Alan Fletcher, president and CEO of Aspen Music Festival and School, has had a rocky administration up on Elk Mountain, indeed.
Fletcher was fired, nearly, in 2009.
In 2010, he received a non-binding, no-confidence vote from the Music Associates of Aspen--a governing body of the fest comprised of instructors and staff.
In the end, though, Aspen's more powerful board of directors granted the composer/administrator a five-year contract extension.
And Alan Fletcher will remain in Aspen, Colorado through the end of 2016.
Centennial State muso-political motives aside, Fletcher's opening remarks to this summer's class are still worth your read. So timely, so trenchant, Classicalite wanted to re-run--verbatim--his convocation speech.
It's best, of course, that we do not tell one David Zinman.
"Let's start with one of the most wrongheaded ideas: that, since there are so many good musicians out there, the particular composition of any given orchestra doesn't matter.
It is not true that musicians are interchangeable--one of the most essential things about music is that every interpretation is unique. The sounds of Chicago, Philadelphia, or Cleveland are not only significantly unlike each other, but they change with different conductors, and they change over time. It is one of the most important truths about music that the audience should want to hear these differences, and value them, not believing that there is a single 'best' orchestra or interpretation.
Further, every city should have its own orchestra, not only as an expression of civic pride, but because having music made in your community by your fellow-citizens is different from experiencing it as a remote thing. Great music must be made in Syracuse, in Honolulu, in Columbus, in Louisville--not just in Berlin and Vienna.
The Boston Symphony in the era of Vic Firth, the Chicago Symphony of Bud Herseth, the New York Philharmonic with Jeanne Baxtresser, the Cleveland Orchestra of Josef Gingold--all these orchestras sounded like no other, thanks to the extremely particular qualities of sound of these great players. When, inevitably, they all retired, the orchestras didn't just 'order up' another musician. It's not that anyone is irreplaceable, in the sense that an orchestra ceases to be great when a key player leaves, but it is a fact that we depend on the unique, the particular, the personal. To be careless of this fact, as an administrator or a board member, is to be wrong.
There's a funny line in the Bette Midler movie Big Business. She's playing an executive, and is told that her board won't approve one of her plans. 'Well fire them and hire a board that will!' An orchestra management looking for drastic concessions that says, 'Let them go, and hire musicians who will!' is making a terrible mistake.
The wrongheadedness is not all on one side, though.
A friend of mine, a composer, wrote this year that it is the boards and managements of great orchestras who should be locked out. My view is that no one should be locked out. We need to end the adversarial tone of confrontation among managements, musicians, boards--before it tears our system apart. No one is free from blame in this.
For me, it is clear that some managements have made catastrophic mistakes, and some boards have supported these mistakes, instead of helping correct them. There's no excuse for this. But to turn it into a sweeping condemnation of all philanthropists, boards, and administrations is also wrong.
It is not true that the musicians create everything important about the music, and staff are merely assistants. An orchestra is a complex organism in which everyone plays a role, and everyone makes a contribution. In some of the disputes, musicians have put forward the view that administrations 'steal' their work for their own profit--that the music is the property of the people on stage. But a performance is the end result of an immense amount of work, to which many different kinds of people contributed. In terms of ownership, let's also not forget that all of this work began with a composer!
A particular accusation is that administrations inappropriately bring a 'business' attitude to their work, as opposed to serving the art. And there's something to this, in that some people in my experience insist on seeing 'business sense' as somehow opposed to, and superior to 'artistic sense.' In running any organization, one must have sound financial planning, must make wise investment decisions, must know how to manage human resources, and must often make tough decisions for the greater good. This does not equate to saying that a non-profit should be run the same way a for-profit business is run. Leaders from both worlds need to understand that the goals are different.
The essence of a for-profit company is that it makes money for its shareholders, but the essence of a not-for-profit orchestra is that it makes wonderful music for its audience. The goal is not to balance a budget by giving great concerts; the goal is to use a well-planned budget to produce truly great concerts. The music is the mission, not the money.
At the same time, I fear many musicians undervalue the essential contributions that management, operations, marketing, finance, and education departments make, and especially fundraising departments.
Because the fact is that nowhere in the world does classical music thrive without external support. Ticket revenue is never enough, and will never be enough."
Check back here tomorrow, when Classicalite will post the final words according to Alan Fletcher.
© 2024 Classicalite All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
