Folk festival director steps down

BANGOR – After nine months at the helm of the National Folk Festival in Bangor, director Susan Pierce has left the post, making her the second to hold – and relinquish – the director’s job within the past year.

Pierce, 49, stepped down late last week as part of a “mutual agreement” with festival organizers, according to Donna Fichtner, executive director of the Bangor Convention and Visitors Bureau, one of four partnering organizations heading the event.

For some, the news came as a surprise, especially after the festival’s highly touted success, drawing more than 80,000 people to the Bangor waterfront for the event’s first year in the city.

Pierce, reached Wednesday evening, said her departure was due to “basic philosophical difference in how the festival director should be involved in decision making.

“I’m just concerned that the folk festival continue to have the same success we started out with,” said Pierce, who is evaluating several future employment options.

The national festival, which takes up three-year residences in cities throughout the United States, features traditional folk arts and music from all over the world.

National organizers and city officials even praised the Bangor event as one of the most successful first years in the recent history of the festival, attendance at which exceeded even the most optimistic expectations.

When asked to reconcile the director’s abrupt departure with the festival’s success, Fichtner said the event – the largest and most logistically complex the city has ever hosted – was a group effort more than that of a single person.

“The festival does not belong to any one individual,” Fichtner said. “This event is huge, as are the expectations that go with it.”

Fichtner would not say how much Pierce was paid.

John Rohman, chairman of the Folk Festival board of directors, said Pierce’s departure was part of a management reorganization prompted by evaluations of the festival’s first year. Rohman said the festival was looking to improve in a couple of areas for next year, when – if past festivals are any indication – more people will attend.

“We had an excellent first year but we also had a number of areas we need to look at,” Rohman said, citing the shortage of food vendors and difficulty in bringing people to and from the waterfront.

Before taking the festival reins in January, Pierce, of Northport, served for several years as events director for the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association. Pierce was chosen from a field of about a dozen applicants after the resignation of Robert Libbey, who held the post for four months before his November 2001 departure.

Libbey, an actor and former television producer, returned to his job as executive director of the Maine Performing Arts Network, an organization that connects performing artists and presenters in the state.

By all accounts, the festival’s Bangor director, technically employed by the Convention and Visitors Bureau, has a demanding job in overseeing the massive event, which this year boasted more than 700 volunteers and cost upwards of $800,000.

But whether organizers will fill the Bangor director’s position before next year’s festival depended on whom you ask.

While Rohman said Tuesday that the festival’s board would “definitely” be looking for a replacement for Pierce, Fichtner was less certain. “I think we could be re-examining that as part of the reorganization,” she said.