A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

Thank you to our community, The Philadelphia Orchestra, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and all of the artists who made SPAC REIMAGINED possible!

times, but creatively, the cavernous space had an incredible vibe. To keep the spirit alive, and offer hope and love to a place that gives so much to so many. We were grateful to be a small part of this moment, and will never forget the experience.”

SPAC REIMAGINED

PRESIDENT AND CEO ELIZABETH SOBOL TAKES US ON SPAC’S BEAUTIFUL 2020 JOURNEY OF TRANSFORMATION.

The year 2020 was to be known as the grand 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, with countless live performances happening around every corner, at every classical concert hall and festival around the globe, in celebration of the composer’s magnificent and awe-inspiring artistic achievement. At the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, an overflowing abundance of summer performances—classical music, jazz, world and pop music, dance, theatre, spoken word, and yes, a Beethoven 2020 festival, were scheduled to take place.

Of course, we all know now that the history books will present a very different narrative of the year 2020. In the middle of March, our exquisite brochure had just gone out. Our marketing campaigns were about to ratchet up into high gear. And we were right on the cusp of SPAC Awakening— that time of year when the grass shows hints of green, the amphitheater doors are flung open, and the campus begins to spring to life in preparation for a summer full of surprise and delight.

By the end of March, however, as COVID case numbers continued to climb and SPAC’s staff worked from home, the amphitheater remained locked down, and the very real possibility of some cancellations—or the cancellation of the whole season—forced its way into our unwilling consciousness. As every day went by bringing inexorable waves of depressing data, the utterly unthinkable became the most probable—until it became the inevitable.

For 53 consecutive years, the SPAC amphitheater had been the summer home of The Philadelphia Orchestra and the New York City Ballet—and Eugene Ormandy and George Balanchine, the very DNA of SPAC’s artistic soul. As the dark days went by this spring, we began to face the questions: Who are we (and what is SPAC) in a summer without the Orchestra, the Ballet, without any performance on the amphitheater stage?

Over the last four years, SPAC has quietly been undergoing a transformation, from the restoration of its physical campus to the expansion and diversity of its programming, and from the exponential growth of education for the arts to a deepening of its role as convener of community and steward of its home in the Spa State Park. In its exquisite location, steeped in the history of healing springs, SPAC lives in the confluence of man-made and natural beauty, as influenced by Balanchine and Beethoven as by birdsong and birch.

In an oddly prescient process last fall, SPAC began rethinking and refashioning its mission statement to encompass this wider, more ample view of its place and its role. As we sought to distill our vision down to its most essential, our sense of purpose and urgency settled upon the knowledge of the profound importance of experiences of beauty in human lives, and SPAC’s importance in making those very experiences possible.

And so, when COVID hit, stripping the world of the most basic human contact through communal acts of gathering, we instinctively knew where to head. And we began to ask ourselves: How can we recreate those experiences that join human souls through shared experiences of beauty? How can we rededicate ourselves to art, artists and community?

Through the seemingly eternal and evolving era of COVID, SPAC has been reimagining itself, creating online communities around shared themes of art and beauty; turning its large and vibrant education program into a creator of extraordinary online learning; taking a beloved 40-year-old jazz festival and refashioning it into a virtual, vital gathering of community and music-making at its best; creating a Beethoven 2020 Festival that combined magisterial digital content by The Philadelphia Orchestra and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center with original choreography and a world premiere audio play about the composer’s life. Most importantly, we found ways to allow people to gather, in person (and socially distanced), on our grounds.

In 2020, SPAC was meant to open its doors to a transformative building project called the Pines @ SPAC. These renovations restored Park aesthetics to the grounds, opening up original site lines from the 50 Gate to the Victoria Pool. The plans also provided for brand-new and vastly expanded restrooms and concessions areas, plus new measures for safety and security. But most of all, this undertaking provided new spaces for gathering outside of the amphitheater: The Pines Pavilion, The Pines Terrace and the Education Room at The Pines. The latter is SPAC’s first year-round space for education and community outreach.

Originally anticipated as a humming, thriving hub of activity, vitally connected to ballet, orchestra and pop concerts in the amphitheater, The Pines this summer has instead been an oasis of calm and tranquility. And yet, it has also been our lodestar as we have navigated, untethered, the depths and darks of an unknowable future. The Pines gave us protected space for intimate gatherings in our natural setting—gave us permission to open our doors to tai chi and meditation, to dance classes and children’s art camp, to screenings of films—to allow people to sit, to gather, once again, on the beloved and hallowed grounds under the stars. And whither, SPAC? Whither the world? No one can know. What we know is this: It is only in moments of encounters with great beauty—the transcendent grace of a Mozart aria, the majesty of a cathedral of pines—that we enter that state of wonder...a place without time or boundaries or strife or differences. On the top of a mountain, under the canopy of the night sky, we are both infinitesimal and infinite, luminous, radiant and eternally interconnected. To this, we dedicate ourselves and our future.

DAVE BIGLER OUR SENSE OF PURPOSE AND URGENCY SETTLED UPON THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE PROFOUND IMPORTANCE OF EXPERIENCES OF BEAUTY IN HUMAN LIVES–AND SPAC’S IMPORTANCE IN MAKING THOSE VERY EXPERIENCES POSSIBLE.