Well, here it is 9:30 Friday night (Denver time) and I’ve only caught you up to yesterday morning. The conference has been amazingly full, with some extremely interesting sessions. I can’t begin to do justice to them right now, especially since I have to be downstairs at 7:30 AM to arrange for a camera to film the morning session about Artistry as Civic Engagement, which we will stream on Polyphonic. So I need to pack tonight. And I want to watch the NBC special about Tim Russert – how sad. I just heard about his death an hour ago.
I’ll give you a quick overview of the sessions I attended, and tell you which ones I’ll go into more detail about later and which ones I’ll turn into a full article. I’ll finish up summarizing sessions on this blog next week, and then turn to getting the full articles ready the after that.
Jim Collins
Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, was the keynote speaker Thursday at noon in the huge theater. Jesse Rosen, incoming President and CEO of the League, introduced himself as “a member of the suits – those of us in the orchestra world. Beneath our suits we’re artists, we love music…”
(Dress has been interesting at the conference. League attendees tend to wear business attire at the League conference, but here we are with all these theater and dance people. They definitely DO NOT wear suits; there are some pretty interesting getups walking around. So when we’re all together in plenary sessions, the orchestra people really stand out.)
Jim Collins is a really interesting and captivating speaker. He spoke for a little over an hour and you could tell that people were just totally immersed in what he was saying. Target (a huge conference sponsor) had passed out blank journals as we walked in, and folks were furiously writing away. [Yours truly talked her way into the handicapped seating area so I could plug in and put my laptop on that lovely ledge that’s at the perfect height.] [No, I didn't deprive anyone of a seat -- there were plenty left!]
I took extensive notes again, but given that Jim Collins’ book is widely available, and I’m sure many of you have read it, I’ll just do a very top-level summary next week. His book is about corporations that succeed; he has adapted it into a monograph: Good to Great and the Social Sectors: Why Business Thinking Is Not the Answer. You can find lots more information, including an excerpt from the monograph, at http://www.jimcollins.com.
Innovative Programming
The League’s afternoon had many sessions; I chose to attend the Innovative Programming session with Ed Harsh of Meet the Composer; Jennifer Higdon, composer; Dale Johnson, Artistic Director, Minnesota Opera; Jeffrey Kahane, Music Director, Colorado Symphony; and Francisco Nunez, Artistic Director and Founder, Young People’s Chorus of NY. They also announced the ASCAP awards at this session.
Each panelist had an interesting story about the type of programming they’ve done. For example, Jeffrey Kahane described how the LA Chamber Orchestra founded A Sound Investment, a commissioning club where regular patrons donated as little as $250 to be part of a group that got to meet the composer all during the course of the writing of a piece. Francisco Nunez commissioned lots of works for children’s chorus – when he asked several composers why they hadn’t written for this group, the answer was that no one had ever asked them to do so. Dale Johnson talked about the Minnesota Opera commissioning and revising new works, and Jennifer Higdon had lots of stories of communities getting involved in a work she was writing. I’ll tell you more about this session next week.
I then took off my Polyphonic hat and put on my HSO Grant Consultant hat and went to an NEA Grantmaking Process session with Wayne Brown and others. Had a lovely dinner with Gaylon Patterson from the Memphis Symphony, an old ROPA buddy, and the people from Memphis who were on his panel. They’ve been working with corporate managers at FedEx along the lines of Orpheus giving presentations to corporations. They’ll be doing another presentation tomorrow morning, so I’ll tell you more next week (and it will be part if the video).
