When it rains, it pours
This week, starting from last weekend, is probably the busiest week and a half of my four month stay with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. It all started on Saturday with LACO’s board retreat. The retreat focused on our new strategic plan, currently nine months in the making. Altogether, thirty people (staff, musicians, board members, our music director and two consultants), met for six hours to review a battle plan focused on improving the stature of the orchestra over the next five years.
Then, the next day, it was all staff hands on deck for our first annual Chidren’s Musical Masquerade at the ritzy California Club downtown. CMM, geared to be a fund raising benefit focused specifically on children, started with a fun masquerade mask making activity led by an independent artist. Then, yours truly joined other staff members and volunteers to help the kids try out instruments at our “instrument petting zoo” (me on trumpet of course). The centerpiece of the event, a concert featuring Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals, was next and followed by lunch.
With the festivities of the weekend behind me, tomorrow, fellow Fellow Kevin Shuck will be making the trip to downtown LA from Orange County (anybody watch “the OC?”) to visit our offices and meet with Ruth Eliel, LACO’s executive director and my current mentor. In the afternoon, we will make our way down the street to meet for lunch with Deborah Borda, the executive director of the LA Philharmonic (and former NY Phil ED). THEN, after hanging out a bit with Fellowship alum Gloria Kim at the Phil, Kevin will split and I will sit in on a rehearsal for a special LACO concert being presented at the LA Phil’s famous Walt Disney Concert Hall. THEN I will team up with other LACO staffers to man an informational table during the actual concert later that night. LACO does not usually play at the Disney Concert Hall, this is a special extra concert featuring vocalist Thomas Quasthoff, bass-baritone. THEN, after the concert, I will attend a reception at the Hall for our donors. Whew, what a day!
As if THIS weren’t enough, several other interviews with other key managers are on the immediate horizon including meetings with senior staff members at the LA Phil, field trips to Long Beach and Ojai to meet with their executive directors, and other meetings with board members, musicians and our music director, Jeffrey Kahane.
On top of all of these meetings and events, I am juggling several projects in the office including: writing two more grant proposals, co-heading a new initiative targeting young working professionals, developing a fund-raising campaign connected to the LA Marathon, increasing circulation of our email newsletter, working on ways to integrate a blog into LACO’s website and many many more projects. Oh and I forgot, I also have to begin solidifying a housing situation for my two weeks in NYC as well as accommodations and a work plan for Memphis.
All of this with just four more weeks left in LA. When it rains, it pours…and I wouldn’t have it any other way!
Then, the next day, it was all staff hands on deck for our first annual Chidren’s Musical Masquerade at the ritzy California Club downtown. CMM, geared to be a fund raising benefit focused specifically on children, started with a fun masquerade mask making activity led by an independent artist. Then, yours truly joined other staff members and volunteers to help the kids try out instruments at our “instrument petting zoo” (me on trumpet of course). The centerpiece of the event, a concert featuring Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals, was next and followed by lunch.
With the festivities of the weekend behind me, tomorrow, fellow Fellow Kevin Shuck will be making the trip to downtown LA from Orange County (anybody watch “the OC?”) to visit our offices and meet with Ruth Eliel, LACO’s executive director and my current mentor. In the afternoon, we will make our way down the street to meet for lunch with Deborah Borda, the executive director of the LA Philharmonic (and former NY Phil ED). THEN, after hanging out a bit with Fellowship alum Gloria Kim at the Phil, Kevin will split and I will sit in on a rehearsal for a special LACO concert being presented at the LA Phil’s famous Walt Disney Concert Hall. THEN I will team up with other LACO staffers to man an informational table during the actual concert later that night. LACO does not usually play at the Disney Concert Hall, this is a special extra concert featuring vocalist Thomas Quasthoff, bass-baritone. THEN, after the concert, I will attend a reception at the Hall for our donors. Whew, what a day!
As if THIS weren’t enough, several other interviews with other key managers are on the immediate horizon including meetings with senior staff members at the LA Phil, field trips to Long Beach and Ojai to meet with their executive directors, and other meetings with board members, musicians and our music director, Jeffrey Kahane.
On top of all of these meetings and events, I am juggling several projects in the office including: writing two more grant proposals, co-heading a new initiative targeting young working professionals, developing a fund-raising campaign connected to the LA Marathon, increasing circulation of our email newsletter, working on ways to integrate a blog into LACO’s website and many many more projects. Oh and I forgot, I also have to begin solidifying a housing situation for my two weeks in NYC as well as accommodations and a work plan for Memphis.
All of this with just four more weeks left in LA. When it rains, it pours…and I wouldn’t have it any other way!
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