The USC School of Music is proud to announce that Dr. Scott Weiss, USC Director of Bands and Interim Director of the USC Symphony, has today been appointed the permanent Director of the USC Symphony and Orchestras in the USC School of Music. During his seven-and-a-half years at Carolina and his four months at the helm of the USC Symphony, Weiss has demonstrated his uniquely gifted musicianship and a distinctive and elite combination of great musical leadership with a superior educational philosophy and pedagogy.

About the appointment, USC School of Music Dean Tayloe Harding said:

"Scott Weiss possesses a sharply refined ability to inspire student achievement and student recruitment, a broad set of personal and management skills in administration of ensemble programs, a passionately informed and collegial manner and approach to his professorship, a highly-nuanced sense of musical programming, and a deep commitment to audience relations and development. In his short time as Interim Director since July 2017, he has displayed a gratifying understanding of our unique orchestral circumstances and stakeholders, and has created a great vision for the future of this signature ensemble that fully integrates it into the fabric of our dynamic School of Music. His portfolio of skills, dispositions, and abilities is of prime importance to our School and manifests a thorough devotion to our core values – it is a common feeling, expressed to me and others by many among us, that we are indeed lucky to have a person of his stature, gifted with all of these qualities, in our midst."

While Dr. Weiss finishes the 2017-2018 year as interim director, he will assume the duties as permanent Director of the USC Symphony and Orchestras on August 16, 2018. He will also continue as Director of Bands for 2018-2019 while the School engages in a national search that year for a new Director of Bands to arrive in the summer of 2019.