Academy of Music board of trustees gets new leader

The Academy of Music has a new chairman of its board of trustees: Adele K. Schaeffer.

Schaeffer, a community volunteer and wife of shopping mall developer Harold G. Schaeffer, has a history of involvement with the Academy, having served as cochair of the 136th Academy of Music anniversary concert and ball in 1993.

She will remain a board member of the Philadelphia Orchestra, which owns the academy.

Schaeffer, of Bryn Mawr, has another connection: she attended, with her parents, the first Academy ball in 1957. "It was a super evening," she said.

Her term as chairman, which runs two years, was settled only last week, she said, so she is still sizing up the task: "Every aspect of the job is appealing to me. Whatever projects we engage in in the future I will be very much behind."

Schaeffer has a long history of civic activism. She was a University of Pennsylvania trustee, and is a trustee of the Wistar Institute, Moore College of Art and Design, and the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a local think tank.

She takes over from Philadelphia Orchestra board chairman Richard B. Worley, who had served on an interim basis after Joanna McNeil Lewis resigned.

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