This is a transcript of a conversation/interview I had with my neighbors Richard Adams and Ross Kyllo on Sunday, 25 August, 2013. It has been lightly edited for reading purposes. There are occasional editorial comments in italics.
S&D: You’re not immediately connected to the orchestra. You are patrons. You know people who work there, you know people who’ve played there, but this isn’t your gig. We can say all we want, those of us who are in the business and such, but I think it’s important to get this different perspective. How did you guys get introduced to the M.O.?
Ross: When I was a kid. We went to concerts from school. It wasn’t called the Minnesota Orchestra then, I think it was called the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra. (*The Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra changed its name to the Minnesota Orchestra in 1968)
S&D: You’re dating yourself.
Ross: That would have been back in Elementary school.
S&D: Richard, you didn’t grow up here.
Richard: No, but it would have been a similar thing, though. I think what we are talking about is outreach. Because I went to my post office box when I was a freshman at Carleton College, and I got a mailing from the M.O., and they had a # of series where you could buy partial season tickets for discounted amounts of money, and it seemed like a good idea since I was aspiring to be a cultured individual. They were playing at Northrop Auditorium (*the home of the Minnesota Orchestra until 1974) at the time. I don’t know if they do still reach out to colleges because what they did was obviously a mass mailing, they got the names of the freshmen from the college, and this was not a random flyer, this was addressed to me. So that was the first thing, and so I started going, choosing whichever series looked the most interesting, which probably at the time was the one that had the most familiar old warhorses in it. But I started going to concerts at Northrop.
S&D: Ah, you are also dating yourself. Were you guys living here in the Twin Cities during the time when the new hall was built downtown?
Ross: What year was it built?
S&D: I want to say ’73? (*Orchestra Hall opened in 1974)
Ross: Yeah, I was still here. But I moved just for a year, then I came back. Otherwise it was all at Northrop.
S&D: Do you remember the first time you went to a concert at the new hall?
Richard: I don’t know if I remember the first time I went to a concert, but I do remember going to see Rudolf Serkin.
S&D: Ah, Rudi! One of my all time favorite pianists.
Richard: Yeah, we got tickets – I’m not sure if it was stage right or stage left – but we chose tickets in the first tier so that we could watch his hands.
S&D: That would be stage right.
Richard: Yes, and as I was sitting down I sat my program down on what I thought was a level surface, and it disappeared onto the bald head of the gentleman sitting below me, and that’s what I remember about the concert. I do remember that Rudolf Serkin was phenomenal but I can’t tell you if that was the first time I went to the hall.
Ross: Now who would have played for the opera performances in ’74?
Richard: They would have had their own orchestra.
Ross: I just remembered I attended an opera right after it was built.
S&D: At Orchestra Hall?
Richard: That would have not been the Metropolitan Opera. That would have been….ummm… it wasn’t a staged opera?
Ross: It was Der Rosenkavalier.
Richard: It wasn’t staged though, right?
S&D: Was it fully staged or concert staged?
Ross: Hmmm…. I don’t remember now. All I know is that I went with our neighbor out at the lake who was a…. umm……. “bachelor.” And he had been a bachelor all his life…
Richard: … and he liked opera….
Ross: …… and suddenly he wanted me to go to the opera with him when I was 20 years old and I never could never figure that out.
Richard: But now you can!
S&D: Looking back on things! He he!
Richard: I bet it was a concert opera.
Ross: Yeah, it might have been. But I bet it was in the hall then because I’m sure I would have remembered Northrop.
S&D: So that would have been when the hall was brand new and Mad Stan was still the Music Director. (*Stan Skrowaczewski was Music Director of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra/Minnesota Orchestra from 1960-1979)
Richard: We had a friend who was very involved in the building of the hall and he was the mover and shaker behind it. But Rody Hall was very much enthusiastic. Her family is the Peavey family for whom the Peavey Plaza is named, and her family had just sold the Peavey company to ConAgra, so part of her agenda was enshrining the Peavey name in downtown Minneapolis someplace. And so she was instrumental in the plaza and also a booster for Orchestra Hall too. (*Peavey Plaza is the public square adjacent to Orchestra Hall)
S&D: So you guys got together in the early ‘80s, right? Was the M.O. something that you melded over or did you know this about each other? Because you both played saxophone, right?
Richard: Exactly! Him better than me. He could read music.
S&D: Right! And he actually recorded! He’s a recorded artist.
Ross: I don’t know that we….. we might have gone to a Pops maybe, or something…
Richard: It wasn’t an integral part. We went to a couple of the last Metropolitan tour at Northrop, the opera tour, and damn near split up over it. But I think that between college and the time our friend starting working for the orchestra I would pay attention to artists and programs individually. I never…
S&D: It wasn’t a subscription situation. You guys would notice that so and so was coming into town and maybe we should get tickets to that.
Ross: We’ve actually never been subscribers…
S&D: … but casual listeners none-the-less, and pretty regularly…
Ross: But only because of the person who gave us free tickets, probably, but then we put the M.O. in our estate plan…
Richard: … and we made regular annual donations to them, too. That’s been at least 10, 15 years.
S&D: So that would have been back in the days of Edo de Waart? (*Edo de Waart was Music Director from 1986-1995)
Richard: No, back in the days of Neville Marriner, I think. (*Sir Neville Marriner was Music Director from 1979-1986)
S&D: That would have been the late ‘80s, mid ‘80s
Richard: That seems right.
Ross: Who came after Marriner?
Richard: Edo, then Eiji Oue… (*Eiji Oue was Music Director from 1995-2002)
Ross: And that’s when you were there.
S&D: Yeah, as soon as Edo brought me in he announced that he was leaving. I don’t think there was a correlation there… (*I was named Assistant Conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra in the fall of 1992)
Richard: His job was done! My work here was done! I got Bill Eddins to the orchestra!
S&D: Ha! So through the years you attended, even made donations….. but what were your feelings about what the orchestra meant to the community?
Richard: You know, it was just part of the wallpaper when I was in college. It was a good orchestra, and I knew it was a good orchestra, but I didn’t develop any great awareness of it’s quality until probably about the time we met, maybe? About the time of Neville Marriner is when I started paying attention to the quality of the orchestra, in part because I don’t know that he’s a particularly good conductor for a full orchestra. I think he’s a chamber orchestra kinda guy.
Ross: I agree with you! ….That’s your partner speaking….
S&D: Was there more home town pride for you, Ross? Or did you not know?
Ross: I’ve loved orchestra and orchestra music and classical music, but I’ve never been one to… you know … It would always bug me. We would go to a concert, and often times we would go with people who had invited us or who had friends going, and after the concert you have the feeling like you liked it? or you didn’t like it? You noticed certain things… But I never felt I could never speak to any of it because these other folks were much more…. ummm…… let’s just say music snobs, for lack of a better term. So I’ve always liked it, and I would go to a concert and I would think it was a great concert, or it was OK, or it was not so good, but it wasn’t until the last 3-4 years that they really were getting to become really good.
S&D: And this was my next question. Did you very much notice that there was this change that started a couple years after Osmo came in… (*Osmo Vänskä became Music Director in 2003)
Richard: I certainly did but my awareness was older than that. I think that when Edo de Waart came I really started paying attention to it as a quality orchestra, and the work that he did to make it a cohesive band. And then being concerned about Eiji Oue’s tenure and wondering if that would have a deleterious effect on the artistic quality. But all that time I never had any concern whether or not the institution would survive. It was all about artistic choices. Then when Osmo came I really did start to see an incredible change in the quality, and that’s also the time when I started paying attention to the economic viability.
Ross: Also for me I noticed that, and then I noticed that partly because of you, because you would be up on what was happening with other orchestras nationally, and so I started thinking about that. Then I started thinking about home pride, that we really had an orchestra, they were going to make it, other places don’t have that…
S&D: Did you notice the PR? Did you notice the things like the Grammy nominations, the trips to Europe? You guys always get the paper. Can you avoid any of this information?
Richard: Yes, you can….
S&D: Let me rephrase that – if you are culturally aware, or a person who wants to be culturally aware, do you think that this was something that was avoidable or not?
Richard: Well, probably not. But my point is a little different than that, because I think that their PR was preaching to the choir. We were looking for information, and I can’t speak to what it was like for somebody who was like I was in college. I don’t know what the last 15 years have been like for someone out there marginally aware of this orchestra being brought into the fold by the PR. And I think that every year when they announced that they were operating in the black I would feel some relief, and that’s why I felt such an incredible betrayal when I found out that they had been lying for three years about that.
S&D: So let’s move into this as we get into the beginnings of the lockout. There started to be progressively more and more fractures, statements from management, statements from musicians, statements from this and that and the other… at the beginning of all this, starting in the summer of 2012, what were your impressions? Or did you have any impressions? Were you aware of any of the particulars that would lead to a lockout?
Ross: Your question takes me to the fact that I have been now pretty involved with my own union in the schools, the Minneapolis Public Schools union. So, the fact that they were going to be doing this…. or that the contract was up, right? That’s how this all started…
S&D: Right, and the renovation of the hall…
Ross: That’s right, they were going to start the renovation of the hall. I thought, well this is going to be interesting, but it just all kinda happened so fast in a way, I think. All of sudden there was this stuff about the musicians wanting too much money….. no, they were going to cut their salary by a third or something? And that seemed pretty severe to me, but at the same time I didn’t even really know what they made.
S&D: You had been hearing of course that the orchestra was in the black. As you say it came as a surprise, it happened so quickly, and suddenly there was a change in tenor?
Ross: Yeah, and suddenly it was like they weren’t talking. They weren’t even long into negotiations and they weren’t talking. They were done talking, ‘cause they were accusing… or at least the orchestra members were accusing … the orchestra of not being honest or forthright about the information about the money, about the dollars that were involved.
S&D: Can I follow up on one thing? Because you mentioned that you were involved with your own union contract, but you never struck me as being one of those people who are like “Union NOW! Union FOREVER! ONLY UNION NA-NA-NA-NA!!!!!…”
Richard: You should see him behind closed doors!
Ross: Yeah, somewhat just the opposite, because it seems like in today’s world that all has to change. Both the union and the administration of whatever area of working you’re in because it’s just so ridiculous, the you vs. them. Yet supposedly with the orchestra they’re suppose to be delivering this wonderful, beautiful thing, artistic thing, and then they fight over stuff that doesn’t make any sense to me. Same with the schools. It’s all supposed to be about educating kids and yet it’s always about something political.
S&D: Well, people want to win.
Ross: Yeah, I think it’s about power.
Richard: We knew something was coming. But we… I had no idea the severity and the depth of the discord until I read that blog of yours, the one where you likened the M.O. to a luxury liner that was heading to the rocks……
Richard: Right, Right! And my initial reaction to that was that Bill’s exaggerating, it can’t be that bad, because we were getting our information from inside. I remember thinking, OK, well, he’s doing that political thing….
Ross: We were worried…
Richard: Yes, we were worried a little bit, wondering if you had stepped into a punch or something…
S&D: To be honest I was a little surprised myself.
Richard: That you wrote it?
Ross: No, that he got the reaction you got….
S&D: Well, no, that I wrote it, that I got the reaction, and that here, almost a year and a half later… everything has come true. It really does surprise me, because from my perspective, having moved here in the ‘90s, I just get a very different feel for the arts scene here, how people take pride in it, especially in this orchestra that I was affiliated with. I felt for sure that this would be headed off at the pass. I found it…. I just didn’t want to believe it, but at some point someone has to be a canary in a coal mine and it was up to me to do that. So that blog was really your first inkling in many ways…?
Richard: Well it was beyond an inkling, it was kinda like this happy little story that all of a sudden exploded in our faces, and I knew there was a battle coming. But the story we heard from within the administration was “You know, I feel really sorry for the musicians, they’re going to have to take lower wages, but they’ve been getting a really, really good package, and they really can’t expect that to continue.” So when the full extent of the vitriol hit I was just shocked.
S&D: Unprepared.
Richard: Yes, unprepared. Totally unprepared.
S&D: Was anyone that you know really prepared for a lockout in October of last year?
Ross: I would doubt it.
S&D: Or even if a lockout had happened, maybe a month…
Richard: I didn’t even know for sure what a lockout was.
Ross: I remember thinking around that time that they need to get rid of this Henson guy. (*Michael Henson became President and CEO of the Minnesota Orchestra in 2007)
S&D: Already? That was already part of your thoughts?
Ross: Because the Board…. that was already in there. The Board was…. they weren’t talking either, they weren’t admitting or saying more to the questions that were being asked of them by the members. This is when now? October?
S&D: October, the start of the lockout essentially.
Ross: Yes, I think so. So I thought….. well this isn’t going to be that simple now. It’s not going to be this easy. And that’s what I was thinking would happen – he would go. Somehow he would go, and that would help. But then I came to realize that that’s not what they are going to do. He’s not…… the Board doesn’t see him as the problem, either. So that’s when I started thinking that they’re all in this together, and the politics come again and what is that all about, but other than that I didn’t know…
S&D: That’s a very interesting progression. So, at first you thought this is definitely being spearheaded by Michael Henson…..
Richard: I don’t know if I thought it was spearheaded by him. I had my eyes on Jon Campbell more than Michael Henson. (*Jon Campbell is currently Chairman of the Board of the Minnesota Orchestra)
Ross: Yeah, I wasn’t trying to say that, it’s just that it seemed that…. it’s got to be about the head guy. It’s like the superintendent of schools. If things are really screwed up you think… meh…. and most of the time they are let go, or someone else comes in if they can’t get it figured out. Other then that I didn’t have any other feeling as to why it should be him.
Richard: And for some reason I looked at him and Campbell as a team. And then just recently I went back and looked at the makeup of the Board. The Board itself…. none of the old representative community boosters of the arts are on the Board anymore. It’s all attorneys and bankers and…. and the thing that has been really, really discouraging to me is that they do not have any intention of doing what they say they’re trying to do.
S&D: Now how did this conclusion come to pass?
Richard: Because nothing…. nothing… zero zip nada in terms of leadership. Not one goddamn thing.
S&D: Was there a tipping point?
Richard: Probably in the spring when I wrote that first letter.
S&D: Dated the 29th of April.
Richard: Right. I had been getting increasingly…… I remember running into our friend in the Skyway probably in November or so, right after the lockout, and I was starting to get really upset by it, and I said “You know, this looks like union busting to me.” And he looked at me with this quizzical expression on his face and said “There’s going to be a union at the end of this.” And I thought “Wow….. he and I are not in any stretch of the imagination on the same page here.” That’s when I really started to get upset, but I was still kind of hoping that something would happen. Then in January when they had that one talk I thought “OK, maybe things are going to get going.” And then by the time we wrote that first letter…..
Ross: Who did you hear from about that first letter?
Richard: The Director of Development or some such.
S&D: What was the response?
Richard: No, it wasn’t the Director of Development… I can’t remember who, but she said “Thank you for your letter. We had to bring the hall up to ADA. Blah blah blah blah blah … I’m confused about your question about artistic control.” Basically. And like I said the response to our second letter was from the Director of Development who just said “I’m so sorry that you have lost confidence in the orchestra.”
S&D: And that 2nd letter is dated the 1st of August. So, once… the 1st letter was pretty much the end of what was supposed to be the season and you had seen an entire season wiped out. The 2nd letter…… as bad as things were in April, now with the lost of Sommerfest, the threat of Osmo to leave, the Carnegie Hall residency being in jeopardy, the whole 9 yards, and also the various revelations about how the Board and Administration seemed to really not want to bargain in good faith…. It really seems like if the 1st letter was a tipping point, the 2nd letter was a closing of the door.
Richard: Oh, absolutely. But bargaining in good faith is what I would certainly say…. but…
S&D: Because it just doesn’t seem like they were doing it to you?
Richard: It just doesn’t seem like to me, but I would expect….. OK, I’m not saying anything outrageous here by suggesting that musicians are egotistical and temperamental …
S&D: But! UH! ….WHAT!!!
Richard: OK? So it seems to me that the Board of Directors for an orchestra and the President of an orchestral association are going to come into their position understanding that they have to deal with a bunch of prima donnas. So, the fact that they did nothing, they tried nothing that I would have expected them over the course of the months… to venture this, try that, open this door, close that door, propose this, propose that…. they did nothing.
Ross: And also there’s the basic thing about the honesty, again. Even that… how do we even really know who is telling the truth about operating in the black or in the red.
Richard: Yeah, I remember talking to our friend when, I think, the first deficit came out, which was 2010? Actually, it wasn’t the first deficit but it was the first time they admitted to a deficit. And I said to him “How do they come up with that?” And he basically said “Oh, it’s just a number they pick.” And I thought “Oh, OK. Huh.” What I didn’t know is that they were massively drawing down the endowment, and…. There was a wonderful MinnPost article where she followed the filings with the IRS, and there’s $6 million dollars that aren’t accounted for? I meant to look on the Board and see if there’s someone from the Star Tribune on there……
S&D: Ah, the publisher of the Star Tribune is on the Board. (*Minnesota Orchestra Board member Michael Klingensmith is publisher and CEO of the Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper)
Richard: OK, so that’s why the Star Tribune is not writing about this.
S&D: ……. ah, we suspect.
Richard: At any rate, what makes me sick is that #1) it could have been avoided. But also I think that what these people are doing….. they’re bankers. They’re businessmen. So what Campbell and Davis (*Richard Davis is Immediate Past Chair and current Executive Committee member of the Minnesota Orchestra Board) do in their banks is that they look around, they see people who have been there for 35 years pulling down $85K a year, and they reorganize in a way to get rid of them and they bring in someone for $35K a year. And there is a tremendous pool of very talented young musicians out there, but it seems like they really don’t get the artistic part of this. You can get some of the most talented musicians together in a room and still won’t have an orchestra. If they would just come clean with that and say here’s what we’re doing, but it’s the lie or the fact that what they say they’re doing and their behaviors don’t line up, that’s like fingernails on a blackboard.
S&D: And it really strikes me that you gentlemen who, I have respect for your opinions, and I know you have decent ears, and you both played instruments, but you seem to instinctively know that you can’t just throw 80 people together…
Richard: I didn’t instinctively know that. I learned that.
S&D: OK, you learned that. It seems that the Board of the M.O. has either has never learned that or is willfully ignoring this fact.
Richard: It could be, but my deal is if they would get up in front of the microphones and say “Here’s what we’re doing – we believe that we can gather a bunch of much cheaper musicians together and have a quality orchestra.” I wouldn’t agree with that …. but it’s the lie, it’s being treated like I’m a fucking doorknob that gets me rankled up.
S&D: Because they’re spinning the whole “the artistic quality is going to remain the same” line, and anyone who has any idea about that knows that this is not the case.
Richard: And the fact that they are not talking about how we got here. This train wreck has been coming, everyone has seen it coming for 5 years. When we had the crash in 2009, and all the rest of us were scrambling and wondering about our retirement accounts, and whether we had futures, bankers and wall street people were getting together because it was an opportunity for them. I think these sons-of-bitches saw an opportunity, when the endowment took a hit, to put a new business plan in place.
S&D: And that’s just how it looks?
Richard: It’s how it looks, it’s how it feels. But a lot of this is speculation. I don’t know, I can’t prove they’re lying, but I can say their behaviors don’t line up with what they say they’re trying to accomplish.
S&D: OK, well what happens now? We’re in the situation where last I heard George Mitchell, the guy who brokered peace in Northern Ireland, has…
Richard: ….. has been brought to his knees…
S&D: …. has been brought to his knees indeed….
Ross: Now I haven’t followed this. Is he still doing it?
Richard: Well, it’s going to be behind the scenes for sure.
S&D: But last I heard the administration has essentially saying that we don’t like your proposal because we think we would lose leverage. At this point we’re coming up on the beginning of September, Osmo has threatened to leave, we’ve already had a recording project pulled in the last week, the Carnegie Hall thing is in trouble…..
Ross: Did you know about the citizens that met? About 600…?
S&D: Absolutely. SOSMN met just last Tuesday night.
Ross: They said within the next couple of weeks they want to see a turn-around, because that’s really the end. If they don’t then Osmo will resign, then I don’t know…..
Richard: No competent conductor will touch this thing with a ten foot pole.
Ross: I don’t know, I don’t know. It’s pretty crazy.
S&D: Do you think the M.O. can survive these wounds?
Richard: Uh, probably not.
Ross: I would say no, not right now. Today I would say that, but I don’t know.
Richard: I’m at the point right now where I kind of don’t care how it’s resolved, I’m not coming back.
S&D: What are you not coming back to?
Richard: Ummm….. That’s a really good question. I’m sick of the dishonesty. If the Board and the admin were to resign I would probably eat my words. But if they broker some deal between the musicians and the current Board and Administration I can’t imagine….. being comfortable sitting in the hall. I don’t know. Mostly I’m telling you how pissed off I am. But it’s hard to imagine that it could survive at this point. There’s probably a fair number like myself who have thrown in the towel. Meanwhile, they were hanging on to their diminishing market share by their fingernails in the first place, and they’ve just taken a year off. So just from a purely economic point of view how do you capture…..
S&D: … recapture…
Richard: ….. recapture market share when you have not delivered a product for a year. I don’t know if you can do that. I don’t know if you can just start putting on concerts again and expect people to come back. They were doing a shitty job with marketing in the first place….
S&D: ….. and we’re not expecting anything to change. If anything I’ve heard…. I cannot confirm this….. but I’ve heard that people have left on the Admin side as well, in marketing, in PR…..
Richard: ….. left by choice? or left because….
S&D: They have left. That’s all I know. As hard as it is on the artistic side to fill in however many violin spots you have, it’s also going to be difficult on the admin side because people are going to have to get used to how the organization functions, how you promote an orchestra, most people haven’t been in this business…. I know that in my orchestra when we hire people we ask “Have you ever worked for an orchestra before? Nope.”
Richard: You’re hired!!!
S&D: Right! Thank God! But very few have had experience with an orchestra. They may have had experience in the arts, or a related something, but with an orchestra? No.
Ross: That’s curious, too, I wonder how many of them, when you say that they’ve left, and we don’t know if they’ve left on their own or not, but what have they been doing for this whole last season? If there’s no orchestra how do you ask?
S&D: Have you gotten some phone calls asking to contribute to the M.O.?
Richard: Yes, and the last phone call I got I said “There really isn’t an orchestra to contribute to, is there?” And he paused and said “Well I guess technically that’s correct.” And I said “Then don’t call back until there’s an orchestra to contribute to.” And they’ve respected that.
Ross: So, what you’re saying is that people have been doing fundraising for…
S&D: … something that doesn’t exist.
Richard: Well, the other thing that was really discouraging…. there’s has been death by a thousand blows here…. but you get these pieces of information that by themselves don’t mean much, but in context just point to a disintegration. It was the pride issue of Lavender magazine, same sex marriage had become legal, and there was a half-page ad in Lavender advertising Orchestra Hall as an event center for concerts, weddings, and other events. I thought “Wow, they’re going to have the best goddamned endowed event center in the country.”
S&D: That didn’t seem to sit very well with you, did it?
Richard: No. Orchestra Hall as an event center… where we could have our wedding…… I think not.
S&D: You didn’t sign up, gents?
Ross: Just one other quick comment about our letters. I find it, too… you write a letter to a person then you don’t hear back from that person, that’s just bizarre to me.
Richard: Even if some flunky is writing a letter and they’re just adding a signature, we didn’t hear back from Campbell or Henson.
Ross: That kind of stuff is just irritating.
Richard: It’s condescending. And it conveys the clear message that people of our means are not important to the vision of the M.O. as held by these guys. They don’t need us. They can’t even bother to sign a fucking letter that was written by someone else. That says how much they value us.