[gentle music] - Norman Gilliland: Welcome to University Place Presents.

I'm Norman Gilliland.

"I'm having my usual pre-season panic attack.

"I'm feeling unprepared both in scores and in sleep.

But then, I suppose this is the normal annual condition."

So said Leonard Bernstein about the difficulties of being a conductor at the beginning of a season.

So many things to think about and so many things to worry about.

When a performance goes well, it's easy for the audience to assume that it's all flowing naturally, and yet, there is a lot of preparation and yes, a lot of anxiety behind preparing a concert, let alone a concert series.

And who could tell us more about that than my guest?

Welcome to University Place Presents, longtime conductor of the Madison Symphony, John DeMain.

- Hi, Norman, great to be here.

- Last time we talked, we talked about your long musical history and even from early childhood, and then your early conducting experiences and how naturally that seemed to be for you, the thing to do, despite some of the challenges, of course, that would apply to any conductor.

But when you make the transition from Texas, Houston, to Madison, what kind of complications arose in your career which was already well established at that point?

- Well, I was on the verge in Houston of trying to expand my career more internationally.

And, some of that, actually, I was planning to conduct some Toscas in Bonn, and the entendent of that particular theater was actually arrested for overspending the stipend, you know, that the government gives.

And so my performances were canceled and that never happened.

But I had been at Houston for 18 years, and I thought, you know, "I don't want to just be in one place my entire life."

So, and I had started actually in symphonic, doing a lot of symphonic.

Well, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra was, you know, it was a symphonic path, and before that, the Norwalk Symphony.

And so I had this, and I suddenly changed, you know, direction with the offer to go to Houston Grand Opera, the Texas Opera Theater.

So, and I found that the more I had a reputation, and I had a lot of success with the world premieres and Porgy and Bess and all of that, the more I was being tapped as an opera conductor, and the harder it was to get anybody to take me seriously as a symphony conductor.

I did have a shot at the Omaha Symphony, and the search committee told me that I would have won that, that position.

But the outgoing president of the board jumped the search before it was finished and panicked and hired somebody else.

And that was upsetting to the orchestra and me.

But anyway, they have a wonderful result as of all those years and my time in Omaha and Houston.

So, but I was beginning to get really frustrated because Mahler didn't write any operas, and they did Bruckner.

So I mean, there's just so many composers that, you know, you want to get your hands on, and it was impossible to.

And so I thought, you know, I can do this.

I really want to have a symphony orchestra.

How can I do it?

And I thought, well, at 45 years of age, you know, or 47, I think at the time I came here, you know, I was not gonna get the New York Philharmonic.

Let's be honest, because I didn't have any track record leading up to that symphonically in a major way.

And it's interesting because I think if you're 19 years old and you do your, you know, you suddenly jump in and you do a Brahms symphony, everybody goes, "Oh, wow, wow, wow."

But if you're 47 years old and you're suddenly doing your Brahms symphony for the first time, they go, "Who are you kidding?"

You know, 'cause those guys have been playing that for all those years, you know, over and over, almost every other season, they're playing the same pieces.

They want somebody to come in who really has been around the block with these pieces and has fresh ideas or whatever, you know.

So that reality was very clear to me.

So I wanted to go somewhere where it was professional, where I could make a difference.

Hopefully I could make a difference.

And so that, I was, I mean, I would, I didn't want to be in front of an amateur orchestra.

That would have been too much of a change from what I was doing in my opera world, 'cause I had the Houston Symphony in the pit.

I had, you know, Seattle Symphony when I was in Seattle.

I had, you know, great orchestras to work with all the time.

So, but it was interesting when I applied to come here because the search was being handled by Madison Area Technical College, 'cause at that time, the symphony and the technical college had a relationship 'cause Roland Johnson, my predecessor, taught there, you know, and was very close friends with the president, I'm told, of the college.

And it was kind of disconcerting because I would, I had a question, you know, and I would call to ask about something about, you know, the guest conducting and the whole thing.

And these students would answer the phone, and they had not a clue as to who a conductor was or what he was, you know.

And I thought, "What am I getting myself into?"

And, but what I did was I came up to see Shining Brow.

You know, Roland wanted to have a world premiere under his belt before he retired, and everybody found the right thing.

Frank Lloyd Wright, the story that happened to him out at Taliesin in Spring Green.

And I came up to see it, and I was very impressed with the level of production.

Of course, Stephen Wadsworth had directed it, and he's a very fine director.

And I guess Madison Opera spent a little bit of money on that production because it really looked good, and the orchestra played well.

I remember at the time I thought the winds and brass were terrific, and I thought the strings were dicey, and, but I thought I could make a difference by the way I would rehearse, 'cause I've had that situation before.

And, you know, let's see where this goes.

So they gave-- So it's interesting.

They gave me the, the first guest of the three guests that they brought in, I was the first one.

And on my program was the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony.

And of course, this season we've had Michael Stern conducting the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony.

So that was, and then there were in January when they sat down to meet, they remembered me 'cause, you know, I thought, "Are they gonna remember me?"

'Cause the last person is the freshest in your mind.

But they did, and they offered me the job.

So, when you say the challenges, well, first of all, what I did when I came here is I sat down with the search committee in which there were some players on the search committee, and I said to them, "What would you like the next music director to do?"

'Cause I thought, you know, why not find out what they want, what they hope for.

And they did not want me to come in there and fire everybody and throw everybody out.

They said, "Just make us play better," is what they told me.

- That's nicely humble.

- Yeah, nicely humble.

And so I thought, "Okay, that gives me, you know, some framework to come in," because you're walking into an orchestra that you don't know.

In fact, it's only in recent years that I discovered the history of how this became a professional orchestra 'cause they, you know, we're about to celebrate our centennial.

When this orchestra started out, it was not paid.

It was a community orchestra.

And Roland was the one who converted to being paid.

And I didn't realize that the principal players that played in the orchestra when I got there never took an audition.

- Oh, that seems to be a little bit of an oversight.

- Well, it would be.

Today, it would be impossible because the contract wouldn't allow it.

But he was creating this orchestra, so he offered the principal chairs to the heads of the department at the university.

And the university hired really good people.

So he was getting first-class musicians in those chairs.

And, you know, a few of them are still there, but, you know, a lot of them have retired now.

But that was the nucleus for building the orchestra.

The string section, just to try to get enough string players.

You know, the program wasn't that strong at the time.

The players weren't that strong, you know.

So that was a challenge.

So anyway, you come in there, and you figure, "Well, how am I supposed to know how to seat people or where to put people," and all of that.

So I suggested that I audition the string section.

Not make it mandatory, but just sort of get an idea, you know, and I made a couple changes, and most of the people went along with it.

But there was one particular person who who had a real problem, and her friends got after her.

And so she lasted a season, and then she quit, which was fine.

But most of it was painless, and it was helpful.

And so we started, and I remember, you know, talking about auditions, and they were now auditioning, but not behind a screen.

- Which is usual today.

- Which is usual.

- Anonymous auditions.

- Yes, anonymous.

You don't wanna know the sex, you don't wanna know the age, you don't wanna know the color.

Nothing, you know, just hear them play the instrument.

And that was interesting because I think that what happened was fiefdoms were created, you know, like the heads of the departments of the university, when you needed a third trumpet or you needed a third oboe or whatever you needed, they chose their best students to come in and play.

So I perceived it to be what I would call a closed shop, and that was fine.

But that's not what, you know, the orchestra of the city should be about.

So the first thing I announced was we were gonna do blind auditions, 'cause that's what I had been exposed to, even at the opera.

The other thing, you know, the other jobs I had always, you know, blind auditions.

And they went belligerent at first.

They were furious with me, you know.

But when they saw how I did it, which was to, we'd pick the winner, we'd see who they were.

And if there was some reason why there was a problem, you know, like, they shouldn't play because they're difficult to work with or something like that.

We let that come to the surface.

We had, you know, they realized that they could make input, but it sort of worked.

I mean, it worked right from the beginning.

But it was interesting when these string players took their auditions because they'd come in, and the sort of good ones at the university would play their concerto, you know, and some of it would be in tune and they'd get around the instrument really well.

- Norman: Good start.

- Yeah, it's a good start.

But when they would play-- So the way you do an orchestral audition is, and actually this, it's prescribed, the excerpts that each instrument will be asked to play at an audition, and most orchestras adhere to that.

So it's really the things that will expose the difficulties of the instrument.

And it might be 32 bars of a Beethoven symphony or a Mozart symphony.

It might, of course, you're always gonna have Ein Heldenleben or Don Juan or one of these incredibly difficult things to play on the violin.

And so that's what's there.

Well, when they would get to those excerpts and play, they would all crash and burn.

I mean, they're beautiful vibratos, now "Ehh."

I mean, it was terrible, it was awful.

And so I remember at my first rehearsal, I stood up at the podium, and I just looked at it.

I said, "You know, "if you want your students to play in this orchestra, "tell them that the excerpts are more important than the concerto."

So the next year, because, you know, if you're not willing to practice your orchestra part, you don't belong in an orchestra because you will pull it down, you know?

And so everybody's got to realize, 'cause you know, you want everybody wants to be Heifetz.

But when you play in that orchestra, those parts are hard.

And if you don't practice... Next year, everybody practiced, you know.

And then, so I think that was the challenge.

And also the string section wasn't full size.

And so I asked if it would be possible to have 16, 14, naively, you know?

I mean, there's a lot of cities in the United States that don't have 16 firsts, 14 seconds, 12 violas, ten cellos, and eight basses.

But I didn't care about that.

I wanted to see if I could have a really-- So they said, "Yeah, if you can find them, you know, we'll let you do it."

So I found them.

And I always pay tribute to John Stevens when he was dean over at the university, because he really believed in developing the string, you know, department.

And they, of course, those excellent players in the Pro Arte and some of the individual teachers that were there.

Good students started, yeah, good students started coming there, and the level was growing, but it was still, our principal source of musicians was still the University of Wisconsin.

That was the principal source.

But as word got out that the orchestra was, you know, getting better and playing, you know, we weren't, you know, mitigating the repertoire.

We were playing whatever, you know, we wanted to play.

I just found a way to rehearse it.

You know, my first concert, Mahler's Symphony No.

1.

So, then people started coming in from Chicago and from, you know, from the outlying areas.

And that was really great.

And I'll remember, you remember we had Martha and Rich Blum, who used to be in the Pro Arte Quartet, and she was principal second, and he was principal viola, and I think it was, it was about the third year or fourth year that I was here.

And the auditions were so good that we had plenty of people for the first violins, and we could actually put people of that level in the second violin section.

And at the first rehearsal, she jumped up and she said, "Oh, my God, I have a section behind me."

[Norman laughs] And that's what started to transform the orchestra.

And now today, they come in from all over the country.

- But you make a distinction, don't you, between what you'd call a weekly orchestra and then a kind of an ad hoc orchestra paid by the service.

- John: Right.

So in Europe, every city has a full-time orchestra, with retirement benefits, you know, health insurance, the whole thing, all paid for by the municipality, all paid for by the government.

Now, they have, according to the size of the city, different level orchestras.

An A orchestra would be a 96-piece orchestra.

A B orchestra might be a few less players, a C orchestra might be 72 players in a smaller town.

But it's full time, fully professional, and supported by the government.

In America, our full-time orchestras are in cities that have over a million population.

You know, so you know, you have the, you know, Philadelphia, Houston, Detroit, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle.

Of course, there's more than ever now full-time orchestras in these big cities all over the United States.

That wasn't the case a hundred years ago.

But that's the way it is, you know, now.

And so in a city like the size of Madison, we have a fully professional orchestra.

The orchestra is paid every time they sit down to rehearse or play.

They're just not on a weekly.

And actually years ago, that was, the schedule that we play is the same schedule that the Cleveland Orchestra played, that the Pittsburgh Symphony played before they went, before this idea happened.

Most of it happened in the 1960s where Ford Foundation came in and was really infusing a lot of money and creating these full-time orchestras all over the country.

And so, but we have a wonderful model because it's a model that is sustainable financially as well as it's really good for creativity 'cause there's no burnout.

The 52-week orchestras have to be careful of burnout.

As a matter of fact, when Michael Stern was here, we talked about the differences of these orchestras and that the orchestra that he had for 20 years, Kansas, had a 42-week season.

And he said there were people saying, "Well, can't you make it to 52 weeks?"

And he said, "No."

He said, "I wouldn't trade those 10 weeks off for anything, because that's what keeps the musicians from getting burnout."

And they can't wait to get back and play.

And they're fresh and they're ready to go again.

So those are some of the little inside trade-offs of all of that.

- How is it all financed, though?

I mean, because we do hear occasionally, of course, about orchestras that get in trouble.

You know, Toronto, I think was one not too long ago, for example.

Green Bay disappeared entirely after a hundred years or so.

And so these things do have their day.

- Well, the challenge is, I think, is to connect with the community, because in America, everything is, you know, we have ticket sales, we have contributed income.

We have sometimes some government and some, you know, a little bit of help from foundations and that kind of thing.

But it's mostly people giving us donations, and big ones, as well as the ticket sales.

And I think that, you know, there have been certain cities, I think, where, you know, you could have a bad board, you could have bad fundraising 'cause, you know, fundraising is such a big piece of this, you know.

And so you have a director of development, Casey Oelkers, you know, with the Madison Symphony.

She's brilliant.

And, you know, we do fabulous with our fundraising.

And it's very different because I joke all the time that when I was conducting, like the year that I came here and Barbara was moving into the house, my wife at the time, before she passed away, she was moving into the house, and I was guest conducting an opera in Nice.

And, of course, it's subsidized by the government.

So my lunch every day was at the commissary with the garbage collectors and everybody else, for $2 or $3.

And I ate like a king, you know?

- Sure.

- But there were no parties.

There were no development functions 'cause there was no need to raise money.

There was no opening night party.

This is all the stuff that we're totally used to in America.

- You don't quite have the ups and downs that you would have with an American orchestra.

- No, I mean, but you don't meet the people you're playing for.

You could live in an ivory tower, go do your performance, and then disappear.

So I remember opening night of Attila.

Verdi's Attila is was what I was conducting.

The head of Glyndebourne, Brian Dickie, who then was at Chicago Opera Theater for years and Toronto.

He came just to see the show.

And so we went out to a bar and got drunk afterwards and celebrated opening night.

But that was so different.

And so I always tell our donors, I said, "You know, "in Europe, you only have to be nice to the deputy mayors who dole out your subsidy every year."

I said, "Here, I have to be nice to all of you."

But it's so great because, you know, especially when you're a town like Madison, Wisconsin, the background of these people who come to the symphony, you know, who has a Nobel Prize, who has a patent, you know.

I mean, there's just such a wealth of interesting people that are in so many different fields and who love music and wanna make music a part of their lives.

Classical music.

- And so you, as a selector of the music, I would think would be a little bit more, correct me if I'm wrong, but a little bit more constrained than one of those European conductors where the income is guaranteed for the organization.

They wouldn't have to rely quite so much on ticket sales and ticket sales being a significant part, not just of the income, but of also kind of the public relations for a symphony, rely those sales on certain pieces that are draws.

- Right, well, let's just back up for a second.

The last part of the 20th century, the big mantra was subscriptions.

And I can't think of his name at Chicago Symphony, but he was the sort of godfather of the idea of subscriptions, are king.

- Guaranteed income, at least for a year at a time.

- And an audience, guaranteed audience.

You know, so, you know, you're doing eight concerts a year, and somebody takes eight, you know, and they get their same seats, they, you know, year after year.

And so we were filling the concert halls with subscribers, and then some single tickets.

All of a sudden, that has completely reversed.

And today, the way things are going today, subscriptions are not a part of the future.

- Why would that be?

- Because people don't wanna make a commitment a year in advance to what they're gonna be doing on Saturday night.

And that's what, you know, I mean, you know, when you think about it, you go back to 1950 and the New York Philharmonic, they were doing, you know, 32 concerts a year or whatever.

You know, people went every Saturday night.

That's what they did.

And you didn't have to have, you know, 4,000 people for two performances, 6,000 people for three performances.

The same people came back all the time.

So your audience was maybe only 6,000 people in a city of 10 million.

- But you could rely on 'em.

- But you could rely on them.

Then when things started to change, they started doing half seasons, then quarter seasons, and then they had to exponentially grow the audience, so they'd start doing pops events and, you know, and all different kinds of events, because especially if you're trying to finance a 52-week orchestra with pension and health and all of those things that go with it and recording.

- And competitive salaries.

- And the salaries, full-time salaries.

So there's a big difference in, you know, not that Milwaukee has to raise every year and what we have to raise, even though we're now at $7 million.

You know, but still, you know, most of the major orchestras look from $32 million to $70 million or $80 million a year that they have to raise to be able to sustain that.

So that's a challenge.

But that's the American system as opposed to the European system.

And if it ever changed overnight in Europe, everything would fall apart because there's no history of private giving.

- Not since, say, Beethoven's time.

- John: Not since Beethoven's time, right.

With the monarchies.

- Yeah, the benefactors.

- Well, they were the government, in a way.

- That's true, they were.

They were just absolute government.

- Absolute government, so they did it.

I think nothing has changed.

[both laugh] - Goes around, comes around and all that.

But getting back to the repertory, how does that need to sell a certain number of tickets determine what you, John DeMain, as the artistic director and conductor of the Madison Symphony, how does it affect what you select, not just the repertory, but of course, the soloists, too.

- John: Well, it's changing.

I mean, it's changing because first of all, for example, single ticket sales, both the opera and the symphony are currently experiencing a huge ticket sale on the day of the actual concert or the day before.

So you're going into these programs not knowing whether anybody's gonna come, and sometimes they don't, sometimes they do.

That's a change.

So then you're trying to say, "Well, okay, what's going to get them in?"

Because now we don't, because with the subscription, a guaranteed audience, you sort of play whatever you want.

You still, if you want them to renew, you still have got to give them the reason why they fell in love with symphonic music.

- And a lot of it has to do with brand names, doesn't it?

- Yeah, sure.

- I mean, familiar things.

- I mean, Beethoven, but don't forget, there was all of that European migration to America and all of that history in those people's lives and work.

And, you know, and I look at, you know, during the Second World War when all the Jewish people came over here, you know, and I mean, for them, their very soul depended on hearing classical music and opera.

I mean, it was nourishment for their soul, and their life was bereft without it.

Today, we're looking at several generations now who have, not necessarily here.

I mean, Madison has music education in the schools and in the outlying areas, but so many pockets around the country do not have music education in the schools.

And so when those people come and move here, they don't have that in their background.

They don't need it.

They don't know about classical music.

So we're facing now a whole couple generations that have not had the benefit of music education, you know.

And so how do we reach them?

And not only that, but as an organization, most symphony orchestras and opera companies have been remiss where equity, diversity, and inclusion was concerned.

So all of that is revolutionizing the approach that we are taking.

But still, you know, I mean, our musicians trained to play hard stuff, right?

I mean, you know, horn players want to play Mahler and Bruckner and Strauss, and we want, and Beethoven is just, I mean, you can't say symphony without saying Beethoven, you know, and Beethoven, and all of these masterpieces, they continue to be masterpieces.

There's nothing, nothing has made Beethoven less than Beethoven.

- And it's true.

And you could look at it on paper and say, "Oh, you know, Pastoral Symphony, ho hum."

But then when you get there, it wins you over all over again.

- Oh, it's so brilliant.

I mean, and he had a way of connecting, I think, with the common man and still wrote very complex music, you know.

But his melodies and the fact that he had a voice.

You know, you always know when you're listening to Beethoven, or most of the time.

- A lot of times, it sounds like you're listening to an anthem.

- Yeah, right.

I mean, it's just phenomenal.

So I think, and those are the reasons why people fell in love with music.

You know, they would hear these pieces, and they'd fall in love with them.

And I think we also went through a very bad patch in the second half, I've said before, in the second half of the 20th century with a lot of ugly music, you know, music that was, that was designed not to have any form, shape, or recognizable thing to it that for an audience to hook into, and following a kind of philosophy that these composers are writing for themselves and screw the audience.

- Yeah, and that does raise a whole interesting approach, doesn't it?

Because you could say that music is either written for the composer or for the performer or for the audience.

- John: Right.

- Sometimes it's all three.

Sometimes, as you say, John, it's just for the composer or just for the performer.

- Well, I think when you look back in history, when composers wrote pieces and they weren't successful, they were devastated.

Bizet was devastated that Carmen wasn't a hit the first time it played.

Rachmaninoff went into a deep depression.

- Yes, before he got hypnotized.

- So they wanted to connect with their audience.

You know, I always like to remind everybody that I think that Beethoven is the father of serious listening, because, you know, we use this idea, this terrible term, classical music.

What does that mean?

Because we write a piece yesterday, so suddenly it's classical.

It's concert music, you know?

And those opening chords of Eroica-- bomp, bomp!

It's sort of like, "Stop talking, listen up.

We're going on a journey."

And he really was the one who started moving into the concert halls and started really listening at the compositions, and that developed from there.

So Beethoven for me is, you know, the icon of symphonic music, even though we have Haydn and Mozart and all of that.

But what Beethoven did with those nine symphonies was just, you know, extraordinary.

But it was also the whole idea of how you experienced a concert and how you, you know, you didn't casually have a drink and walk around like you did in the, you know, the Renaissance and, you know.

- Or in Beethoven's time for that matter, too often.

Yeah, I mean, there's a wonderful story about him.

I think he was just playing solo for some high-rolling patrons and their friends.

They were chatting as he played, and he got up and said, "Für solche Schweinen spiele ich nicht."

"I will not play for such pigs," and walked out.

[both laugh] So... - On the other hand, there's been a big discussion recently about whether we should applaud in between movements.

- And that is an interesting phenomenon.

Now, let me give you my two cents' worth before you tell us.

- John: I give you my two cents' worth.

[both laugh] - More than that.

I tend to think of applause, and usually, of course you don't, the composer doesn't expect, or the performer, applause in between movements of a three or four-minute movement concerto or symphony, for example, or a suite for that matter.

However, and the audience doesn't really, you know, a really familiar audience will not applaud between movements.

However, if you hear applause between movements, to me, it implies that those are people who are fairly new to classical music.

And to me, then it's a positive thing.

- Yes, but I also think that this idea of not applauding.

So I didn't realize until recently that so often after the second movement of a concerto in a three-movement concerto, it says on the bottom, "attacca," which means go right to the third movement.

It doesn't say that after the first movement.

And we know historically that they didn't play the second and third movements right after they played the first.

- They put other stuff in between.

- Right, and if you listen to the endings of first movements, they demand applause.

- Right, they're so dramatic.

- The Greek, I mean, how cruel it is to play the finale of the first movement of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto to silence.

So, I mean, I think the time has come.

If you feel like applauding, applaud.

But you don't-- and so, okay.

So don't applaud after the slow second movement.

I think the idea of not applauding between movements really should go to the idea, yeah, to the idea that when song cycles and things have a theme and you're trying to create, you know, this, that you don't interrupt it with this noise and you allow this whole thing to affect you and take over.

Right, but I think it's a little different with concertos.

And I think symphonies, you probably don't have to applaud as much.

But concertos are designed to dazzle.

- Of course, what is it, Tchaikovsky's Sixth that ends the, next to the last movement, very dramatically.

Everybody applauds and then, oh, guess what, there's a quiet finale.

- Well, because that's what it does to you, you know.

And so, applaud.

What are we being fussy about?

You know, come and have a good time.

- Well, and I would think that, given your extensive operatic background, you would particularly feel that way, John, because in opera, you know, hit the high note, everybody applauds.

They go crazy, you know, everything stops.

Yeah, it's a story line.

But yeah, it's a different kind of conduct.

- In some instances, you know, encores.

- Norman: Right, yes, let's hear that again.

- Right, but I think, so I think, you know, but you're right.

We're trying to get new people in, and I think it's, I mean, I think it's important when you have these single ticket sales that you still do interesting work, but I think it's important to make sure that you have something that the audience recognizes on the card.

At least that's some of the advice I've been given recently.

Make sure that there's something that they know, and then they'll give you a break on listening to something they don't know, and maybe find out that it's really interesting and intriguing.

So, but we're trying to figure this out because I do think that there's, with the dawn of single ticket sales actually growing to the extent that they are and subscriptions eroding for social reasons, you know, more than anything, that it's demanding that we look at repertoire.

But repertoire changes over time.

You know, when you look at the operas that the Metropolitan Opera was doing in 1900 and 1950 and what they're doing today, there's certain pieces that were in vogue that went out of fashion, came back in.

You know, certain pieces have always been there, but repertoire changes.

And so I think we have to look at the symphonic world the same way.

But, and also, I think we have to do our own job of maybe trying to help our audiences know how to listen to this music.

You know, I mean, I'm pushing for, I'm sort of blasphemous, but I'm sort of pushing that we closed-circuit televise our concerts.

So when an audience is sitting there, it looks like when they're watching Final Forte at home, you know, and when the pianist is playing, the whole audience can watch his hands if they want to, you know?

And when the oboist is playing, you actually could see the oboe.

And, you know, the way we do for other people.

So we would help people, you know, journey through the music and give their eyes something to do because life is different.

And when I've proposed this idea over the years, you know, the older generation is really content to sit there and just listen.

But that's not the way the new generation is growing up.

Visuals are a part of their experience.

And so, that's something that I think we need to look at for the future.

- There are ensembles, the North Corner Chamber Orchestra, for example, and I think also, Portland Baroque out in Oregon, if I remember right, will actually stream their concerts.

- Stream their concerts?

- Yeah, so livestreaming.

And sure, you know, you might have audience, potential audience that would be sitting at home instead of in the hall where you, I assume, get more excited as performers if you have a full house.

- John: Well, we haven't, you know, we finally have a contract now, a media agreement that will allow us for streaming.

During COVID, we couldn't stream music.

We could stream-- anybody could talk, but nobody could play a note because we did not have an agreement with our musicians for streaming.

Before COVID, we never saw the need for it.

And so in a way, we were caught with our pants down.

So now, we have the ability to do it, but we don't want to shoot ourselves in the foot.

We still want buns in seats, as we say.

- That's right.

- You know.

And so, but people have been going to hear us for years, and now maybe they're in a long-term facility, you know, where they can't travel anymore and all of that.

The idea for them being able to see and hear something that they really loved all their lives, that's terrific.

And also the idea of maybe taking an education concert that you're doing, and you could send it to some place in northern Wisconsin that might not have an opportunity to hear this kind of thing.

You know, there's a lot of potential for streaming.

- What does the Madison Symphony do for outreach, though?

I mean, if there is somebody up in Minocqua or, you know, Solon Springs or someplace, who's not likely to come to Madison, or we'll even say Milwaukee for a symphony, how do you bring the music to them, live music?

Do you have smaller ensembles that go out as kind of missionary groups to spread the word?

- Well, we've been doing a little bit recently with some community concerts in our own area, but we haven't gone way out of town, you know.

And we're doing some where we take the orchestra to different group areas.

And of course, I think Final Forte has, you know, statewide, and that's really good.

And I think we want to do a little bit more, you know, try to do a little bit more with that sort of thing.

But we don't really, I mean, we're pretty much focused on, you know, the Dane County and this sort of southwestern region.

And so we're not really doing much right now, I don't think, to try to get people up in... - Yeah, I suppose you do have to kind of identify your target audience there.

- Also, because it's costly.

I mean, you know, to stream, it's not free.

I mean, the musicians have to be paid.

And so, you know, and then, you know, how much do you charge people to be able to stream?

Is everything free, or, you know.

So I think we're still at the dawn of that, you know what I mean?

I just think we're at the beginning of how to do all of that.

- How do you go about, again, you're the one selecting the music.

How do you go about selecting a soloist?

You decide first, "I wanna hear the Grieg Piano Concerto."

Or do you decide, "I wanna hear Garrick Ohlsson."

- John: No, I want to hear Garrick Ohlsson.

I don't care what he plays.

No, I do care what he plays.

I'm just kidding, no, I wanna hear him.

So I think, you know, over the years, the Madison Symphony has, as part of their endowment, the Steenbock, I think gift or something.

It was one of those gifts in the endowment was to bring in important guest artists.

And Roland had great soloists, my predecessor.

I mean, he brought some really fine artists here.

And so that's always been a part of our mix.

But I think what we do is, you know, we let the agents know.

The whole idea of artists' agents has changed, too, because some of these big artists now, their agents are based in London, based in Europe, because the American scene has gone much more pop and much more, you know, you know, Columbia Artists is not the Columbia Artists it was 25, 30 years ago.

- No, it was quite the enterprise... - Enterprise, sure.

- ...releasing a lot of recordings.

- So now we've got to negotiate with an agent in London and hope that he has that artist's European or international schedule as well as getting them to come.

So what we do is once we get our dates in Overture Hall, and we try to keep them pretty consistent every year about the sort of week that they're gonna fall on.

Every now and then, we have to get out of their way if they're gonna bring in a Lion King or a Wicked or a Hamilton or some big show that they could sell a month worth of tickets, and then we, you know, we work around that because we want them to be successful.

But, so we get the dates, and then there's agents that we like to deal with, but not exclusively, but we let, you know, the big agencies know that we can afford to pay basically for any soloist who wants to come here.

Not on a one night, one off.

We don't want that.

- Because you do three concerts, Friday, Saturday night, and Sunday afternoon.

- Right, and we want the artists to come and play for all three, 'cause if we, you know, so we don't-- So we shy away from single performances.

We do them from time to time, but we shy away from that because usually that's a gala and that's very expensive ticket prices.

And then they don't come to the next subscription concert.

So you don't want to shoot yourself in the foot.

And we built up this, this audience, which is today a challenge since COVID.

But we build up our audiences by having this artist play for all three performances.

You know, when I got here, we were doing Saturday nights, eight Saturday nights, seven and Christmas, you know, which was more like a pops concert.

And then, I had always, when I was at Houston Grand Opera, I always loved the Sunday matinee performance.

There was something about that audience, you know.

They were rested.

They were there to hear the music.

It was the last thing they were gonna do before they prepared for the week, and they already put last week behind them.

So it was a great audience.

And I thought, you know, we've got this lousy weather in the winter here in Madison.

And, you know, people don't want to drive home late at night on a Saturday night.

And besides, there's a lot of revelers out there on a Saturday night.

So I said, "We should do a Sunday matinee."

So the first year I did the Beethoven Ninth and Christmas.

I repeated those two on Sunday.

The next year, I added two more, and the next year two more.

And then by the fourth year, we were offering subscription, and we had 300 or 400 people to start with, and then it really took off.

And now, Sunday afternoon is our biggest audience.

- Let's talk a little bit about demographics then.

I mean, you might see the numbers behind the scenes, but you're out there on the stage facing that audience, addressing them often.

Usually, in fact, at the beginning of a concert and maybe at the beginning of the second part.

Do you have a sense of is the audience collectively aging, are you filling it in?

Is it kind of picking up younger audiences in a significant number?

- I think opera is.

- Getting younger audiences?

- Yeah, yeah, absolutely, it's visual.

You know, The Barber of Seville had a lot of young people, which we had just done, you know, this past year.

And Candide had a lot of young people.

I mean, we're seeing younger people at the opera.

I think it's important to remember that back in 1950, I think it was, the Chicago Symphony surveyed... - Norman: It was research?

- ...the audience, you know, and they found out that the audience was the age that the audience is today.

There's no difference.

And I feel that it's very important that kids in college have a really good experience as part of their education, you know, learning about opera, learning about symphony, Broadway, whatever.

Jazz, whatever they do, you know.

And whatever they do while they're dating, you know, having really good date nights.

Then they get married and they have kids.

What do you have to do?

You got to go to all those kids' concerts and all their games and all of that, and everything costs money, you know.

And so, with exception, people don't do the things they did when they were courting.

They're doing the things that they need to do to raise a family and hopefully giving these kids a good chance.

So my theory is that once they're out of the nest and actually after college is paid for, there, you're looking at people who are now 55, you know, 60 years old.

They have some discretionary income now, and they'll go back to doing the things they did when they were younger.

The problem is that if those people don't have any music education, they're not gonna go back to going to symphony concerts if they don't have any classical music education.

You know, but, or we have to entice them to try it out and to experience it.

And so, we're looking right now at the idea of, how can we make going to a concert an event.

'Cause the other thing to happen with COVID is that people found out that they could entertain themselves without ever leaving their home.

- To a certain extent anyway.

After two or three years, you would think maybe they were eager to get back out.

- Well, you'd think they would.

I mean, I would imagine that if you're in that older age group and you have a pre-existing condition, you're wary of being in public spaces.

And I think, I don't know that scientifically, but I know it anecdotally, that there are people who are not coming right now because they don't wanna be in a public space.

It doesn't seem to bother young people, though.

You know, rock concerts are packed and all that.

- So true.

- But it's different with an older group that feel more, you know, health threatened.

- Well, the one thing about the opera, I'm just hypothetically thinking here, though, is more so than a symphony concert, in addition to being something beautiful, an opera for the most part is also, you can look at it as an athletic event because it demands such power and accuracy and timing and finesse and presence.

- You are so right.

I always said two things.

Opera is your life sung back at you, and opera is the Olympics of singing.

- Uh-huh.

[laughs] - Those are the two things that I think make opera special.

You have to develop, I mean, you're not hearing that kind of singing, you know, on the airwaves.

- Right.

- And so it might be kind of a shock, but usually when you go and you realize there are no microphones out there and these people make this giant sound by just, you know, what they do with their, you know, physiognomy, you know, to be able to do all that, it's just amazing.

But it's the same thing.

The problem is caring.

We know that there's a big difference between live performance and recorded performance.

But when you have fabulous recording equipment in your house and, you know, and I think it's a problem.

I think we experience too much of life now virtually.

- Yes, you can certainly make, because more all the time.

- You sit in front of that camera, TV set and play endless games and have all these fabulous visuals, and there's great music a lot of times going on at the same time.

But, you know, it's virtual, virtual, virtual.

And so, we've got to make going to a live concert an event that has a wonderful aura to it.

You know, from the time you walk in, the time you leave home until the time you go home, basically.

And what is it like when you walk into that lobby?

What can we do after those concerts are over?

What can we, so that you don't wanna miss it.

You know, so we're introducing an idea for the centennial, which I'm not allowed to say just yet, but I think with young people, I don't think we should worry too much about that.

I mean, we know that the audience is made up of people who have have a relationship with music.

So, you know, you look at WYSO, you look at the Madison Youth choirs, you look at all these wonderful things for youth in this city, you know, and they do come to the concerts as well.

But by the same token, if you don't have any contact, if you never sang in a choir, you didn't take a piano lesson, you didn't, then how do you become attracted to what we do?

And how can we make you attracted to what we do?

- Norman: You make it a social event.

- Make it a social event.

And I think also, maybe we do some music appreciation online.

I think we could do more of that, not just playing a piece, but actually giving sort of classes of musical appreciation.

- Which of course you do, but on site with the pre-concert talks and also your introductions to some of the pieces, especially the contemporary ones.

Another component of this draw, though, I would say would be the venue itself, and that would be, in the case of the Madison Symphony, the Overture Center for the Arts, and 2004, I believe, it was inaugurated.

- John: We are celebrating our 20th anniversary, being in that hall.

- Norman: And you were, to some extent, involved in the very design of the hall.

You were consulted to some extent.

- John: So backing up to when I got here and the challenges when I got here, I learned early on that the Oscar Mayer was a very inferior space for classical music.

I would say that a lot of our donors didn't know that because they sat up in the dress circle, and the sound in the dress circle was really excellent, but the sound underneath the balcony was frightening.

- Yeah, notoriously so.

- Frightening.

And if anybody came there, sat there, they'd never come back because it sounded like, I mean... - Norman: Just kind of deadened, wasn't it?

- It cut into the overtones of the orchestra so that they sounded horrifically out of tune, like the worst student orchestra you've ever heard.

It was unbelievable.

And I went to an educational concert that I wasn't conducting.

Beverly was conducting 'cause I had something else, but I got back in time to see the performance, and I sat underneath the balcony, speakers in the ceiling, this horrifically, horrifically out of tune orchestra, and I ran upstairs and sat in the mezzanine, and I thought I was at Carnegie Hall.

I mean, day and night.

So then we thought, "Well, what do we do about that?"

So the first thing we did is we looked at the Orpheum.

But the Orpheum has the same issue.

So when we when we asked acousticians to evaluate the Orpheum Theater, they said, "We can maybe get you from a three to a five, but you still, we'll never get you to a 10."

- Well, the Orpheum is, what, about a hundred years old at this point?

- Yeah, but it also has all those seats underneath the balcony.

So it has a different scallop to the ceiling.

It was more for live performance than than the Capitol Theater, which was the name of the-- - Oscar Mayer originally.

- Yeah.

So, you know, and the stagehands used to call it Wiener Hall, and I used to call it Dog Hall because I thought it was really-- - But you still wanted the buns in the seats?

- Not in those seats.

[Norman laughs] I used to go to marketing, and I'd say, "Please don't sell those seats.

Get them all upstairs and in the front."

So anyway, then we found out that Pleasant was going to sell the American Girl doll, and that we knew that she was interested in the arts and her help with getting the Concerts on the Square started, and, you know, and bringing people back downtown and all of that.

And she sort of knew that people would come at her from all sides, you know, once this got out that she was selling the company, she and her husband.

So they jump-started the whole thing by suggesting that the executive directors of the different professional organizations get together and dream.

What would you like?

Who would your partners be?

What would happen?

And out of that, I mean, we first at the symphony thought we'd love to have a dedicated concert hall, which meant you could only do concerts.

Well, the only partner we could have in that, that would use up enough nights in the year would be the University of Wisconsin.

And they were playing in a 700-seat house, you know, on campus.

What's that called?

- There's Mills.

- Mills.

They were playing in Mills before the new hall was built.

And they sort of felt to be in 1,850-seat concert hall with 500 people, you know, they said, "If 500 people come to Mills, it looks like a sellout," if 500 people come.

So they weren't interested in partnering with us.

So to make a long story a little less long, our partners were gonna be the same.

It was gonna be Broadway, and it was gonna be opera.

So we were gonna, we wanted then a multi-purpose hall, but that had real acoustics for live music and would address the problems.

So that's what came out of all of this, was the Overture Center of the Arts.

And, you know, when César Pelli was chosen to be the architect, I probably played a little bit of a role in that because we knew we had money to build the hall.

We were down to the final stages of choosing an architect.

The Pacific Symphony out in Orange County wanted to build a hall, and they had engaged César Pelli to be the architect, but they didn't have the money together yet.

So I went to a fundraiser where César Pelli spoke, and he talked about the fact that he never put a brick in place without consulting with an acoustician.

And that was music to my ears.

- Norman: Literally.

- So I said, I let Pleasant know, you know, that he had made that speech or that he had said that, and she liked him, you know, and eventually that's who we got.

I also think to Bob D'Angelo's credit, who was running the Civic Center at the time, the Oscar Mayer, that we were kept abreast of all the stages of development.

One of the things we did is we went to view other concert halls around the country, including one that Pelli had done in Charlotte, North Carolina, which was sort of a role model for the one that we have here.

And then we went out to see my hall 'cause I was with Opera Pacific, you know, out in Orange County, and when Pleasant saw that and she saw how high-end the fixtures were and how beautiful it was, she wanted Overture Hall to be beautiful and to have quality construction materials in it.

So that came out of that.

We learned that the way to have a good acoustic for a symphony orchestra is that there's no division between the stage and the audience.

That the stage and the audience have to be in the same room.

So you don't have a proscenium arch cutting off that sound.

So when you go to Overture Hall and we're in concert setting, you see that the cantilevered ceiling goes right into the hall.

And so that already is the secret to so many of the concert halls in Europe.

You know, that is for a first-rate acoustic.

So we had that.

And there's not a lot we could do in that hall 'cause it's multi-purpose.

I mean, we can expose drapes.

We can part drapes to, we expose drapes mainly to absorb sound when we're rehearsing.

So it's like the audience, and then we pocket them when we're actually there.

So we learned all of that, but also, we were able to look at sight lines.

We were able to look at all kinds of things.

And, you know, I remember the first year in the hall, Rick Mackey, the brilliant, you know, predecessor to our brilliant Robert Reed, did not sell those slide box seats the first season because he said, "Look, our public has no experience "sitting on the side, and we've got to make sure those sight lines are okay."

They were.

You could see the whole stage or almost the entire stage sitting on the side.

So those then became, you know, coveted seats.

So all of that kind of stuff, you know, behind the scenes.

And then, you know, so when we went to see the hall in Charlotte, the back of the, it was a multi-purpose hall, and it was set up for symphony.

And the back wall had organ pipes across, just like ours does.

And so they had planned for an organ, but they had run out of money, so those pipes were faux.

[Norman laughs] But we didn't.

Pleasant gave us that organ.

- The organ, yes.

- And I really thought, "Oh, my God, "if we could just have an organ, it'd be so much like a European concert hall."

Well, Anne Stonkey, who was running the opera at the time, dead set against it.

She didn't want that organ in there.

- Oh, well... - Because the wing space, while it was gonna be more than the Oscar Mayer, it still was not gonna be, you know, if you go to the Kennedy Center, you go to stage right, it's as big as the stage.

So you could put an entire act off to the side.

The Met has it on both sides.

I was in Kaohsiung in Taiwan earlier this year, and I went to see the art center there.

And both sides of the stage for the opera house were the size of the opera house.

So we didn't have that.

So then, what do you do about, we have a more sophisticated way of doing projections now, but rear screen projections at that time needed to be able to project.

So you needed some depth back there, and the organ was going to eat up all of that rear space where the opera could store sets, of the organ.

And I worked for both companies, right?

So I just turned a blind-- I said, "Anne, we need the organ.

We'll figure it out."

And of course, the very first opera we did, Turandot, when that production came from Chicago Lyric and San Francisco, that was a ginormous production.

And I remember that everybody was panicked that the sets weren't gonna fit.

There was no way we were gonna get them in Overture Hall.

And how we solved the problem?

We built the sets up in the loading dock.

We put trusses, and we stored the scenery out in the loading dock and then just put it right in and so we could do anything we wanted.

But those were the early days.

I mean, we were afraid.

And then-- - You learned, though.

- And then the acoustic for the opera was so good.

That was sort of like by default, really great.

So we're so fortunate.

- Well, it's been great, and I feel fortunate getting behind the scenes with you, John DeMain.

- Thank you.

- So many moving parts, and we've learned a lot about them.

And always great to hear you and see you in action.

- Thank you.

[chuckles] - I'm Norman Gilliland.

I hope you'll join me next time around for University Place Presents.

[gentle music]