Jon Limbacher wears two hats: He is the managing director and president of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra (SPCO), and he is president of the Twin Cities’ famed Arts Partnership, a unique collaboration among the SPCO, the Ordway Center, the Minnesota Opera, and the Schubert Club.

Donning his other hat, Limbacher describes SPCO’s post-Covid focus on honing its membership model—currently $9 a month for any and all concerts—and on widening its free video streaming archive. Both, he says, are key to SPCO’s core mission of affordability.

When James (Jim) Ginsburg, president of Cedille (pronounced Say-Dee) Records, entered law school in 1989, he had every intention of following in the illustrious footsteps of his parents: Martin and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Cedille, however, launched that same year, took on a life of its own and law school went by the wayside.

Today, more than 30 years and 200 recordings later, Cedille is among the most highly regarded labels in the business. In his One to One, Ginsburg describes how the nonprofit enterprise has achieved major success—30 Grammy nominations, eight Grammy awards—while remaining true to its mission of recording only artist-led, Chicago-based music and musicians.

Michelle Miller Burns arrived as president and CEO of the Minnesota Orchestra just months before Osmo Vänskä announced, in December 2018, that he would be stepping down as music director in August of 2022 after 19 years in the job. Thinking they had nearly four years to find Vänskä’s successor, Burns and her search committee came up with a slate of 60 (!) possible candidates, with the idea to invite a generous number to guest conduct over the next several seasons.

Then the pandemic hit. Podium guests had to be rescheduled and, equally important, the musicians’ contract was at that time set to expire in several months. Exploring the new online territory to keep the orchestra's artistry before the public, there ensued a series of compromises on both sides of the aisle, which enabled the orchestra to remain viable. Today, the Minnesotans have a new music director designate in Thomas Søndergård, a new, up-to-date musicians’ contract, and a president and CEO who can take a great deal of credit for both.

Deborah Borda will exit as president and CEO of the New York Philharmonic next July, her hand-picked successor Gary Ginstling on board to step into her shoes—which, diminutive figure that she is, are huge.

Borda has done more for American orchestras than any single executive by building or revitalizing artistic life and concert halls in Detroit, Los Angeles, and now New York, with the newly reopened David Geffen Hall. The first woman to run a major U.S. ensemble, she talks about breaking the "concrete" (her word) ceiling, about one very high-profile maestro who dismissed her candidacy altogether, and about the journey from Detroit to New York to Los Angeles and back to New York. Having conquered the decades-long Geffen Hall challenge, she now has moved on to finding a music director to succeed Jaap van Zweden in New York. She pleads the Fifth (“we don’t know”), but rest assured he or she will be the beneficiary of her brilliant tenure.

The stagings of James Robinson, artistic director of Opera Theater of Saint Louis (OTSL), are everywhere these days, from OTSL to the Santa Fe Opera to the Metropolitan Opera. Robinson is known for breaking new ground: he's responsible for Terrance Blanchard's first venture into the artform with Champion at OTSL, which next spring comes to the Met, where he also staged Porgy and Bess and Blanchard’s second opera, Fire Shut Up in My Bones.

One to One caught up with Robinson in Santa Fe, ten days before the world premiere of M. Butterfly, now onstage. Rehearsals were going well, he reported, due no doubt to his trademark ability to keep "a happy room." Asked about opera's biggest challenges post-pandemic, he noted the daily hassle of testing for Covid and rehearsing in masks. "It's so much harder—singers hate it—so you have to find a way through that." Given his track record, he has clearly succeeded.

We caught up with Jacques Marquis, president and CEO of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, just after the 2022 Medalists were announced. The quadrennial, highly prestigious contest, named for the American winner of Russia’s 1958 Tchaikovsky Competition, started its live rounds last March, just at the start of the Russian invasion. Marquis explains his decision not to ban the 15 Russian competitors (chosen from 388 applicants) from coming to the U.S. He also explains how he chose the all new, nine-member jury, and his mandate to each juror to use his or her unique "tunnel vision" in choosing the finest pianist.

Ara Guzelimian has a long history with California’s Ojai Festival and two years ago was named the artistic and executive director of one of the arts world’s most fertile breeding grounds (running this summer June 9-12). A former provost and dean of the Juilliard School and, before that, Carnegie Hall’s senior director and artistic advisor, Guzelimian has long been a key player in classical music on both the east and west coasts.

Continuing the Festival’s 75-year success formula of having a different music director every season, Guzelimian has this year chosen the multi-headed, multi-disciplined American Modern Opera Company (AMOC). At 17 members strong and with an acronym pronounced "amuck," the group epitomizes the vitality and experimentation of Ojai, host to historic premieres by the likes of John Cage, Pierre Boulez, and, this summer, Olivier Messiaen. In his One to One interview, Guzelimian touches on season highlights. "Working with 17 different music directors has reminded me that democracy actually CAN work," says Guzelimian. "The AMOCers make it work. They are deeply committed to a collective decision-making process." The result is four days of fresh, often off-the-wall, programming.

Arriving at his third-year anniversary as president and CEO, Henry Timms describes the rationale behind the "different kind of Lincoln Center" that has so clearly been evolving on his watch. He cites three priorities: completing the David Geffen Hall renovation; "fixing" the finances; and building a broader and more diverse culture among staff, constituents, and audiences. He is also working to create a stronger connection among the Center’s ten organizations, from the Met Opera to Jazz at Lincoln Center to The Juilliard School.

The U.K. born Timms, known for inventing #GivingTuesday, is the former president and CEO at the 92nd Street Y, which he revitalized through modern thinking and technology. He is also the co-author of the international best-selling book, New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World—and How to Make it Work for You. He is a Hauser Leader at Harvard Kennedy School and a Senior Fellow at both the Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society at Stanford University and the United Nations Foundation.

Joseph Conyers is assistant principal bass of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and recipient of the orchestra’s highest honor for a musician, the C. Hartman Kuhn Award, as bestowed by Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin. He is also the founder of Project 440, which, through music, gives young, often inner-city students in Philadelphia the "agency" (his word) to lead and enrich their respective communities. He is also music director of Philadelphia’s All City Orchestra, the Boston University at Tanglewood Institute (BUTI) Young Artists Orchestra, and on the Juilliard and Temple University faculties. Teaching, he says, is his greatest joy.

Conyers, who grew up in Savannah, GA, describes his journey from piano student to bass player to “this little school in Philadelphia I had never heard of called the Curtis Institute,” to becoming principal bass of the Grand Rapids Symphony to the Atlanta Symphony to the Philadelphia Orchestra, in 2010. “I’ve had a very blessed career,” he says. Asked about being a Black musician in a very white field, he says early on he was solely focused on his music (“I didn’t care about anything else”). Only now, he says, does he see room for improvement, especially in access to the artform. Lack of it, he says, is what has made him "lean in."