James (Jim) Roe’s first connection to the Orchestra of St. Luke’s (OSL) was as an oboe player in many of its concerts. From there he managed to morph into a widely admired orchestra manager, first as CEO of the New Jersey Symphony and now coming up on his seventh season as OSL’s president and executive director.

In his One to One, he discusses OSL’s evolution from a small chamber group in Greenwich Village in 1974 to a multi-pronged, multi-format organism. OSL performs up to 80 concerts annually across New York’s five boroughs and owns and runs the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, a 20,000-square-foot rehearsal, recording, and performance space on Manhattan’s West Side. He discusses OSL’s unusual business model; the evolution of its new digital series; the unique relationship with Bernard Labadie, its recently renewed principal conductor; and how the OSL has emerged from the pandemic in better financial shape than ever.

As an arts presenter, Washington Performing Arts (WPA) is unusual in that it has no venue of its own. “The city is our stage,” says its President and CEO of nearly nine years Jenny Bilfield. She points to the 11 different spaces in the D.C. area that WPA uses for its (mostly classical) programs, and they range in size from 300 seats to 2600.

When the pandemic struck, closing down a venue was clearly not at issue. The immediate challenge was the annual gala, scheduled for March 17, just as the U.S. moved into total lockdown. On March 14 Bilfield decided to “take a leap,” as she puts it, and move the year’s most important fundraiser online. She continued that leap into the next, 2020-21 season, becoming one of the first to announce an all- digital season. “We decided not to subscribe to magical thinking,” she says, avoiding the last-minute cancellations that so many others suffered through. Better still, cyberspace offered new and different sites, including tours and a performance at Taiwan’s magnificent National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts, Weiwuying.

One to One with Afa Dworkin in July 2020, she has seen some progress in performing arts organizations’ efforts to diversify, but, as she now puts it, "not enough." As president and artistic director of the Sphinx Organization, this month honoring its 25th year of "transforming lives through the power of diversity in the arts," Dworkin should know.

Dworkin maintains the only way to overcome "centuries of systemic, intentional, and implicit exclusion" in the performing arts is for every member of an organization, be it one devoted to opera, theater, ballet, or classical music, to get on board. It’s not just a "top-down" issue, she says, calling on conservatories to join the crusade, but perhaps more importantly, a "bottom-up" one.

Simon Woods became president of the League of American Orchestras in September 2020—at the height of the pandemic—after a distinguished career heading the Seattle Symphony, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and other major ensembles. He talks to One to One about the needs of the League’s 700 member orchestras when he first arrived and what they need now—respectively, inter-colleague communication and research/data to help predict a future still struggling with Covid-19 and its variants.

Woods defends the League from its age-old reputation of having only management’s—not musicians'—interests at heart. He also reports not a single League member went under during the pandemic, thanks largely to federal aid, much of which was gained through the lobbying efforts of the League and other arts groups.

Last year, as the shutdown crippled the performing arts and all of its support systems, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) announced, through the largesse of an anonymous donor, it would purchase Opus 3 Artists, one of the last surviving large artist management companies. The move sent shock waves through the industry: The tail wagging the dog? A non-profit buying a for-profit? An automatic entrée to the 250-member Opus 3 roster for SFCM graduates?

In his One to One interview, SFCM President David Stull explains the origins of the partnership, how it will work, who pays for what, and how the arrangement will serve the performing arts by filling the gap between graduation and career launch.

When he first started discussions with director Yuval Sharon about using the Detroit Opera House parking garage to stage Twilight:Gods, Michigan Opera Theater (MOT) President and CEO Wayne S. Brown had no thoughts of Sharon becoming MOT’s artistic director on a permanent basis.

But with the huge success of the pandemic-induced Twilight, since reprised by the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and with Sharon’s keen interest in site-specific work, a partnership was born, one that has since yielded additional "Out and About" stagings in Detroit, including Blue, in the Aretha Franklin Amphitheater, and Bliss in the previously abandoned, gothic designed Michigan Theater. Next up, and this time finally back in the Detroit Opera House: La bohème, backwards.

With our industry’s baby-boomer generation entering retirement and the Musical America job listings at their highest number ever, we wanted to take a closer look. In this One to One, we turn to the experts: Ron Schiller and Anne Johnson at the Aspen Leadership Group, one of top executive search firms specializing in the non-profit realm and the arts.

Their take: Turnover is high across all sectors and at all levels, partly because of a backlog built up during the pandemic, and partly because prospective employees, having learned to work successfully on their own and out of the office over the last 16 months, are demanding more flexibility. The one trend particular to classical music, they said, is the need for increased diversity in hiring practices, on all sides of the equation.

Annie Burridge is coming up on five years as general director and CEO of the Austin Opera, one of just under 50 arts and culture nonprofits recently chosen by Bloomberg Philanthropies to participate in its $30 million Digital Accelerator Plan. Thanks to a prescient coincidence, Burridge had just put together a panel of tech experts drawn from Silicon Hills—Austin’s nickname—when the pandemic hit, and so was able to draw on their expertise from the get-go.

Austin Opera has been on an upward digital trajectory ever since, to the point where its popular Opera ATX outreach series is moving into virtual reality (the first offering in VR is Beethoven: Fidelio). Burridge also talks about the future of the artform as strictly collaborative, exemplified by next season’s (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, a new production that will tour among its five co-commissioners with a single cast.

Harold Brown, chief diversity and inclusion officer for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (CSO), has been on the job since last March. He reports directly to the CEO as a member of senior staff, with the mandate to effect change and broaden the institution’s personnel profile to better reflect its diverse community.

Brown has no experience working in the performing arts; however, he cites (with a smile) his son being a student of one of the orchestra’s cellists. Rather, his impressive credentials are in the world of academia, where he has set strategy not only for equity hiring and recruitment but for retention. This applies to his work at the CSO, both within the organization and well beyond. “When they get here,” he says of attracting diverse audiences, "do they feel like they belong? Are they respected? What will make them decide to return?"

Clive Gillinson has been executive and artistic director of Carnegie Hall since 2005, expanding the storied performing arts center into a major force in U.S. arts education as well. Like many institutions, Carnegie has taken “a huge hit” financially, though its shift to digital has broadened its footprint, says Gillinson. Nonetheless, after being dark for 18 months, it will reopen in fall—gradually—and the plan is for 90 Carnegie Hall presentations in the 2021-22 season, rather than the usual 150 or so, across its three halls.

But it’s only a plan. “Just like everything has changed weekly for the last 16 months, it will continue to change,” Gillinson says. He points to the two big unknowns that lie ahead for Carnegie. Will audiences come back? Equally important, how will rental income—comprising almost two thirds of the annual (pre-pandemic) $100-plus million budget—be impacted, especially with proof of vaccination required for entry. Says Gillinson, “We’re in such a different world now.”

Brian Goldstein, arts lawyer and co-principal of GG Arts Law, sets the record straight on a variety of issues—foreign travel, visas, the worldwide consulate backlog, and the hard-to-get National Interest Exception (NIE). The NIE should, in theory, enable U.S. presenters to book foreign artists who they deem essential to their business. But, says Goldstein, "It’s called an 'Exception' for a reason."

Goldstein was the first One to One interview, in March of 2020. Fifteen months later, we discuss what has changed, what hasn’t, and what should. For instance, when should an artist get paid? ("What other professionals only get compensated after they’ve completed the job?," says Goldstein.) Should presenters be more flexible? Should managers charge their artists a retainer? (“Asking artists to invest in their own careers makes sense,” he says).

This week's One to One: Part 2 of our "Exit Interview" with Mark Volpe, who is retiring as CEO of the Boston Symphony after 23 years (view Part 1 here).

In this segment, Volpe talks candidly about the long overdue reckoning of race in American orchestras, both among musicians and administrators. He also discusses how orchestras have evolved into media companies, and the need to monetize their increased visibility – perhaps the way sports teams turned to broadcasting and sponsorship.

He also shares some of his favorite memories, like the time Seiji Ozawa, in an international al fresco performance, managed to outpace a looming thunderstorm seconds before it broke open on a crowd of thousands.

On the eve of retiring after 23 years at the helm of the mighty Boston Symphony Orchestra, CEO Mark Volpe talked with us about reopening Tanglewood after 18 months of shutdown and about the real reason that, in 1938, legendary BSO Music Director Serge Kouzzevitzky needed to launch a summer music festival.

Volpe, also a former Detroit Symphony CEO, shares his experience of three very different BSO music directors—and how one director's sudden exit led to the discovery of a young Latvian conductor named Andris Nelsons, who went on to become BSO Music Director and Musical America’s Artist of the Year.

Francesca Zambello tells One to One about the multiple alternatives the Washington National Opera (WNO) and the Glimmerglass Festival created during the pandemic to stay in touch with their audiences. As she prepares for both to go live again, Zambello outlines highlights from WNO’s coming 2021-22 season, as well as Summer 2021 “Glimmerglass on the Grass” plans, which include a new stage on the company’s expansive lawn, shortened performances of reimagined standard repertoire, and several short films.

All mark the beginnings of what she calls “the new world of opera,” which, this seasoned director maintains, is now upon us.

Teddy Abrams arrived as music director of the Louisville Orchestra in 2014 at the age of 26. “It was crazy,” he says now. The orchestra, despite the success of its mid-20th -century First Edition recordings, had fallen on hard times. Abrams, a recent Michael Tilson Thomas protégé, had big ideas on how to fix it and no (discernible) doubts.

Recently dubbed “the Louisville Orchestra’s Rock Star” by CBS News, Abrams describes in One to One how he seized the pandemic as an opportunity for change, making the last year one of the orchestra’s most ambitious and most visible. Its success, accomplished through an ingenious fund-raising scheme, streamed concerts, and Abrams’s hugely popular one-to-one Zoomed “Comfort Concerts,” helped to heal a community suffering from the dual devastation of Covid-19 and the civic unrest caused by Breonna Taylor’s death.

In his One to One interview, Director of the Association of British Orchestras Mark Pemberton talks about how musicians and organizations have been affected by the pandemic, what steps the government has taken to support them, and where they find themselves as the country emerges from lockdown. He also discusses the disastrous impact of the U.K.’s Brexit deal with respect to touring in Europe, what went wrong, and whether there is any light at the end of the tunnel.

An Oxford graduate who started his career in arts management, Mark has headed the Association of British Orchestras since July 2007 and is the current chair of the U.K.’s National Music Council, which exists to promote the interests of the British music sector as a whole.

One to One checks in with arts consultant Michael Kaiser for an update from our two-part May 2020 conversation about how best to deal with the lockdown. Now that we appear to be arriving on the other side, Kaiser advises arts groups to mount more inventive, unusual programming than ever as they open to live audiences. It’s the only way to compete against the myriad other entertainment options—from cruise lines and theme parks to restaurants and movies—scrambling for visibility in what he predicts will be a glut of post-pandemic entertainment marketing.

In addition to being a Baltimore Symphony Orchestra percussionist, Brian Prechtl is the chairman of the BSO Players Committee and was pivotal to bringing musicians, management, and trustees together in resolving 2019’s labor and financial impasse.

Prechtl explains how, over the last year and throughout the pandemic, BSO leaders met routinely to hammer out a new five-year musicians’ contract, in effect since last fall. He credits arts consultant Michael Kaiser with facilitating the agreement; Prechtl also points to his year-long participation in the League of American Orchestras’ Emerging Leaders program with giving him a new understanding of the administrative challenges of running an orchestra.

Stephen Hough—pianist, composer, writer and author—discusses the effect of the pandemic on musicians' bank balances, its impact on international touring, and reflects on how the industry might change as it seeks to re-establish live performance in a post-COVID world.

Named by The Economist as one of "Twenty Living Polymaths," Hough’s career took off after winning first prize at the 1983 Naumburg Competition in New York. An acclaimed concert pianist with a discography of over 60 titles, Hough currently resides in London and is a regular visitor to the U.S. where he is a member of the faculty at The Juilliard School. Last year he was the first musician to return to the concert platform as part London’s Wigmore Hall.

In her new One to One interview, Heather Noonan, vice president of advocacy for the League of American Orchestras, explains how the latest COVID-19 relief package, including Save Our Stages (SOS) legislation, will impact presenters, venues, and independent contractors in the arts.

Updating her One to One last April, when she unwrapped the CARES Act provisions for us, Noonan here explains the new support options, from a PPP loan to a Shuttered Venue Operator (aka SOS) grant to retroactive tax credits, and more. She also urges us to keep the pressure on our local representatives to support the arts, made easy via now-familiar FaceTime and Zoom. Physical distance is no longer an excuse—"You don’t have to fly to Washington to have a meeting with your member of Congress," she notes.

In her One to One interview, mezzo-soprano Dame Sarah Connolly, a vocal opponent of the British government’s Brexit proposals, talked about the current plight of U.K. musicians and the campaign to secure visa-free travel arrangements for artists wishing to perform in the European Union. She also discussed the effect of the pandemic on her own life as well as her hopes for the future of live performance.

During a 30-year career, Connolly has become one of the most popular and successful mezzo-sopranos of her generation. Her international career has seen her perform in opera houses and on concert stages around the world from Covent Garden to the Met and Carnegie Hall. She was made a Dame of the British Empire in the 2017 Queen’s Birthday Honours and was the recipient of the prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society’s 2012 Singer Award.

Kim Noltemy arrived as president and CEO of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in 2018, and neither the orchestra nor the city has been the same since. Even before the pandemic hit, she was making major upgrades to the DSO’s artistic and civic profile. Last June, the orchestra became the first in the U.S. not only to return to its concert hall but to do so before a live, albeit small audience.

Since then, Noltemy has kept the momentum going, involving DSO musicians in a huge range of activities, from delivering groceries to families in need to performing with as many as 50 of their colleagues in Meyerson Symphony Center before an audience of 200. Recently, Guest Conductor Nicholas McGegan tested positive in one of the DSO’s daily COVID-19 screenings, after he had led the orchestra the night before. Noltemy’s response was to shut down performances for two weeks. “We wanted to keep the musicians home,” she explained in an email, “to be sure everyone stays healthy.” The orchestra returns on January 28 under its Music Director Fabio Luisi.

The self-governed Vienna Philharmonic is perhaps the most celebrated orchestra in the world. It was also the first full ensemble following the pandemic shutdown to return to its concert hall and tour internationally as a group. Chairman and first violinist Daniel Froschauer describes that initial rehearsal in the Musikverein—Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony under Daniel Barenboim—"It was like a healing!" He also recounts the myriad obstacles surrounding the four-city tour of Japan, including the November 2 terrorist attacks in Vienna the night before the group’s departure.

Doug Sheldon has a unique perspective on the changes to the classical music business as a result the pandemic, which he shared with One to One. After decades at the now defunct powerhouse of artist management, Columbia Artists, Sheldon has launched his own firm, Sheldon Artists, LLC. Noting “the business is in the process of changing, in a dramatic way,” he described how he sees the future unfolding for artist management, orchestra touring, fees for performers, and salaries for CEOs at large presenting organizations.

Sheldon believes recovery will begin by 2022 but acknowledges it will be slow. His new roster boasts several of his big-name longtime collaborators, but also a number of young emerging artists—investments for the future. “There’s no money in that,” he said. “Yet.”

In his One to One interview, Graham Vick, founder and artistic director of the Birmingham Opera Company, discussed BOC’s unique ethos, the long-term benefits of the current digital climate, the impact of the pandemic, and the Black Lives Matter movement. Concerned that larger institutions will emerge having paid little more than "lip-service" to diversity and community engagement, Vick expressed confidence the future belongs to companies like BOC which know what it is doing and who it is doing it for.

Over a 40-year career, Vick has directed from Covent Garden and La Scala to the Met and the Mariinsky. In 1987, he founded Birmingham Opera Company, developing a far-sighted model of community engagement that has placed the company among the artform’s leading exponents when it comes to imagining what opera should be in the 21st century.

Jeremy Geffen arrived at U.C. Berkeley in April of 2019 as the new executive and artistic director of Cal Performances, one of the major, multi-genre presenters in the country. After leaving his longtime post as senior director and artistic advisor for Carnegie Hall, he discovered within less than one year that the cross-country trek brought unexpected challenges, thanks to the pandemic.

In his One to One interview, Geffen discussed Cal Performances’ move from live to digital, and points to the positive side of the transition: For audiences, it has meant a more intimate relationship with the artists they view online; for staff, said Geffen, “We never would have invested in the digital platform we have now.” He also discussed what it means to present the performing arts in an academic setting, and a huge, statewide university, at that.

When the Tulsa Opera announced the pandemic-caused cancellation of its October 2020 Rigoletto in the local performing arts center, the Tulsa Drillers baseball team offered the company the use of its ONEOK ballfield.

In his One to One interview, composer Tobias Picker, the opera’s artistic director, remembers responding, "Yes!" and then wondering, “What am I going to do with a baseball field?” A few rejected scenarios later—put a soloist on the field with a mic, build a huge stage for a socially distanced cast, make a pre-recorded stream—a key image came to mind: "A baseball diamond is a thing of beauty," Picker remembered.

And thus was born the first-ever baseball Rigoletto. It sold 1800 seats and introduced a wealth of baseball fans to opera for the first time. Most importantly, staff, cast, crew, and fans all stayed healthy.

Now approaching its 25th year, the Grammy-winning ensemble Eighth Blackbird has gone through some major changes since being named Musical America’s 2017 Ensemble of the Year. In their One to One, pianist Lisa Kaplan and percussionist Matthew Duvall, also the sextet’s executive and artistic directors, discuss recent shifts that have been further solidified by the pandemic.

For one, the group has four new members as of January 2020; for another, Eighth Blackbird now self-identifies as an “arts organization,” says Duvall, one that performs, tours, and presents. This last iteration gets underway October 20 when the newly revitalized Creative Artists Workshop (CAW, get it?) launches the first of 24 concerts this season, most of them guest-artist performances, live streamed from Eighth Blackbird’s spacious Chicago studio.

Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s President and CEO Anne Parsons tells One to One how the DSO has been adapting to the pandemic, from streaming its archives in the spring, to live outdoor concerts in the summer, to the current concerts on the stage of an empty Orchestra Hall, conducted by new Music Director Jader Bignamini.

Decisions around each phase, she emphasizes, have been reached through “a culture of shared participation and shared sacrifice,” from across-the-board pay cuts to weekly Covid-19 tests for live performances to musicians paying visits to donors.

Lidiya Yankovskaya is busy—which, in light of the last six months, is good to hear.

The music director of the Chicago Opera Theater (COT), founder of the Refugee Orchestra Project (ROP), and former Musical America New Artist of the Month, Yankovskaya is at the moment involved in three projects simultaneously, each requiring major adjustments for the pandemic. One is a newly recorded opera video—with each of the components, from singers to strings, captured individually and later mixed together to be broadcast on giant video board in a ball park on Sept. 26 (Minnesota Opera’s “Opera in the Outfield,”); one is a live concert with the ROP, performed outdoors with socially distanced musicians and a socially distanced audience; and one is a live streamed opera-in-concert (the COT premiere of The Transformation of Jane Doe), performed in an empty theater in Chicago with the singers six-feet apart on a wide stage and a small ensemble of musicians spread out in the pit.

Small wonder that she feels like she’s in a “whirlwind” working on several projects at once, “and of course none of them are regular performances in the way that we’ve been used to.” No kidding.

The Hollywood Bowl summer season has been cancelled, but that doesn’t mean its behemoth stage (5,700 square feet) sits empty. Chad Smith, CEO of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which operates the Bowl, describes the logistics behind the Phil’s upcoming "Sound/Stage" series.

Filmed at the Bowl over a number of weeks in July and August, the performances start streaming September 25, most of them conducted by Music Director Gustavo Dudamel. Players were masked and positioned between six and 12 feet apart, with the winds encased in multiple layers of plexiglass. For musicians used to taking finely honed aural cues from each other, it was a huge challenge. Smith describes how, to surmount it, Dudamel told his charges, "listen less, watch me more!"

David H. Stull, president of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, describes how last spring’s “accelerated learning path” to the digital realm has fully prepared SFCM for the coming fall semester. Although the entire curriculum will be available online, he says, 70 percent of the student body (enrollment is 485) will arrive on campus in October for a hybrid of in-person and electronic learning.

The Dante networking system, with its mere 10-millisecond latency, will enable SFCM musicians to rehearse in ensembles, and live concerts for up to 12 (masked) players are planned for one of the two concert halls in the just-completed, $195 million, 12-story Bowes Center. Technology is a vital learning tool right now, but as Stull sees it, it’s vital tool for any working musician in the 21st century.

Jesse Rosen, president and CEO of the League of American Orchestras, described to One to One how, during the pandemic, the League has not only provided guidance for its 2,000 members in securing government aid, but also served as a virtual gathering place for arts leaders to touch base, check in, and gain mutual support. He also said American orchestras have a grave responsibility to bring on administrators, as well as musicians, of diverse backgrounds.

Rosen's tenure is also coming to an end as he prepares in the coming days to hand over the League's substantial reins to his successor, Simon Woods. Woods is the former CEO of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and interim chief of the Grand Teton Music Festival.

Eric Einhorn, co-founding general and artistic director of On Site Opera, has watched his colleagues rush to move their productions online during the pandemic, causing what he calls "collective screen fatigue." Prevented by lock-down from staging its works at any given "site," wanting to avoid the digital screen model at all costs, Einhorn and his four-member staff came up with what they call "the world’s first telephone-based opera experience."

To My Distant Love, sung by one performer to one audience member at a time, has been hugely successful since its launch in June, and is just one example of Einhorn’s search to, in his words, "explode the model"—something we’ve all had plenty of time to think about.

Alan Fletcher, president and CEO of the Aspen Music Festival, discusses how this summer’s students and faculty have jumped online, both for teaching sessions and for concerts, some of which are streamed live from “pods” of artists all over the world. As a result, he notes, a wide public is now exposed to how Aspen works, both as an educational and presenting institution, without the hassle and the expense of physically traveling to its remote—if spectacular—locale. Fletcher also calls on the music industry to address its diversity problem, noting that "there’s a lot of work to do."

In the midst of the pandemic, LA Opera CEO Christopher Koelsch and his team have focused on inventing new ways to stay connected to audiences, outside of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. They’ve also reached out to performers, paying principals in advance for postponed or future engagements, and to composers, commissioning new work for their online Digital Shorts series, set to bow in the fall. With the Shorts, he says, we are "exercising technical and creative muscles that are not native to the company," while at the same time laying the groundwork for a new iteration of a 400-year-old art form.

Jacques Marquis is the president and CEO of the Cliburn, the umbrella organization for the famous International Piano Competition as well as the Amateur Competition and the Junior Competition. The Amateur Competition, scheduled for May and June 2020, had to be postponed to 2022. Meanwhile, the usual live auditions in eight cities around the world for the flagship event have been replaced with online screenings. The current plan is for about 70 applicants chosen from those to perform live in Fort Worth next April, with the final 30 invited back for the final round in May. “Playing online is sometimes interesting,” says Marquis. “But the purpose of the competition is to gather the best young pianists in the world in the same spot.”

Susan Feder is a program officer in the Mellon Foundation’s Arts and Culture Program, where she oversees grants from what is the country’s largest funder to the arts. She explains the recent shift in focus to social justice and how Mellon has been responding to what she describes as the "twin pandemics" of COVID-19 and the killing of George Floyd, which has brought to the surface the urgency of inclusivity among all organizations, particular in classical music. Recovery from both pandemics will be slow, she says; Mellon intends to assist with both.

John Kieser is executive vice president and provost of the Miami-based New World Symphony (NWS) and longtime general manager and executive producer of the San Francisco Symphony. He reports that NWS is preparing for an online season, if necessary, which is all in keeping with its goal, "to turn our fellows into producers of audio and video media." Right now, that’s the best way for orchestras to reach audiences, he says. Take your time, Kieser advises--the learning curve for using media effectively is steep.

Sphinx Organization President and Artistic Director Afa Dworkin characterizes the impact of the pandemic as simultaneously "abrupt, disturbing, and transformative." Founded over 20 years ago, Sphinx through its four focus areas—education, artist development, performance, and leadership—is the core program for the creation of diversity in classical music. Covid-19 and the Black Lives Matter Movement have only added urgency to its mission: transforming lives through the power of diversity in the arts.

Beth Morrison tells One to One how Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) is committed to "paying artists on every show that was contracted, to the best of our ability," and how BMP is "weathering the storm" of COVD-19 and experimenting in the new medium of the day.

Beth Morrison founded BMP in 2006 and has gone on to commission and nurture countless new chamber operas and take them on tour. She’s an “industry disruptor” nonpareil, stretching the boundaries of opera as an artform in a way that is “suddenly indispensable,” according to The New Yorker.

In his One to One interview, Trey Devey explains the five interlocking divisions of the Interlochen Center for the Arts and how each is dealing with the pandemic. Interlochen’s flagship, the Summer Arts Camp, founded in 1928, opens online June 28. The boarding school—Interlochen Arts Academy—will welcome students in August in person, under a very specific Fall Re-entry Plan.

Mr. Devey has been president of the famed Interlochen Center for the Arts since 2017 and was previously CEO of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. In both cases, he has had a major impact though his commitment to diversity and his marked savvy as a fund raiser.

Stefan Forsberg reflects on how Sweden’s laissez-faire approach to the Covid-19 pandemic impacted his decision to keep the orchestra performing, without audience, and the modifications he made to keep the players safe. When we spoke, tickets had just gone on sale for the first performance with audience in the Konserthuset since March, scheduled for July 4.

Stefan Forsberg has been executive and artistic director of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and the 20,000-square-meter Konserthuset Stockholm for 17 years. He is also chairman of Swedish Performing Arts, to which all of the country’s opera, theater, dance and orchestral groups belong.

In her One to One interview, Elizabeth Sobol discussed the cancellation of the SPAC season, plans for a virtual jazz festival in its place and perhaps even a SPAC "wellness" series, and the vital role the Center plays in the economic and cultural welfare of its surrounding community.

Sobol has been at the helm of SPAC since 2016. SPAC is a vast expanse of indoor/outdoor space located in the heart of the 2,400-acre Saratoga Spa State Park ("spa" for the natural springs) in upstate New York. A former managing director for IMG Artists and president of Universal Classics, she today oversees a 5,200-seat amphitheater and accompanying 22,000-capacity lawn space that, in a normal summer season, hosts performances by the New York City Ballet, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and a huge array of pop and rock concerts presented by LiveNation.

John Gilhooly told One to One about the artistic and technical logistics behind Wigmore Hall’s upcoming live-without-audience concert series, which begins on Monday with pianist Stephen Hough and continues throughout the month of June on the BBC. He describes the future and the "ecology" of classical-music performance in these challenging times. "We know we’re not going to come back 100 percent, and we all need to be there for each other."

Since arriving at Wigmore Hall in 2000, John Gilhooly OBE has heightened both the profile and the programming of this historic, century-old venue. Known primarily for chamber music and recitals, the 522-seat hall in prepandemic days offered nearly 500 concerts annually, many of them broadcast internationally, sponsored both singing and chamber music international competitions, and provided substantial educational programming to learners of all ages.

Also chairman of the Royal Philharmonic Society, Gilhooly was awarded Britain’s prestigious OBE in 2013, one of many honors in recognition of his immense contributions to British arts and culture.

Stanford Thompson talked with One to One about the impact of the pandemic on Play on Philly, both as its executive director and as its educator-in-chief. Thompson explained some of the outside-the-box solutions he and his teaching staff devised to connect with students online. Thompson also figured a way to support his teachers and staff without a PPP loan and come out ahead in the process.

A musician and educator, Thompson 10 years ago founded the tuition-free Play On Philly after-school orchestral program that has benefited almost 1,000 K-12 students in underserved Philadelphia neighborhoods. The founding board chairman of El Sistema USA, he is a Ted Fellow and serves on the faculty of the Global Leaders Program. As a consultant, Thompson has guided the development of dozens of music programs across the U.S.

In part 2 of his One to One interview (see part 1 here), Michael Kaiser tells us his arts management consulting firm recently offered a free hour of consulting to any needful arts organization. He wound up doing 427 separate consultations over six weeks, and "it was astonishing to me how well, how smartly arts leaders dealt with the very sudden attack of no earned income." It is a story, he says, that should be told to sponsors and donors—and is possibly more impactful than streaming another concert online.

Michael Kaiser, Musical America’s onetime (and only) Impresario of the Year and undisputed guru of the business of the arts, is among the most sought-after consultants in the world for his expertise in creative problem-solving in the arts.

In part one of the One to One interview, Michael Kaiser, the undisputed guru of the business of the arts, discusses "the four phases of the pandemic" and how to deal with each.

As we near the end of Phase I—the lockdown—Kaiser talked with us about preparing for the most painful phase, he says: waiting to get back into our concert halls and theaters. Here’s what we can and should be doing in the meantime.

Matthew Shilvock’s task is daunting: he needs to envision a path forward for the 1,000 employees and $72 million annual budget of the San Francisco Opera.

Forced to cancel the entire summer season (18 performances of three operas), unsure of the fall season, uncertain when the company can use its 3,150-seat War Memorial Opera House, Shilvock is pondering ways for the company to be "nimble, responsive, set up quickly, and bring art to the public." And, at the forefront of that rather tall mandate, Shilvock says, he is seeking to "bring beauty and catharsis to a public that yearns for it."

Fast and flexible moves between a Friday and the following Wednesday helped the Cleveland Institute of Music quickly pivot during the pandemic. It is also enjoying a 20 percent increase in enrollments, Paul Hogle, CIM’s president and CEO, told Musical America.

Hogle is the former executive VP of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra who was instrumental in bringing the DSO back to life by negotiating to stream its concerts live, so we knew we wanted to hear what he had to say. "The quality of an organization’s leadership—this is where it’s an all-in thing … there’s a small group of people who think they will shut down, lock the employees away from their pay and everything will be fine&151;I feel sad for those organizations."

Musical America interviewed Hogle from his home in Shaker Heights, Ohio.

Heather Noonan, longtime VP of Advocacy for the League of American Orchestras, has been instrumental in keeping the arts on Congress’s agenda. Together with her colleagues in the Performing Arts Alliance and national organizations in the broader arts sector, she has been supporting local advocates nationwide in demonstrating that the arts matter and ensuring that the CARES legislation recognizes its organizations and artists as an important part of the American workforce. This interview took place just on the heels of the first wave of funding; the second wave, now ensured, had yet to pass, but you can be sure Noonan was involved in filling the gaps left by the first.

The force majeure clause in contracts is a hot topic in the COVID-19 crisis. Jasper Parrott shared how he feels the standard force majeure clause being "an unbalanced and unfair instrument [that] supports big and powerful organizations," and leaves smaller organizations and individual artists in the lurch. He is responding to our first One to One interview with arts lawyer Brian Goldstein. Mr. Parrott was named Artist Manager of the Year at the ABO/Rhinegold Awards and is the co-author, with Vladimir Ashkenazy, of the widely read book, Beyond Frontiers.

The New York Philharmonic was the first major American orchestra to cancel its season (March 23) due to the coronavirus. Here, in part 2 of the interview with MA's Susan Elliott [see part 1, below], NYPhil President and CEO Deborah Borda gives insight into the factors impacting that decision; she also lends her expertise on leadership in a time of crisis.

Deborah Borda, president & CEO, the New York Philharmonic, had quite a couple weeks in March.

After sending the entire organization home, she negotiated a new interim contract over the phone with her orchestra, secured sweeping new media rights to NY Phil's archive, launched a new streaming service (NY Phil Plays On), cancelled a European tour, held an emergency board meeting with 57 members, each in a different location--and was, quite possibly, instrumental in New York adopting its current stay-at-home policy.

We were on the edge of our seat as she let us see those moments through her eyes.

The current crisis has impacted the performing arts no less than every other business. Performers and presenters and scrambling to make sense of canceled bookings and travel, lost ticket sales, and more.

Musical America's Susan Elliott turned to entertainment lawyer Brian Taylor Goldstein of GG Arts Law and the author of Law and Disorder, a column about legal issues on MusicalAmerica.com, to make sense of issues affecting the industry during CODVID-19, including force majeure clauses, Visas for foreign artists in the U.S., and, in light of the crisis, the need to rethink how the performing-arts business operates.