Orchestral Turbulence

Abstract

I have spent most of my career as an active mathematician, and now, in my retirement years, I find myself in a perplexing situation. Not too long ago (in June of 2020), I was elected president of the Board of Directors of the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra in Boulder, Colorado, where we have lived for more than a decade. To be elected to such an office in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic is quite unsettling, to say the least. When we planned the new slate of officers for the orchestra some four months ago, no one had any idea that we were going to be confronted with this bizarre situation.

I have spent most of my career as an active mathematician, and now, in my retirement years, I find myself in a perplexing situation. Not too long ago (in June of 2020), I was elected president of the Board of Directors of the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra in Boulder, Colorado, where we have lived for more than a decade. To be elected to such an office in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic is quite unsettling, to say the least. When we planned the new slate of officers for the orchestra some four months earlier, no one had any idea that we were going to be confronted with this bizarre situation.

The orchestra has canceled its last two spring concerts, has had to raise emergency funds to help pay the musicians for the canceled performances, and is scrambling to plan for a 2020–2021 season, when the usual venues are closed due to the pandemic. Moreover, two staff members have been laid off, and the cash flow has changed dramatically. This is indeed a turbulent time for the orchestra.

Furthermore, not long ago, George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis. This has caused additional national turmoil as well as the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. This too is affecting most of American society. Finally, the question of opening schools in the fall, or how that might happen, is another part of the current national debate. All three of these national issues: the pandemic itself, the racism discussion our society is having, and the effect of the pandemic on our schools, have made an impact on our orchestra in different ways, as I describe in this essay.

The pandemic effect on the orchestra is a very complex problem, and our board and dedicated staff are working hard on coming up with virtual concerts using various digital media which are available these days. It is quite difficult, and it is certainly not clear whether the decisions we are making now will be successful for the future of this sixty-two-year-old professional orchestra. The situation is incredibly difficult for the musicians of our orchestra, all of whom are part-time employees (with union contracts), most of whom perform gigs with other musical organizations in the area, all of which have the same problems we do. Some such performing arts groups have simply canceled the 2020–2021 season completely.

Fig. 1

The Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra

I have been involved in other non-profit civic and arts organizations before, but this situation is certainly the most challenging I have ever faced personally. As they say, we shall see what we will see.

What is interesting is to see the creativity of our artists and administrators. Our music director, Michael Butterman, created a YouTube video of the last movement of the Firebird Suite by Igor Stravinsky, which was supposed to have been performed at our concert in March. It was quite amazing and well done. It portrayed all of the musicians performing in their own homes, with the music being synchronized for the broadcast. The video showed closeups of individual musicians (e.g., several trumpet players being highlighted in the video) and then zoomed out to show all the performers at the same time and many variations of this idea. For much of the video, the music director was shown conducting, at times highlighted but mostly as one of several images on the the screen. He was also conducting from his own home! It had a magical feel and represented so well the times we are in.

I talked to Michael recently and asked how he did it, and what was it like to be conducting to an empty room. He explained the process, and I found it fascinating. Here’s what he told me. First, the sound and video engineer who works with the orchestra and helped create the video found a recording the orchestra and Michael had made some years ago of the Firebird Suite. Then Michael was filmed conducting to the sound track of the recording he had made (he knew what was going to happen, moment by moment). Then the video of his conducting and the sound track were sent to the musicians so that each of them could hear (via earphones) the performance and see the conductor (via a monitor) as they performed their individual parts, which were recorded. The engineer and one of the members of the orchestra compiled the audio and video recordings to create a composite performance.¹ Yes, Michael said, it was weird to be conducting to an empty room!

We are planning what looks like an all digital season (for the fall for sure), and a sticky part has been the union contracts for our professional musicians. How do you compensate for digitally streamed performances versus live auditorium performances? Our executive director and the union representatives have finally come to an agreement after more than a month of negotiations at both the local and the national level. We are now able to offer a digital season for our subscribers, and we have had to make some substantive compromises to be able to make this happen.

Another problem concerns our subscribers and our patrons. We had season ticket subscribers who didn’t get to see the last two performances of the season, and we gave them several options. The vast majority donated the value of their tickets back to the orchestra, which increased our overall donations at the time. Moreover, we also had fewer expenses (e.g., rental of the 2000-seat auditorium on the university campus). Both of these facts did help us on cash flow at the time. So far our major donors are sticking with us. Now we are announcing our digital season, and we will soon see how many of our subscribers will stay loyal to us through these trying times.

The Black Lives Matter movement affected us as well. At a meeting where we were revising our by-laws and updating our mission statement, one of our board members became very passionate and he questioned, in so many words, whether we can just revise our mission statement and say we are going to perform music when the turmoil around us was asking us to do more. He argued that we should have a value statement as well as a mission statement. His passion was well received, and our board adopted a new value statement, which I am sharing here in the form that was sent to the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra (Boulder Phil) community in an e-broadcast.

To the Boulder Phil community:

The Boulder Phil joined our colleagues across the music world in pausing our music yesterday to hear the important black voices speaking now, the voices calling for justice in America. Pausing one day was not enough; we must keep listening – and elevating and acting – today, tomorrow, and for every tomorrow after, until all voices can rise up together in a just land.

The path to justice begins with empathy, with our ability, however imperfectly, to imagine ourselves in the places of others, to fundamentally recognize our common humanity. Music is empathy in sound. To put our lives into tones and share them with another is a profound way to know and be known. Music seeks a shared vision to be better.

Music is aspirational, and we shall be too.

Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra

It was an interesting and important moment for all of us. Since that time our orchestra is taking additional steps to address the issues of diversity and equity in our orchestra and our community. This is not easy, but it is very important for all of us to strive for improvement in the long standing inequities in our society.

The Boulder Phil has prided itself for at least a decade on its interaction with schools and students in the Boulder area. Approximately 10,000 students each year (primarily elementary and middle school students) get to experience either a special concert with Maestro Michael in the large symphony hall (about 4,000 students in four special concerts over two days), or they meet small ensembles (brass, winds, strings, etc.) in their classrooms. It’s a powerful program that we are very proud of, and major funding has been provided on a regular basis by several major benefactors in Boulder.

With the question of opening of schools and the nonavailability of our large symphony hall, we are faced for our education and outreach program with the same sort of problems that our regular orchestral programs are facing. Our education and community engagement director, Sara Parkinson, and her collaborators in the schools are coming up with creative solutions to this problem. I have seen some samples of this, and they are doing a great job. Some of these innovations will be new ways to interact with the students even after the schools have opened and we have some sense of normality in our lives.

Fig. 2

The Boulder Phil brass ensemble in a school auditorium

What have we learned from this experience? First and foremost is that in interacting digitally with artists and audiences, it became clear that there can be powerful interactions between performers and patrons not possible in a performance or even a recital setting. One example that has evolved has been our Events of Note, a recital series with a guest artist, usually in a private home. We have had several such events post pandemic onset via Zoom and YouTube where the artist is a part of a Zoom discussion before, during and after watching a YouTube playlist with presentations of music by the artist, performed for the occasion.² The discussions are vivid and all can participate, whereas at the wine and cheese part of the event in the private home only a few get to talk to the artist at a time. One important point for the orchestra, financially, is that our patrons are paying for these events. just as they did for recitals at a private home (not quite as much, of course).

For instance, in May, we had a well-known violinist in a Zoom chat from her apartment in New York. She was one of the soloists whose concert was canceled. After the introductions and after listening to her perform several pieces of music, she was asked how she was doing in New York with the pandemic. She replied that she knew 10 people personally who had died from the virus and she was having to wash her clothes in her bathtub, due to her fear of using the laundry room or a laundromat, it was difficult to get salt or butter, etc. It was a tough time in New York! Her short personal monologue was very vivid for all of us in Boulder. The more recent recitals have not been quite as dramatic! But they have been equally moving and personal.

I think the digital version of sharing music will be a strong supplement to our normal concerts and recitals, and we are only now learning how to do this.

My hope is that, after sixty-two years of being an important, and beloved by many, part of Boulder, the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra will continue to fulfill its mission of providing superb orchestral music to its community. I am personally very pleased to be a part of trying to make this happen.

Ronny Wells