Symphony Spring 2019

symphony SPRING 2019 n $6.95

THE MAGAZINE OF

THE LEAGUE OF AMERICAN ORCHESTRAS

Road Trips

2019 Conference Preview

Government Shutdown: Orchestras Step Up

America’s Classical Music Festivals, Coast to Coast

Orchestras Tell Their Own Stories

Surround Sound

GATEWAYS CONNECTING AND SUPPORTING PROFESSIONAL CLASSICAL MUSICIANS OF AFRICAN DESCENT

MUSIC FESTIVAL IN ASSOCIATION WITH EASTMAN SCHOOL OF MUSIC

6 DAYS ≠ 1 2 5 M U S I C I A N S ≠ 5 0 P E R F O R M A N C E S

AUGUST 6 - 11 2019 R O C H E S T E R

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gatewaysmusicfestival.org

Y O R K

PRELUDE

VO LU M E 70, N U M B E R 2

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hen the federal government closed over the holiday season, something extraordinary happened—and it wasn’t that this shutdown turned out to be the longest in the country’s history. What’s remarkable is that orchestras across the country immediately started offering free tickets to furloughed federal employees. (See story on page 56.) Free tickets were available not only for concerts during the shutdown itself; some orchestras offered tickets to pretty much any concert through the end of the current season.

Orchestras have been upping their public-service game in recent years. In the wake of Hurricane Harvey in 2017, the Houston Symphony, Houston Youth Symphony, and Houston’s Mercury ensemble hosted fundraisers for residents, replaced ruined instruments for music students, and gave pop-up concerts in shelters. And they did this while their offices and concert halls were damaged, and their musicians were displaced.

Not all of these efforts are close to home: The Philadelphia Orchestra partnered with other Philadelphia arts group to raise thousands for relief efforts in Puerto Rico following the devastation of Hurricane Maria.

These actions reflect expansive new definitions of community engagement that embrace the urgency of taking action right here, right now. Provocative questions emerge: How do orchestras fit in society? How should orchestras fit in society? What is the shared value of art, of orchestras? Can—and should—orchestras address issues of social justice? The League and growing numbers of orchestras are working to welcome underrepresented communities, to program more music by women composers, to raise the numbers of black and Latinx musicians. All of it points to social justice as an increasingly vital concern at orchestras.

THE MAGAZINE OF THE LEAGUE OF AMERICAN ORCHESTRAS

symphony®, the award-winning quarterly magazine of the League of American Orchestras, discusses issues critical to the orchestra community and commun­icates to the American public the value and importance of orchestras and the music they perform.

EDITOR IN CHIEF Robert Sandla

MANAGING EDITOR Jennifer Melick

PRODUCTION AND DESIGN Michael Rush

ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Stephen Alter ADVERTISING ASSOCIATE Joseph Matthews

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THE MAGAZINE OF THE LEAGUE OF AMERICAN ORCHESTRAS

1 Prelude by Robert Sandla

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4 The Score Orchestra news, moves, and events 12 Critical Questions Why organizational culture is key to retaining a capable and diverse workforce. by Jesse Rosen

56 Jeffrey Kaczmarczyk

14 Board Room An excerpt from Heidi Waleson’s Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America examines the important role that boards play in the success of performing arts groups.

18 Conference Preview Music, musicians, and composers will take center stage at the League’s 2019 National Conference in Nashville from June 3 to 5, hosted by the Nashville Symphony. by John-Morgan Bush

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Surround Sound Orchestras are experimenting with concerts that put audience members close to the musicians. by Vivien Schweitzer

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44

Summer Festivals 2019 From mountain retreats to outdoor amphitheaters and lawn concerts, a classical guide to what’s on this summer.

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Community Service During the recent partial government shutdown, orchestras stepped up with free tickets. by Nancy Malitz 61 Advertiser Index 62 League of American Orchestras Annual Fund 64 Coda Singer/songwriter Rhiannon Giddens, who made her name on the folk scene, is bringing her voice to the orchestra and opera world.

64 Michael Weintrob

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Road Trips A summer vacation by car offers the appeal of the open road— and the flexibility to hit a lot of classical-music festivals. A drive-by, divided into five excursions. by Keith Powers

Ed DeArmitt/Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra

Start Spreading the News As news outlets cut back coverage of classical music, orchestras are filling the void by telling their own stories. by Susan Elliott

about the cover

Classical-music road trip, anyone? The answer is yes, to judge from the faces of Sarasota Music Festival musicians Caeli Smith, Jarita Ng, Joseph Betts, and Ben Manis. The most popular American vacation by far is one taken by car, so it seems reasonable to ask: how many classical festivals summer can you hit in a two-week road trip? And what is the experience like? See story page 36.

Text marked like this indicates a link to websites and online resources.

Key Glockenspiel Professionals Depend on Yamaha.

With a touch that matches Yamaha concert grand pianos, hammers made of deer antler for a restrained reverberation, and the first ever single-layer action to create a uniform feel, the new key glockenspiel from Yamaha gives professionals ample reason to depend on Yamaha.

CEL-56PGL

Visit 4wrd.it/celsym13 for complete details

SCORE News, moves, and events in the orchestra industry THE

Tony Nelson

The Minnesota Orchestra, based in Minneapolis, launched its annual Common Chords residency program in 2011, bringing a week of music and other events to far-flung Minnesota cities, in settings ranging from concert halls and schools to coffee shops, pubs, and community centers. This winter, the orchestra stayed closer to home with a Common Chords residency featuring more than 25 events, many of them free, throughout the city’s working-class North Minneapolis neighborhood, January 2127. Highlights included Music Director Osmo Vänskä leading the orchestra in a concert at North High School featuring artists from the community including The Steeles, MacPhail Northside Youth Orchestra Bucket Drummers, and Juxtaposition Arts. The program included Michael Abels’s Dance for Martin’s Dream, Alejandro García Caturla’s Danzón, Bernstein’s Overture to Candide, Sibelius’s Finlandia, and Barber’s Symphony No. 1. Other activities included a Community Meal and Sing-Along at Sanctuary Covenant Church, musician visits to elementary and high schools, and chamber performances at locations ranging from the University of Minnesota Urban Research and Outreach-Engagement Center to Wilson’s Image Barbers and Stylists and Sammy’s Avenue Eatery. The 2019 residency was designed over twelve months by a steering committee of North Minneapolis leaders representing a cross-section of the community.

Tony Nelson

At the Minnesota Orchestra’s Common Chords residency in the city’s Northside neighborhood this winter, activities included a catered community meal and sing-a-long with musicians and community members at Sanctuary Covenant Church (above and top left); informal performances by the Northside Youth Orchestra Bucket Drummers, joined by Music Director Osmo Vänskä, second from right in photo (left); and a Freestyle Dance Battle with a string quartet and Asian Media Access Youth Dancers.

The final orchestra concert was followed by a free reception for audience members and musicians.

Chicago Symphony Musicians Strike Over Pension, Salary At press time, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was in the second week of a strike by musicians. The strike began on March 10, following eleven months of contract negotiations. At issue are the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association’s proposal to replace the musicians’ pension plan, which is a defined benefit plan, with a direct contribution plan, and the amount of salary increases.

The Chicago Federation of Musicians, which represents the musicians, has argued that salaries are inadequate, and falling behind those at orchestras of comparable size in other cities. CSOA President Jeff Alexander said the proposed three-season contract includes increases in base pay of 1, 2, and 3 percent, and that funding requirements for the current pension plan are unsustainable. In the Chicago Tribune, CSO bassist Stephen Lester, chair of the musicians’ negotiating committee, said that the decision to strike “was not taken lightly.” Discussions between musicians and management were on hold at press time. Visit The Hub at https://hub.americanorchestras.org/ for regular updates on the situation.

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symphony

SPRING 2019

Tony Nelson

Common Chords in Minnesota

Equity, diversity, and inclusion are among the most vital concerns in the United States today. In January 2019, the League of American Orchestras’ board of directors adopted a strategic framework for the League’s work in advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in the orchestral field. “Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion: An Evolving Strategic Framework” outlines why EDI is important to the League, and why the League thinks it’s important for all orchestras. The document provides a definition of terms, as well the League’s vision, values, goals, and strategies related to EDI. While the framework was designed for use by the League, it may inform or inspire similar reflections, conversations, and statements by member orchestras, which may adapt as much of the framework as they wish.

The framework is expected to evolve as the League and its membership engage with this work and continue learning. To read or download the framework, visit www. americanorchestras.org/EDIframework.

Classical Grammy Awards: Bates, Blanchard, Fuchs, Kernis, Shostakovich

MUSICAL CHAIRS Montana’s Billings Symphony Orchestra has named IGNACIO BARRÓN VIELA executive director.

KIMBERLY BREDEMEIER has been named acting executive director of the Evansville Philharmonic in Indiana.

Barrón Viela

New York City-based classical music station WQXR has appointed JACQUI CHENG to the newly created position of editor-in-chief, music.

Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon has appointed GLORIA CHIEN and SOOVIN KIM as its next artistic directors. They will replace longtime artistic director David Shifrin in 2020. has been appointed music director of the New West Symphony Orchestra in Thousand Oaks, California.

MICHAEL CHRISTIE

HARRY CHRISTOPHERS will step down as artistic director of Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society in 2021.

is the new executive director of the San Antonio Symphony.

COREY COWART

The Santa Fe Symphony and Chorus has named executive director.

DANIEL CRUPI

EDO DE WAART will become the San Diego Symphony’s principal guest conductor in the 2019-20 season.

Musical Chairs

League Board Adopts Strategic Framework for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

Orchestras on opposite coasts were classical winners at the 61st annual Grammy Awards in February. The Boston Symphony Orchestra won Best Orchestral Performance for its recording of Shostakovich Symphony Nos. 4 and 11, led by Music Director Andris Nelsons. The Seattle Symphony’s recording of Aaron Jay Kernis’s Violin Concerto, led

by Music Director Ludovic Morlot with soloist James Ehnes, won Best Contemporary Classical Composition and Best Classical Instrumental Solo. Best Classical Compendium went to Kenneth Fuchs’s Piano Concerto (“Spiritualist”), Poems of Life, Glacier, and Rush, with JoAnn Falletta conducting the London Symphony Orchestra and pianist Jeffrey Biegel, countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, electric guitarist D.J. Sparr, and alto saxophonist Timothy McAllister. Best Opera winner was Santa Fe Opera, with Mason Bates’s The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs. Terence Blanchard’s Blut und Boden (Blood and Soil) won Best Instrumental Composition in the composing/arranging category.

Oregon’s Eugene Symphony has appointed ­STEPHANIE DOMURAT marketing and communications director, TEGAN DEBOLT development and fundraising manager, and MARY SCARPINATO finance and administrative director.

Presidential Tribute

RYAN FLEUR is the new executive director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, where he was executive vice president of orchestra advancement and interim president prior to Matías Tarnopolsky’s arrival as president and CEO in 2018.

In early December, the Symphony of Southeast Texas, based in Beaumont, received an urgent phone call from Sylvester Turner, the mayor of Houston.

Could Chelsea Tipton II, music director of the Symphony of Southeast Texas, conduct the Houston Symphony in a memorial concert in Houston honoring the late President George H.W. Bush, Chelsea Tipton II conducts the Houston Symphony who had died the previous day? Tipton in a public memorial concert for the late President would have two days to prepare a pro- George H.W. Bush, December 3, 2018. gram including Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, “Nimrod” from Elgar’s Enigma Variations, and “I Believe I Can Fly” with gospel singer Yolanda Adams. The tribute, held outside City Hall, went off without a hitch, and also included performances by several country-music stars, all favorites of the Bush family. americanorchestras.org

Composer and conductor TAN DUN will become dean of the Bard College Conservatory of Music in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York on July 1, 2019.

RICHARD EGARR will become music Dun director of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra in 2020, replacing longtime leader Nicholas McGegan.

The Minnesota Orchestra has named CAROLYN EGEBERG vice president of advancement.

has been named executive and artistic director of Cal Performances, based in Berkeley, California. He served as senior director and artistic adviser at Carnegie Hall from 2007 to 2019.

JEREMY GEFFEN

The Reno Chamber Orchestra’s Nevada Chamber Music Festival has appointed cellist CLIVE GREENSMITH artistic director.

The Greensboro Symphony Orchestra in North Carolina has appointed KEYSHIA TAMAR HAITHCOCK director of development and public relations, succeeding chief operating officer DANIEL CRUPI .

Haithcock

has been named director of media relations and communications at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. She was previously the New York Philharmonic’s vice president of communications.

KATHERINE JOHNSON

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Country of Immigrants

MUSICAL CHAIRS

At the heart of Julia

ROGER KALIA has been named associate conductor of California’s Pacific Symphony.

Wolfe’s oratorio Fire in

The Maryland Symphony Orchestra has named ANDREW KIPE interim executive director.

my mouth is the 1911

has been appointed executive director of the Lexington Symphony in Massachusetts. LAUREN BUSA is the orchestra’s new operations manager.

Factory Fire in which

Triangle Shirtwaist

JEFF LEVENSON

146 garment work-

has beenn named the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s vice president for sales and marketing.

RYAN LEWIS

Washington, D.C.’s National Symphony Orchestra has named LIN MA principal clarinet.

women, perished.

JOHN L. MALCOLM IV

has been appointed chief conductor of Sweden’s Uppsala Chamber Orchestra, effective fall 2019.

Miller

Connecticut’s New Haven Symphony Orchestra has appointed violinist and composer DANIEL BERNARD ROUMAIN as artist-in-residence.

North Carolina’s Youth Orchestras of Charlotte has named CHRISTINE RYDEL executive director and ERNEST PEREIRA music director.

American-Israeli conductor STEVEN SLOANE will become music director of the Jerusalem Symphony in 2020-21. is the new executive director of the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra.

U.S. government shutdown over

tours of former immigrants’ apartments at the Tenement Museum, online discussions by the orchestra’s current musicians of their own migrations and cultural heritage, chamber music by composers influenced by their time in America, and an archival exhibit.

Music Director Jaap van Zweden led the premiere of Wolfe’s Fire in my

Singers from The Crossing performed selections from Julia Wolfe’s Fire in my mouth in apartments at the Tenement Museum, connecting Wolfe’s music to the lives of the immigrant garment workers her score depicts.

mouth, which evokes the

The Houston Symphony has appointed chief marketing officer.

Teisinger

The Juilliard School has appointed ALEXANDRA WHEELER vice president and chief advancement officer.

has been named president of the Conductors Guild, an organization for conductors of symphony, opera, ballet, choral, band, contemporary, and chamber ensembles.

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coming during the

role as a beacon for immigrants with two weeks of concerts and activities that included

STEVEN ROSENZWEIG has been named chief financial officer of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.

JULIUS WILLIAMS

premiere in January,

ic’s “New York Stories: Threads of Our City” events, which explored the city’s enduring

The Annapolis Symphony Orchestra in Maryland has appointed PAUL NEMETH principal bass.

has been named executive director of the Association of California Orchestras.

relevance at its world

immigration policy. Fire in my mouth was the centerpiece of the New York Philharmon-

TIMOTHY MUFFITT will step down as music director of Louisiana’s Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra at the end of the 2019-20 season, after 20 years in that role.

SARAH WEBER

Music Director Jaap van Zweden led the New York Philharmonic in the world premiere of Julia Wolfe’s Fire in my Mouth in January. The performance included archival photos and films, with lyrics drawn from oral histories about the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Vocalists from the chamber choir The Crossing and the Young People’s Chorus of New York City filled the stage and aisles of David Geffen Hall.

Chris Lee

The Seattle Symphony has appointed LEE MILLS associate conductor and LINA GONZALEZ-GRANADOS conducting fellow, effective in September 2019.

GWEN WATKINS

gained unanticipated

Musical Chairs

The Louisville Orchestra has named ROBERT MASSEY chief executive officer.

JENNIFER TEISINGER

The multimedia work

Ma

KRIS MARKES is serving as the Oklahoma City Philharmonic’s interim executive director, following the departure of longtime executive director EDDIE WALKER .

REBECCA MILLER

young immigrant

Chris Lee

has been named to the newly created position of chief technology officer at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

ers, most of them

fears and hopes of immigrants in the early twentieth century as well as the horror of the factory fire. Protests and actions by the surviving women, many of whom were Jewish and Italian immigrants, led to workplace safety reform. The Philharmonic co-commissioned the piece with Cal Performances, the Krannert Center, and the University Musical Society at the University of Michigan. The chorus comprised 146 women and girls— the number of workers who died in the fire—from the chamber choir The Crossing and the Young People’s Chorus of New York City.

symphony

SPRING 2019

Pianist, Composer, and Conductor André Previn Was there anything André Previn could not do? He moved with breathtaking ease from conducting to composing to performing, writing operas and concertos and film scores, playing jazz piano, and leading orchestras around the world. Born in Berlin as Andreas Ludwig Priwin, he died in Manhattan on February 28 at age 89. As a child, he fled Nazi Germany with his family in the late 1930s and emigrated to the U.S. By the time he was a teen, Previn was improvising music for silent films and working on Hollywood movie scores. Music-making for film and television was a connecting thread during much of his early and middle career. In the 1970s, he hosted the TV show André Previn’s Music Night on the BBC with the London Symphony Orchestra. He won Oscars for his musical arrangements for four films; his original film scores included Elmer Gantry, Inside Daisy Clover, and Dead Ringer; and he wrote the songs for Valley of the Dolls. He was renowned as a jazz pianist and as an interpreter of the Great American Songbook.

Classical music was at the core of Previn’s life. Beginning in the 1960s, he was music director of the Houston Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and Los Angeles Philharmonic; André Previn during his years as Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s music principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and Royal Philharmonic; and principal director, 1976-84 guest conductor of Tokyo’s NHK Symphony Orchestra. The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra noted on its tribute page to Previn that he was widely credited for launching a new era there.

Robert Moir, the Pittsburgh Symphony’s former vice president for artistic planning, remembers that shortly after Previn’s appointment in 1976, he said, “When I arrived for the first rehearsal, the musicians were tuning and doing the thing with the reeds and all that. And I suddenly had a moment of absolute pleasure. I thought, ‘That’s my orchestra. They’re tuning for me.’ I couldn’t get over it. It was so wonderful.” Among his accomplishments was Previn and the Pittsburgh, a string of award-winning television specials that ran for three years. In the 1980s, he composed a harp concerto for the Pittsburgh Symphony’s principal harp, Gretchen Van Hoesen, and Reflections for English Horn, Cello and Orchestra for Anne Martindale Williams, principal cello, and Harold Smoliar, principal English horn.

He wrote song cycles, including Honey and Rue for Kathleen Battle; more concertos, including one for pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy and another for violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter; and the operas A Streetcar Named Desire and Brief Encounter. The media spotlight often zeroed in on Previn’s glamorous lifestyle—his third marriage was to actress Mia Farrow, and his fifth and final one was to Anne-Sophie Mutter. But it was his connection to music that remained most constant. Previn was composing until the end of his life.

Bring on the Berlioz In December, the Delaware Symphony Orchestra received an unusual gift: seven pitched church bells, donated by the friars at the Franciscan Center in Wilmington. The bells—part of a set known as The Bells of Remembrance that have been featured at 9/11 commemorative events—are being renamed the William Kerrigan Symphony Bells of Remembrance, after the orchestra’s principal percussionist, who “really got the relationship going between the Symphony and the Bells of Remembrance,” says Brother David Schlatter. Each bell has a pitch that corresponds to requirements in certain musical works of the symphonic canon. The two largest bells—a 1,200-pound, 42-inch-diameter bell pitched at G, and a 550-pound, 30-1/2-inch-diameter bell pitched at In December, the Delaware Sym- C—are nicknamed the Berlioz bells, since they are used in the composer’s phony received seven pitched bells from the Franciscan Center Symphonie fantastique. This winter, of Wilmington, Delaware. For the while the DSO looked for a permatime being they are being stored nent space for the bells, they were in Music Director David Amado’s stored in the garage of David Amagarage. do’s home in Wilmington. The bells will be featured during indoor DSO performances and at outdoor concerts such as the City of Wilmington’s July Fourth concert. americanorchestras.org

Racial Equity Foundations Workshop The room was packed on February 26 at the San Francisco Symphony’s SoundBox space, when the orchestra hosted a full-day Racial Equity Foundations Workshop, which brought together 30 area arts organizations to build a movement to advance racial equity in and through the arts in the city. Joseph Conyers, assistant principal bass of the Philadelphia Orchestra, gave the keynote address (pictured below). Representatives of arts organizations of all sizes attended the workshop, which covered the impact of individual, institutional, and structural racism and bias.

Participants also contributed ideas for a future sector-wide racial equity working group to be led by the San Francisco Arts Commission. In addition to performing in the Philadelphia Orchestra, Conyers is an active music-education advocate. He is executive director of Philadelphia’s Project 440 music-education program and a 2019 Sphinx Organization Medal of Excellence recipient.

Mark Hanson

Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra

Berlin, Germany, April 6, 1929 – New York, N.Y., February 28, 2019

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Matt Duboff

Ice, Ice, Baby In Winnipeg, Canada, midwinter temperatures regularly plunge to the negative double digits, but that’s when things get really cooking at the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.

At one concert during the orchestra’s annual New Music Festival in January and February, a capacity crowd of 500 people jammed into an outdoor amphitheater created by ice architect Luca Roncoroni to hear John Luther Adams’s Inuksuit on a program entitled “Glacial Time.” Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra Resident Conductor Julian Pellicano led the Adams work, featuring percussionist Victoria Sparks and the University of Manitoba Percussion Ensemble, and Norwegian artist and multi-­ instrumentalist Terje Insungset performed his own Beauty of Winter on ice instruments. The weeklong festival, led

by Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra Music Director Daniel Raiskin with Harry Stafylakis as co-curator and composer in residence, featured ten world premieres, plus Making music outdoors at the Winnipeg Symphony’s New Music panels, discussions, a Festival composers institute, and noon-hour concerts. Performers included the progressive-metal band Animals as Leaders, the vocal octet Roomful of Teeth, the Canadian ensemble collectif9, a string band, and the percussion quartet Architek—and most concerts, thankfully, were indoors.

Star Maestro Conductor Gustavo Dudamel has racked up a lot of honors in the decade since he was named music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, but on January 22 he received what might be the ultimate Tinseltown accolade: he got his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Dudamel joins more than 2,600 stars on the 1.5-mile stretch of sidewalk at the heart of Hollywood Boulevard that draws 10 million visitors per year. Alphabetically, the placement of Dudamel’s name says a lot about the nature of celebrity in Hollywood: he is nestled between Duck, Donald and veteran character actor Duff, Howard.

Though classical-music figures are few on the Walk of Fame—Leonard Bernstein, Leopold Stokowski, and Igor Stravinsky number among them—former Los Angeles Philharmonic Music Director Zubin Mehta got his star in 2011. Joining Rana Ghadban, president and CEO of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, to unveil Dudamel’s star in January were actor Helen Hunt and Los Angeles Philharmonic Music and Artistic conductor and film composer John Director Gustavo Dudamel gets his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Williams.

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Musical Instruments to be Part of Endangered Species Treaty Talks Musical instruments will be on the agenda when representatives from 182 countries gather in Colombo, Sri Lanka May 23 through June 3 to renegotiate the implementation of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Whether orchestras are traveling internationally for performances or musicians seek to buy and sell instruments across borders, CITES sets limitations and requires permits for instruments that have historically been made with small bits of material from natural resources that are now under protected status, such as monitor lizards, sea turtles, and elephant ivory.

The League of American Orchestras will participate in the negotiations, seeking to improve implementation of the Musical Instrument Certificate that touring orchestras must obtain, and the League will also weigh in on new policies related to rosewood, which is used in a wide array of instruments.

At meetings leading up to the Sri Lanka gathering, conservation leaders agreed that musical instruments are not contributing to the threat to non-Brazilian rosewood species and should be exempted from CITES permit requirements. A record number of proposals to list species under protected status as well as new policies will be considered at the meeting. Visit https://americanorchestras.org/endangeredspecies for information.

symphony

SPRING 2019

Boston Symphony Principal Flute’s Equal-Pay Lawsuit Settled A new equal-pay law in Massachusetts and the salary of a Boston Symphony Orchestra principal musician were the focus of extensive media coverage in late 2018 and early 2019. In August, Elizabeth Rowe, the orchestra’s principal flute since 2004, filed a lawsuit under the Massachusetts Equal Pay Law, enacted in July 2018. Noting that Rowe’s salary is approximately three-quarters of that of John Ferrillo, the BSO’s principal oboe since 2001, Rowe’s suit alleged discrimination by the orchestra “on the basis of gender by paying her an amount less than other comparable males for comparable work.” The orchestra denied the charges, stating that gender “is not one of the factors in the compensation process at the Boston Symphony Orchestra;” that oboe and flute are not comparable instruments; and that many orchestras set different pay rates for different instruments. In February, Rowe and the BSO entered mediation, and the case was settled in Suffolk County Superior Court. Details of the resolution remain confidential.

You’re wrong about

President’s Proposed Budget Eliminates Federal Funding for NEA, NEH On March 11, President Trump put forward a $4.7 trillion federal budget for 2020 that eliminates funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Like last year’s proposed budget, the 2020 spending plan provides small appropriations that would enable the agencies to close down. The cuts to the arts, humanities, public broadcasting, museums, and libraries total $897 million of the $4.7 trillion budget. According to the White House’s 2020 budget document, “Most of the eliminations and reductions in this volume reflect a continuation of policies proposed in the 2018 and 2019 President’s Budgets that have not yet been enacted by the Congress and highlight the Administration’s efforts to eliminate wasteful or unnecessary spending.” The Washington Post reported, “President Trump called for eliminating these agencies in his first two budget plans, but the Republican-led Congress funded them both times, with the NEA, NEH and IMLS each seeing small increases in 2019.”

Lawmakers will need to reach an agreement on the budget later this year. Visit the Advocacy and Government pages at americanorchestras.org to stay up to date.

Saint Paul-Puerto Rico Connections

When cellist Joshua Koestenbaum was twelve years old, he wrote to legendary cellist Pablo Casals and received a letter in response. This March, Koestenbaum, now a member of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, traveled with his colleagues to Puerto Rico to perform in the Casals Festival, founded by his childhood hero in 1957. While there, the musicians performed a program of Beethoven, Bruckner, Mozart, and Widmann. Former SPCO artistic partner Christian Zacharias conducted and was piano soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27, and SPCO musicians Ruggero Allifranchini (violin) and Hyobi Sim (viola) were featured in Jörg Widmann’s Aria for String Orchestra. Beyond music, there was a philanthropic aspect to the trip. Puerto Rico was hard hit by Hurricane Maria in 2017, and the orchestra encouraged friends and audiences back home to contribute to ongoing recovery efforts on the island.

Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra cellist Joshua Koestenbaum with a portrait of Pablo Casals in San Juan, Puerto Rico, March 2019. americanorchestras.org

“I never knew that a pantomimist could be so intelligent. I guess you proved me wrong.”

— Stacy, age 11

Like Stacy, you can discover that mimes are not all as stupid as they look. Dan Kamin makes classical music into visual fun for young and old. An intelligent addition to any family series.

See how wrong you are about mimes at

www.dankamin.com

Dan Kamin

Comecdeyrtos Con (412)563-0468 dan2@dankamin.com 9

Pacific Northwest Connections

The League of American Orchestras has a long history of providing programming, research, and resources to support the work of orchestra governance. In February, the League presented the first of two 2019 orchestra governance seminars to inform trustees, executive directors, and board chairs about best practices and to give them the chance to connect across organizations. More than 30 trustees and orchestra executives attended the daylong event, which was hosted by the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall. After welcomes by League President and CEO Jesse Rosen, Los Angeles Philharmonic CEO Simon Woods, and Association of California Symphony Orchestras Executive Director Sarah Weber, attendees participated in group discussions and activities and learned how to improve their own boards. The day’s main speaker At the League governance seminar in Los Angeles this February, was governance guru orchestra trustees worked in groups to apply lessons learned.

Susan Howlett, author of Boards on Fire! (excerpted in the Winter 2019 issue of Symphony). The day wrapped up with a concert by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in music by Benjamin Britten and Richard Strauss. For more League governance resources, visit the Noteboom Governance Center at www.americanorchestras.org/noteboom.

On December 3, the Oregon Symphony hosted the second annual Northwest Orchestras Gathering, which was established to foster discussion about issues and challenges facing orchestras in the region. Nearly 50 artistic and administrative professionals from 33 orchestras across Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and British Columbia attended the event. Oregon Symphony President and CEO Scott Showalter and Scott Faulkner, representing the League of American Orchestras, opened the meeting with a conversation about strategic planning. Faulkner advised orchestra leaders to take stock of what they are doing and what they could be doing. “If you can’t say, ‘Hell, yeah!’ about a project, you shouldn’t pursue it,” he said. Afterward, attendees participated in break-out sessions addressing

Music in Motion Point Counterpoint II—a 195-foot barge designed by Louis Kahn that for years was home to the American Wind Symphony Orchestra—has retired to Florida. Except that the boat is not retired, exactly. Finding a permanent berth for the boat has been a longtime project of Robert Boudreau, the 92-year-old trumpet player and conductor who founded the American Wind Symphony and lives in Pennsylvania. Point Counterpoint II first gained fame during a 76-city performance tour for the U.S. bicentennial in 1976, but the American Wind Symphony gave its final concerts in 2017, and the ship needs repairs estimated at $1 million. After cellist Yo-Yo Ma drew attention to the boat’s plight, several cities expressed interest giving it a home. In the end, the boat made it to Pahokee, Florida, on Lake Okeechobee, in Palm Beach County. Boudreau hopes to use the boat’s refurbished stage to establish a music program for young instrumentalists in partnership with local school districts, and has begun working with the chamber of commerce and school board members. The program would provide college scholarships as well as music The Point Counterpoint II, docked at its new home in Pahokee, Florida lessons.

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The Northwest Orchestras Gathering started with a session led by Oregon Symphony President and CEO Scott Showalter and Scott Faulkner, representing the League of American Orchestras, on the stage of the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland.

Courtesy Pahokee Chamber of Commerce

John-Morgan Bush

Understanding Orchestra Governance

topics including fundraising, artistic planning, public relations, and equity, diversity, and inclusion. The half-day meeting was followed by dinner and an Oregon Symphony concert led by guest conductor Eivind Gullberg Jensen and featuring Rachmaninoff ’s Symphonic Dances and Walton’s Violin Concerto, with soloist James Ehnes. The group of northwest orchestras plans to continue meeting annually while expanding its membership with the support of the League of American Orchestras. symphony

SPRING 2019

League’s Catalyst Fund to Advance Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Orchestras Orchestras across the U.S. have told the League of American Orchestras that they are committed to advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion throughout their organizations— but that they need help in doing so. The League’s new Catalyst Fund aims to address that. Made possible by a three-year, $2.1 million grant to the League from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Catalyst Fund supports the League’s commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in the field, and responds to needs expressed by orchestra stakeholders during the League’s listening, learning, and planning process. Announced in January, The Catalyst Fund provides annual grants to League-member orchestras that seek to further their understanding of EDI and to foster effective EDI practices. Catalyst Fund grants range from $10,000 to $25,000; orchestras are required to use the funds to support the costs of retaining a skilled EDI practitioner to advance EDI learning objectives.

Examples of activities that qualify for support include, but are not limited to, working with a consultant on capacity building; planning, alignment, and readiness; improving competencies; measuring progress; and peer- and group-based learning. Grantees will be linked to a learning community to share their findings, including an online forum as well as remote and in-person convenings. The 2019 Catalyst Grant awards will be announced in mid-May. Find further details at http://www.americanorchestras.org/ TheCatalystFund. For more on equity, diversity, and inclusion, visit the League’s EDI Resource Center at http://www.americanorchestras.org/EDI.

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Composers Courtney Bryan, Cindy Cox, and Fang Man will each receive orchestral commissions of $15,000 as part of the 2018 Women Composers Readings and Commissions program, an initiative of the League of American Orchestras, in partnership with American Composers Orchestra (ACO) and supported by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation. Courtney Bryan’s work will be premiered by the Louisiana Philharmonic Courtney Bryan Cindy Cox Fang Man Orchestra and Music Director Carlos Miguel Prieto in the 2019-20 season. Cindy Cox’s work will be premiered by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in May 2020, and Fang Man’s work will be premiered by the San Francisco Symphony (details to be announced). Since the inception of the Women Composers Readings and Commissions program in 2014, thirteen composers have received commissions, and five new works have been premiered,

by Julia Adolphe, Melody Eötvös, Chen-Hui Jen, Andreia Pinto Correia, and Andrea Reinkemeyer. As part of the program, thirty-four women composers benefitted from career development via EarShot Readings. The Women Composers Readings and Commissions program is embedded in EarShot, an initiative of American Composers Orchestra in collaboration with American Composers Forum, the League of American Orchestras, and New Music USA. Visit americanorchestras.org for more about the Women Composers Readings and Commissions program.

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QUESTIONS

How to Develop Human Resources When You Have No Resources Organizational culture is key to retaining a capable and diverse workforce with low turnover and high employee satisfaction.

by Jesse Rosen

M

ission-driven organizations prioritize mission delivery.

Staff, board, and volunteers all engage out of their passion for the mission.

That passion and commitment are what make these organizations exciting and rewarding places to work. These organizations tend to focus outward on the outcomes and progress toward mission. Unfortunately, and especially in nonprofits, that outward focus has often been at the expense of looking inward at the people and the cultures that drive the organization. We often presume that passion for mission brings high motivation, job satisfaction, and acceptance of demanding and challenging working conditions. And we have put nearly all available resources into mission delivery, leaving little or none for talent development and culture. Well, in case anyone hasn’t noticed, the days of getting a free pass for neglecting talent and culture because you are nonprofit, have a worthy mission, or just can’t afford it, are over.

In today’s world, every organization is expected to address at least two aspects of organizational culture: sexual harass-

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Chris Lee

CRITICAL

Jesse Rosen, President and CEO, League of American Orchestras

guidance and top-level professional services. Here are some things you can do. ment prevention, and equity, diversity, and inclusion. This is not easy or quick work, and there are no silver bullets. But there are qualified practitioners who can help, and various forms of online guidance are available. Developing and nurturing talent, while not so much in the public limelight, is no less important. Orchestras suffer from significant levels of attrition among administrators. Too many gifted,

In today’s world, every organization is expected to address at least two aspects of organizational culture: sexual harassment prevention, and equity, diversity, and inclusion. motivated people leave the field. The cost of turnover of a single employee is estimated at three times the annual salary of the employee. And conversely, high rates of retention are highly corelated to effective onboarding of new staff.

While the vast majority of orchestras are not scaled to support a dedicated chief diversity officer or director of human resources, there are opportunities to access

Human Resources • Through a new partnership between the League of American Orchestras and Nonprofit HR (NPHR), the country’s leading provider of outsourced human resources services in the nonprofit sector, we are offering three free webinars covering key talent development practices as a benefit of League membership: 00 Recruiting & Interviewing: Hiring the Right Talent to Move the Mission Forward 00 The Challenges of Managing People 00 Why Culture Matters to Mission For more information, visit https:// americanorchestras.org/ and look for Nonprofit HR. • Members can also obtain discounted outsourced human-resources consultation services through Nonprofit HR with the special League member-only discount of 18 percent.

NPHR’s standard consultation rate is $225 per hour. Member orchestras pay an hourly rate of $185. Nonprofit HR offers the full range of human-resources services includsymphony

SPRING 2019

•

•

•

•

ing talent acquisition, onboarding and orientation, employee relations and engagement, compliance, performance management, cultural assessments, and more. https://www. nonprofithr.com/ The League’s online Jobs Center has a range of information and programs designed to help those interested in exploring a career in orchestra management or looking for that right next step. You can post an opening at your organization, or look for a job on the site. The site also offers sample job descriptions and tips on applying for jobs. https://amer icanorchestras.org/career-center Join the Society for Human Resource Management, which provides hundreds of resources for virtually every aspect of HR: interview questions, job descriptions, sample policies, etc. Memberships start at $95 per year. https://www.shrm.org/ Board members: Recruit a humanresources professional on your board.

And if you don’t already have one, charter an HR or personnel task force.

Participate in the League’s annual Salary Survey, to benchmark your salaries and see new data on HR practices and priorities.

Organizational Culture and Talent Development • Guidance on sexual harassment prevention is available at the League website, including guidance from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and guidance for boards of trustees from BoardSource. americanorchestras.org/ shprevention.

• Some states have mandated sexual harassment training for all employees. Be compliant. The League had a good experience with an online provider for its training: Clear Law Institute. Cost can be as low as $30 per employee. Visit https://clear lawinstitute.com/ for more.

• The League’s new Catalyst Fund americanorchestras.org

•

•

•

•

•

•

awards grants that aim to build the internal capacity of orchestras to advance their understanding of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) and to foster effective EDI practices. Grants support the costs of EDI practitioner consultancies with orchestras. This year’s deadline has passed but the program continues for at least two more years. https:// www.americanorchestras.org/The CatalystFund Additional equity, diversity, and inclusion resources are available on the League’s EDI Resource Center at http://www.americanorchestras. org/EDI. Appoint a chief culture officer. No, not a high-cost C-Suite executive, but if organizational culture is an institutional priority, then some person, or people, needs to be charged with looking after it. This is as true for board and musicians as it is for staff.

Encourage qualified people you know to take advantage of the League’s talent development programs: Emerging Leaders Program at http://americanorchestras.org/ELP and Essentials of Orchestra Management at https://www.amer icanorchestras.org/essentials.

Participate in the League’s peer learning opportunities like the National Conference, Midwinter Managers Meeting, and League 360 discussion groups.

Board members can develop their talents in governance practice and leadership through the many sources available on the League’s Noteboom Governance Center at amer icanorchestras.org/noteboom.

Join BoardSource, a recognized leader in nonprofit board leadership that supports, trains, and educates nonprofit leaders from across the country and throughout the world. https://boardsource.org/

Several years ago, Independent Sector— the organization that represents the entire

Lisa Brown Alexander, founder and CEO of Nonprofit HR, a leading provider of human resources services for nonprofits, participated in the League’s 2018 Midwinter Managers Meeting and National Conference. A partnership between the League and Nonprofit HR offers League members free webinars covering key talent development practices, as well as discounted rates for consulting services.

nonprofit sector—launched an Initiative for Non-Profit Talent and Leadership.

That program framed the leadership opportunity for the sector in a way that also applies directly to orchestras. I continue to believe this framework is highly relevant to our field, so with only a few tweaks I have adapted it here as follows: Vision: Orchestras are thriving, healthy, sustainable, and fueled by a diverse network of inspired and innovative leaders.

Theory of Change: Valuing talent and leadership through focused investment of time, attention, and resources is one of the most effective ways to achieve transformational results for thriving orchestras.

Core Beliefs: • Leadership isn’t about a person or a position.

• Leadership is an ongoing practice exercised at all levels.

• Equipping leaders to make an impact requires sustaining them as healthy, thriving, and whole individuals.

• Leadership embraces and respects diversity as essential to creating the conditions that elevate community solutions.

• Leaders do not work alone: collaboration among organizations and individuals is essential.

• Highly capable and diverse leadership is a consistently effective and efficient means to achieve impact in orchestras.

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ROOM

BOARD

Who Killed City Opera?

New York City Opera had a storied history, a reputation for scrappy, innovative productions, its own orchestra and chorus, and a prominent home at Lincoln Center. A perfect storm of economic circumstances and cultural shifts raised red flags about its survival. But the board of directors failed to understand and embrace their fiduciary and oversight responsibilities, and the 70-year-old company filed for bankruptcy. The company regrouped, but now operates in greatly diminished form.

An excerpt from Heidi Waleson’s Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America chronicles the story from behind the scenes—and examines the important role that boards play in the success of performing arts groups.

By Heidi Waleson

W

hen the New York City Opera filed for bankruptcy in October 2013, the arts world was shocked. The 70-year-old company had teetered on the edge of the abyss before, but it had always survived. What was different this time?

Blame could be, and was, liberally assigned. Should the honors go to George Steel, its final general director? Or, working backwards, was the last straw the decision to leave Lincoln Center in 2011? Many pointed to the dark season of 2008–09, when the company abandoned its loyal subscribers, who, in turn, abandoned it. Was the culprit the former board chair, Susan Baker, whose single-handed, quixotic choice of Gerard Mortier as general director and whose failure to raise

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the funds to support his vision set the final desperate years in motion? Or was it the board, which did not come up with a plan to fix the company’s struggling business model in the 2000s, when the

City Opera’s demise can be attributed to a complex web of factors and behaviors. But there is no doubt that one central strand of the story was the role of City Opera’s board. annual operating deficits began to grow, and instead followed Baker’s lead in all things, including the steady pillaging of the endowment, and also allowed for a leadership vacuum after the departure of general director Paul Kellogg?

City Opera’s demise can be attributed to a complex web of factors and behaviors.

But there is no doubt that one central strand of the story was the role of City Opera’s board, which failed to recognize and deal with the company’s worsening condition in a dramatically changed environment, enabled destructive decisions, and failed to come up with the money to secure its future.

When City Opera had found itself on the brink before, a savior always seemed to turn up. In the early 2000s, the board, like the company, continued to expect one, even as audiences dwindled, fundraising stayed flat, and expenses grew exponentially, resulting in growing operating deficits. This time, the hope was that a new theater would solve all its problems. A more artistically and acoustically suitable theater had been Paul Kellogg’s dream from the early years of his tenure, and the board, first under the leadership of Irwin Schneiderman and, as of 2004, that of Susan Baker, was happy to go along with the idea.

Kara Unterberg, a young City Opera fan and Harvard Business School graduate, joined the board in 2004. From the outset, she was aware of the company’s difficulties and felt that little was being done, at least on the board level, to symphony

SPRING 2019

address them. “So much of the board’s time was wasted,” she said, on the new building project: “where to build, how to raise money to build—and all this stuff was fanciful.” In her view, the board found the tangible building project easier to talk about than enduring problems like ticket sales, deficits, and the company’s artistic future. As the youngest member by far, Unterberg recalls being intimidated by the City Opera board, which, she says, was very formal and not conducive to discussion. “People on non­

Since Gerard Mortier could not start as general director for two years, Board Chair Susan Baker decided that she would run City Opera herself, with support from the company’s executive director.

In 1966, New York City Opera moved from its first home on West 55th Street to the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center (at left in photo), where it remained until 2011. The 2,500-seat theater was designed according to the specifications of choreographer George Balanchine as the home of New York City Ballet, and opened in 1964 (it was renamed for donor David H. Koch in 2008). Balanchine sought to muffle the sound of the dancers’ footsteps, and over time the theater underwent several acoustic modifications to make it more suitable for opera and musical theater.

As part of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York City Opera shared a campus with the Metropolitan Opera (which was right next door), the New York Philharmonic, the Juilliard School, and other major arts organizations.

profit boards often don’t disagree because they are afraid to insult people,” she says.

Under Baker’s leadership, Unterberg felt that dissent was unwelcome. “Things were just presented, and if there was any kind of dissent or question, Susan had this amazing way of just getting off that topic.” Unterberg began to feel that she had no power, that no one wanted her opinion, just her money, and that momentous decisions about the company’s future were made in committee, where there was little that she could do to influence them.

In 2008, facing monetary woes as well as temporary displacement during the renovation of the Koch Theater, the board and management of City Opera decided not present a season while still contractually obligated to pay musicians and chorus, hastening the company’s financial decline.

Aspirational Budgets

Unterberg was particularly dismayed by the board’s practice of approving budgets that included operating deficits.

The budgets were also wildly optimistic, substantially overestimating both ticket and fund­raising income, so that the actual year-­end results showed even greater deficits than those that were projected.

New York City Opera was founded in 1943 by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia as “the people’s opera,” aiming to make the art form accessible to wide audiences with reasonable ticket prices as well as an artistic focus on American performers and composers and new or innovative productions.

In addition to presenting many world premieres, the company launched the careers of singers including Beverly Sills, Plácido Domingo, Shirley Verrett, José Carreras, Sherrill Milnes, and Samuel Ramey. For many years, New York City Opera produced lengthy autumn and spring seasons of opera, operetta, and musicals in repertory, ran extensive education and outreach programs, and maintained its own orchestra and chorus.

Nomi Ghez, the board treasurer, would disapprovingly refer to this practice as “aspirational,” but still it persisted.

The board went on approving the budgets because there were no immediate repercussions: the $55 million endowment—encompassing $51.5 million from the Wallace Funds, a 2001 windfall, as well as some smaller, previously granted funds—had become NYCO’s unofficial piggy bank. Starting in 2004, the company had been using it as collateral to borrow money to fund operations, paying significant interest fees. Then,

Adapted with permission from Heidi Waleson’s Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America (Metropolitan Books, 2018). For more on the book, visit https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781627794978.

americanorchestras.org

late in 2005, two new sources of cash were identified. One was serendipitous: Ruth Klotz, a longtime, relatively low­ level donor, who died in 2002, had left the company half her estate. The Klotz gift would eventually total $10.4 million and would be disbursed over three years, helping to bridge the ever­-widening gulf between expenses and revenue.

In addition, the board had identified a provision in the Wallace endowment agreement that enabled them to take money directly out of the $51.5 million Wallace principal and use it for operations, without being required to pay it back—circumventing the rules that usually govern endowments. For three years, these so­-called Special Projects withdrawals were used to pay off the company’s

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Conductor Julius Rudel and soprano Beverly Sills built stellar careers on international stages, but New York City Opera was their launching pad and home for many years. A 1967 record cover says much about New York City Opera’s cultural role at one time: Sills and bass-baritone Norman Treigle (another City Opera stalwart) were so influential in the revival of Handel’s operas that major label RCA Victor put its resources behind a lavish recording with forces including contralto Maureen Forrester and the New York City Opera Orchestra and Chorus. Rudel and Sills were long associated with City Opera: Rudel led the company from 1957 to 1979, and Sills sang with City Opera from 1955 to 1979, and then led it from 1979 to 1988.

loans (for which the endowment funds had previously been used as collateral).

In all, the company withdrew a total of $9.6 million from the endowment in this way, the maximum permitted under the original grant. Susan Baker was particularly concerned about the loans since the company would have to demonstrate fiscal responsibility if it was to have any chance of receiving support from New York City for the proposed new building. So, for the 2005–06 season, the company used some creative accounting, offsetting the actual operating deficit of $5.9 million with the Klotz bequest and a Special Projects withdrawal from the Wallace endowment. On paper, the company had a surplus for the year. The following year, with the second multi-million-­dollar installment from the Klotz bequest and another $4.24 million from Wallace, they did the same and again showed a surplus. The finance committee also decided to raise the percentage of the endowment draw from 5.5 percent to 6.6

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percent, which is higher than customary, allowing the company to apply more investment income to its operations.

In the 2006–07 season, the company’s investment committee had responded to the buccaneering Wall Street spirit and diversified the endowment portfolio into additional asset classes, including moving 25 percent of it into risky hedge funds.

Financial speculation was the board’s latest attempt to find a new strategy for survival. For a while it seemed to be working: the first year’s returns were strong, with investment results up nearly 18 percent, and despite the Special Projects withdrawals, the endowment’s value actually grew that year. Ghez warned the other board members that the Wallace withdrawals were not “new money” and thus did not represent an increase in fund­raising, but the success of the new investment strategy did not help her case. If the company could replace the money by playing the stock market, what was the problem?

was like Joe Torre coming to manage Little League.”) She was ready to promise her big fish whatever he wanted, and he wanted a lot: Mortier insisted that he would need a budget of $60 million per season. Such a figure was way out of line with NYCO’s finances. Its most recent operating budgets were in the neighborhood of $40 million, and income was not keeping pace with even that number: the company’s actual income added up to just over $30 million. Reaching a $60 million budget would require at least another $20 million in annual fund­ raising, but despite all indications to the contrary, Baker assured Mortier that this could be done, and Mortier agreed to the deal in early 2007. Baker also decreed an unorthodox management strategy: Since Mortier would not be starting full-time in New York until the beginning of the 2009–10 season, Baker decided that she would run the company herself (aided by Executive Director Jane Gullong) rather than bringing in an

Artistic Leadership

City Opera’s board viewed the endowment as expendable rather than as an asset to be preserved, which is the fiduciary responsibility statutorily required of a nonprofit board.

The board’s approach to the search for a new general director was no more coherent. Kellogg had announced his retirement in 2005, though he was staying on through the end of the 2006–07 season, and the search process for his successor dragged on for months, with the nine-member board search committee interviewing numerous candidates.

Search committee member Emilie Corey felt that the board’s criteria were vague. “They wanted a star,” she says, who also had experience in dealing with unions. Then, in the spring of 2006, Susan Baker attended a dinner at the French consulate in New York.

She was seated next to Gerard Mortier, the legendary Belgian “enfant terrible” impresario, then general director of the Paris Opera. “Susan met Mortier and fell in love,” says Corey.

Even as the search committee continued interviewing candidates, Baker began wooing Mortier, despite the obvious mismatch between him and the company. (As one staffer put it later: “It

interim manager to take over the general director’s functions, for the intervening two years.

With these unilateral decisions, and the board’s unquestioning acquiescence to them, the company embarked on a perilous 18-month Baker-Mortier folie à deux. It would end in November 2008, when Mortier withdrew from the agreement because Baker and the board failed to come up with the $60 million budget they had promised. The board, never a group of big spenders, followed Baker’s lead in her expectation that the money would come from unspecified billionaires in Dubai or Abu Dhabi, and did not commit their own funds. symphony

SPRING 2019

Tapping the Endowment

In the meantime, they had made one catastrophic decision after another. Two in particular had a devastating impact on City Opera’s future. In order to renovate the New York State Theater (Mortier thought the theater was fine, but he wanted a bigger orchestra pit), the company agreed to move out for an entire year, 2008-09, and made no plans to perform elsewhere. The company had no box-office income for the dark season, while it continued to pay its unionized employees their required minimums, and the audience would never return.

Also, in order to pay off the accumulated deficit and cover the company’s still-considerable fixed costs for the dark season, the board made an application to the New York State Attorney General for permission to draw from the principal of the Wallace Endowment.

Kara Unterberg was aghast at the idea that the company would invade its nest egg: “I didn’t go to the endowment vote.

I said, I’m not voting on that.” Unterberg says that she had tried to raise objections to the plan in small meetings but got nowhere. “The answer I always got was, ‘what’s the alternative?’ And I didn’t have an alternative.” The petition said that the funds would be “borrowed,” and thus required a plan for eventually paying the money back into the endowment, which the staffers recognized was probably impossible. The request was granted, and the endowment, already reduced in value because of the 2008 financial crisis, with the hedge fund investments especially hard hit, would ultimately be almost entirely gutted to pay for operating expenses.

All along, City Opera’s board had viewed the endowment as expendable rather than as an asset to be preserved, which is the fiduciary responsibility statutorily required of a nonprofit board.

The pattern of borrowing today to pay for tomorrow had begun even before Baker’s Hail Mary hiring of Gerard Mortier—just the latest “savior.” And it was the prospect of using the endowment as a piggy bank that had set the americanorchestras.org

whole debacle in motion, first emboldening Baker to promise Mortier a vastly expanded budget, and then encouraging the complacency that led to her failure to raise sufficient funds for the fantasy. It was with this same attitude of nonchalance that she agreed to wait two years for Mortier to arrive, and to squeak by with a dark, no-­income season in the meantime. The invasion of the endowment was originally intended to

Tapping the endowment happened just as the financial markets were in free fall. provide the cash to keep the company running until Mortier came; supposedly, his enormous success would then open the floodgates of donations and enable the company to pay it back. Worst of all, the invasion was done at the most inopportune moment, when the financial markets were in free fall.

Board Responsibilities and Oversight

Even if the first $60 million had been found, and Mortier had come, the chances of success were slim. Marc Scorca, president and CEO of Opera America, says, I’ve seen many companies make an Arts Management 101 error, which is, “If we do the work, and it’s good enough, people will flock to us and support us.” That’s what City Opera was saying: “Somehow, if we can just pay for Gerard Mortier’s first season, it will be so great that we will be supported through box office sales and philanthropy.”

That doesn’t work. You have to have the base.

You have to have the investment capital. You have to be prepared for sustained investment in a new concept, a new direction, and it doesn’t happen overnight. Betting on the good reviews, betting on the word of mouth as an institutional strategy is not a good idea.

The City Opera board, like those of many non-profits, failed to understand and embrace their fiduciary and oversight responsibilities, and made choices, or rubber-stamped the choices of others,

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without the regard or care that they would have had for a for-profit business. As Mark Moorman, a onetime member of the City Opera development staff, put it, “There are many reasons for the downfall of NYCO, but I think one of the most compelling stories of NYCO is, ‘who oversees the overseers?’ ” Baker and the board had dug the company into a hole that seemed impossible to climb out of. It would have taken a leader of considerable skills and stature to change the trajectory. Instead, pushed by longtime board member Mary Sharp Cronson, the board hired George Steel as general manager and artistic director.

Miller had previously served as executive director of Columbia University’s Miller Theatre. Steel had minimal experience raising money, and scant practical knowledge of opera or opera houses. His turbulent tenure would end, not quite five years later, in the company’s bankruptcy.

HEIDI WALESON is the opera critic of the Wall Street Journal.

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2019 CONFERENCE

PREVIEW

MUSIC centriCITY The League’s 2019 National Conference will put music, musicians, and composers center stage. And it will tackle the ideas that are most relevant in the orchestra field today, exploring new definitions of excellence and embracing the principles of equity, diversity, and inclusion while bringing forward ways to remain relevant in a rapidly changing world.

By John-Morgan Bush

C

an you remember the feeling you had during the closing session of the League’s 2018 National Conference in Chicago? Do you recall the electricity in the room as Yo-Yo Ma challenged us to work together to solve the challenges the orchestral field faces?

Each of us left that session asking how we could redefine what excellence meant in our corner of orchestral life and how we at orchestras can make a difference in the world. After three days of sessions and meetings that sparked conversations and championed progressive ideas, we were all filled with optimism and a renewed energy for the work of orchestras.

When I was charged to be the architect for this year’s Conference, my first thought was, how to create that energy and excitement again? What exactly was different about our gathering in Chicago?

I realized that the power of Ma’s keynote address was not in my personal experience, but rather in the unity we shared collectively as a group of professionals from all parts of the field centered around the art form that we cherish. In short, we were reminded—of what brings us together, what energizes our work, and why we

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choose to dedicate ourselves to the work of orchestras.

Growing out of that indelible moment, the League’s 2019 National Conference in Nashville will place music, musicians, and composers at the center of our conversations. Their voices and artistry bring creativity, innovation, and—most impor-

The League Conference reminds us of what brings us together, what energizes our work, and why we choose to dedicate ourselves to the work of orchestras. tant—inspiration to orchestras and arts professionals who must continue to adapt to a rapidly changing world. The theme?

“MUSIC centriCITY”—a neologism that spotlights the central role music plays in the life of a vibrant city.

Together in Nashville, we will explore

the new frontiers of “excellence” that last year’s keynote speakers, and indeed, our environment, called upon us to pursue. We will continue to embrace the principles of equity, diversity, and inclusion that must remain in the forefront of our national conversation. We will hear new perspectives that will energize us and drive change in this important area of growth for the field. These imperatives helped us to assemble a constellation of speakers and presenters whose work illustrates and advances our areas of focus this year.

The Nashville Symphony has proven to be an enthusiastic and constant partner in the planning process and has contributed in so many ways to crafting a memorable experience at the Conference. We’ve shared productive dialogues with many partners and creative leaders in the field to curate content that will challenge as well as inspire. We’ve also listened to you, our members, through a new request-forproposals process, enabling us to align our major objectives and ideas for this Conference with yours, and inviting professionals in the field to share what they’ve learned with their peers.

Conference 2019 The League of American Orchestras 2019 National Conference: June 3–5 in Nashville, Tennessee. Hosted by the Nashville Symphony. Visit https://www. leagueconference2019.org/ for more information and to register.

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The Nashville Symphony hosts the League’s 2019 National Conference. On June 3, Music Director Giancarlo Guerrero will lead the orchestra in a concert featuring Jonathan Leshnoff’s Symphony No. 4 (the Nashville Symphony commissioned the work and gave its world premiere in March 2018), Barber’s Adagio for Strings, and a new multimedia production of Orff’s Carmina Burana.

Courtesy of Nashville Symphony

ent at the opening session. The Nashville Symphony’s Accelerando ensemble—an intensive music education program that prepares gifted young students of diverse ethnic backgrounds to pursue music at the collegiate level and beyond—will perform during the Opening Plenary, premiering a new work by Nashville-based composer Christopher Farrell.

The League’s Annual Luncheon is an important midway milestone in the Na-

Speaking with three distinct points of view, the three keynote speakers will illustrate the central content pillars of the Conference of redefining excellence; identity, culture, and collective action; and, of course, music centricity. Through compelling addresses that merge the personal, the artistic, and social consciousness, our speakers will boldly tackle the ideas that are most relevant in our field today.

In the opening session at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, Nashville Symphony Music Director Giancarlo Guerrero will ignite the Conference as he shares his own journey leading the Nashville Symphony on an exploration of what it means to be an orchestra in the America of today. As a champion of

new music, he has commissioned and performed dozens of works by American composers from an extraordinary array of stylistic influences. Guerrero will explore how musical convictions demonstrate an orchestra’s authentic connection to its

The three keynote speakers will illustrate the central content pillars of the Conference: redefining excellence; identity, culture, and collective action; and music centricity. community and reflect an active cultivation of diverse talent. We will be able to see and hear that active cultivation of tal-

Composer and conductor Tania León will deliver the keynote address at the Confer­ ence’s closing plenary session on June 5.

tional Conference. It’s when we honor the recipients of the Ford Musician Awards for Excellence in Community Service.

The Ford Musician Awards celebrate the incredible work that musicians around the country are doing to further their orchestra’s connection to the community. Plus, we’ll share important information about the League’s work with updates from League President and CEO Jesse Rosen and League Board Chair Doug Hager-

Courtesy of Nashville Symphony

Schermerhorn Symphony Center and its Laura Turner Concert Hall, local landmarks, are the home of the Nashville Symphony and the gathering place for a performance and other events at the League’s 2019 Conference.

Michael Provost

Conference Themes

americanorchestras.org

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Courtesy of Nashville Symphony

In his address at Conference’s opening session on June 3, Nashville Symphony Music Director Giancarlo Guerrero will explore what it means to be an orchestra in the America of today.

Jared Platt

man on the development of new and existing programs as well as an overview and news from the field.

This year, the Luncheon keynote speaker is Alex Laing, principal clarinet of the Phoenix Symphony. Recently appointed to the core faculty of the League’s Essentials of Orchestra Management seminar and an in-demand speaker at national gatherings such as the Sphinx Organization’s annual convening and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s Building Bridges Symposium, Laing is a rising thought leader and influencer in the orchestral field.

Alex Laing, principal clarinet at the Phoenix Symphony and a rising thought leader in the orchestra field, is the keynote speaker at the June 4 League Annual Meeting and Luncheon during the Conference.

Through words and music, Laing will examine the very nature of our art form and the dialogue between musicians and audiences. Laing sees opportunities for orchestras to develop if they tap into more of the creative abilities and ambi-

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tions of their musicians, and he imagines a wider range for how orchestras define themselves and their work. Sharing notes from the field and foregrounding his own artistic experience as a black, so-called classical musician, he will unpack some of the fundamental stories we tell about of our art form, how those stories impact our structures, and what we conceive of as “the work.”

On the final day of Conference, renowned composer and conductor Tania León will deliver the closing keynote address. Her enthusiasm is contagious, and her message will center on the progress our field has made in supporting equity for composers and on her own journey from Cuba to the U.S. She will examine what the field needs to do to continue to progress towards parity and how she overcame professional challenges, and uses new music to celebrate and recognize the artistic vitality of other cultures. Central to the core of her message, León’s celebrated work and creative life have promoted equity through the music she creates. The Conference will close on an energetic and inspirational note, with León helping us to understand how to harness the power of new music to celebrate and recognize and rebuild the bridge between the music of North and Latin America and how the interplay of cultures expands creative pos-

sibility. Lastly, we will celebrate the confluence of themes in this year’s Conference through the presentation of the Gold Baton Award to American composer Joan Tower—a champion of new music and parity for women composers and performers whose career has left a lasting mark on the American musical landscape.

Finding Inspiration

We hope that delegates will be inspired to look at the musical and creative opportunities for confronting challenges; that they will seek skills in new areas, such as curating, audience engagement, and bridging boundaries with music. We hope that the Downtown Nashville

simple fact of the extraordinary artistic variety of these three keynote speakers— who are all “classical” musicians—demonstrates how rich a musical experience can be when approached with an inclusive, not exclusive, outlook.

The League’s 2019 National Conference takes place June 3-6 in Nashville, Tennessee.

The host hotel is the Omni Nashville Hotel. www.omnihotels.com/hotels/nashville. The League has a group rate of $249/night plus tax (single/double) for June 1-6. Room reservations can be made by calling 615 782 5300 and referencing the “League of American Orchestras” room block. Note: Hotels in downtown Nashville will be sold out during this period due to a Country Music Awards festival—so book your room early.

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The League’s National Conference is not just a gathering of professionals but, more appropriately, a convergence of all parts of the orchestra world—and we want you to make the most of it. Come to Conference to grow, not just learn.

Expand your network, not just for the sake of networking, but so that you have more partners and collaborators who can

help carry out the work that only orchestras can do. Visit our exhibit area, not just to see what’s new—but to discover new resources, tools, and services that you can use to enhance your programs and innovate.

So join us in Nashville, not just to convene—but to connect and prepare to rediscover the energy and excitement that

can only happen when we place music at the center of all that we do.

Engaging New and Existing Audiences Through Digital Learning Playgrounds: A Design Workshop for Orchestra Professionals: Orchestras are using social media primarily for one-way communication, rather than as a means of providing sustained engagement with the music and the organization. Via a mini design workshop, participants will discover fresh ways to engage audiences through digital technologies. Speakers: S. Alex Ruthmann, director, NYU Music Experience Design Lab; Andre KostiwGill, founder, Playrounds.

composer; Derrick Spiva Jr., composer, Code Switch Composers Collective/ Bridge to Everywhere; Alex Temple, composer, lecturer, Northwestern University; Evan Williams, composer.

JOHN-MORGAN BUSH is the director of Learning and Leadership Programs at the League of American Orchestras. He is a professional horn player and holds an adjunct faculty position at the New School University, Mannes School of Music, teaching music entrepreneurship.

Conference Highlights There’s a rich panoply of sessions, seminars, concerts, and more at the League of American Orchestras’ 2019 National Conference. Here are some highlights.

Pre-Conference workshops are intensive, hands-on half-day seminars on June 3 that offer in-depth learning, practical skills, and fresh insights. They take place in advance of the main Conference, with a separate fee to participate.

Pre-Conference seminars include: New Strategies for Success in Audience Research and Development will show how audience research and cost-benefit analysis can give orchestra professionals a new understanding of audiences—and how to address audience attrition, churn, and aging. A presentation from The Wallace Foundation will demonstrate how arts groups can utilize cost-benefit analysis, and California Symphony Executive Director Aubrey Bergauer will explain how the California Symphony rethought its audience-development strategy— and doubled the number of tickets sold annually.

Website Tools and Skills for DataDriven Decision-making: Learn about no-cost website analytic tools—and acquire the hands-on skills to use them. Participants will gain a clear understanding of how to determine whether their organization’s website is or isn’t performing—and how to improve it in either case. Speaker: Jess Bergson, senior analyst, Capacity Interactive. americanorchestras.org

Conference Sessions, June 3–5: Building a Race Equity Culture: Transforming Your Organizational Culture Beyond Diversity and Inclusion Towards Racial Equity: Orchestras must confront the lack of equity, diversity, and inclusion in our workforce, and commit to creating a culture of inclusion and equity. This session will engage and support leaders in a bold conversation on the cases, tactics, and tools that will drive action on building a Race Equity Culture. Speaker: Kerrien Suarez, executive director, Equity in the Center.

New Voices: Composers of Today: An introduction to four emerging composers whose unique voices are making an impact. Learn about their orchestral output; how they view their music in an art form responding to social change; and the roles composers play in their communities. Speakers: Reena Esmail, composer; Daniel Bernard Roumain,

Philanthropy: New Motivations and Incentives for Giving will focus on emerging trends in giving. Panelists will discuss how the next generations might prioritize their charitable giving, whether changes to tax laws are impacting donors, and what orchestras can do to adapt their fundraising strategies.

Speakers: Eric Javier, principal and managing director, CCS Fundraising; Patricia Richards, lifetime board member and past chair, Utah Symphony | Utah Opera.

Walking the Walk: Why Music Education Matters and What Orchestras Can Do will explore the status of arts education in our schools and detail the challenges faced by young musicians from under-represented communities. Whether the goal is to foster a lifelong love of music or support future professional musicians, orchestras can play a part in ensuring these musical journeys get the support they need.

Speakers: Jane Best, director, Arts Education Partnership; Walter Bitner, director of education and community engagement, Nashville Symphony; Joy Payton-Stevens, section cello, Seattle Symphony.

For more information and to register for the 2019 National Conference, visit https://www.leagueconference2019.org/.

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Ed DeArmitt - Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra

Surround Sound

Orchestras are experimenting with concerts that put audience members in close connection with the music—and the musicians. Concert newcomers find new approaches to classical music, and devotees gain fresh perspectives.

by Vivien Schweitzer

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BEFORE A DECEMBER PERFORmance of The Nutcracker by the Experiential Orchestra in the ballroom of the Bohemian National Hall in Manhattan, conductor James Blachly urged attendees to experience the music however they preferred. Some members of the audience sat on chairs interspersed throughout the musicians, while others danced in front of the orchestra. A handful of listeners even sprawled out on the floor to listen.

At the conservative end of the classical music spectrum the tired debate continues about whether it’s okay for listeners to clap

between movements. At the other end of the spectrum conductors such as Blachly are encouraging listeners to not only clap between movements, but to move around freely and even lie down if they feel so inclined.

Blachly is also music director of the Johnstown Symphony Orchestra in Pennsylvania, which performs at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown as well as in unorthodox venues such as a former steel mill. He is one of several orchestral entrepreneurs offering unusual seating arrangements to attract new listeners, retain symphony

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A young concertgoer gets into the spirit at the Experiential Orchestra’s December 2018 performance of The Nutcracker in the ballroom of the Bohemian National Hall in Manhattan, led

by Music Director James Blachly. Audience members were welcome to sit on chairs interspersed throughout the musicians, sprawl on the floor to listen, and dance to the music.

For David Bernard, the founder and music director of the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony, an avocational orchestra in New York City, the most inspiring place to be is indeed inside the music. Bernard created the InsideOut concert series to nurture new classical music enthusiasts and encourage regular concertgoers to experience music from a different perspective.

Bernard leads InsideOut concerts with the Park Avenue orchestra and with Long Island’s Massapequa Philharmonic, where he is music director, but InsideOut is also its own entity. “Most of what is so exciting and thrilling happens on the stage,” he says. “Folks who sit in the audience receive about 5 percent of what’s going on. How can we expect them to be enthusiastic about coming to live concerts if we’re not giving them the full experience?” Bernard conducts Park Avenue Chamber Symphony’s InsideOut concerts in the flexible DiMenna Center for Classical Music: audience members rotate between different

Some conductors are encouraging listeners to move around freely and dance if they feel so inclined. polyphony. And with a performance this good, that’s a spectacular place to be.”

Park Avenue Chamber Symphony

regular concertgoers, and offer everyone an experience they’ll return for. Nick Gray, 36, a newcomer to classical music who attended the Nutcracker performance on December 2, said “being able to move around” was his favorite element of the experience, noting that he didn’t have to worry about “clapping in the wrong place.”

In the wider arts world, audiences have proven willing to pay steep ticket prices for immersive events such as Sleep No More, the interactive, site-specific theater hit inspired by Macbeth and film noir, which has been running since 2011 in New York.

Classical music impresarios have also been experimenting during the last decade or so with ways to integrate listeners into the performance space. In 2007, during a concert of Monteverdi madrigals by the British vocal ensemble I Fagiolini, the musicians wandered amid patrons seated at the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse in Lincoln Center. Describing the event, Allan Kozinn wrote in his New York Times review that “the main dividend of this staging is that the listeners are surrounded by the individual strands of Monteverdi’s

Allison Stock, courtesy of Experiential Orchestra

Opposite: At the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s PSO360 series, launched in 2017, audience members sit onstage at Heinz Hall, surrounding a chamber ensemble of PSO musicians and guest artists. In photo: The final PSO360 concert of the orchestra’s 2017-18 season, on May 19, featured violinist Augustin Hadelich as soloist.

americanorchestras.org

At a recent InsideOut concert by the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony, Music Director David Bernard led works by Holst and Ligeti, with audience members seated among the musicians at New York City’s DiMenna Center for Classical Music.

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At the Windsor Symphony Orchestra’s Onstage at the Capitol series in Ontario, Canada, listeners sit and dine or drink at cabaret tables on the stage of the Capitol Theatre near the orchestra. In photo: Music Director Robert Franz leads a Windsor Symphony Onstage performance on October 18, 2018.

solar system and live commentary from Dr. Jacqueline Faherty, senior scientist and astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History and the Hayden Planetarium.

the music happening all around you. This is what I hope you walk away with from this concert.”

After the orchestra performed an excerpt from Jupiter, Bernard asked for feedback from listeners: one woman said she could “feel the vibrations in my body and in the soles of my feet.” The event included video footage and images of the

Up Close and Personal

Chris Lee

sections of the orchestra for each movement. He doesn’t provide programs for the InsideOut concerts, which he touts as the way forward for orchestras, because “classical music can be enjoyed viscerally and you don’t need to read about it in order to enjoy the music.”

Before a well-attended InsideOut concert in February at the DiMenna Center, Bernard spoke to the audience about what he hoped they would experience while listening to Holst’s The Planets and Ligeti’s Atmosphères. “When you’re part of a concert audience you are having music delivered to you, and you see what’s happening at a distance,” he said. “Here, you don’t only get to hear: you get to see and feel

Windsor Symphony Orchestra

Park Avenue Chamber Symphony violinist Graham Rash on the orchestra’s InsideOut concerts: “You can’t necessarily appreciate the value of playing an instrument until you’ve been up close and felt the power of a tuba or the sweetness of a violin or the wonderful sound of a cello.”

The view from the conductor’s podium at the New York Philharmonic’s 2012 Philharmonic 360 concerts at the Park Avenue Armory.

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In Canada, during the Windsor Symphony Orchestra’s Live the Orchestra Experience, part of its ONSTAGE at the Capitol series, listeners sit and dine or drink at cabaret tables positioned on the stage of the Capitol Theatre near the orchestra. The three-concert series was launched during the 2018-19 season, but the orchestra had tested the waters in 2017-18 with a oneoff called “Beethoven’s Biergarten” that sold out. In a promotional video, Music Director Robert Franz explains that “rather than sitting out in the audience and receiving the music as we normally perform, it’s really fun to get on stage with us.” He adds that of course the traditional listening experience is also worthwhile, but points out that “it’s one sound to hear an orchestra out in the hall. It’s a completely different sound to hear the music being made right next to you within three or four feet of where you’re sitting.”

Hungarian conductor Iván Fischer also encourages listeners to enjoy the “surround sound” experience. During midnight concerts with his Budapest Festival Orchestra, he invites audience members to sit on beanbag chairs amidst the musicians, or on symphony

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Larry Ford

bleachers next to the orchestra. In 2014, New Yorker critic Alex Ross described the experience of being “embedded with the cellos” for a performance of Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto, with Alexander Toradze as soloist, writing, “Acoustically, the Prokofiev left much to be desired: those of us on the beanbags had a hard time hearing the piano, while those seated at the front of the bleachers may have heard little else. Yet it was revelatory to listen from such a peculiar vantage: you could grasp how the cello parts fit into the whole, as simple figures contributed to a machinelike mass.”

During Blachly’s Nutcracker performance in December, audience member Ada Brunstein, 48, sat near the brass section. For Brunstein, who is not a devotee of classical music, sitting far from the orchestra can render the experience an emotionally disconnected one. After sitting in the orchestra, however, she said: “I like seeing the notes on the page that they’re playing from. I like feeling the music in my bones because I’m so close to the instruments. For me the proximity adds layers of engagement with the music.” During a post-concert reception after the InsideOut event, Meryl Dakin, 30, who grew up listening to classical music, said, “It was incredible to be in the audience

Allison Stock

InsideOut Family Concerts at the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony make the music up close and personal for children—and adults.

James Blachly, music director of the Experiential Orchestra (NYC) and Johnstown Symphony Orchestra (PA). americanorchestras.org

with the musicians around us. You can feel the vibrations of the instruments. I think there is more to engage you with this kind of concert.” Dakin bought tickets to the event for as a Christmas present for her husband, Nathan Johnson, 30, who had never been to a classical concert before. He described the experience as “amazing” and said he now feels inspired to listen to more classical music.

And what about the musicians? Are the violinists worried about inadvertently elbowing a listener in the face during a virtuosic passage? Is it distracting to have listeners peering over their shoulders and sometimes filming them on cell phones at close proximity? Bernard admits that the InsideOut concept can initially prove uncomfortable for the musicians, and there is more pressure on them. Blachly usually offers the surround-sound experience during encores, noting that the musicians might find it distracting during a full performance.

Jordan Lee, a violinist who performed in the InsideOut concert, said it can be challenging to remain focused when pieces are performed with breaks between movements, as they are at the InsideOut events.

“I had to retrain my brain,” she says, in order to “get out of concert mode and then

The Pittsburgh Symphony launched the PSO360 chamber music series in 2017 to facilitate a greater sense of intimacy for listeners, with two hundred audience members seated on the stage of Heinz Hall surrounding the musicians. back in.” Lee, who enjoys seeing audience reactions up close, adds that as a music student she was often reminded to make classical music more accessible. “I feel like this is a great way to bring people in,” she says. “Otherwise, musicians are tiny dots on stage.”

Violinist Graham Rash describes the InsideOut concerts as “a fantastic outreach and educational tool. You can’t necessarily appreciate the value of playing an instrument until you’ve been up close and felt the power of a tuba or the sweetness of a violin or the wonderful sound of a cello.”

He adds that he didn’t find it distracting to perform with audience members in close proximity.

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the California Symphony expand its audience and donor base. Tickets to the fundraiser are $500, but even at that high price, Bergauer says, it attracts new listeners.

“Price is always about a value proposition,” she says. “We have new and younger people in their thirties and forties, and they bring their friends.” Tickets costing $500, of course, are only going to attract a wellheeled new audience. Bergauer notes the dilemma in offering the experience as a gateway one: “It’s such a high price point: if we offer it in a non-gala way, will people come back and pay for the gala?” Blachly calls the chance to sit inside the orchestra the “VIP experience.”

Theissen Imagery

The Concert Experience

Cellist Joshua Roman was the soloist at the California Symphony’s 2018 Symphony Surround gala benefit, held at the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley.

VIP Treatment

Chris Lee

Offering patrons the chance to sit amid the musicians is being incorporated by some organizations as a perk for gala events. During the California Symphony’s Symphony Surround fundraisers, patrons dine in close proximity to the musicians, with the performance tailored to allow wait staff to serve food. Executive Director Aubrey Bergauer said the idea came

about after donors gave “great feedback” about open rehearsals in which they sat on stage. Together with Music Director Donato Cabrera she devised an immersive experience that featured the violinist Anne Akiko Meyers as soloist in the inaugural 2017 event and the cellist Joshua Roman at the 2018 event at the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley.

Bergauer says the concerts have helped

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The concept of offering audience members a complete “experience,” VIP or otherwise, has flourished in recent years in the classical world. Conceptual artist Marina Abramovic’s staging of Bach’s Goldberg Variations in NYC’s cavernous Park Avenue Armory in 2015 was billed as a “reimagining of the traditional concert experience.” The audience sat in deck chairs positioned around a long motorized platform that slowly transported the pianist Igor Levit from one part of the hall to another as he played the complete work.

For the Philharmonic 360 concerts at the Armory in 2012, the New York Philharmonic performed works by Stockhausen, Boulez, Ives, and Mozart with musicians surrounding the audience. During the countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo’s recent multimedia extravaganza Glass Handel performances, staged in Philadelphia and New York, listeners were wheeled individually while seated in their chairs to different areas of the space to experience music, dance, video, and live painting.

Guests at Andrew Ousley’s imaginative Angel’s Share series can partake in a whiskey tasting before being ferried by trolley through the Green-Wood Cemetery in For its Philharmonic 360 concerts at the Park Avenue Armory in 2012, the New York Philharmonic performed with musicians in eight different groups surrounding a central section of the audience, while other audience members were seated adjacent to the musicians. At center, then-Music Director Alan Gilbert conducts Pierre Boulez’s Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna for Orchestra in Eight Groups.

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as a chamber orchestra.

The 360 format enables the orchestra to perform repertoire, such as Baroque music, not suited to a large concert hall.

Pittsburgh Symphony President and CEO Melia P. Tourangeau spoke of the pressure on arts administrators to provide an “experience” for the audience, explaining Musician meets audience at one of the Milwaukee Symphony that the 360 concerts are Orchestra’s in-the-round Symphony Soiree events. a way to “maximize the talent in town, give lisstage, behind, and above the orchestra, in teners a different kind of experience, and showcase the orchestra in a different way.” its new Milwaukee Symphony Center, which will feature a total capacity of 1,750.

The first concert sold out immediately, she The center is slated to open in 2020 after said, and ensuing concerts have also proved a hot ticket. Reviewing Proximity to musicians is such the violinist Augustin a growing expectation that Hadelich’s performance in the final PSO360 the Milwaukee Symphony concert of the 2017-18 plans to include 150 seats season for the Pittsburgh onstage, behind, and above Post-Gazette, critic Jeremy Reynolds wrote the orchestra in its new that “hearing Heinz Milwaukee Symphony Center.

[Hall] from a musician’s perspective was delightthe orchestra converts the Warner Grand ful.” Five PSO360 conTheater, an historic movie palace in downcerts are planned for the town Milwaukee, into a modern concert 2019-20 season. hall. The renovated venue will include Proximity to musipublic spaces for audiences to socialize, as cians is such a growing At the Pittsburgh Symphony’s PSO360 concert on Valentine’s Day 2019, pianist Emanuel Ax was joined by Guest Concertmaster Alexi well as such amenities as valet parking. The expectation that the MilKenney, First Violin Christopher Wu, Acting Principal Viola Tatjana building’s antique wooden phone booths waukee Symphony plans Mead Chamis, and Principal Cello Anne Martindale Williams. will be transformed into listening stations to include 150 seats onEd DeArmitt-Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra

Jonathan Kirn

Brooklyn to the catacombs where the musicmaking takes place.

Most orchestras who perform regularly on a particular stage can’t suddenly accommodate a dozen listeners in their ranks or cart listeners around between movements or to different locations. But concert promoters have devised other ways to create a more intimate environment by bringing audience members in closer proximity to the performance. In 2005, seating arrangements were altered for the Mostly Mozart Festival, which has taken place every summer for decades at Lincoln Center. Jane Moss, the festival’s artistic director, told the New York Times that year: “We wanted to make Avery Fisher Hall feel smaller and more intimate to support the greater intimacy of the music.” For the festival’s

americanorchestras.org

Audience members became ecstatic dancers at the Experientials Orchestra’s performance of The Rite of Spring, led by Music Director James Blachly at Brooklyn’s National Sawdust.

Allison Stock, courtesy of Experiential Orchestra

events in David Geffen Hall (as Avery Fisher Hall is now called), a temporary stage extends some 30 feet into the audience. Extra seating is placed beside and behind the musicians.

Since Heinz Hall, home of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, doesn’t have a smaller hall for chamber music, administrators were similarly creative with how to use the space onstage. Mary Persin, vice president of artistic planning, launched the PSO360 series in October 2017 to facilitate a greater sense of intimacy for listeners. Two hundred audience members are seated on the stage of Heinz Hall and surround the PSO musicians, who perform

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Rendering: Kahler Slater

The Milwaukee Symphony’s plans for the Milwaukee Symphony Center, slated to open in 2020 in a renovated movie palace, includes 150 onstage seats that can be used by choral ensembles or audience members.

featuring the orchestra’s recordings. Patrons will be able to purchase drinks from several mobile bars and take them into the hall. Speaking about the inclusion of onstage seating, Susan Loris, executive vice president for institutional advancement, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “I’d want that seat for Edo (de Waart),” the

MSO’s music director laureate, “because he is quite animated in his face versus what you see from behind.”

Concertgoers certainly seem to appreciate the chance to experience orchestral music in different formats and from different vantagepoints. The beginning of Blachly’s Nutcracker event felt rather like

a high school dance, with audience members sitting on chairs lining the walls of the room as orchestra staff tried to get the ball rolling with their own exuberant dancing. But it didn’t take long for audience members to join in, with teenage and middle-aged couples dancing alongside each other.

“There’s a certain jadedness if you go to a lot of concerts. You may not have the wide-eyed wonder of a young person going for the first time. We try and keep it fresh for everybody,” says Blachly, explaining why he experiments with different ways to present music. “I can always find new things in a Beethoven symphony. We are not trying to displace the standard concert experience, but invite people in so that when they next attend a traditional concert they hear things differently.”

VIVIEN SCHWEITZER is a music journalist, pianist, and author. Her first book, A Mad Love: An Introduction to Opera, was published in September by Basic Books.

“InsideOut Concerts are transforming the traditional concert experience...the seats are with the players themselves, in the thick of the violins or right next to a harp.

There’s no separation here, just a mass of pumping hearts in a singular musical communion.” WQXR “I felt every note. I could hear everything and could see the faces of the musicians. It was fantastic!”

Andrea Arroyo audience member

“Holy cow... Ligeti’s ‘Atmosphères’ sounds EVEN MORE AMAZING when you’re in among the players.” Steve Smith music critic, commenting as an audience member

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Bring an InsideOut Concert Experience to your orchestra or venue, specially targeted for: • Audience expansion • Development / sponsorship • Education events • Outreach • Public awareness Low on cost, high on effectiveness, InsideOut Concerts developed and delivered by David Bernard are the result of intensive testing and development.

To book an InsideOut Concert with David Bernard, email bookinginfo@ insideoutconcerts.com @InsideOutConcerts

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MUSIC DIRECTOR DONALD RUNNICLES

IN JACKSON HOLE, WYOMING

JULY 3 - AUGUST 17, 2019 F E AT U R I N G

KRISTIN CHENOWETH

HILARY HAHN

BRANFORD MARSALIS

YEFIM BRONFMAN

PRAISED AS A TOP SUMMER CL ASSICAL MUSIC FESTIVAL

BY THE NEW YORK TIMES AND THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE

TICKETS ON SALE NOW

Start Spreading the

News

At right: How do you get your news?

Coverage and reviews by mainstream media are vital for orchestras. But as readers change how they consume media (whether in print or digitally) and publications face drops in advertising, newspapers and magazines are cutting back on arts coverage.

As traditional media outlets devote less coverage to classical music, orchestras are filling the void by stepping forward to tell their own stories themselves.

by Susan Elliott

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S

cratch the surface of any symphony orchestra and you’ll find a highly complex, sophisticated organism of ever-moving, evermorphing interdependent parts. All have the same ultimate mission, of course, but how they get there is another story.

In fact, orchestras have a “treasure trove of stories to tell,” as Charlie Wade, senior vice president of marketing and business operations at the Seattle Symphony, puts it. But who’s going to tell the stories, how, and to whom—especially when music critics and local newspapers are heading for extinction in all but the major markets?

The bottom line is, orchestras increasingly have to tell their own stories, and in their own ways. Ironically, digital media, often perceived as a huge threat to live performance (and film, books, newspapers, and magazines) has become an essential tool for survival. Virtually all arts organizations are now up to speed with mobilecompatible websites and e-newsletters, along with judicious use of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and/or sophisticated CMS (Customer Management Systems) software that links their development, public relations, marketing, and ticketing efforts.

“This is the biggest challenge right now,” says Adam Crane, vice president of external affairs for the New York Philharmonic, which, like the orchestras in some other big cities, still gets coverage from local mainstream media. “If you want to get your story out, you have to generate your own content. Balance—who controls the americanorchestras.org

content, where does it live, who creates it” is the issue, says Crane. At the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, where Crane was senior vice president of external affairs and strategic initiatives, social media and “content marketing,” as it is called, lived in the marketing department. At the Philharmonic, it “lives” in external affairs, which communicates regularly with marketing.

“We all have the same goal, it’s just a question of how do you get there,” says Crane.

“You have to pull back and ask the questions, ‘What do we stand for? What story are we telling? Are we relevant?’ ”

Newspapers, magazines, and professional music critics are facing cutbacks. Orchestras increasingly have to tell their own stories, and in their own ways.

Professional outlets that carry informed coverage of the arts are few and far between these days, so orchestras are filling the void to get their messages out. The impartial, journalistic perspective may be missing, but the information—lacking a middleman—is accurate.

Who’s Doing What

A highly unscientific survey of U.S. orchestra websites and their distribution channels shows a vast variety of approaches, both to creating content and distributing it. A website can offer a straight-up

sales option (“click here, buy a ticket”) or a more subtle one (“watch this guest-artist video interview, buy a ticket to see him/ her in the flesh”) or pure story telling (“we performed in a senior center last week, and here is some video and photography from the event”) or all of the above. There may be an essay by a local freelancer on as broad a topic as American music, or one by a university scholar on Mahler, as the orchestra prepares for an upcoming cycle of his symphonies.

And while all distribution outlets—from Instagram to monthly e-newsletters—may lead to the website, the goal is broader than just ticket sales. “It’s much longerterm than that,” says Gwen Pappas, director of communications for the Minnesota Orchestra. “It’s about building relationships. Someone might buy a ticket, or give a gift, or just care more about the organization because they feel more connected.”

Pappas reports that a new software system, implemented within the last two years, has enabled the orchestra’s marketing, fundraising, and communications departments to “speak to each other. Now, we’re in an environment where we can look holistically at orchestra fans, be they audiences, donors, or both, and really chart out a deliberate strategy of communication.”

Pappas runs a weekly Communications Council meeting. “We get together every Monday, with representatives from marketing, communications, development, artistic, and education,” she explains. “We go through a weekly checklist: ‘What are we putting out on social [media] this

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“If you want to get your story out, you have to generate your own content,” says Adam Crane, vice president of external affairs for the New York Philharmonic.

Chris Lee

sic by Peter Mercer-Taylor, a professor of musicology at the University of Minnesota, with no “call to action” at the end, and another on the upcoming Symphony Ball.

Most of the content is generated by the four-member communications office, says Pappas, although freelancweek; what press releases, marketing maers or scholars like Mercerterials; any program changes?’ ” Pappas Taylor are also hired occaand her team create a weekly email with sionally. The orchestra has a a mix of stories and videos, some provideographer on staff, whose moting concerts, some about fundraiswork is largely used on its Left to right: New York Philharmonic Vice President of External ing, some general institutional or classisocial media channels. A few Affairs Adam Crane, President and CEO Deborah Borda, and cal music topics. A tab at the top of the other orchestras have created actor-director Bradley Cooper share a moment while Cooper orchestra’s website marked “stories” leads researches an upcoming biopic about Leonard Bernstein, the similar staff positions. a reader to scroll through a host of phoPhilharmonic’s former music director.

“Social media is a hungry to-heavy articles and interviews, mostly beast,” says Pappas, “and we’ve Q&As, with titles like “Meet a Musigot to keep feeding it” with new content all cian” (Principal Timpani Erich Rieppel) Filling the Gap the time. Like most organizations, Minneor “Meet the Composer” (Missy MazWith some newspapers running only a sota recycles much of its content—includzoli), with options at the end of each to few articles a month to cover the city’s ing concert program-book articles—on its buy a ticket to their upcoming concert. entire arts scene, the Seattle Symphony’s various digital outlets.

There’s also an article on American muresponse has been to “create our own newsroom,” reports Rosalie Contreras, the orchestra’s vice president of communications. “Sometimes other departments come and pitch us their projects, just like we used to do with the newspaper. So we develop an editorial calendar that works for everyone and keeps the organization’s goals front and center.” Content distribution, like all outlets canvassed for this article, ranges from weekly and/or monthly e-newsletters to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram posts, and most of the content lives on the orchestra’s website as well. Seattle even profiles some of its patrons in short “Here to Hear” articles in the concert program book.

The orchestra also makes good use of its local NPR outlet, KING FM, with a combination of concert broadcasts and weekly interviews with guest artists. It has its own streaming channel via KING FM. Multiple orchestras stream concerts or one-off events; smaller-budget orchestras can afford to stream a concert through apps like FacebookLive, which is free. And the cost of a YouTube channel—free—makes it a Above: Minnesota Orchestra staff in front of the Nelson Mandela stained-glass window at Regina Mundi Church in Johannesburg, South Africa, during the orchestra’s 2018 tour. From left, Kari go-to outlet for orchestras of any size.

Marshall, director of artistic planning; Beth Kellar-Long, vice president of orchestra administration; If Minnesota and Seattle mostly divide Kris Arkis, orchestra personnel manager; Kevin Smith, then-president and CEO; Mele Willis, up content creation among staff in their artistic operations manager; Gwen Pappas, director of communications, and, in front, Michael respective communications/PR departPelton, artistic planning manager and executive assistant. Right top and bottom: The orchestra’s ments, the Utah Symphony | Opera about weekly email includes stories and videos, and a section of the website features articles and interviews, most of them generated by staff. two years ago hired a specific “digital con-

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symphony

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Articles at the extensive CSO Sounds and Stories section of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s website include profiles of CSO musicians, interviews with guest artists, previews of coming concerts, and essays by journalists and musicologists. americanorchestras.org

the bowels of Brooklyn, coverage is scarce and, at that, often focused more on human interest than music-making. Publishers like to see readers click on stories; insufficient numbers of clicks means insufficient readership, which means less and often no coverage.

[Editor’s Note: To keeps classical-music journalism going, a few nonprofits are stepping in. In 2017, the San Franciscobased Rubin Institute for Music Criti-

Brandon_Patoc

when it launched the CSO tent producer,” whose sole Sounds and Stories section of job is to write articles, shoot its website. Content ranges photos and video, and write from photo galleries to quesand respond to social media tion-and-answer interviews posts. Kathleen Sykes, whose with guest artists to unsigned background is advertising previews of upcoming con(not music, or any of the arts) certs to in-depth musicologicame onboard about eighcal examinations of repertoire. teen months ago, when The Writers for the bylined articles Salt Lake Tribune scaled back include scholars, CSO musiarts coverage. (The other Salt In response to scaledLake paper, Deseret News, back arts coverage at local cians, and veteran music journalists—sometimes the ones had also made cuts in arts re- media outlets, the Utah Symphony | Opera hired whose jobs were eliminated as porting.) newspapers and magazines cut “I remember the good old Kathleen Sykes as digital content producer. back on arts coverage. The site days, when we would get a represents significant investpreview and/or a review in ment on the part of the CSO, as it aims the newspaper,” says Jonathan Miles, vice to strikes a balance between promoting president of marketing and public relaupcoming concerts, informing first-timers, tions, in the job twelve years. “But those and engaging classical-music enthusiasts days are long gone. I hired Kathleen bewho want to know more. cause we needed someone internal to tell our story and help communicate with audiences. She covers all the orchestra conDid the Tree Fall in the Forest? certs and opera dress rehearsals; she’ll inIf orchestras are building closer relationterview a guest artist ahead of time.” Utah ships with their audiences, a big additional Symphony | Opera Facebook followers, challenge remains: finding new and alterby Sykes’s calculations, have increased by native audiences. And that is where the about a third (to 30,000) since her arrival. lack of mainstream media remains a stub“I feel like I can write in a way that our paborn issue. trons would love,” she says. “I can be funny “We still need traditional media,” says or funky and have a sense of humor.”

Contreras, “because it puts us in front of Miles points out that occasionally he’ll people we wouldn’t otherwise reach.” turn one of the social media channels over “The challenge is the reach,” concurs to a guest artist. “They can tell their story Miles. “We’re talking to the same people” for a day on Instagram,” he explains, “so without the wider reach of mainstream they get access to the account and talk dimedia. rectly to the audience.”

Even the newspapers that continue to The Chicago Symphony Orchestra crecover classical music do so on a very limated its own “newsroom” a few years back ited basis. At The New York Times, if there’s not a new production at the Metropolitan Opera, a world premiere in Carnegie Hall or David Geffen Hall, or an offthe-wall, cutting-edge, trans-sexual indie band in

The Seattle Symphony responded to diminished arts coverage by creating its own digital newsroom, says Vice President of Communications Rosalie Contreras, at center in photo. In photo, from left: Managing Editor Heidi Staub; Social Media and Content Manager Andrew Stiefel; Contreras; Digital Content Manager James Holt; and Public Relations Manager Shiva Shafii. Below: The Beyond the Stage section of the Seattle Symphony’s site features articles, interviews, and video.

cism began granting money to newspapers that were reducing or eliminating classical music coverage; essentially, Rubin underwrites about 85 percent of a freelance classical music writer’s position. Newspapers in Boston, Dallas, Houston, Pittsburgh, Toronto, and elsewhere have kept classical-music journalists on staff with this

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Robert Cummerow Robert Cummerow

The Toledo Symphony, responding to less local arts coverage, posts videos by staff members including Artistic Administrator and Principal Second Violin Merwin Siu (top photo). Above, left to right, Toledo Symphony President and CEO Zak Vassar, Director of Marketing Felecia Kanney, Siu, and Music Director Alain Trudel.

Alexandra Llamas

Platt Photography

support. A couple of nonprofits are taking a more localized approach by supporting arts coverage at their hometown news outlets. Whether such efforts will last depends on the support of the nonprofits.]

At the Toledo Symphony, where the lo-

cal Blade newspaper is quietly phasing out its print operations, Director of Marketing Felecia Kanney says that when the paper does send a critic—only to cover programs being performed more than once, of course—“It really helps sales.

In fact, it’s critical to what we do.”

The Blade, like other newspapers, is beefing up its online presence, to the point of cutting printed editions entirely a few days a week.

Lacking the local coverage, Kanney uploads short videos by Toledo Symphony President and CEO Zak Vassar and by Artistic Administrator and Principal Second Violin Merwin Siu on the orchestra’s website. Recently Vassar talked about an upcoming program featuring Brahms’s First Symphony and how it connected with other works on the bill by Clara (“Brahms’s muse”) and Robert (her husband) Schumann.

Phoenix Symphony uses short videos on its website as well, although they tend to be more generic about the symphonic experience than interview-focused. The lack of local media coverage there has prompted Chief Marketing Officer Todd Vigil to move his entire advertising budget to digital, especially for single-ticket sales.

Print advertising, he declares, is dead. “As an industry we have this love affair with print that really is a one-sided relationship; we’re giving them a lot and really getting nothing in return,” especially as “in return” relates not only to editorial coverage, but also to print’s effectiveness as a sales tool.

Phoenix Symphony Chief Marketing Officer Todd Vigil (at right) limits the orchestra’s single-ticket advertising to Facebook and Google. Above, Vigil gives a talk on the Phoenix Symphony’s digital evolution at Capacity Interactive’s 2017 Digital Marketing Boot Camp for the Arts in New York City.

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National Sawdust, the Brooklyn-based music presenter, created its own online publication, LOG, which covers not only Sawdust performers such as the Kronos Quartet but also features reviews, essays, and interviews about other music organizations. National Sawdust’s director of publications is veteran newspaper arts reporter and editor Steve Smith.

“We were spending a quarter of a million on ads with the local paper [The Arizona Republic] and cut all that over the last six or seven years, along with TV and radio and most of our direct mail,” says Vigil, who is 39. “Print ads are not effective; not sharable; they’re boring. I don’t question that older people read the newspaper but I also know that they’re spending up to six hours a day on Facebook. I go to Einstein’s Bagels every morning and there’s a group of older folks sitting there and they all read the paper and I’ve never once seen them show their neighbor an ad and be like, ‘Hey, look what’s going on at the symphony this weekend.’ Whereas on Facebook they can do that.”

Which is why he limits single-ticket adsymphony

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The lack of local media coverage prompted Todd Vigil, chief marketing officer at the Phoenix Symphony, to move his advertising budget to digital. “We’ve just gone to where people’s eyeballs are—their phones and their desktops,” he says. vertising to Facebook and Google. “We’ve just gone to where people’s eyeballs are— their phones and their desktops,” says Vigil. And it’s working. He reports that the marketing budget has remained flat

but attendance and revenue have increased significantly. “Since 2011, our earned revenue is up 65 percent; single tickets are up 145 percent; subscriptions grew 2 percent, which is why I like to joke that flat is the new up.” (Vigil’s background is in sales, most recently at Target department stores.)

Of course, what works in Phoenix, Arizona, may not work in Salt Lake City,

Utah, and what works in New York, New York, most likely will not work in Springfield, Illinois.

Every market is different, not to mention every orchestra. As Crane puts it, “There are no easy answers. Everyone is trying to stand out.”

SUSAN ELLIOTT is the news and special reports editor of Musical America.

For over 35 years, the Conductors Guild has provided conductors with the tools needed to develop a solid and substantial career in the music field.

The Conductors Guild is a community of arts leaders, advocates, and teachers, sharing their knowledge and experience with the world-wide community of conductors.

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The Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s marketing emails include interviews with featured composers, including Steven Mackey in October and John Corigliano in February. americanorchestras.org

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Road Trips Summer music festivals: a drive-by, divided into five excursions.

S

ummer road trips by car bring a whiff of nostalgia, and a sense of adventure. And for a classical-music lover, what better way to experience the country’s many summer music festivals than to cruise the countryside, enjoying the daytime drive—maybe blasting some Beethoven or Mahler or Bernstein along the way—as much as the nights of music?

There are huge numbers of summer music festivals to choose from, and we’ve dreamed up some two-week excursions— some more challenging than others— plotted out to land in as many of them as possible. Our East Coast trip—Asheville, North Carolina to Bar Harbor, Maine—is

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by Keith Powers dotted with festivals in just about every hamlet. The Midwest trip isn’t quite as plentiful, but quite artistically adventurous. The Rockies abound with prestigious musical guests in the summer. The Pacific Northwest has its own spectacular mountains—and the ocean. And Southern California—didn’t they invent driving there?

From a practical standpoint, a summer vacation by car offers not just the appeal of the open road but also the most practical option, the flexibility to hit a lot of festivals, not to mention avoiding headaches of air travel such as security lines and flight delays. Perhaps the real question is what kind of car to drive. Whichever vehicle you symphony

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San Luis Obispo County Montecito Ojai Los Angeles La Jolla San Diego

choose, it won’t be easy to do it all—you can’t, not in one summer, at least. Whatever you miss goes on next year’s summermusic bucket list. I’ll be in the Rockies this summer. See you there, or send me a note on your own travels. But first, pick out the driving machine.

Southern California Dreaming

Musacchio and Ianniello / Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia

La Jolla has to be excited. This season the American/Israeli pianist Inon Barnatan takes over the La Jolla Music Society’s chamber-focused SummerFest in August, after eighteen years of growth under violin-

Oh, Ojai: Conductor and soprano Barbara Hannigan will be curator for this June’s Ojai Music Festival in southern California.

ist Cho-Liang Lin. And a new venue, the Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center, opens—it already has a nickname, the Conrad—designed by Epstein Joslin Architects, who have helped create performance spaces such as the Koka Booth Amphitheater in Cary, North Carolina, summer stage for the North Carolina Symphony, and the Strathmore Music Center in Bethesda, Maryland, americanorchestras.org

one of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s two regular performance venues. The Conrad’s seating curves like a horseshoe, so the audience is always close to the action. “I call it a cocoon of wood that embraces the stage and the audience,” architect Alan Joslin says.

Before you travel to La Jolla, spend a thought-provoking weekend at Ojai. The Ojai Music Festival may not last long ( June 6-9), but everyone seems to be there. The Thomas Fire in 2017 miraculously spared the village of Ojai—if you can call being surrounded by fire and Hooray for Hollywood: The Hollywood Bowl, summer home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, hosts a busy smoke “spared”—and the festival calendar of symphonic and pops concerts every year. as well. The list of Ojai Music Festival’s guest music directors since it phonic and pops events all summer long. began 75 years ago impresses: recently ViBut also head south, where conductor Mijay Iyer, Jeremy Denk, and Dawn Upshaw chael Francis’s Mainly Mozart in San Dihave created programs, and eminent artego brings a little bit of Salzburg to the reists like Boulez, Copland, Foss, Harbison, stored Balboa Theatre in June. The Mainly and Tilson Thomas have led the festival in Mozart summer opens with pianist Jeremy the past. The guest leadership position this Denk, and also features violinist Augustin season will be filled by the versatile conHadelich playing the Beethoven concerto ductor/soprano Barbara Hannigan, and with the festival orchestra. Then cap it all June 2019 also marks Artistic Director off with La Jolla.

Thomas W. Morris’s last of sixteen seasons.

Under his watch, Ojai Music Festival has morphed into something like Germany’s Pacific Overtures Darmstadt Music Festival, or the Venice “It’s not rocket science,” says clarinetist Biennale. “The world of music is so differDavid Shifrin about running Chamber ent than it was sixteen years ago,” Thomas Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon. “It says. “The appetite on the part of audiis labor-intensive, and it’s about partnerences for more intense, distinctive musical ships—between musicians and music lovexperiences is increasing. Those forces that have propelled the music director appointments over the years.”

Several spots north of Los Angeles are an easy road trip from Ojai. For eight weeks, the Music Academy of the West summer festival trains young professional musicians and presents hundreds of concerts on its campus in Montecito and in Santa Barbara; the Academy in recent years has included partnerships with the New York Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestra. And Festival Mozaic—with a mix of chamber, orchestra, and “unclassical” crossover concerts—spreads out over multiple venues in San Luis Western Lights: Music Academy of the West’s Obispo County. Conductor Scott Yoo diHind Hall teaching studio building (above), rects that festival, which takes place in late opened in 2017. The festival trains young July and August. In Los Angeles, the Holprofessional musicians and presents hundreds lywood Bowl, summer home of the Los of concerts in Montecito and Santa Barbara, California.

Angeles Philharmonic, is open for sym-

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Portland Bend Jacksonville

St. Helena San Francisco Atherton Santa Cruz

ers.” Shifrin has led the festival as artistic director since 1981—that’s a long time in musician years. “I came to Chamber Music Northwest in the earliest stages,” he says.

“It was just two or three concerts in a city that did not have that much music going on. But it became like Field of Dreams: if you build it, they will come. Now we have tens of thousands of people coming every year. A budget that was about ten thousand dollars is now probably something like a couple million.” The 2019 summer kicks off with three clarinetists playing Mozart (Shifrin is in charge, after all). The Rolston, Calidore, and Miró string quartets all make appearances as well. This season marks Shifrin’s 39th and final season, and stay alert for next year’s celebrations, when the festival turns 50 and the husband-and-wife team of violinist Soovin

Wine Country: Music in the Vineyards, in its 25th year this summer, presents chamber concerts at multiple California wineries, such as this one at Harvest Inn in St. Helena.

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Lisa-Marie Mazzucco

Seattle

Kim and pianist Gloria Chien become the festival’s next artistic directors to succeed Shifrin.

Driving north, in July you can find the Seattle Chamber Music Society settled into Benaroya Hall, the Seattle Symphony’s home and a beautiful destination after a scenic drive up the Pacific Coast.

And with live concert broadcasts in four parks around the city—the Music under the Stars program—you don’t even have to get a ticket. Violinist James Ehnes directs.

Oregon makes some beautiful music in the summer, and you could easily spend some happy time driving around the Oregon Cascades. Teddy Abrams directs the Britt Orchestra in the tiny town of Jacksonville; the Britt festival is named after Peter Britt, a pioneer and owner of the land now used for Britt Park, and performances take place in July and August. Sunriver Music Festival at the Sunriver Resort and in Bend, about three hours southeast of Portland, features classical and pops concerts, masterclasses, and open rehearsals. Among the many fine younger players in its August series, will be Van Cliburn Competition silver medalist Kenny Broberg in several appearances.

Traveling south to California’s wine country, Music in the Vineyards makes pairings all over the area, from the wineries of Charles Krug to Mondavi to Beringer. This August, Music in the Vineyards celebrates its 25th anniversary.

Driving out to the peninsula, the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, now directed by Cristian Macelaru, brings contemporary orchestral music to Santa

Bay Area Sounds: California’s Music@Menlo chamber music festival and teaching institute is curated by husband-and-wife team of pianist Wu Han and cellist David Finckel.

Cruz in July and August. And the adventurously themed Music @ Menlo—run for years by the husband-and-wife team of cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han—brings performers, scholars, and a well-schooled audience to concerts in the Atherton area. This year’s theme: Incredible Decades, focusing on seven periods from Bach to the present that helped propel music’s evolution.

Mountain and Desert Treks

“I think you have to foster a genuine interest in the whole gamut of music,” says Mark Neikrug, artistic director of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. “Audiences will always run away faster than you can chase them,” he jokes. Neikrug has led the downtown festival in the artsy high-desert locale since 1998, so he knows what he’s talking about. The festival’s user-friendly schedule—most concerts at noon, or early evening—completes the laid-back vibe of the series. Complemented by the sumptuous Santa Fe Opera season—just a few miles up Rte. 84/285—Santa Fe feels like a musical place to be in July and August.

Further north, a couple hours drive into the mountains, is gorgeous Music From Angel Fire, a chamber music festival near Taos that has been bringing distinguished musicians to the community for 35 years.

Violinist Ida Kavafian directs, and she recruits a roster of esteemed colleagues like cellist Peter Wiley and pianist Anne-Marie McDermott. Continuing north, deeper into the Rockies, the four orchestras at Bravo! Vail are waiting to greet you. In 2019, Chamber Orchestra Vienna–Berlin—a chamber group of musicians from the Vienna and Berlin philharmonics— symphony

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Jackson Hole

Deer Valley

Fort Collins Steamboat Springs Boulder Vail Aspen

Eric Berlin

Taos Santa Fe

Mountain Music: For six weeks every summer, the Colorado Music Festival takes place at the historic Chautauqua Auditorium in Boulder.

joins the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic at the skiing retreat, with each doing a one-week residency.

There are plenty of great summertime vistas on the road in the Rockies, and plenty of rewards for music lovers. Robert Spano serves as music director for this season’s “Being American” themed programs at Colorado’s Aspen Music Festival—only 100 curvy, mountainous miles from Vail.

The Strings Music Festival in Steamboat Springs celebrates its 30th anniversary this season, under the direction of Michael Sachs, the Cleveland Orchestra’s principal trumpet. The Off the Hook Arts festival in Fort Collins, run by composer Bruce Adolphe, brings neurosciensits, cognitive psychologists, and, of course, musicians for an exploration of human perception (and deception, and illusion). It’s fun, and certainly one-of-a-kind. The Colorado Music Festival just named conductor Peter Oundjian as permanent director, and focuses its attention on Beethoven with its stellar list of soloists for its six-week season in Boulder. It’s a long poke from there to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, but little Teton Village hosts one of the most dynamic orchestral festivals anywhere—and has since 1962. Donald Runnicles runs the Grand Teton Music Festival, with the music resonating in the all-wooden Walk Hall. Deer Valley, tucked away in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains, isn’t exactly close.

But nothing is close out west. Summer home of the Utah Symphony, the resort town hosts the orchestra’s summer pops/ classical series beginning in late June.

Gabriel Kahane as composer-in-residence this summer. Just north, the Ravinia Festival hosts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and other groups, and provides a gateway to points even further north, and much more countrified.

Case in point: Token Creek, a small one-week Wisconsin festival in late August notable for its co-artistic director— composer John Harbison, who runs the festival together with his wife, violinist Rose Mary Harbison. The Pulitzer/Mac­

Madeline Island Fish Creek Token Creek Highland Park Chicago

South Bend Cincinnati

Inspiration Point Fayetteville Hot Springs

Chi-Town Loops—and Beyond

Desert Dvorák: The Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico, built in 1931 as a vaudeville and movie house, is now one of the spaces where Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival concerts take place. americanorchestras.org

Like most great cities with a lot going on, you can leave Chicago in the summer—or you can stay put. The Grant Park Music Festival serves as home to dozens of events, many of them free, from June to August in Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park right in the center of town. Carlos Kalmar serves as principal conductor, and

Arthur awardee celebrates his 80th birthday this season, as Token Creek, just north of Madison, marks its 30th anniversary.

Harbison’s music has been the focus of orchestras and ensembles across the country this year—and deservedly so. Heading deeper north into Wisconsin is tempting.

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Bar Harbor Portland Keene Portsmouth Marlboro Putney Rockport Boston Lenox Cape Cod Norfolk Katonah Newport New York

Vienna

College Park

Charlottesville

City Vibes: In downtown Chicago, the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park is home to the Grant Park Music Festival. Carlos Kalmar is principal conductor, and this summer Gabriel Kahane will be composer in residence.

Peninsula Music Festival in Fish Creek, under Victor Yampolsky’s direction, hosts an orchestral series in August (it’s a long drive, an hour past Green Bay). An even longer drive to another little bit of summer heaven is Madeline Island Chamber Music, in Lake Superior off the northwest tip of Wisconsin, which has some impressive residencies this summer—the Dover, St. Lawrence, Arianna, and American string quartets.

lent chorus and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. The Cincinnati Symphony also plays throughout the summer at Cincinnati’s Riverbend Music Center. Further south, in Fayetteville, Arkansas, conductor Corrado Rovaris directs Artosphere during the month of June, a mashup of art, music, and nature with many family- and pocketbook-friendly performances and experiences. A variety of artistic approaches—musical and otherwise—will focus

Rustic Splendor: Performances take place in a barn at the Token Creek Chamber Music Festival, just north of Madison, Wisconsin. Composer John Harbison (in photo) and his wife, violinist Rose Mary Harbison, run the festival, celebrating its 30th anniversary this August.

And then we could head south from Chicago. If you’re getting an early start to the summer, the young musicians participating in the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition in South Bend, Indiana in May provide a look at the future.

If you do, make a detour southeast to Cincinnati’s May Festival, with director Juanjo Mena, worth a trip for the excel-

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this year’s festival on sustainability and environmental awareness. Hot Springs Music Festival, also in June and close by, is an orchestral mentorship program under the direction of conductor Peter Bay, music director of the Austin Symphony Orchestra in Texas, with a busy daytime-teaching and nighttime-performance schedule. Opera in the Ozarks, nestled in Inspiration

Asheville Brevard

Point a few hundred miles north, “a mountainous place not too many miles from Heaven,” as the festival describes it, makes for a musical change of pace, rotating half a dozen productions in June and July.

East Coast Wanderings

The plentiful summer choices along the East Coast are the biggest challenge for our road trip. Up and down the coast, it seems like every small town hosts a chamber series, or some work-vacationing city orchestra.

Starting in the Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina, the beginnings of the Asheville Chamber Music Series certainly sound idyllic: in 1952 founder Joe Vandewart set up a table in a hotel lobby, convinced 800 people to subscribe to “an unspecified number of concerts” (for $4), and that was it. Almost seven decades later they’re still making music—although the program details are a little more precise.

The Brevard Music Center, about an hour southwest of Asheville, features ten weeks of symphonic and chamber music and is home to a long-running summer institute for young musicians, currently Keith Lockhart, principal conductor of the Boston Pops. Drive another 400 or so miles north, and if the timing is right, enjoy the 20th anniversary of Virginia’s Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival (in September).

Spectacular Wolf Trap, with hundreds of events throughout the year, is only a couple hours away in Vienna, Virginia, and if you symphony

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courtesy of Platt Architecture, PA

Appalachian Airs: The 1,800-seat Whittington-Pfohl Auditorium is the main performance venue of the Brevard Music Center in western North Carolina. The festival offers ten weeks of symphonic and chamber music concerts every summer, and the Music Center also hosts a long-running summer institute for young classical musicians.

friends in northwestern Connecticut, on the way to the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s storied summer home, Tanglewood.

Marco Borggreve

need a piano break, the Kapell International Piano Competition takes place in College Park, Maryland, just 25 miles from there.

Keep driving north along the northeast D.C.-N.Y.C.-Boston-Maine corridor. Although some people might want to skip big cities during the summer months, one good reason to stop in New York City is June’s Chelsea Music Festival, hosted by conductor Ken-David Masur—recently named music director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra—and his wife, Melinda Lee Masur, which focuses as much on food as it does on music. Another good reason to stop by the Big Apple in summertime is Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, but that doesn’t happen until July and August. The Caramoor Music Festival, summer home to opera, chamber music, and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, makes a good hub for the New England part of the trip, nestled north of New York City in a former estate in Katonah, in Westchester County. Take a breather for a few days, and you’re ready to fire up the chariot again. The Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, operated by the Yale School of Music, hosts the Yalies and their musical

The Shed, and More: The iconic Shed at Tanglewood, longtime summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. This summer, the Tanglewood campus will expand with the opening of the new, year-round Linde Center for Music and Learning. In summer, the space will host the Tanglewood Learning Institute; in the fall, it opens for use by the BSO, Berkshire community, and more. americanorchestras.org

The big news at Tanglewood is the new education and performance center, known as the Tanglewood Learning Institute, situated near Ozawa Hall and set to open this summer—yet another reason to visit idyllic Lenox. Pianist Emmanuel Ax joins the BSO for the festival’s opening night, and the summer also includes Wagner’s Die Walküre, split over two days of performances. An August appearance by the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra— traditional Chinese instrumentalists, set in Western configuration—figures to be a highlight.

Tanglewood can be hard to leave— there’s just so much going on. Musicians and staff of the Boston Symphony Orchestra decamp here from Boston, a hundred miles away, for a solid two months. But drive southeast to Rhode Island, where pianist Natalie Zhu runs the Kingston Chamber Music Festival, and where nearby Newport Music Festival has been reborn under Executive Director Pamela A. Pantos’s direction. The Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival blankets the Cape with classical and contemporary music in August, and Boston, relatively quiet in the summer, has Boston Landmarks Orchestra performing al fresco every week in the Hatch Shell on the Esplanade.

On Boston’s North Shore, the Rock-

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Rockport’s artistic director last summer, and the results—focusing on new music, and unusual presentations—were profound. “With St. Lawrence, I experienced the direct impact that visceral presentations of new music can have on a career,” Shiffman says.

“It was very important to us. We need to normalize new music and Vienna, Virginia? The Filene Center at Wolf Trap presents the not make it a special National Symphony Orchestra, Wolf Trap Opera, American Ballet event all the time. At Theater, and more every summer. Wolf Trap, set on 117 acres about fifteen miles from Washington, D.C., is operated in partnership with the same time, you have the National Park Service. to create a festival that both challenges and comforts—that goes between the two.” In port Chamber Music Festival cannot be his first season Shiffman did just that, with missed—gaze out the glass window bean array of presentations ranging from hind the stage into Rockport Harbor, and theater to film to late-night cabaret—and you can get a day at the beach and some great chamber music.

Brentano Quartet at the same time. VioIf it seems like classical music haplinist Barry Shiffman, formerly of the St. pens in each little town in Vermont, Lawrence String Quartet, took over as

New Hampshire, and Maine, well, yeah.

From Yellow Barn to Marlboro (both in Vermont) to Halcyon Music Festival (Portsmouth, New Hampshire) to Apple Hill (Keene, New Hampshire) all the way up Maine, park the car in just about any village and you can find a program.

Maine in particular becomes a chamber music paradise in the summer: Bar Harbor Music Festival, Salt Bay Chamberfest (Damariscotta), Seal Bay Festival of American Chamber Music (held in museums and galleries in multiple Maine locations), Portland Chamber Music Festival, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music School and Festival (Blue Hill)—it’s a wonderful place to explore by car, and the best time of year to do it. From Boston to Blue Hill is only a five-hour drive, but it seems like every chamber musician in the world passes through each summer.

KEITH POWERS covers music and the arts in Boston for GateHouse Media and WBUR’s ARTery.

Astral’s reputation as an industry leader in identifying top talent has made it a trusted partner for presenters. The rising stars in our program inspire listeners, while the skills they develop through our mentorship will help you deepen your community impact.

Contact Astral to enrich your concert season.

215.735.6999 | astralartists.org | bookings@astralartists.org Photos: Timothy Chooi (Ryan Brandenberg), Chrystal E. Williams (Alex Kruchoski), Henry Kramer (Hugo De Pril)

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symphony

SPRING 2019

What can you accomplish in a day?

Thanks to our donors we raised $61,095 on June 14, 2018!

Stay tuned for information on our 3rd Annual

League Giving Day June 4, 2019

Coming Soon to‌

orchleague

orchleague

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Summer

Festivals

Steven McBride

You never know where student musicians will be inspired to perform during the Brevard Music Center Summer Institute and Festival in North Carolina.

ARKANSAS

Artosphere: Arkansas’ Arts + Nature Festival Northwest Arkansas, AR June 10 to June 29 Featuring music, film, visual arts, and innovative collaborative performances and events, Artosphere celebrates ways the arts can connect us to the natural world. The Artosphere Festival Orchestra (AFO) features top musicians from around the world who perform symphonic, chamber, and community engagement “pop-up” style performances.

Festival Artistic Direction: Corrado Rovaris Festival Conductor: Corrado Rovaris Festival Artists: Andrea Levine, clarinet; Benjamin Beilman, violin Featured Groups: Aeolus Quartet; Artosphere Festival Orchestra; arx duo; Bella Gaia Ensemble; Dover Quartet; Seraph Brass Orchestra Affiliation: Artosphere Festival Orchestra For Information: Jason Howell Smith, AFO General Manager Walton Arts Center P.O. Box 3547 Fayetteville, AR 72702 479 571 2731 jsmith@waltonartscenter.org waltonartscenter.org/artosphere

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@waltonartscenter

@walton_arts

@waltonartscenter Hot Springs Music Festival Hot Springs, AR June 1 to June 15 For over 20 years, the Hot Springs Music Festival has paired world-class mentor musicians from major orchestras, chamber ensembles, and conservatory faculties with especially talented pre-professional apprentices—all of whom receive full instructional scholarships—to participate in open rehearsals and present nightly concerts.

Festival Artistic Direction: Peter Bay Festival Conductor: Peter Bay For Information: Lynn Payette, Executive Director Hot Springs Music Festival P.O. Box 1857 Hot Springs, AR 71902 501 623 4763 festival@hotmusic.org hotmusic.org

CALIFORNIA

Bayside Summer Nights Embarcadero Marina Park South, San Diego, CA June 28 to September 1 Bayside Summer Nights mixes classical favorites and pop music at San Diego’s picturesque waterfront.

Festival Conductors: Francesco Lecce-Chong, Yaniv Dinur, Christopher Dragon, Todd Ellison, Rob Fisher, Ted Sperling Festival Artists: B52’s, Blues Traveler, Chaka Khan, Doo-Wop Project, Empire Strikes Back in Concert, Harry Potter in Concert, Lyle Lovett, Midtown Men, Singin’ in the Rain in Concert Featured Groups: B52’s; Blues Traveler Orchestra Affiliation: San Diego Symphony For Information: Ticket Office 1245 Seventh Avenue San Diego, CA 92101 619 235 0804 tickets@sandiegosymphony.org sandiegosymphony.org

@HotSpringsMusicFestival

@sandiegosymphony

@SanDiegoSymph

@sandiegosymphony

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Summer

Festivals

Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music Santa Cruz, CA July 28 to August 11 Called a “new music mecca” by the New York Times, the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music makes Santa Cruz, California the place to be each August! The Festival’s 57th season welcomes a dozen resident composers, a stunning roster of soloists, a bevy of premieres, and the award-winning Festival Orchestra led by Cristian Măcelaru.

Festival Artistic Direction: Cristian Măcelaru Festival Conductor: Cristian Măcelaru Festival Artists: Inbal Segev, cello; Preben Antonsen, Clarice Assad, Anna Clyne, Dan Dediu, Melody Eotvos, Vivian Fung, Jake Heggie, Kristin Kuster, Hannah Lash, Wynton Marsalis, Caroline Shaw, Nina Young, Du Yun, composers; Sarah Fuller, harp; Jamie Barton, mezzo-soprano; Nicola Benedetti, violin Featured Groups: Roomful of Teeth vocal ensemble For Information: Ellen Primack, Executive Director 147 S. River Street Suite 232 Santa Cruz, CA 95060 831 426 6966 info@cabrillomusic.org cabrillomusic.org

June 9 to June 23 An intensive orchestral immersion program, FOOSA offers side-by-side training for preprofessional musicians. Concert at Disney Hall in Los Angeles. Concerto competition, master classes, recitals, and daily lessons.

Festival Artistic Direction: Thomas Loewenheim Festival Conductor: Thomas Loewenheim Festival Artists: Catherine Marchese, bassoon; Emanuel Gruber, Thomas Landschoot, Thomas Loewenheim, Jonathan Ruck, Brian Schuldt, cello; Guy Yehuda, clarinet; Bruce Bransby, double bass; Mihoko Watanabe, flute; Laura Porter, harp; Lanette Lopez-Compton, horn; Rong-Huey Liu, oboe; Matthew Darling, percussion; Luis Fred, trombone; Wiff Rudd, trumpet; Michael Chang, Adriana Linares, viola; Francisco Cabán, Sharan Leventhal, Domenic Salerni, Katrin Stamatis, Limor Toren-Immerman, violin Featured Groups: FOOSA Philharmonic Orchestra Affiliation: Youth Orchestras of Fresno For Information: Julia Copeland, Executive Director 1586 West Shaw Avenue Fresno, CA 93711 559 512 6694 foosamusic@gmail.com foosamusic.org

@CabrilloFest

@CabrilloFest

@cabrillofestival

@festivalmozaic

@festivamozaic

@festivalmozaic FOOSA Festival/Fresno Summer Orchestra Academy California State University, Fresno, CA americanorchestras.org

@FoosaMusic

@foosafest

Hollywood Bowl 2019 Season Los Angeles, CA June 8 to September 29 As the LA Phil continues celebrating its Centennial year, the Hollywood Bowl season features a roster of world-class artists ranging from classical

@HollywoodBowl

@HollywoodBowl

@HollywoodBowl

Music@Menlo Chamber Music Festival and Institute Atherton, CA July 12 to August 3 Music@Menlo’s seventeenth season—Incredible Decades—runs from July 12 to August 3, features over forty artists, and focuses on the most pivotal moments in the history of Western classical music.

Festival Artistic Direction: David Finckel and Wu Han Festival Artists: Nikolay Borchev, baritone; Peter Lloyd, bass; Peter Kolkay, bassoon; Dmitri Atapine,

Los Angeles Philharmonic

Festival Mozaic San Luis Obispo County, CA July 24 to August 4 Festival Mozaic presents chamber music, orchestra, and crossover concerts and events in a variety of venues. The music ranges from classical and contemporary to experimental, with an emphasis on education.

Festival Artistic Direction: Scott Yoo Festival Conductor: Scott Yoo Festival Artists: Susan Cahill, bass; Fei Xie, bassoon; Jonah Kim, Dariusz Skoraczewski, cello; Michael Fine, Anton Rist, clarinet; Robert Walters, English horn; Alice Dade, flute; Robert Belinić, guitar; Noam Elkies, harpsichord; Elizabeth Koch Tiscione, oboe; Susan Grace, John Novacek, Christopher Shih, piano; Michael Tiscione, trumpet; Maurycy Banaszek, Michael Casimir, viola; Steven Copes, Abigel Kralik, Grace Park, Elly Suh, Scott Yoo, violin Featured Groups: Amir John Haddad; Illeana Gomez Flamenco Quartet; Take 3 Orchestra Affiliation: Festival Mozaic Orchestra For Information: Jeri Corgill, Interim Executive Director P.O. Box 311 San Luis Obispo, CA 93406 805 781 3009 director@festivalmozaic.com festivalmozaic.com

@FOOSAfresno

and pop to jazz, rock, and world music.

Festival Conductors: Gustavo Dudamel, Music and Artistic Director; David Newman, Bramwell Tovey, Xian Zhang, and more!

Festival Artists: Tony Bennett; Leon Bridges; Herbie Hancock; Chrissie Hynde; Chaka Khan; Barry Manilow; Michael McDonald; Natalia Lafourcade; Cyndi Lauper; John Legend; Khatia Buniatishvili, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Yuja Wang, piano; Katia and Marielle Labèque, pianos; Nicola Benedetti, Martin Chalifour, Ray Chen, James Ehnes, violin Featured Groups: Budapest Festival Orchestra, Death Cab for Cutie, Earth, Wind & Fire, The Gipsy Kings, Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, The Kingdom Choir, LA Dance Project, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Pink Martini, The Roots, Siudy Flamenco Dance Theater Orchestra Affiliation: Los Angeles Philharmonic Hollywood Bowl Box Office 2301 North Highland Avenue Los Angeles, CA, 90068 323 850 2000 Information@Hollywoodbowl.com hollywoodbowl.com

The Hollywood Bowl is the summertime home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, plus stellar artists from pop, jazz, rock, and world music.

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Summer

Festivals

David Finckel, David Requiro, Keith Robinson, Brook Speltz, cello; Romie de Guise-Langlois, Tommaso Lonquich, clarinet; Bruce Adolphe, Ara Guzelimian, Michael Parloff, R. Larry Todd, encounter leaders; Tara Helen O’Connor, flute; Mark Almond, Kevin Rivard, horn; James Austin Smith, Hugo Souza, Stephen Taylor, oboe; Ayano Kataoka, percussion; Gloria Chien, Gilbert Kalish, Hyeyeon Park, Juho Pohjonen, Stephen Pruts­ man, Gilles Vonsattel, Wu Han, piano; Hsin-Yun Huang, Pierre Lapointe, Paul Neubauer, Richard O’Neill, Arnaud Sussmann, viola; Adam BarnettHart, Aaron Boyd, Ivan Chan, Chad Hoopes, Soovin Kim, Jessica Lee, Kristin Lee, Arnaud Sussmann, James Thompson, Angelo Xiang Yu, violin; Klari Reis, visual artist Featured Groups: Escher String Quartet, Schumann Quartet For Information: Claire Graham, Communications Director 50 Valparaiso Avenue Atherton, CA 94027 650-330-2030 claire@musicatmenlo.org musicatmenlo.org

Evie Ayers, Executive Director P.O. Box 6297 Napa, CA 94581 707 258 5559 evie@musicinthevineyards.org musicinthevineyards.org @MusicIntheVineyards

@MITV_NapaValley

@musicinthevineyards Ojai Music Festival Ojai, CA June 6 to June 9 Capturing the attention of the music world, Ojai is as an immersive creative laboratory bringing together innovative artists and curious audiences during four curated days in the outdoor splendor of the Ojai Valley.

Festival Artistic Direction: Barbara Hannigan, music director; Thomas W. Morris Festival Conductors: Edo Frenkel, Barbara Hannigan, Steven Schick Festival Artists: Edo Frenkel, keyboard; Steven Schick, percussion; Stephen Gosling, piano Featured Groups: Equilibrium Artists; JACK Quartet Orchestra Affiliation: LUDWIG For Information: Gina Gutierrez, Chief Operating Officer 201 South Signal Street Ojai, CA 93023 805 646 2094 ggutierrez@ojaifestival.org ojaifestival.org

@musicatmenlo

@musicatmenlo

@musicatmenlo

@ojaifestival

@OjaiFestivals

Ojai Music Festival

@ojaifestivals

At the Ojai Music Festival in bucolic southern California, the milieu is one of the attractions.

Music in the Vineyards Napa Valley, California July 31 to August 25 Now in its 25th season, Music in the Vineyards is a nationally acclaimed chamber music festival held each summer in the Napa Valley showcasing world-class artists performing in winery settings.

Concerts feature witty commentary, wine tasting, and breathtaking views.

Festival Artistic Direction: Michael Adams (viola); Daria Adams (violin) Festival Artists: Joshua Roman, cello; Burt Hara, clarinet; Elizabeth Koch Tiscione, oboe; William Wolfram, piano; Paul Neubauer, viola; Francisco Fullana, Arnaud Sussman, violin; and many more.

Featured Groups: Dover Quartet; Pacifica Quartet; Tesla Quartet For Information:

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Pacific Symphony SummerFest Pacific Amphitheatre, Costa Mesa, CA July 4 to September 8 With over three decades of presenting great music under the stars, Pacific Symphony returns again this summer to the 8,500 seat open-air Pacific Amphitheatre at the OC Fair and Event Center.

Festival Artistic Direction: Carl St.Clair, music director Festival Conductors: Richard Kaufman, principal pops conductor; Carl St.Clair, music director Festival Artists: Benjamin Beilman, violin Featured Groups: A New Hope—In Concert; Hotel California: A Salute to the Eagles; Star Wars; Tchaikovsky Spectacular Orchestra Affiliation: Pacific Symphony For Information: John Forsyte, President 17620 Fitch Avenue Irvine, CA 02614-6081 714 755 5700 info@PacificSymphony.org PacificSymphony.org @PacificSymphony

@PacificSymphony

@PacificSymphony

COLORADO

Aspen Music Festival and School Aspen, CO June 27 to August 18 The AMFS is considered one of the top classical music festivals in the world, noted for its concert programming and musical training. The 70th-anniversary season includes more than 400 events.

Festival Artistic Direction: Edward Berkeley, director, Aspen Opera Center; Alan Fletcher, president and CEO, AMFS; Asadour Santourian, vice president for artistic administration and artistic advisor, AMFS; Robert Spano, music director, AMFS Festival Conductors: Christian Arming, Alondra de la Parra, Andy Einhorn, James Gaffigan, Jane Glover, Lawrence Isaacson, Cristian Măcelaru, Nicholas McGegan, Ludovic Morlot, Stephen Mulligan, Erik Neilsen, Patrick Dupré Quigley, Larry Rachleff, Leonard Slatkin, Robert Spano, Marcus Stenz, Michael Stern, Patrick Summers, Scott Terrell, Joshua Weilerstein, Timothy Weiss, Hugh Wolff, Johannes Zahn Festival Artists: Darrett Adkins, David Finckel, Andrei Ioniţă, Edgar Moreau, Alisa Weilerstein, cello; Sharon Isbin, guitar; Nancy Allen, Anneleen Lenaerts, harp; Mahan Esfahani, Jory Vinikour, harpsichord; Isabel Leonard, Kelley O’Connor, mezzo-soprano; Elaine Douvas, oboe; Colin Currie, percussion; Andrew Armstrong, Inon Barnatan, Jonathan Biss, Yefim Bronfman, Seong-Jin Cho, Simone Dinnerstein, Vladimir Feltsman, Andreas Haefliger, Wu Han, Stephen Hough, Jeffrey Kahane, Maxim Lando, George Li, Jan Lisiecki, Nikolai Lugansky, Anton Nel, Conrad Tao, Daniil Trifonov, Arie Vardi, Orion Weiss, Joyce Yang, piano; Renée Fleming, Mané Galoyan, soprano; Tamás Pálfalvi, trumpet; Matthew Lipman, Tim Ridout, viola; Kristóf Baráti, Joshua Bell, Nicola Benedetti, Renaud Capuçon, Sarah Chang, James Ehnes, Augustin Hadelich, William Hagen, Chad Hoopes, Paul Huang, Sergey Khachatryan, Fabiola Kim, Robert McDuffie, Midori, Simone Porter, Blake Pouliot, Esther Yoo, Angelo Xiang Yu, violin Featured Groups: American Brass Quintet; American String Quartet; Aspen Chamber Symphony; Aspen Contemporary Ensemble; Aspen Festival Orchestra; Aspen Philharmonic Orchestra; Colorado Symphony Orchestra Chorus; Emerson String Quartet; Escher String Quartet; JCT Trio; Pacifica Quartet; The Percussion Collective; Seraphic Fire For Information: AMFS Box Office 225 Music School Road Aspen, CO 81611 970 925 9042 tickets@aspenmusic.org aspenmusicfestival.com @aspenmusic

@aspenmusic

@aspenmusicfest Bravo! Vail Vail, CO June 20 to August 4 This season features the New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and Chamber Orchestra Vienna –

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Berlin, plus the festival’s first opera production, and a world-class chamber series.

Festival Artistic Direction: Anne-Marie McDermott Festival Conductors: Stéphane Denève, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Bramwell Tovey, Jaap van Zweden Festival Artists: Yefim Bronfman, Seong Jin Cho, Conrad Tao, piano; James Ehnes, Hilary Hahn, Anne-Sophie Mutter, violin Featured Groups: Chamber Orchestra Vienna – Berlin; Dallas Symphony Orchestra; New York Philharmonic; The Philadelphia Orchestra; St. Lawrence String Quartet; Takács String Quartet For Information: Carly West, Director of Marketing 2271 N Frontage Road W, Suite C Vail, CO 81657 970 827 4304

Festivals Rojak, trombone; Kevin Cobb, trumpet; Toby Appel, Phillip Ying, viola; Steven Copes, Ellen dePasquale, Stefan Hersh, Stephen Rose, Robin Scott, Andrew Wan, violin For Information: Gina Spiers, Assistant Director 14 E. Cache la Poudre Street Colorado Springs, CO 80903 719 389 6552 festival@coloradocollege.edu coloradocollege.edu/musicfestival @CCSummerMusic

@CC Summer Music Festival

*******************

July 31 - Aug 25

Napa Valley Chamber Music Festival

Winery Venues World-Class Musicians

Witty Commentary

Stunning Views

Free Wine Tasting *******************

2019 FESTIVAL

Aspen Music Festival and School

Jul 31 Aug 2 Aug 3

This summer, the Aspen Music Festival and School in Colorado marks its 70th anniversary with more than 400 events.

cwest@bravovail.org bravovail.org @bravovail

@BravoVail

@bravovail

Colorado College Summer Music Festival Colorado Springs, CO June 2 to June 22 The CC Summer Music Festival is a three-week, intensive educational festival for pre-professional musicians. Fellows work with world-class educators and performers. More than 28 concerts, including community outreach.

Festival Artistic Direction: Susan Grace Festival Conductor: Scott Yoo Festival Artists: Susan Cahill, bass; Michael Kroth, bassoon; Mark Kosower, Bion Tsang, David Ying, cello; Daniel Gilbert, Anton Rist, clarinet; Elizabeth Mann, Julie Thornton, flute; Michael Thornton, horn; Jonathan Fischer, Elizabeth Koch Tiscione, oboe; John Novacek, Orion Weiss, William Wolfram, piano; John Kinzie, timpani/percussion; John americanorchestras.org

Colorado Music Festival Boulder, CO June 27 to August 3 Now in its 42nd season, the Colorado Music Festival presents a six-week summer concert season at the historic Chautauqua Auditorium in Boulder showcasing Maestro Peter Oundjian and the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra. Inspired programming performed by exceptional national and international musicians has earned Colorado Music Festival recognition from the League of American Orchestras and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Festival Artistic Direction: Peter Oundjian Festival Conductors: David Danzmayr, Peter Oundjian, JeanMarie Zeitouni Festival Artists: Kian Soltani, Jan Vogler, cello; Jorg Widmann, clarinet; Janice Chandler-Eteme, mezzo soprano; Gabriela Montero, Natasha Paremski, Jon Kimura Parker, Lilya Zilberstein, piano; James Ehnes, Stefan Jackiw, Robert McDuffie, Mira Wang, violin Orchestra Affiliation: Colorado Music Festival Orchestra For Information:

Aug 4 Aug 7 Aug 9 Aug 10 Aug 11 Aug 14 Aug 16 Aug 17 Aug 18 Aug 21 Aug 23 Aug 24 Aug 25

Walt Disney Family Museum

Merryvale Vineyards Napa Valley College Frog’s Leap Winery Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Domaine Carneros Robert Mondavi Winery Charles Krug Winery Chimney Rock Markham Vineyards Silverado Vineyards Silverado Vineyards Silverado Vineyards Hudson House The Hess Collection Clos Pegase Inglenook Tre Posti

MusicInTheVineyards.org

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Summer

Festivals

Liz McGuire, Executive Director 900 Baseline Road Boulder, CO 80302 303 665 0599 mcguire@comusic.org coloradomusicfestival.org

Manager 166 Capitol Avenue Hartford, CT 06106 860 987 5900 info@hartfordsymphony.org hartfordsymphony.org

@COmusic

@Colomusicorg

@Colomusicorg

@hartfordsymphony

Music in the Mountains Durango, CO July 6 to July 28 Featuring musicians of the highest caliber, Music in the Mountains is Southwest Colorado’s premier classical music festival. Join us for our 2019 season in beautiful, historic Durango, Colorado.

Festival Artistic Direction: Gregory Hustis Festival Conductor: Guillermo Figueroa For Information: Angie Beach, Executive Director 515 E. College Drive Durango, CO 81301 970 385 6820 info@musicinthemountains.com musicinthemountains.com @musicinthemountainsCO

National Repertory Orchestra Breckenridge, CO June 2 to July 28 For more than 50 years, the NRO has been preparing musicians for careers in the orchestra world and is now at the forefront of the nation’s summer music festivals.

Festival Conductors: Karina Canellakis; Tania Miller; Anu Tali; Carl Topilow, music director; Bramwell Tovey Festival Artists: Artists from the Philadelphia Orchestra For Information: Kristin Kall, Director of Operations 150 West Adams Avenue P.O. Box 4269 Breckenridge, CO 80424 970 453 5825 kristin@nromusic.com nromusic.com @NROmusic

@NROmusic

CONNECTICUT

Talcott Mountain Music Festival Simsbury Meadows Performing Arts Center, Simsbury, CT June 28 to July 26 Celebrate summer at the Hartford Symphony Orchestra’s annual Talcott Mountain Music Festival.

Pack your picnic and enjoy the HSO under Music Director Carolyn Kuan and distinguished guest conductors and artists.

Festival Artistic Direction: Carolyn Kuan Festival Conductors: Adam Boyles, Carolyn Kuan Festival Artists: Hartford Symphony Orchestra Orchestra Affiliation: Hartford Symphony Orchestra For Information: Amanda Savio, Marketing and Public Relations

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@HSOTweets

@hartfordsymphony

FLORIDA

Sarasota Music Festival Sarasota, FL June 1 to June 22 The Sarasota Music Festival is a world-renowned performance and teaching festival that attracts young musicians and esteemed faculty from across the globe each June.

Festival Artistic Direction: Jeffrey Kahane Festival Conductor: Jeffrey Kahane Festival Artists: Romie de Guise-Langlois, Nathan Hughes, Jeffrey Kahane, Ani Kavafian, Robert Levin, Jon Kimura Parker, Richard Svoboda, Angelo Yu Featured Groups: Pacifica Quartet; Montrose Trio Orchestra Affiliation: Sarasota Orchestra For Information: RoseAnne McCabe 709 N Tamiami Trail Sarasota, FL, 34236 941 953 4252 rmccabe@sarasotaorchestra.org sarasotaorchestra.org/festival @SarasotaMusicFestival

@sarasotaorchestra

Symphony of the Americas Summerfest South Florida and selected countries of the Americas July 6 to August 10 Internationally acclaimed musicians and soloists from Europe and the Americas join principal musicians of the Symphony of the Americas for chamber orchestra and ensemble presentations under the baton of Maestro James Brooks-Bruzzese.

Festival Artistic Direction: James Brooks-Bruzzese Festival Conductor: James Brooks-Bruzzese Festival Artists: Claudio Osorio, trumpet Featured Groups: Soloists and members of various European chamber orchestras Orchestra Affiliation: Symphony of the Americas For Information: Renee LaBonte, VP Executive Director 2300 E. Oakland Park Blvd., Studio 306 Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33306 954 335 7002 info@sota.org sota.org @sota.org

@sotamericas

IDAHO

SummerFest 2019 McCall, ID

July 14 to July 20 McCall Music Society presents SummerFest 2019, a week-long festival of classical and pops orchestra concerts with soloists, and an opening-night event featuring ensembles and soloists.

Festival Artistic Direction: Eric Garcia Festival Conductor: Eric Garcia Festival Artists: Tim Fain, violin; Rachel Tyler, vocalist Orchestra Affiliation: Festival Orchestra For Information: Richard Surbeck, President, McCall Music Society PO Box 558 McCall, ID 83638 208 315 0905 surbeckr@gmail.com McCallMusicSociety.org @McCallMusicSociety

ILLINOIS

Grant Park Music Festival Millennium Park, Chicago, IL June 12 to August 17 In 2019, the Festival celebrates 85 seasons of world-class music with the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus, twenty seasons with Carlos Kalmar, and fifteen years at the Frank Gehry-designed Pritzker Pavilion.

Festival Artistic Direction: Carlos Kalmar Festival Conductors: Christopher Bell, Martyn Brabbins, David Danzmayr, Norman Huynh, Carlos Kalmar, Larry Loh, Cristian Măcelaru, Emmanuel Villaume Festival Artists: Nathan Berg, Michael Sumuel, bass-baritone; Edgar Moreau, cello; Anthony McGill, clarinet; Demarre McGill, flute; Yolanda Kondonassis, harp; J’Nai Bridges, Sienna Miller, Ewa Plonka, mezzo-soprano; Inon Barnatan, Stephen Hough, Jeffrey Kahane, Conrad Tao, piano; Amanda Majeski, Melody Moore, Susanna Phillips, soprano; Andrew Owens, Andrew Staples, tenor; Benjamin Beilman, Jeremy Black, Vadim Gluzman, Augustine Hadelich, violin; Holland Andrews, Susan Egan, Gabriel Kahane, Doug LaBrecque, Alicia Hall Moran, Holcombe Wallers, vocalists Featured Groups: Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus; Mambo Kings Orchestra Affiliation: Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus For Information: Jill Hurwitz, Chief Marketing Officer 205 E. Randolph Street Chicago, IL 60601 312 744 9179 jill.hurwitz@gpmf.org gpmf.org @Grant Park Music Festival

@gpmf

Ravinia Festival Highland Park, Illinois May 31 to September 15 America’s oldest music festival, presenting 140 events including summer residency of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Concerts are staged in the covered Pavilion and two indoor halls and are broadcast to the Lawn. The Ravinia Festival takes

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Bar Harbor Music Festival

place in Highland Park, just 20 miles north of Chicago.

Festival Artistic Direction: Welz Kauffman Festival Conductors: Marin Alsop, Itzhak Perlman, and others Festival Artists: Bernstein 101: The Celebration Continues; Ryan Speedo Green, baritone; Paulo Szot, bass; Kian Soltani, cello; Michelle DeYoung, mezzo; Emanuel Ax, Yefim Bronfman, Denis Matsuev, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, André Watts, piano; Jennifer Hudson, singer; Itzhak Perlman, violin; Featured Groups: Chicago Children’s Choir, Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, The Knights, Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, Mil-

Maine’s Bar Harbor Music Festival often features opera as part of the mix. In photo: April Martin and David Margulis in a July, 2017 performance of Don Pasquale. On the slate for summer 2019: Carmen.

waukee Symphony Chorus, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra Orchestra Affiliation: Chicago Symphony Orchestra For Information: Nick Pullia 418 Sheridan Road Highland Park, IL 60035 847 266 5012 npullia@ravinia.org ravinia.org @raviniafestival

@RaviniaFestival

@RaviniaFestival

MAINE

Bar Harbor Music Festival Bar Harbor, Maine June 30 to July 28 Hailed as “one of New England’s great music festivals,” the Bar Harbor Music Festival celebrates its 53rd season in a breathtaking setting. Highlights will include Bizet’s Carmen, the 47th annual Acadia National Park Outdoor Concert by the Bar Harbor Festival String Orchestra, the 25th Annual “New Composers” Concert, Jazz Night, a “Pops” concert, and six Young Audience Concerts.

Festival Artistic Direction: Francis Fortier americanorchestras.org

Festival Conductors: Cara Chowning, Music Director, Bar Harbor Music Festival Opera Theatre; Jeffrey Ellenberger, Assistant Conductor, Bar Harbor Music Festival String Orchestra; Francis Fortier, Conductor, Bar Harbor Music Festival String Orchestra Festival Artists: Jimmy Mazzy, banjo; Richard Ollarsaba, baritone; John Clark, clarinet; Ramin Amir Arjomand, composer/piano; Allison Kiger, flute; Audrey Babcock, mezzo-soprano; Alexandra Beliakovich, Cara Chowning, Deborah Fortier, Christoper Johnson, Antonio Galeria López, Margaret Mills, Ross Petot, piano; Janinah Burnett, April Martin, soprano; Fenlon Lamb, stage director; Adam Diegel, tenor; Janey Choi, Jeffrey Ellenberger, violin Featured Groups: Ardelia Ensemble, Bar Harbor Festival String Orchestra, Bar Harbor Music Festival Opera Theatre, Brass Venture, Wolverine Jazz Band Orchestra Affiliation: Bar Harbor Festival String Orchestra For Information: Deborah Swanger, Associate Director (Before June 10:) 741 West End Avenue, Suite 4-B New York, NY 10025 212 222 1026 (After June 10:) The Rodick Building 59 Cottage Street Bar Harbor, ME 004609 207 288 5886 info@barharbormusicfestival.org barharbormusicfestival.org @BarHarborMusicFestival

MASSACHUSETTS

Boston Landmarks Orchestra Esplanade/DCR Hatch Memorial Shell, Boston, MA July 17 to August 28 Boston Landmarks Orchestra offers free outdoor concerts at the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation’s Hatch Memorial Shell, frequently featuring collaborations with other performing, educational, and social service organizations.

Festival Artistic Direction: Christopher Wilkins Festival Conductor: Christopher Wilkins Featured Groups: Back Bay Chorale; Boston Ballet II; One City Choir; and others Orchestra Affiliation: Boston Landmarks Orchestra For Information: Jo Frances Meyer, Executive Director 545 Concord Avenue, Suite #318 Cambridge, MA 01938 617 987 2000 info@landmarksorchestra.org landmarksorchestra.org @LandmarksOrch

@LandmarksOrch

@LandmarksOrch

Tanglewood Lenox, Massachusetts June 22 to August 25 In summer 2019, Tanglewood opens the Linde Center for Music and Learning and Tanglewood Learning Institute, marking a transformational new era of programming in the illustrious 82-year history.

Festival Conductor: Andris Nelsons, Boston Symphony Orchestra Music Director Festival Artists: Ryan Speedo Green, bass-baritone; Meow Meow, cabaret singer; Gautier Capuçon, Yo-Yo Ma, cello; Thomas Ades, Michael Gandolfi, John Harbison, André Previn, Kevin Puts, Poul Ruders, Joan Tower, composer; John Williams, composer/conductor; Tom Stoppard, librettist; Stephanie Blythe, Ronnita Miller, mezzo-soprano; Emanuel Ax, Paul Lewis, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano; Renée Fleming, Christine Goerke, soprano; Pamela Frank, Leonidas Kavakos, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Gil Shaham, violin Featured Groups: Boston Symphony Orchestra; Emerson String Quartet; Juilliard String Quartet For Information: Bernadette Horgan 297 West Street Lenox, MA 01240 617 638 9285 bhorgan@bso.org tli.org @TanglewoodMusicFestival

@TanglewoodMA

@tanglewoodmusicfestival

MICHIGAN

Baroque on Beaver Beaver Island, MI July 26 to August 3 A festival of classical music in its eighteenth season. The ten-day event features professional chamber, orchestral, and choral performances in multiple venues by musicians from Michigan, the Midwest, and beyond.

Festival Artistic Direction: Robert Nordling Festival Conductors: Robert Nordling, Kevin Simons Festival Artists: David Cunliffe, cello; Marta Aznavoorian, Jeeyoon Kim, piano; James Crawford, Desirée Ruhstrat, violin; Peter Amster, voice Featured Groups: Jeeyoon Kim; The Lincoln Trio For Information: Matthew Thomas, Festival Director Beaver Island Cultural Arts Association/Baroque on Beaver P.O. Box 326 Beaver Island, MI 49782 989 859 8893 msthomas@baroqueonbeaver.org baroqueonbeaver.org @BaroqueOnBeaver

MONTANA

Festival Amadeus Kalispell, MT August 2 to August 11 Seven days of chamber orchestra and opera concerts this season featuring Mozart’s Così fan tutte in a concert version production. Guest artists include

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violinist William Hagen and the Cascade String Quartet.

Festival Artistic Direction: John Zoltek Festival Conductor: John Zoltek Festival Artists: William Hagen, violin Featured Groups: Cascade String Quartet Orchestra Affiliation: Glacier Symphony For Information: John Zoltek, Music Director and Conductor P.O. Box 2491 Kalispell, MT 59903 406 407 7000 info@gscmusic.org

970 470 9772 lindsey.himmon@tippetrise.org tippetrise.org

@Tippet-Rise-Art-Center-402423033200609 @TippetRise

@tippet.rise

NEVADA

Classical Tahoe North Lake Tahoe, NV July 26 to August 11 A virtuoso orchestra of musicians invited from the Metropolitan Opera, Los Angeles, and New York Philharmonics, Philadelphia Orchestra, the sym-

@glaciersymphonychorale

@glaciermusic

Hilary Scott

@glaciersymphony

The Boston Symphony Orchestra, led here by Music Director Andris Nelsons, is at the center of the music-making at the Tanglewood festival in Lenox, Massachusetts.

Tippet Rise Art Center Fishtail, MT July 12 to September 7 Tippet Rise Art Center’s fourth concert season will feature seven weeks of concerts by an impressive list of artists, under the direction of newly appointed artistic advisor Pedja Muzijevic.

Festival Artistic Direction: Pedja Muzijevic Festival Artists: Anthony Manzo, bass; Gabriel Cabezas, Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir, cello; Brandon Patrick George, flute; James Austin Smith, oboe; Behzod Abduraimov, Julien Brocal, Jenny Chen, Stephen Hough, Pedja Muzijevic, Roman Rabinovich, and Aristo Sham, piano; Ayane Kozasa and Nathan Schram, viola; Benjamin Beilman, Jennifer Frautschi, Paul Huang, Katie Hyun, violin Featured Groups: Anderson & Roe Piano Duo; Escher String Quartet; the Gryphon Trio; the JACK Quartet; the Rolston String Quartet; St. Lawrence String Quartet For Information: Lindsey Hinmon, Managing Director, Programs 96 S. Grove Creek Rd. Fishtail, MT 59028

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phonies of San Francisco, Seattle, Dallas, Toronto, Vancouver, and other exceptional ensembles.

Festival Artistic Direction: Laura Hamilton, Concertmaster (Principal Associate Concertmaster, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra); Joel Revzen, Artistic Director and Principal Conductor (Assistant Conductor, Metropolitan Opera) Festival Conductor: Joel Revzen, Artistic Director and Principal Conductor (Assistant Conductor, Metropolitan Opera) Festival Artists: Emmanuel Ceysson, harp; Svetlana Smolina, piano; Weston Sprott, trombone; Itamar Zorman, violin; other soloists TBA Tahoe Festival Orchestra For Information: Cindy Rhys, Sarah Wells 948 Incline Way Incline Village, NV 89451 775 298 0245 info@classicaltahoe.org classicaltahoe.org @classicaltahoe

@classicaltahoe

@classicaltahoe

NEW MEXICO

Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival Santa Fe, NM July 14 to August 19 An intimate six-week festival featuring the world’s finest musicians performing a wide range of chamber music amid the backdrop of a stunning Southwestern setting.

Festival Artistic Direction: Marc Neikrug Festival Conductors: John Harbison, David Zinman Festival Artists: Leigh Mesh, Mark Tatum, bass; Philippe Sly, bass-baritone; Liam Burke, Miles Jaques, basset horn; Julia Harguindey, Christopher Millard, bassoon; Clive Greensmith, Joseph Johnson, Eric Kim, Mark Kosower, Keith Robinson, Peter Wiley, cello; Todd Levy, David Shifrin, clarinet; Tara Helen O’Connor, Joshua Smith, flute; Łukasz Kuropaczewski, guitar; Paolo Bordignon, Kathleen McIntosh, harpsichord; Stefan Dohr, Gregory Flint, Hunter Sholar, Karen Suarez, James Wilson, horn; Susan Graham, Christianne Stotijn, mezzo-soprano; Julia DeRosa, Robert Ingliss, Randall Wolfgang, oboe; Robert Kleiger, Steven White, Gregory Zuber, percussion; Inon Barnatan, Zoltán Fejérvári, Kirill Gerstein, Wei Luo, Michael McMahon, Jon Kimura Parker, Elizabeth Joy Roe, Peter Serkin, Gilles Vonsattel, Shai Wosner, Haochen Zhang, piano; Sarah Shafer, soprano; Paul Appleby, tenor; Choon-Jin Chang, Guillermo Figueroa, Margaret Dyer Harris, L. P. How, Ida Kavafian, Scott Lee, Paul Neubauer, Theresa Rudolph, Steven Tenenbom, Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu, viola; Martin Beaver, Kathleen Brauer, Harvey de Souza, Carla Ecker, Jennifer Frautschi, Jennifer Gilbert, L. P. How, Paul Huang, Daniel Jordan, Ida Kavafian, Benny Kim, Soovin Kim, Daniel Phillips, Sarah Tasker, Ashley Vandiver, Eric Wyrick, violin Featured Groups: Dover Quartet; Escher String Quartet; FLUX Quartet; Miami String Quartet; Orion String Quartet For Information: Steven Ovitsky, Executive Director 208 Griffin Street Santa Fe, NM 87501 505 983 2075 ext. 110 sovitsky@sfcmf.org SantaFeChamberMusic.com @SFChamberMusic

NEW YORK

Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival Bridgehampton, NY July 21 to August 18 BCMF’s distinctive programs highlighting chamber music masterworks, contemporary repertoire, and regular commissions are performed by worldrenowned musicians in stunning surroundings. In its 36th season, BCMF is lauded as Long Island’s premier music festival.

Festival Artistic Direction: Marya Martin Festival Artists: Donald Palma, bass; Peter Kolkay, bassoon; Nicholas Canellakis, Clive Greensmith, Mihai Marica, Peter Stumpf, Paul Watkins, cello; Romie de Guise-Langlois, Tommaso Lonquich, clarinet; Marya Martin, flute; Stewart Rose, horn; Kemp Jernigan, James Austin Smith, oboe; Gloria Chien, Jon Kimura Parker, Juho Pohjonen, Gilles Vonsattel, Orion Weiss, piano; Ian David

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Rosenbaum, percussion; Ettore Causa, Che-Yen Chen, Matthew Lipman, Richard O’Neill, Cynthia Phelps, Cong Wu, viola; Benjamin Baker, Frank Huang, Ani Kavafian, Erin Keefe, Alexi Kenney, Tessa Lark, Kristin Lee, Anthony Marwood, Amy Schwartz Moretti, violin; Yura Lee, Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu, violin/viola For Information: Michael Lawrence, Executive Director 850 Seventh Ave, Suite 700 New York, NY 10019 212 741 9403 info@bcmf.org bcmf.org @bridgehampton.chamber

@bcmftweets

@bcmfphoto

Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts Katonah, NY June 15 to July 28

Festivals Laura Benanti, vocals Featured Groups: A Far Cry; Aizuri Quartet; Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn; Boston Early Chamber Ensemble; Bumper Jacksons; Cady Finlayson & Vita Tanga; Decoda; Dover Quartet; Eddie Palmieri Salsa Orchestra; Kostas Psarros & Friends; Lei Pasifika; New York Baroque Incorporated; Omer Quartet; Roomful of Teeth; Russian Renaissance; Sandbox Percussion; Takacs Quartet; The Milk Carton Kids; Tribu Baharu; Venice Baroque Orchestra; Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks; Westchester Symphonic Winds Orchestra Affiliation: Orchestra of St. Luke’s For Information: Tahra Millan, VP/Chief Marketing Officer 149 Girdle Ridge Road Katonah, NY 10536 914 232 1252 info@caramoor.org

Strings); Arie Lipsky (Chair of Chamber Music); Timothy Muffitt (Artistic and Music Director); Rick Sherman (Chair of Winds, Brass and Percussion) Festival Conductors: Rossen Milanov, Timothy Muffitt Festival Artists: Curtis Burris, Owen Lee, bass; Jeff Robinson, bassoon; Eric Lindblom, bass trombone; Scott Hartman, brass; Arie Lipsky, cello; Eli Eban, Diana Haskell, clarinet; Richard Sherman, flute; Beth Robinson, harp; William Caballero, Roger Kaza, horn; Jan Eberle Kanui, oboe; Michael Burritt, Pedro Fernandez, Brian Kushmaul, percussion; John Marcellus, Chris Wolf, trombone; Charles Berginc, trumpet; Don Harry, Ray Stewart, tuba; Karen Ritscher, viola; Kathryn Votapek, viola/violin; Aaron Berofsky, Ilya Kaler, Nurit Pacht, Almita Vamos, violin Featured Groups: Chautauqua is thrilled to feature many of our resident faculty and guest artists on an exciting Resident Chamber Series.

Orchestra Affiliation: Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra For Information: Sarah Malinoski-Umberger, Manager CHQ Schools of Performing and Visual Arts P.O. Box 1098 Chautauqua, NY 14722 716 357 6233 smalinoski@chq.org chq.org/schools

Gateways Music Festival

@CHQSummerSchools

Musicians of the Gateways Music Festival Orchestra in performance at the Gateways Music Festival in Rochester, New York.

Caramoor’s 74th summer season takes place at the festival’s stunning 90-acre campus, and features new music from twelve living composers, and continues to highlight innovation across symphonic, chamber, American roots, jazz, and even sound art.

Festival Artistic Direction: Kathy Schuman Festival Conductors: Curt Ebersole, Bernard Labadie, Cristian Măcelaru, Peter Oundjian Festival Artists: Shea Owens, baritone; Davóne Tines, bass-baritone; Alisa Weilerstien, cello; David Rothenberg, clarinet; Anthony Roth Costanzo, countertenor; MILOŠ, guitar; Avi Avital, mandolin; Vivica Genaux, mezzo-soprano; Timo Andres, Matthew Aucoin, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Jonathan Biss, Daniil Trifonov, Andrew Tyson, piano; Emi Ferguson, Catherine Gregory, piccolo; Anna Fusek, recorder; Madison Leonard, soprano; Paul Appleby, tenor; Bria Skonberg, trumpet; Dimitri Murrath, viola; Christian Tetzlaff, violin; Kat Edmonson, Amythyst Kiah, BUIKA, americanorchestras.org

caramoor.org

@caramoor

@caramoor

@caramoor

Chautauqua School of Music Chautauqua, NY June 22 to August 13 The School of Music at Chautauqua considers orchestral work, private study, and chamber music each to be vital components of the program. The orchestra rehearses daily for the majority of the seven weeks and performs its concerts in Chautauqua’s newly renovated 4,400-seat Amphitheater.

Our chamber music program runs throughout the festival and includes a ten-day intensive period where there is no orchestra. Each student receives six private lessons with our world-renowned faculty.

Festival Artistic Direction: Aaron Berofsky (Chair of

Gateways Music Festival Rochester, NY August 6 to August 11 Connecting and supporting professional classical musicians of African descent, the Gateways Music Festival features 125 musicians performing in more than 50 enlightening and inspiring chamber and orchestra concerts throughout Rochester, New York.

Festival Artistic Direction: Lee Koonce Festival Conductor: Michael Morgan Featured Groups: Gateways Music Festival Orchestra; Music Kitchen-Food for the Soul; Ritz Chamber Players For Information: Lee Koonce 26 Gibbs Street Rochester, NY 14604 585 232 6106 info@gatewaysmusicfestival.org gatewaysmusicfestival.org @gatewaysmusicfestival

Lake Placid Sinfonietta Lake Placid, NY July 4 to August 11 The Lake Placid Sinfonietta is a twenty-member chamber orchestra performing from July 4 to August 11 in the Adirondack region of New York.

Festival Artistic Direction: David Gilbert (orchestral); Navah Perlman (chamber music) Festival Conductors: Kynan Johns, Stuart Malina, Peter Rubardt Festival Artists: Gregory Quick, bassoon; Ann Alton, Jonathan Brin, cello; Amitai Vardi, clarinet; Devin Howell, double bass; Anne Lindblom Har-

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row, flute; Adam Pandolfi, TBA, horn; Cynthia Watson, oboe; Tony Oliver, percussion; Steven Franklin, trumpet; Denise Cridge, Julia DiGaetani, viola; Amanda Brin, Karl Braaten, Anna Gendler, Gaylon Patterson, Diana Pepelea Marius Tabacila, Daniel Szasz (concertmaster), violin For Information: Deborah Sutin Fitts, Executive Director Box 1303 Lake Placid, NY 12946 518 523 2051 info@lakeplacidsinfonietta.org lakeplacidsinfonietta.org

jposnock@brevardmusic.org brevardmusic.org @brevardmusiccenter

@brevardmusic

@brevardmusic

OREGON

Britt Festival Orchestra Jacksonville, OR

@LPSinfonietta

and more!

Festival Artistic Direction: David Shifrin Festival Artists: Edgar Meyer, bass; Corrado Giufreddi, Romie de Guise-Langlois, clarinet; Gloria Chien, Jeffrey Kahane, Gilles Vonsattel, piano; Soovin Kim, Yura Lee, violin; and many more!

Featured Groups: Calidore String Quartet; Dover Quartet; Miró Quartet; Rolston String Quartet For Information: Chamber Music Northwest Box Office 503 294 6400 tickets@cmnw.org cmnw.org

@LPSinfonietta

Tom Emerson Photography

@LPSinfonietta New York Philharmonic Concerts in the Parks, presented by Didi and Oscar Schafer All five boroughs of New York City June 11 to June 16 The New York Philharmonic Concerts in the Parks return for their 54th season of free outdoor concerts in all five New York City boroughs.

Festival Conductor: Jaap van Zweden Featured Groups: New York Philharmonic Orchestra Affiliation: New York Philharmonic For Information: Jennifer Luzzo, Manager, Public Relations 10 Lincoln Center Plaza David Geffen Hall New York, NY 10023 luzzoj@nyphil.org nyphil.org/parks

The Chamber Music Northwest Summer Festival brings music to several locations in Portland, Oregon. Lan Su Chinese Garden, in photo, was the setting for a July 2018 concert.

@nyphilharmonic

@nyphil

@nyphilharmonic

NORTH CAROLINA

Brevard Music Center Summer Institute & Festival Brevard, NC June 21 to August 4 One of America’s premier summer training programs for exceptional young musicians. Students participate in orchestral studies, piano, opera, composition, jazz, classical guitar, and voice alongside world-renowned guest artists and faculty.

Festival Artistic Direction: Keith Lockhart Festival Conductors: Matthias Bamert, Nicholas Buc, JoAnn Falletta, Angel Gil-Ordoñez, Ken Lam, Keith Lockhart, Ruth Reinhardt, Kraig Alan Williams, Christian Zacharias Festival Artists: Camille Thomas, cello; Steve Cohen, clarinet; Amy Porter, flute; Susan Platts, mezzo-soprano; Eric Ohlsson, oboe; Rémi Geniet, Vanessa Benelli Mosell, Olli Mustonen, Alexandre Tharaud, Christian Zacharias, piano; Ilana Davidson, soprano; SooBeen Lee, Jason Posnock, Rubén Rengel, Chee-Yun, violin For Information: Jason Posnock, Director of Artistic Planning and Educational Programs 349 Andante Lane P.O. Box 312 Brevard, NC 28712 828 862 2142

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July 23 to August 11 The Britt Festival Orchestra brings a unique group of musicians together each summer to perform music under the stars at the West Coast’s premier outdoor concert venue.

Festival Artistic Direction: Teddy Abrams Festival Conductor: Teddy Abrams Festival Artists: Oliver Herbert, cello; George Li, piano; Augustin Hadelich, violin Featured Groups: Third Coast Percussion Orchestra Affiliation: Britt Festival Orchestra For Information: Mark Knippel, Artistic Operations Director Britt Music & Arts Festival 216 W. Main Street Medford, OR 97501 541 690 3856 mark.knippel@brittfest.org brittfest.org @brittfestivals

@brittfestivals

@brittfestival

Chamber Music Northwest 49th Annual Summer Festival Portland, OR June 24 to July 28 This year CMNW’s five-week festival celebrates the incredible variety of chamber music—from classics to contemporary music, clarinet masters to string quartets, plus opera, jazz, world premieres,

@chambermusicnorthwest

@chambermusicnw

@chambermusicnw

Oregon Bach Festival Eugene, OR June 28 to July 13 Oregon Bach Festival has presented the masterworks of J.S. Bach, and composers inspired by his work, to audiences in Eugene and throughout the State of Oregon for nearly five decades.

Festival Conductors: Anton Armstrong, John Butt, Jane Glover, Matthias Maute, John Nelson Festival Artists: Peter Gregson, cello; Paul Jacobs, organ Featured Groups: Brooklyn Rider; Darrell Grant; New York Polyphony; Portland Cello Project For Information: Josh Gren, Director of Marketing 1257 University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403 458 210 6631 jgren@uoregon.edu OregonBachFestival.org Sunriver Music Festival Sunriver, OR August 9 to August 22 Sunriver Music Festival Orchestra performs at the Historic Great Hall at Sunriver Resort and at the

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Tower Theatre in downtown Bend. The festival’s premier classical, pops, and solo concerts feature many internationally acclaimed performers.

Festival Artistic Direction: George Hanson Festival Conductor: George Hanson Festival Artists: Olga Kern, piano For Information: Pamela Beezley, Executive Director PO Box 4308 Sunriver, OR 97707 541 593 1084 information@sunrivermusic.org sunrivermusic.org @sunrivermusicfestival

@sunrivermusicfestival

PENNSYLVANIA

Mann Center for the Performing Arts Philadelphia, PA June 24 to July 26 The Mann Center for the Performing Arts has served for many decades as Philadelphia’s premier outdoor performing arts summer festival, presenting a wide array of cultural programming and popular events.

Festival Artistic Direction: VP of Artistic Planning and Chief Innovation Officer Toby Blumenthal; Artistic Advisor Evans Mirageas; Festival Artistic Director and CEO of NEWorks Productions, Collaborative Artistic Partner Nolan Williams, Jr. Festival Conductors: Andrew Constantine, Justin Freer, Gemma New, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Ken-

Festivals sho Watanabe Festival Artists: Featured Concerts: Beethoven’s 9th; A Night of Berlioz; Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire in Concert; Raiders of the Lost Ark in Concert; Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back in Concert; Voyage to the Moon: A 50th Anniversary Concert.

Artists and programs subject to change.

Orchestra Affiliation: The Philadelphia Orchestra; Reading Symphony Orchestra For Information: Toby Blumenthal, VP of Artistic Planning and Chief Innovation Officer 123 South Broad Street Philadelphia, PA 19109 215 546 7900 tblumenthal@manncenter.org MannCenter.org @themanncenter

@manncenter

@manncenter

TEXAS

Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra’s Concerts In The Garden Fort Worth, TX June 7 to July 7 A five-week music festival offering seventeen nights of outdoor concerts at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden, with fireworks every night! 1812

Overture, Asleep at the Wheel, Classical Mystery Tour, Music of Led Zeppelin, Music of Queen, Old-Fashioned Family Fireworks Picnic, Star Wars and Beyond, and a variety of other programs with something for everyone.

Festival Artistic Direction: Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Music Director Featured Group: Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra Orchestra Affiliation: Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra For Information: Dancy Clark, Marketing Manager 330 East Fourth Street, Suite 200 Fort Worth, TX 76102 817 665 6500 marketing@fwsymphony.org fwsymphony.org @fwsymphony

@ftworthsymphony

@ftworthsymphony

Immanuel and Helen Olshan Texas Music Festival Houston, TX May 31 to June 29 Texas’ premier summer orchestral training institute celebrates its 30th anniversary in June 2019.

Composed of nearly 100 Orchestra Fellows, its orchestra boasts four concerts of major repertoire under world-class conductors. Faculty Artist Concert Series. Private instruction, master classes, mock auditions.

music in motion oregon bach festival june 28 - july 13, 2019

www.OregonBachFestival.org • 541-682-5000 americanorchestras.org

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Summer

Festivals Park City.

Orchestra Affiliation: Utah Symphony For Information: Utah Symphony | Utah Opera 336 North 400 West Salt Lake City, UT 84103 801 533 6683 info@usuo.org utahsymphony.org @utahsymphony

@UtahSymphony

Winter, violin Featured Groups: Bio Ritmo; Love Canon; Masters of Soul; Oratorio Society of Virginia; Richmond Symphony Chorus; US Army Chorus; Wintergreen Festival Orchestra For Information: Erin Freeman, Artistic Director Wintergreen Performing Arts P. O. Box 816 Nellysford, VA 22958 434 361 0541 info@wintergreenperformingarts.org WintergreenPerformingArts.org @Wintergreen Performing Arts

@UtahSymphony

Wolf Trap

Festival Artistic Direction: Alan Austin, General and Artistic Director Festival Conductors: Josep Caballé-Domenech, Franz Anton Krager, Rossen Milanov, Carl St.Clair Festival Artists: Benjamin Kamins, Elise Wagner, bassoon; Tony Kitai, Philippe Mueller, cello; Thomas LeGrand, Mark Nuccio, Michael Webster, clarinet; Paul Ellison, Eric Larson, Dennis Whittaker, double bass; Leone Buyse, Aralee Dorough, flute; Paula Page, harp; Robert Johnson, William VerMeulen, horn; Robert Atherholt, Jonathan Fischer, oboe; Ted Atkatz, Matthew Strauss, percussion; Allen Barnhill, Phillip Freeman, trombone; Mark Hughes, Thomas Siders, trumpet; David Kirk, tuba; Wayne Brooks, James Dunham, Ivo Jan van der Werff, viola; Emanuel Borok, Andrzej Gra-

The annual Wolf Trap festival in Virginia draws audiences to music by a wide range of artists and ensembles, including the National Symphony Orchestra, which has made Wolf Trap its summer home for decades.

@WintergreenArts

@wintergreenperformingarts Wolf Trap Vienna, VA May 23 to September 8 Wolf Trap’s Filene Center is a 7,028-seat outdoor amphitheater that showcases a diverse array of artists, from May to September. It has been the summer home of the National Symphony Orchestra since it opened in 1971.

Festival Conductors: Gianandrea Noseda, Long Yu Festival Artists: Alisa Weilerstein, cello; Nina Feng, violin Featured Groups: American Ballet Theatre; Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, Wolf Trap Orchestra Orchestra Affiliation: National Symphony Orchestra For Information: Lee Anne Myslewski, Vice President of Opera and Classical Programming 1645 Trap Road Vienna, VA 22182 703 255 1900 classicalprogramming@wolftrap.org wolftrap.org @WolfTrapOfficialPage

@Wolf_Trap

@Wolf_Trap

VIRGINIA

biec, Kathleen Winkler, Kirsten Yon, violin Featured Groups: Festival Orchestra, Faculty Performers, Young Artist Series For Information: Alan Autin, General and Artistic Director 3333 Cullen Blvd., Room 120J Houston, TX 77204 713 743 3167 tmf@uh.edu tmf.uh.edu @TexasMusicFestival.UH

@TXMusicFestival

UTAH

Utah Symphony’s Deer Valley Music Festival Park City, UT June 28 to August 10 The Deer Valley Music Festival, the Utah Symphony’s summer home, offers a variety of classical, chamber, and entertainment performances in scenic venues throughout the mountain resort town of

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Wintergreen Summer Music Festival July 8 to August 4 Wintergreen, VA Located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, the Wintergreen Summer Music Festival and Academy features nearly 180 performances, seminars, and events by professional musicians and academy students.

Festival Artistic Direction: Erin Freeman Festival Conductors: Erin Freeman, Stephen Mulligan, John Morris Russell, Victor Yampolsky Festival Artists: Michael Dean, bass-baritone; Wesley Baldwin, Julian Schwarz, cello; Charles Messersmith, clarinet; Daron Hagen, Gilda Lyons, Jessica Rudman, Michael White, composer; Joseph Conyers, double-bass; Lance Armstrong, flute; Jaren Atherholt, oboe; Heather Johnson, mezzosoprano; Kathleen Kelly, Peter Marshall, Edward Newman, Orion Weiss, piano; Natalia Zukerman, singer-songwriter; Arianna Zukerman, soprano; Matthew Bassett, timpani; Ann Marie Brink, Steve Larson, viola; Elisabeth Adkins, Gerald Greer, Sharan Leventhal, John Meisner, Ross Monroe

WASHINGTON

Marrowstone Music Festival Bellingham, WA July 21 to August 4 Marrowstone is the largest and most comprehensive summer orchestral training program in the Pacific Northwest. Two hundred musicians study with our internationally acclaimed faculty at the campus of Western Washington University.

Festival Artistic Direction: Ryan Dudenbostel Festival Conductors: Ryan Dudenbostel, Alastair Willis Festival Artists: Diana Gannett, bass; Francine Peterson, bassoon; Walter Gray, Andrew Smith, cello; Kenneth Grant, clarinet; Jill Felber, flute; Catherine Case, harp; Margaret Tung, horn; Roger Cole, oboe; Gunnar Folsom, Matthew Kocmieroski, percussion; Jeffrey Gilliam, piano; Joseph Rodriquez, trombone; Roy Poper, trumpet; Eric Kean, Laura Kuennen-Poper, Roxanna Patterson, viola; Grant Donellan, Fritz Gearhart, Hal Grossman, Leslie Katz, Ron Patterson, Lauren Roth, violin Orchestra Affiliation: Seattle Youth Symphony

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Orchestra For Information: Annie Petersen, Marrowstone Admissions and Operations Coordinator 11065 Fifth Ave NE, Suite A Seattle, WA 98125 206 686 3109 marrowstone@syso.org @MarrowstoneMusicFestival

@marrowstone_music_festival Seattle Chamber Music Society: Summer Festival Seattle, WA July 1 to July 27 More than 40 world-renowned musicians perform chamber music masterpieces. The festival includes twelve concerts as well as community events throughout the city.

Festival Artistic Direction: James Ehnes Festival Artists: Seth Krimsky, bassoon; Julie Albers, Edward Arron, Ani Aznavoorian, Raphael Bell, Cameron Crozman, Robert deMaine, Yegor Dyachkov, Daniel Muller-Schott, Bion Tsang, Paul Watkins, cello; Lorna McGhee, flute; Stephen Stubbs, lute; Ben Hausmann, oboe; Andrew Armstrong, Inon Barnatan, Alessio Bax, Angela Draghicescu, Boris Giltburg, Piers Lane, Jeewon Park, Jon Kimura Parker, Orion Weiss, piano; Nicholas Phan, tenor; Beth Guterman Chu, Aloysia Friedmann, David Harding, Matthew Lipman, Richard O’Neill, Cynthia Phelps, Jonathan Vinocour, viola; Kristof Barati, Benjamin Bowman, James Ehnes, Augustin Hadelich, Jun Iwasaki, Erin Keefe, Alexander Kerr, Tessa Lark, Yura Lee, Amy Schwartz Moretti, Andrew Wan, violin For Information: Connie Cooper, Executive Director 10 Harrison Street, Suite 306 Seattle, WA 98109 206 283 8710 connie@seattlechambermusic.org seattlechambermusic.org @SeattleChamberMusic

@SEAChamberMusic

@seattlechambermusic

WISCONSIN

Peninsula Music Festival Fish Creek, WI August 6 to August 24 Every August, sixty-five musicians from the world’s leading symphony and opera orchestras travel to Wisconsin’s Door County Peninsula to perform nine exciting concerts along the beautiful shores of Lake Michigan.

Festival Artistic Direction: Victor Yampolsky Festival Conductors: Roderick Cox, Yaniv Dinur, Victor Yampolsky, Simon Zerpa Festival Artists: Denise Djokic, cello; Eric Olson, oboe; Timothy McAllister, saxophone; Stewart Goodyear, Hyejin Joo, Vassily Primakov, piano; Bella Hristova, Janet Sung, violin; Grant Knox, Mikaela Schneider, vocalists.

Featured Group: Peninsula Music Festival Orchestra For Information: P.O. Box 340 10347 North Water Street, Suite B americanorchestras.org

Festivals Ephraim, WI 54211 920 854 4060 musicfestival.com musicfestival@musicfestival.com @PeninsulaMusicFestival

@penmusicfest

@thepeninsulamusicfestival

WYOMING

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OSM Classical Spree Montréal, Québec August 7 to August 11 In the space of three days, 31 affordable and varied concerts will reverberate in the heart of Montréal, along with scores of free activities the whole family can enjoy!

Festival Conductor: Kent Nagano For Information: Ingrid Fontes, Project Manager Orchestre symphonique de Montréal 1600 rue St-Urbain Montréal, Québec H2X 0S1 Canada ifontes@osm.ca osm.ca/en/classicalspree/

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EVENT HOST

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Community Service

When furloughed federal employees faced tough times during the partial government shutdown in December and January, orchestras across the country stepped up with free tickets.

nsivais / AP rtinez Mo Pablo Ma

by Nancy Malitz

Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

Furloughed federal workers wait in line for free meals at Chef José Andres’ World Central Kitchen “emergency café” in Washington D.C., January 2019.

Mary Tuuk (at left), president and CEO of Michigan’s Grand Rapids Symphony, was interviewed by Susan Shaw about the orchestra’s free tickets on Day 28 of the government shutdown on local Channel 8 WOODTV.

Jeffrey Kaczmarczyk

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A

s roughly 800,000 furloughed federal employees woke up on January 11 with the knowledge that they would not receive their paychecks, American orchestras large and small across the country had already begun springing into action with free ticket offers and outpourings of support.

As the government shutdown stretched on—it lasted from December 22 to January 25, the longest in U.S. history—more and more orchestras rolled out a variety of ticket offers. “It was one of those great waves that sometimes happens,” says Martha Gilmer, CEO of the San Diego Symphony. symphony

SPRING 2019

indicated to us just how much people saw the Portland Symphony as communitycentered.”

The Portland Symphony is the secondlargest performing arts organization in Maine, and among the oldest, set to celebrate its centennial in 2024. More than half—65 percent—of the orchestra’s mu-

sicians come from the Boston area, which is about two hours to the south. Among government workers affected were the employees at Maine’s Acadia National Park on the Atlantic Coast, closed for the duration of the shutdown. Nishon says the orchestra wanted to offer something that would promise a respite for families: “We had some capacity in the hall for that Winter Wonderland concert, which promised a nice time together, with an instrument petting zoo and a chance for children to hop onto a podium with five musicians right there to teach them how to conduct, in addition to the afternoon concert.” The response was so positive that the orchestra reinforced its message with other free ticket offers during the shutdown. And, Nishon says, as word spread, “we started getting some calls from other orchestras” about how it all went down.

By January 15, Scott Burditt, the principal horn and personnel manager of Maine’s Bangor Symphony Orchestra, Portland’s neighbor to the northeast, was also on the case. He sent a clipping about the Portland free-ticket offer to Brian Hinrichs, the Bangor Symphony’s executive director, who took it to the board. “The feeling was unanimous that we should do this. It was a pretty easy conversation, frankly,” Hinrichs says. When setting up

free For its January 13 family concert at Merrill Auditorium, Maine’s Portland Symphony offered tickets to furloughed government employees.

americanorchestras.org

Nate Levesque

“As a civic organization we are a place that people can come to, for all sorts of reasons,” says Spokane Symphony Executive Director Jeff vom Saal.

Natasha Nellis

Among the very first orchestras to take action was Maine’s Portland Symphony, which immediately offered up to five free tickets per person to its January 13 winterthemed concert featuring excerpts from Disney’s Frozen and Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. Executive Director Carolyn Nishon says the offer prompted “a really amazing outpouring” of support from the public. “It

Scott Burditt, the Bangor Symphony’s principal horn and personnel manager (above), heard about the Portland Symphony’s freeticket offer and passed a clipping about it to Executive Director Brian Hinrichs, who immediately took it to the orchestra’s board.

the free-ticket offers, “The only tricky question was how do we identify a federal worker, and we decided that we would be

“The Grand Rapids Symphony loves to think of ourselves as the orchestra of the western Michigan community,” says President and CEO Mary Tuuk. “With that comes responsibility—and also the privilege to give back in whatever way we can.” pretty generous regarding the forms of identification that we would accept. We put it out to the public that we would take government-issued PIDs [personal identity verifications], federal facility smart cards, uniformed personnel common access cards, etc. The fact that we made the decision to do something like this got an enormously positive reception, with multiple calls for comment from the TV stations and the local newspaper.” Bangor’s per-service orchestra is not a full-time job for its musicians, as Burditt explained: “We’re made up of music teachers, doctors, lawyers—one is a potter—from half a dozen surrounding communities. It’s a la-

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contractors. Bassist Tom Reel, who was in the Air Force after graduating from the Air Force Academy in 1970, was an early influencer in the effort to let other orchestras know that the Virginia Symphony had begun offering free tickets to furloughed federal workers and their families, encouraging others to follow suit.

“Almost everybody here knew somebody who was impacted by the shutdown,” says the orchestra’s president and CEO, Karen Philion. “The way Tom framed the suggestion, it made so much sense to everyone that we didn’t need to talk anybody into it. It was important for us to make it as easy as possible.” Because there are already significant numbers of military personnel who attend Virginia Symphony concerts, it was easy to spread the word, Philion says. Among the events with free tickets, the orchestra’s “Broadway A to Z” pops concert was the biggest draw.

Virginia Symphony Orchestra bassist Tom Reel was an early influencer in the effort to let other orchestras know that the Virginia Symphony had begun offering free tickets to furloughed federal workers. “Almost everybody here knew somebody who was impacted by the shutdown,” says President and CEO Karen Philion.

Spreading Goodwill

Throughout the country, orchestras report

Tom Kells

bor of love. But I like to think that if some of the big orchestras are like oil tankers in the ocean, where it might take seven miles to make a turn, we can do it in less time.”

In fact, several larger orchestras did jump in with free-ticket offers, as reporting for this article revealed.

The Virginia Symphony Orchestra’s four performance venues include Newport News and Norfolk, the vicinity of many shipbuilders and the nation’s largest naval base, home to 22,000 government workers and a large concentration of government

made The Georgia Symphony and Music Director Timothy Verville in performance. The orchestra basis, for its 115 tickets available to furloughed workers at the door, on a first-come, first-served January 26 concert.

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that the goodwill response on Facebook and television news was overwhelming, whether the number of tickets given away was in the hundreds or in the dozens. In western Michigan, Grand Rapids Symphony President and CEO Mary Tuuk was interviewed on Day 28 of the government shutdown for a three-anda-half-minute segment on local Channel 8 WOODTV, which covers Grand Rapids, Holland, and Kalamazoo—a market area with a population of 1.3 million. The video’s life was extended onto the internet, where it ran at the top of several news stories, including a long list of free deals offered to the 6,000 furloughed workers in the area. In fact, the video remains online—with Tuuk’s in-person message: “The Grand Rapids Symphony loves to think of ourselves as the orchestra of the western Michigan community. With that comes responsibility—and also the privilege to give back in whatever way we can,” Tuuk says in the video.

In the Twin Cities, the Minnesota Orchestra gave away 317 tickets fairly quickly.

Of no little tangential significance was the sense of goodwill that touched the orchestra internally, according to Associate Principal Horn Herb Winslow, who has been with the ensemble full time since 2005: “We went through this horrible lockout back in the 2012-14 era,” says Winslow, “and during that time we heard many encouraging stories from people about what our orchestra meant to them. It helped us to get through our tough times. Ever since then, we have worked hard to be part of the fabric of the community. And now here were people struggling again—they couldn’t afford to buy a ticket or even go to a movie to get away from their troubles for a couple of hours. So I thought that this was a time when we should step up. As it happened, a group of us had just met with the new president and CEO, Michelle Miller Burns, and she encouraged orchestra members who had ideas to come and talk to her.

So, I thought, ‘What the heck, I’ll shoot her an email,’ and within a day she had gotten back to me and had people working on the idea through the weekend. What was interesting was how the offer caught on at Facebook, and how the community itself started chipping in with ideas, like, ‘If you know another government worker, maybe you can trade off babysitting nights,’ and other symphony

SPRING 2019

Greg Helgeson

Josh Kohanek

ideas about how things could happen at very little additional cost.”

The Minnesota Orchestra was among several larger orchestras that opted to offer affected federal employees (there are 17,000 in the Twin Cities) a pair of tickets to a concert of their choosing from pretty much anything available in the current season. That meant, for example, a chance to Minnesota Orchestra Associate Principal Horn Herb Winslow (at right in photo, next to colleague Brian Jensen) lock in two seats in mid- suggested the idea of offering free tickets to President and CEO Michelle Miller Burns (left), who mobilized staff to June for Music Director make it happen.

Osmo Vänskä conducting Mahler’s Symphony No. 10, as it’s being allowed us to underscore the notion that Classics and More prepared for a recording. we at the Symphony are not so mysterious, The Spokane Symphony offered free tickLikewise, at the Nashville Symphony not elitist, that we are in fact the exact opets in January to a classical program of in April, one could obtain two tickets for posite,” vom Saal says. “As a civic organiDvořák and Rachmaninoff led by Music Music Director Giancarlo Guerrero leadzation we are a place that people can come Director Eckart Preu, and also to a family ing Bernstein’s “Kaddish” Symphony and to, for all sorts of reasons.” show called Cirque Zuma Zuma, which is Michael Torke’s Adjustable Wrench. rather like an African-themed Cirque du Or at the Des Moines Symphony in Soleil with acrobats, tumbling, vocalists, “It was important May, two for Bernstein’s Symphonic percussion, and juggling. “It was actually a Dances from West Side Story under Music good thing for us to have both events goto show that we Director Joseph Giunta. ing on,” says Executive Director Jeff vom could bring some Or, at the San Diego Symphony OrSaal, who explains that it provided an opjoy in a time that chestra in May, up to four tickets for the portunity to highlight the orchestra’s role Saint-Saëns “Organ” Symphony helmed as both performer and presenter. The Spowas challenging

by Music Director Jahja Ling. kane Symphony performs at The Fox, an for people,” Or, at the Seattle Symphony in June, up Art Deco theater that the orchestra owns says Omaha Symphony to four seats for Debussy’s Nocturnes under and also operates as a performing arts Music Director Ludovic Morlot. center. “The two different ticket options President and CEO Jennifer

Boomgaarden.

Courtesy Omaha Symphony

The Omaha Symphony offered free tickets for January performances of South Pacific at the Holland Performing Arts Center with Music Theatre Wichita. Below: Principal Pops Conductor Ernest Richardson in rehearsal with Anne Horak, playing Nellie Forbush, and local seventh-graders Claire Graham Baijnauth and Brodhi McClymont.

americanorchestras.org

When the furloughs began in December, the Omaha Symphony was in the middle of a joint effort with Music Theatre Wichita, in nearby Kansas, to produce South Pacific in concert for Omaha audiences. “It was the perfect program to offer free tickets for,” says President and CEO Jennifer Boomgaarden. “We were using some of our local talent in the choral roles and more than 30 percent of what we do is community engagement, so it was important to show that we could bring some joy in a time that was challenging for people.”

In addition to the post office and airport, Omaha is also home to a fully functioning Air Force base (home of the 55th Wing).

“We do things with them on a regular basis,” Boomgaarden says. “I think the

59

Portland Symphony Executive Director Carolyn Nishon says the orchestra’s free-ticket offer prompted “a really amazing outpouring” of support from the public. gratitude and appreciation we were hearing reaffirmed our core values.” The orchestra’s initial free-ticket offer, posted on Facebook, brought 4,167 impressions and comments praising the orchestra as “absolutely wonderful and so giving.”

The Georgia Symphony Orchestra opted for a somewhat different approach to available tickets as a practical matter due to a second complication: a flooded concert hall. A recent deluge had forced the Marietta-based orchestra to move temporarily into a larger space. GSO Executive Direc-

Portland Symphony Orchestra Principal Horn Lauren Winter at an instrument petting zoo before the orchestra’s January 13 family concert. The orchestra offered free tickets to fuloughed federal workers for the concert, which featured excerpts from Disney’s Frozen and Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.

tor Susan Stensland immediately made 115 tickets available to furloughed workers at the door, on a first-come, first-served

basis, to its January 26 concert. “The tragedy that befell our own hall made it easier to serve them,” says Music Director Timo-

Leonidas Kavakos Augustin Hadelich Marco Rizzi Liviu Prunaru Stefan Milenkovich DECADES OF DISCOVERY David Chan Robin Sharp Bin Huang Iona Cristina Goicea Dami Kim Yura Lee David Kim Svetlin Roussev Yuval Yaron Yuriko Naganuma Barnabás Kelemen Anna Lee Luke Hsu Bella Hristova Ivan Chan 10th Quadrennial Chin Kim Simone Lamsma Benjamin Beilman International Jinjoo Cho Nai-Yuan Hu Antal Zalai Andrey Baranov Judith Ingolfsson Violin Competition Jaakko Kuusisto Susie Park of Indianapolis Haoming Xie Ida Kavafian Soovin Kim Pavel Berman Juliette Kang Ye-Eun Choi Sungsic Yang Frank Huang Mihaela Martin Ji Yoon Lee Alina Pogostkina Andrew Haveron Soyoung Yoon Yoojin Jang Andrés Cárdenes Risa Hokamura Annick Roussin Shannon Lee Virginie Robilliard Sergey Khachatryan For availability, contact: Martin Beaver Ju-Young Baek Olivier Charlier Kyoko Takezawa Ji Young Lim Michiko Kamiya Glen Kwok, Executive Director Celeste Golden Boyer Clara-Jumi Kang Tessa Lark kwok@violin.org, 317.637.4574

THE INDIANAPOLIS FOUR

Richard Lin, Gold Medalist

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symphony

SPRING 2019

INDEX

ADVERTISER

Astral..................................................... 42 Classical Movements............................ C4 Conductors Guild................................. 35 Gateways Music Festival...................... C2 Grand Teton Music Festival.................. 29 InsideOut Concerts............................... 28 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis....................................... 60 Courtney Perry

Dan Kamin Comedy Concertos.............. 9 League of American Orchestras......43, C3 Music in the Vineyards......................... 47 Music Director Osmo Vänskä conducts the Minnesota Orchestra. This winter, the orchestra offered free tickets for furloughed government workers for most concerts through the end of the season.

Monty Rand

thy Verville. “We had quite a few takers.

From the stage, one of the board members welcomed all to the concert hall, mentioning patrons and subscribers, and then how especially happy we were to have with us the furloughed workers, who got a special big round of applause.”

Marietta is part of a market area that serves government workers employed at the nation’s busiest international airport, and it’s also home to the Dobbins Air Reserve Base. “Almost every time you drive in that area, they’re practicing for flight maneuvers such as low entries, ‘touch and goes’ over the road, helicopter runs, things

Music Director Lucas Richman and the Bangor Symphony Orchestra in performance.

The Bangor Symphony was one of many orchestras offering free tickets to furloughed government employees this winter. americanorchestras.org

“The feeling was unanimous that we should do this,” says Bangor Symphony Executive Director Brian Hinrichs of the orchestra’s decision to offer free concert tickets during the government shutdown. like that,” Verville says. The January 26 concert program looked somewhat esoteric on paper—half Schubert, half Arvo Pärt, which Verville had arranged as paired pieces in a mirror formation. “It was one of those concerts where your executive director says, ‘Well … okay …’ and then it turns out to be great!,” recalls the delighted Verville. “GSO performances are very approachable for audiences, and I’m very pleased that we were able to provide this opportunity to remove a potential financial barrier.”

NANCY MALITZ is the founding music critic of USA Today, an editor at ClassicalVoiceAmerica. org, and publisher of ChicagoOntheAisle.com. She has written about the arts and technology for the New York Times and Opera News, among other publications.

OnStage Publications............................ 17 Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal... 55 Oregon Bach Festival............................ 53 Word Pros, Inc....................................... 11 Yamaha Corporation of America............ 3

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LEAGUE OF AMERICAN ORCHESTRAS With the support of our valued donors, the League continues to have a positive impact on the future of orchestras in America by helping to develop the next generation of leaders, generating and disseminating critical knowledge and information, and advocating for the unique role of the orchestral experience in American life before an ever-widening group of stakeholders.

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CODA

Singer/songwriter Rhiannon Giddens is a classically trained soprano who left the classical world to explore folk music, learning banjo and fiddle and gaining notice as co-founder and lead singer of the string band Carolina Chocolate Drops. The North Carolina native won a MacArthur “Genius” grant in 2017, performs in an all-female strings-and-banjo quartet called Our Native Daughters, and played an ongoing character for two seasons of the TV drama Nashville. These days, she is becoming more visible in the classical world. Her recent and upcoming performances include the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Pops, Richmond Symphony Orchestra, and she is host of the WQXR/Metropolitan Opera podcast Aria Code. This May, she and her band will join the Boston Pops for two concerts of folk, blues, country, hot string jazz, and Caribbean music, led by Keith Lockhart. She will also curate two evenings with the Boston Pops, vocalist Darius de Haas, and pianist Lara Downes, featuring African American composers including Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Eubie Blake, and Florence Price.

Here, Giddens talks about moving between folk and classical music, singing with orchestras, and rediscovering overlooked music by black American composers.

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Winslow Townson

O

ne of my passions is ignoring the artificial boundaries of American music—to emphasize that the great thing about our music is that it is made up of so many different cultural influences. Last year, I performed with the Boston Pops as part of a wonderfully diverse July 4 concert, and this year they invited me back to curate a series of concerts with them on that theme. We will also be shining a light on artistically significant figures who have been ignored or forgotten, particularly black composers. For example, we’ll be performing Billy Strayhorn, who has been hidden behind Duke Ellington; we will celebrate Florence Price, who was very well known in her day as a pioneering black composer but fell into obscurity; and we will show off Afro-English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, whose Hiawatha’s Wedding was performed as much as if not more than the Messiah at one time.

I have recently had the good fortune of performing more and more with wonderful orchestras like the Pops; and I am reminded what an incredible experience it is. I had only sung with pit orchestras while I was at Conservatory, and my first

Michael Weintrob

American Original

Rhiannon Giddens

is well worth it. Pieces that are explosive when I’m with just my band become even bigger and at the end it’s just like, oh my God. Gabe Wichter, who plays with the Punch Brothers, does my orchestrations, and what I love about them is that it could be the loveliest, tiniest orchestra in Brittany or the mighty San Francisco Symphony, and the players will say, “We love these.”

Another obsession I have had since my Oberlin Conservatory days is, what about all the ordinary people who don’t go to operas and The Boston Pops and Rhiannon Giddens perform at the Pops’ symphonies who would annual Fireworks Spectacular at the Hatch Shell, July 4, 2018, led love this music? With by conductor Keith Lockhart. the Richmond Symphony last year, I did my usual stuff but I experience singing with an orchestra onalso sang “Mein Herr Marquis” [Adele’s stage—wow! What a wall of sound that “laughing song” from Die Fledermaus]. washes over you—I am enchanted anew Here I am, outside in Richmond in front every time, and I never tire of it. I will of this enormous crowd that has just admit there is a bit of stress performbeen listening to a brass band, dancing, ing with the natural inflexibility of an and drinking beer all day, and I explained orchestra. When you run your own show, a little of “Mein Herr.” I was like, “I’m you can stop in the middle of a song and about to sing in German. Here’s the start over, or do it a little faster the next story.” And they freakin’ loved it! You just night. With a symphony, you are part present it like a song, without talking of a larger organism; there are so many down to the audience. There are so many people are working in tandem overseen different ways of doing that. by the conductor. But what it produces symphony

SPRING 2019

Orchestra Board Members,

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by Giancarlo Guerrero.

New Lower Individual and Group Rates* for Smaller Budget Orchestras Nashville, June 3–5, 2019 At the Omni Nashville Hotel www.leagueconference2019.org/home *Valid through April 26, 2019.

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