L.A. Phil chief Chad Smith makes a surprise move to Boston

The Boston Symphony made the surprise announcement Monday that this fall its next president and chief executive will be current Los Angeles Philharmonic CEO Chad Smith. “He opened my eyes to new music,” Gustavo Dudamel said in a phone call from Berlin, as he was about to go onstage and conduct the Berlin Philharmonic in “Téenek — Invenciones de Territorio,” a work by Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz that was commissioned by the L.A. Phil and premiered by Dudamel in 2017. “I was not a teenager when I began at the L.A. Phil,” Dudamel said of becoming the orchestra’s music director in 2009 at age 27, “but musically I was a teenager, very young. My favorite days are those sitting down and talking with Gustavo and with composers.” But Smith also noted that the orchestra is “super healthy, in amazing shape, and thrives in times of change while always retaining that thing that is the L.A. Phil.” Meanwhile, at 51, Smith said he was ready for a new challenge. Shortly after Deborah Borda became head of the L.A. Phil in 2000, she hired Smith to run the orchestra’s new-music Green Umbrella series.