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Paul Snyder wants to get you back downtown.
Snyder stepped into the CEO role at the Oregon Symphony last summer after a five-year stint at the Tillamook County Creamery Association. For most of his career, Snyder worked in hospitality, starting as a bartender at a Holiday Inn outside Chicago, working his way up through Marriott and Intercontinental Hotels Group. But he’s also always volunteered for arts organizations, serving on the boards of the Atlanta Opera, the Atlanta Symphony and Portland Opera—and the Oregon Symphony. After Snyder’s predecessor, Isaac Thompson, left to step into the CEO role of the Minnesota Orchestra, the board invited Snyder to step in as interim chief of the Oregon Symphony.
“As I settled into the role, I realized that the symphony kind of had what I was looking for in my next role, which was I wanted it to matter to Portland,” Snyder tells WW.
Snyder spoke with WW about his background, the symphony’s 2026–27 season and why audiences are coming back downtown.
WW: You’ve talked about the symphony as a driver for downtown foot traffic. Four or five years ago, or even two or three years ago, lots of performing arts organizations were still facing a lot of challenges getting people back into auditoriums. What are things looking like for you now?
Paul Snyder: Our audiences are back and have now exceeded pre-pandemic levels. We are seeing folks coming into the halls in droves. So for us, our patrons are back. We also just launched our ‘26–’27 subscription season, and we’ve had the highest number of subscription sales in the first day and in the first week than we ever have. So our audience, I’m really happy and proud to say, is back.
What do you attribute that to?
First of all, I think the fantastic art we put on the stage—whether it’s our incredibly talented and hardworking musicians who are just a spectacular symphony orchestra, who just perform unbelievably under our music director David Danzmayr. On top of our classical music, we’ve also got a really great slate of popular programming, whether it’s our film programming, our special holiday programming, like Gospel Christmas or our popular programming, like in the fall, when we had the Dandy Warhols, or we had the Decemberists. And then, of course, we’ve got some real Portland institutions that play with us, not the least of which is Storm Large and Pink Martini. So the suite of things that we offer to people to come enjoy is one that they really want. These are things they really want to hear. So they come and hear them down in Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.
Tell me a little bit more about the 2026–27 season—programming that you’re looking forward to, or particular highlights.
We’re very excited about the season. We really begin it in earnest with just an old war horse of a piece, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5. But at the same time we’re doing that, we’re also premiering a piece [“These Righteous Paths”] by the brilliant composer Jessie Montgomery; this is actually a co-commission of ours, and this will be a West Coast premiere. We’ve got everything that you could look for, whether you are into things like Holt’s The Planets or Mahler’s Symphony No. 6, to a Legends songbook where it’s a highlight of Paul Simon songs. Itzhak Perlman is visiting, who obviously is so incredibly brilliant; [we also have] things like New Year’s Eve with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which is always a hit. I always like to point out also some pieces and composers that we really focus on, like Bruckner and like Mendelssohn.
And then, honestly, I always want to talk about our films. Films in Concert is just a fantastic way to see your favorite film—a film that you’ve seen 100, 200 or a thousand times. This last year we had The Goonies, we had Chicago, we had Pirates of the Caribbean. Next year, we’re going to have, or in the next season, The Princess Bride, How to Train Your Dragon, Harry Potter, Home Alone. It’s such a wonderful experience to go into a hall and listen to the music and have that visceral feeling of the music while you’re watching one of your favorite movies of all time. But then there’s also the fact that you’re watching it with 1,000 or 2,000 other people. It’s different, and it’s better when you see a movie with a whole bunch of other people. You’re laughing together, maybe you’re crying together, but you’re watching the movie together—and it’s so much more of just an incredible experience.
Getting back to the symphony as being a big driver for foot traffic downtown, what are you hearing from downtown business owners about that? Downtown is still sort of in a difficult spot, but there are real glimmers of hope. What’s your sense?
There are absolutely glimmers of hope, and you can see it on the streets. The Portland Metro Chamber obviously released their foot traffic report, and that showed that things were coming up, but we’ve still got ways to go. What we hear from business owners is they know the nights that we’re playing because—whether they’re a restaurant owner or a bar owner or a parking garage owner—those are the nights they need to make sure they have staff on the premises. I would encourage anyone who hasn’t come downtown for a couple of years to come and see downtown is looking fantastic. If you look at the incredible work that Downtown Clean and Safe is doing, the fact that we do have restaurants that are opening up in the downtown core, and foot traffic, the downtown is looking and feeling more alive, and that’s why we’ve got things like the new Rothko Pavilion at Portland Art Museum. Jessica Elkan and her crew with the James Beard Market are gearing up to open. There are more than just hints and glimmers of hope. There’s some true green shoots that we’re starting to see spring up out of the ground.
SEE IT: To learn more about the Oregon Symphony’s 2026–27 season, visit orsymphony.org.
