm. Another opportunity has come my way, and I’m thrilled to join a terrific faculty in my new position at Westminster Choir College.
“I’m full of gratitude to both Westminster and TCO, however, for allowing me the opportunity to continue to serve the greater Broome County community as artistic director for TCO, to build upon the great work we’ve begun, and to foster great opera and musical theater experiences both on and off the stage,” she said.
James Burns, chairman of the Binghamton University Music Department, yesterday (Aug. 1) informed his faculty that Ashbaker also is resigning from her adjunct position at BU.