The Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts begins its busiest season with fresh direction from an experienced businesswoman and an accomplished opera singer.

Christine Pouch of Indian Lake has taken over as the nonprofit’s executive director, with support from George Cordes of Tupper Lake, the center’s new creative director. Pouch says she’ll provide financial know-how while Cordes lends his vast experience in the performing arts to lead creative efforts.

This summer, the duo will implement several new programs to foster the arts among a wider Adirondack audience: the Adirondack Lakes Summer Theatre Festival, art workshops and a benefit dinner at an Adirondack Great Camp. They will also reinstate “Tuesdays@TheAC,” a program that hosts performance artists, lectures and open mics at the organization’s arts center in Blue Mountain Lake.

Meet the leaders

Pouch has a combined 16 years of experience in institutional development, first with a Boys and Girls Club chapter in Indiana and later with the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake. She has also been the president of Indian Lake’s Chamber of Commerce for eight years.

“I think that our skill sets really work well together,” Pouch said, “and I think that’s why the board chose us to be the next two people to lead the arts center. My business background really dovetails well with the nonprofit world, and George brings a lot of experience and knowledge in the arts that I simply don’t have.”

What she found most impressive about her counterpart was his quick turnaround of programming plans.

“He started and then quickly had to completely set up a schedule for the year,” she said. “That usually takes somebody months, and he did it in record time with a really tight budget. He really had his work cut out for him.”

Cordes began what would become a distinguished career in performing arts in the 1980s while studying music and voice at the Boston Conservatory. He met his wife, now Tupper Lake High School music teacher Liz Cordes, while attending graduate school in Ohio.

After college, Cordes spent most of his time on the road as a full-time performer, appearing in high-profile venues across the country in operas, operettas and concerts. His voice has bellowed in the Metropolitan Opera, Houston Grand Opera and the Chicago Lyric Opera among many other locations.

Cordes said his focus “turned a little more local” after moving to Tupper Lake with his wife and kids in 2006. The couple established High Peaks Opera in 2009 with a goal to encourage regional appreciation of the age-old art form.

“A big part of what we wanted to do with our programming is show that opera is really a type of art form that everyone can appreciate,” he said. “Believe it or not, we found a lot of fans of Opera in the area.”

With his new appointment as creative director, Cordes said he’s dedicating all of his time and energy to the art center’s operations.

“My overall goal is to continue the arts center as a multi-arts organization,” he said, “to have a nice balance of the visual arts with the performing arts with our performances, classes and workshops. As we progress, Christine and I are going to work together to create a vision for the Arts Center, and to nurture the idea of the arts serving everyone in the local community and everyone coming through the Adirondack area.”

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Summer plans

This summer will be the first time the center tours its Adirondack Lakes Summer Theatre Festival, an idea of the center’s previous Executive Director, Steven Svoboda. The series tours with three different performances from July 15 to Aug. 13.

Cordes said four young, professional actors from the region were selected for the performances: Brandon Bedore of Tupper Lake, a senior musical-theatre major at Catholic University; Lucky Cerruti of Lake Placid, a graduate of Berklee College of Music in Boston; Danielle LaMere of Tupper Lake, a senior double-major in theatre and education at SUNY Potsdam; and Cassidy Dermott, a New York City-based actress and teaching artist with Shakespearean training. LaMere, Cerruti and Dermott have regularly appeared in performances at the Pendragon Theatre in Saranac Lake.

The first show, “The Best of Broadway,” features a mix of comedy skits and classic songs, with a performance at the Tupper?Lake Middle-High School at 7 p.m. Sunday. The second, “The Taming of the Shrew,” is a shortened version of a Shakespeare play performed outdoors and free to attend. The final event is the “Great Arts Benefit Cabaret,” a benefit dinner with food and performances at the Huntington Lodge in Newcomb on Aug. 13.

Other new events this summer include artistic workshops and several art exhibits featuring local artists. The current exhibit is “Conservation Through the Lives of Adirondack Loons,” a collection of art celebrating the aquatic birds.

Two performance artists are booked for “Tuesdays@TheAC.” Natalie Lurie, a classically-trained harpist based in Nashville, will perform on July 26 and Nacre Dance will perform its show “Revolutionary!” on Aug. 9.

For more information on show times and the center’s various activities, visit www.adirondackarts.org.