Planning for the future

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I spent this turkey day with some family in Orange County. The fare was an interesting mix of Asian and American food. I am not sure if the two complimented each other perfectly but nevertheless, it was tasty!

As I mentioned in my last post, I have spent a good chunk of time lately meeting with some top orchestra administrators in and around LA. These individuals were kind enough to lend me their time, brains and cumulative experience as I set forth to refine my goals for the rest of the Fellowship year and onward into my next job.

Going into the year, I knew that I wanted to get a well rounded overview of the entire industry. I had come into the Fellowship with some marketing and public relations experience under my belt. Then, over the summer in Aspen, I had the opportunity to test my operations chops as I managed the Festival Orchestra (operations has since become a high interest area). Since my arrival in LA, I have been exposed to many projects all around including some senior management tasks such as strategic planning and budgeting.

At this point, one major category that has been relatively unexplored is that of development and fund raising. My meetings with Emily Laskin, Director of Development at the LA Phil and Jeff Haydon, Executive Director of the Ojai Music Festival and ’98 Fellowship grad, further stressed the growing importance of proficiency in this area for executive directors.

Also, the area of artistic affairs (programming, repertoire, having a refined ear, etc) still remains relatively fresh. During my meeting with Ed Yim, Director of Artistic Planning at the LA Phil and ’92 Fellowship grad, I found out that despite his title as top artistic guy (next to the music director, Esa-Pekka Salonen), Ed started out with a non-orchestral background. He gained his artistic chops by choosing jobs after the Fellowship with large top-quality orchestras that played 30+ weeks of concerts a year.

Looking ahead and reflecting on my areas of interest, I will try to specifically hone in on development and operations during my next assignments in Memphis and Pittsburgh. Plus, in Pittsburgh, I will work hard to capitalize on being associated with a top quality orchestra that performs frequently to boost my artistic proficiency.

All of this work should help me better achieve my goal of finishing the year well rounded and better prepared to contribute to the field come next June.

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!

An evening out at LACMA

When you move out to a city as large and spread out as LA, it is pretty hard to catch all of the cultural sites in under four short months. Normally, I gravitate toward major music halls and art museums so you can imagine my surprise when I finally discovered LACMA just last night.

Really, discovering LACMA (the Los Angeles County Museum of Art) should not have been that big of a surprise. It is known, along with the Getty Center and MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art), as one of the largest cultural institutions in LA. I just had no idea it would be so cool and full of depth.

Being more than just a presenter of the visual arts, I was drawn to LACMA last night because of their weekly "Sunday’s Live!" chamber music concert series. Danielle Harrell, coworker and ’04 Fellow alum, organized a mini staff outing to listen to the Colburn Orchestra at LACMA's Bing Theater. Being curious, I made sure to get there about an hour early to check out what LACMA was all about.

I was impressed to find a much-larger-than-anticipated facility accompanied by an equally impressive collection and events calendar. Aside from specially scheduled concerts and film screenings, LACMA also programs a regular Friday night Jazz and Sunday night chamber music series. On top of all of this, they are located just next to the famous La Brea Tar Pits (just another added attraction).

In the end, I was very impressed to say the least yet disappointed that I did not have the time to fully explore the museum, especially their Renoir exhibit. I guess I’ll just have to go back soon. Only five more weeks in LA to do it!

Bach’s Brandenburg Bonanza…and then some

On Oct. 30th and 31st, we presented a “LACO Plus One” concert set featuring members of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra playing Bach’s 2nd, 4th and 5th Brandenburg Concertos (there are six total). We call it “Plus One” because these are special concerts outside of our normal subscription series.

The concerts took place at the Colburn School of Performing Arts in their 400 seat Zipper Hall. Particular highlights of the concerts included Patricia Mabee’s performance on the harpsichord cadenza on the 5th, Margaret Batjer’s violin solos in the 4th and David Washburn’s impressive show on the first and last movements of the 2nd concerto. The group finished out the concert with an encore, repeating the last movement of the 2nd at a blinding tempo with a surprise high note finale on the piccolo trumpet (those of you that know I play trumpet probably understand my excitement).

In addition to those present at these two concerts, nearly a thousand elementary school kids from the Los Angeles Unified School District were able to hear elements of the concertos earlier that week as the finale of our first Meet the Music concert of the season.

Meet the Music is a LACO educational outreach program where we train volunteers to go into elementary schools and work with resident music teachers to prepare students for a concert field trip. This extremely successful program emphasizes tiered learning about music and instruments prior to the actual concert, thereby leaving a more effective and long lasting impression on the kids.

This extra program is cleverly woven into the cloth of the organization at a reduced cost. The musicians were able to use the Meet the Music concert as their second of three rehearsals before the normal weekend performances. As LACO compensates its musicians per service, they were paid the performance rate for Meet the Music (as opposed to the lower rehearsal rate). In the end, this means that for the difference (in musicians’ costs) between a normal rehearsal and a performance, LACO was able to add an extra educational outreach concert. Of course, underneath the surface, other expenses such as staff time and marketing factor into the Meet the Music program but the gist is that LACO has expanded its scope by cleverly using existing structures at a minimal cost.

In a climate where many orchestras are facing financial difficulty, an initial reaction is to scale down operations and scope. As this case proves, clever management can sometimes provide another way out.