S12 E26: Delaware State of the Arts - Delaware Symphony Orchestra

Brace yourselves to be captivated by the Executive Director of the Delaware Symphony Orchestra (DSO), J.C. Barker, as he opens up about how the DSO sailed through the storm of the COVID-19 pandemic. With an unyielding commitment to their musicians, we uncover the commendable decision by the DSO board to honor all contracts amidst the crisis. This episode is a tribute to the resilient spirit of the Delaware arts community and the strengthening bond between the musicians, management, and board during these extraordinary times. 

Delve into the future of the Delaware Symphony, as Barker lifts the curtain on the upcoming 23-24 season. You'll hear of an exciting blend of celebration and exploration punctuated by the 150th anniversary of Sergei Rachmaninoff and music from Latin America. As Barker shares his journey as the DSO leader, anticipate a deeper appreciation for the thought process behind creating meaningful experiences for patrons. The episode culminates with a palpable energy, mirroring the buzzing anticipation surrounding the first live concert since the pandemic and a sneak peek into the new season. Prepare to be inspired by the story of resilience and passion that characterizes Delaware's symphonic scene.

The Delaware Division of the Arts, a branch of the Delaware Department of State, is committed to supporting the arts and cultivating creativity to enhance the quality of life in Delaware. Together with its advisory body, the Delaware State Arts Council, the Division administers grants and programs that support arts programming, educate the public, increase awareness of the arts, and integrate the arts into all facets of Delaware life. Learn more at Arts.Delaware.Gov.

Delaware State of the Arts is a weekly podcast that presents interviews with arts organizations and leaders who contribute to the cultural vibrancy of communities throughout Delaware. Delaware State of the Arts is provided as a service of the Division of the Arts, in partnership with NEWSRADIO 1450 WILM and 1410 WDOV.

Transcript

Andy Truscott: 0:06

For Delaware State of the Arts. I'm Andy Truscott. My guest today is JC Barker, the Executive Director of the Delaware Symphony Orchestra. The Delaware Symphony Orchestra, or DSO, is dedicated to enriching lives through the inspiring musical experiences. It strives to present all activities while upholding its core values of building and sustaining trust, commitment to quality, access for all, curiosity, open-mindedness and exploration. Jc, thank you so much for joining me today. I'd be remiss if I didn't say that you started with DSO just days right before the COVID pandemic shut down gathering spaces for live events. As you made your way into Delaware, kind of not knowing right what the future would bring, how did you and the DSO navigate your way through that period?

J.C. Barker: 0:57

Well, andy, thanks for having me today. So I came from. I was in Mobile Alabama. I was the General Manager of the Mobile Symphony in Mobile Alabama. I had been there for 15 years. I was approached about coming to Delaware to become the Executive Director during the course of the winter of 2019-20. I was made an offer to come and take the position here in early February of 2020. I signed the contract to come to Delaware on the 27th of February 2020, and on March, the 13th 2020, everything stopped.

J.C. Barker: 1:35

It was an interesting time. I know I'm not alone. I know many people had very interesting times, but I was looking at a way to transition to a new position, was attracted to this position for a number of reasons and I really didn't know if it was a puzzle that I was going to be able to figure out. I think a lot of people were that way.

J.C. Barker: 1:59

A big thing happened here, actually before I landed on the ground in Wilmington, and that is that the board of directors of the symphony had emergency meetings and decided what they would do is that they would honor the contracts and the pay of all of the musicians that were contracted through that season, which is a very big deal Orchesters all over the country began to furlough musicians without pay at the beginning of the pandemic, and it was a crisis time for performing artists everywhere. The board here decided to do what they needed to do to raise the funds to honor the contracts through the end of the 2020 season and pay all of those musicians for contracted services. It was a big deal. They had to turn around in a matter of days and raise almost $100,000 to do that, and they did it.

J.C. Barker: 2:50

I was in Mobile and I was on a conference call with the interim executive director at that point, Dave Fleming, and our board president at that point, Charlie Babcock, and some other board members, and they told me they had made this decision. When they told me they had made that decision, something clicked in my mind and I said, well, now this is probably a group that I could work with. To have community members serving on a board that would make the effort to take care of their musicians in that way is extraordinary, and it remained our focus throughout the pandemic. I did arrive. I got here on May, the 15th 2020. I had no understanding of where I might live. I rented an apartment online. I lived downtown in Wilmington, on Knight Street, right behind the offices and a block from the ground. Everything was shut down.

J.C. Barker: 3:44

It was an interesting time. There was no networking, Andy. I think one of my first networking experiences was with you and a handful of other arts folks at the Chelsea Tavern. We sat outside and I remember just listening very intently to all of you talk about Wilmington and Delaware and the art scene For the next months. That's really what I did is I listened. So it wasn't interesting time.

J.C. Barker: 4:15

When I did get here and I saw what we had to do, we did, like a lot of other groups. The Grand Opera House did this, upper Delaware did this. Everybody was trying to figure out how are we going to serve our community without the ability to interact personally, and we did. We figured out a way to a keep musicians employed or and keep them safe and also be able to produce some content for our patrons, and we did that through that 2020-21 season and then through the beginning of the 21-22 season, and the Delaware Symphony finally played their first concert in front of a live audience at the Grand in February of 2022. So we went a long time without playing before big audiences.

Andy Truscott: 5:08

What makes you excited about the work that you all produced or will be producing, that keeps you here, keeps you jazzed about Delaware?

J.C. Barker: 5:16

Well, that's a good question. This trajectory over the past three years now almost it's been has been unusual. Normally we would have tackled standard programming, standard concert production. I would have had a variety of interactions with figures over the course of the first year and second year and developed relationships. All that came in fits and spurts because we didn't know what we were doing. I had a lot was a long time before I really had any meaningful interactions with our patrons because there was simply no way to do it.

J.C. Barker: 5:55

In hindsight, looking back over it, it's just amazing that all of us not just the Delaware Symphony but all of the arts organizations did what they did over the past three years and I think we should all be very proud. I think we should also be very proud that we live in a state that supports its arts the way they do the arts organizations, the nonprofits in general, but the arts organizations in the state of Delaware. They're in many ways far better than many other places in this country and it says a great deal about the community and our leaders. And so a lot of the anxiety financial anxiety specifically the organizations around the country and the world were experiencing, we didn't have quite the same level of anxiety. So I'm proud that we were able to do what we did. I'm most proud that through the process, as tense as it was, that the morale of the musicians in the orchestra and the relationship between the musicians of the orchestra and the management and the board all improved enormously. And it did because the only way to survive what we went through was to communicate, and very quickly. When we were making decisions, especially about health, I said to the orchestra and I said to the board if you're looking for me to make some sort of blanket decision about what we're going to do and how we're going to do it, you're wrong. We're going to have to decide what we're all comfortable with. We all have brains and we all need to look at the evidence and look at the facts and figure out what we were going to do as far as testing and as far as vaccination requirements and as far as spacing and performance and all of those kind of things. So through that process we developed some pretty tight relationships and we're working on that and building on that.

J.C. Barker: 8:01

You know we say we're kind of past COVID. I don't know that we are. I don't know that we really will ever be past COVID. But we certainly appreciate what we're able to do. Now more than ever, I think, and I think that we're also relying on the relationships that we built through the hardest months that we went through and trying to remain positive going forward. I'm excited right now that we're able to actually look at planning a full season without any real fears of any shutdowns or emergency provisions. But you know, it's never far from the back of our minds and I hate the word that people used, nimble. Everybody said all these organizations were nimble. But I think we all will be, at least in my generation, our generation. I think we'll all be to some extent in the back of our minds, capable of being nimble if we need to going forward.

Andy Truscott: 9:02

You had mentioned the dedicated group of musicians that you all work with, and I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about that core group, right? What do they look like, how long have they been playing and what makes a great DSO musician?

J.C. Barker: 9:17

Well, that's my favorite thing to talk about and I think that you know, I tell everybody, in every facet of the community, certainly the board and the staff and everybody involved you know, without the musicians that are actually on the stage performing the music, you don't have a Delaware Symphony. There is no Delaware Symphony. So discussions about anything that does not include the musicians, the musicians, welfare and appreciation of their brilliance is short sighted. It's not just here, that's really any professional orchestra, and what we do have here is a professional orchestra in Delaware. The Delaware Symphony is different than some bigger orchestras like Philadelphia, new York and Boston, etc. And that our musicians are not full time, they are part time employees. And our musicians that exist throughout the Northeast Corridor, that perform with a variety of different ensembles throughout the region, we have musicians that play with us, that play with Opera Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Ballet, with the Reading Symphony, with the Harrisburg Symphony, with any number of orchestras in and around. They come from New York, they come from Baltimore, they come from as far south as northern Virginia and some from even further away, and all professional orchestras. Though we have a core group of contracting musicians. There are 72 of them at this point. They do work, as many people know, under a collective bargaining agreement, which is part of the American Federation of Musicians. They are on contract year to year. There's a lot of details that go into their performing. It's a lot of work for us to make sure that our conditions are exactly correct and that we are honoring their needs as they should be.

J.C. Barker: 11:24

But you know we were talking a little before that. We went online here about the tenure of the musicians and you know people often come up to me not only here but in other places. I've worked in city. What do I have to do to join the orchestra? How do I join the orchestra? And while you appreciate the enthusiasm, it's not really complicated. It's not quite so easy to join. As with any job, there's only an opening when there is an absence, and so musicians that audition and go through the process to audition for the Delaware Symphony when openings do occur, tend to hold on to those positions for many, many years. We just had five members of the Delaware Symphony that we honored, that retired during the course of the pandemic, and the combined length of tenure for the five musicians that had retired was 246 years. So for a musician to win a position and stay with the orchestra for 30 years, sometimes 40 years, is not unheard of. And just to be clear, during the course of the year we may have one opening, we may have two openings, we may have three, but we don't usually have a lot of openings. It's competitive.

J.C. Barker: 12:50

It is difficult to be quite honest with you, it's very difficult to get a job, not only in the Delaware Symphony but in any professional orchestra. The standards are quite high. What you hear on the stage when you come to the Delaware Symphony or any professional orchestra, is cumulative experience and collective experience of 70 brilliant, brilliantly trained musicians. Rehearsal time is not long, and so the musicians, when they come to rehearsal, are prepared and really all we're doing is putting it together. So it's quite a process to watch. But as far as joining an orchestra, there's not really a way that you can just call up and say I want to come next Tuesday night to rehearsal. It doesn't really work like that. It's the same as if you were a doctor and saying well, you know, I just finished medical school, I want to join the staff at Penn. It doesn't really work that way.

Andy Truscott: 13:52

As you had mentioned, a symphony is not a symphony without its musicians, but a symphony with musicians is not anything without the music or the programs that they'll be playing. And you guys are fresh off of announcing your 23, 24 season of shows. What can our listeners expect to see next season?

J.C. Barker: 14:10

Well it's very exciting to talk about. Next season is going to be exciting for many different reasons. Our music director, david Amato, has agreed and has signed on to become our music director Laureate. Music director Laureate position with Adelora Symphony is a very big deal. Adelora Symphony has been in existence for 118 years and in the course of that 118 years no music director has ever been offered the title of music director Laureate. I think it speaks volumes to David's dedication, david's brilliance, david's leadership over 20 years with Adelora Symphony and we're very excited that he next season will be joining us for our opening concert and our final concerts. On that opening concert we will be still celebrating Sergei Rachmaninoff and his 150th anniversary. Pianist Stuart Goodyear, brilliant pianist that I think has been known to some audiences in the area, will be coming to perform the Rhapsody and the Theme by Paganini, which is an incredible work for extra and piano. Some of our patrons know that will also be featuring on that concert the enormous, brilliant work by Claude Debussy Le Maire, his painting, orchestral painting of the ocean and the sea and the wind.

J.C. Barker: 15:38

We have our concert in November where we'll welcome our first guest conductor to the Delwa Symphony stage, michelle DeRusso. Michelle is a native of Argentina. She is of Italian and Argentinian descent and she is coming in to do a concert of all Latin music. So we are going to be welcoming Joao Luis as our guitar soloist playing the Rodrigo Concerto for guitar. Also on that concert we'll have music of Arturo Marquez Hina Stara, the Estancia, the four dances for orchestra. We'll also have the Rimsky Korskopf Capriccio Espanol and I think we've got a very exciting encore on that concert that may or may not involve a conga loan. Then, moving on into January, we will have another guest artist with us, guest conductor with us. Friend of mine and known in the Philadelphia area, andre Raffael, will be joining us in January.

J.C. Barker: 16:41

Andre I've known for many, many years. He and I were in school together. Andre was an associate conductor with the Philadelphia Orchestra, has had positions all over the country, is recently just conducted the Boston Symphony in a series of concerts. He's coming in to conduct a concert that will really be what I call kind of a meet and potatoes concert. We have great soloist. Jennifer Fraucci is the violinist coming in to do the Beethoven Violin Concerto, which is arguably one of the most famous violin concertos in the world. We'll also have on that program an enormous piece for orchestra, the Autorino Respeaking Pines of Rome, which if you've not experienced, live you really should. It is terrific. There are trumpets in the balcony in an organ and all kind of great, great music and great sounds in that concert.

J.C. Barker: 17:36

We're really excited that next season we will be honoring our American composer, john Williams, in a concert of all John Williams scores. This is our Classics 4 concert, larry Lowe. Lawrence Lowe, guest conductor, will be coming in to conduct that. Larry is John Williams' enthusiast, to say the least, and it's a brilliant program that he put together. It is split into three sets. One is what he calls his Spielberg set, which are pieces that were specifically written for Steven Spielberg movies. One is what he calls his Potter set, which is scores from the Great Harry Potter series, and then, of course, there will be a Star Wars set and that will end the concert in March. David will be back with us to end the season in April and he will be conducting one of the large symphonies of Gustav Mahler. David's conducting and knowledge of Mahler is extraordinary. The works of Mahler for orchestra are truly remarkable and should not be missed, and we're looking forward to ending the season on that high note.

J.C. Barker: 18:58

There's some other concerts during the course of the season. We have our Chamber Series, which is going to continue In the fall. We'll be featuring the percussionists of the Dolores Symphony. We, during COVID actually we did a concert with the percussionists and it was incredibly successful. Tons of instruments, tons of different music from all different genres and we'll be performing that. We will return next December to the Hotel DuPont, to the Gold Ballroom, and we're excited for that concert. We brought that back this past season with great success. The concert sold out very quickly and I'm sure it will again this year. That's on December the 12th.

J.C. Barker: 19:41

And then we are going to do a concert in February which I'm very excited about. It's a chamber concert featuring solos from the orchestra and different musicians playing music of the African Diaspora. It's a concert that was really exciting to put together. There are scores for orchestra not only for orchestra but for chamber groups that have been wrongfully ignored for years by brilliant composers. On this concert we'll be featuring the music of Jesse Montgomery, adolphus Hellstorke, carlos Simon, valerie Coleman and Samuel Cooleridge-Taylor. That's a concert I'm very excited about doing. In February we are looking at the possibility of doing a very special event on St Patrick's Day. We've got a full season and it looks like a lot of fun.

J.C. Barker: 20:27

I think that looking forward one of the things you asked me about is what I look forward to. I look forward to witnessing the continued enthusiasm of audiences. This past March, we played for what I believe might have been the first sold out house in many, many years at the Grand. Our ticket sales continue to rise with each and every single concert. We hope that we're giving our patrons more of a welcoming experience when they come to concerts.

J.C. Barker: 20:58

The staff here at the Delaware Symphony has changed and we have a terrific staff of cheerleaders. One of the things that and still, I hope, in all of them is that we are producing music and we are selling, if you want to say, music and selling this incredible artistry that we have on stage. But what we're also responsible for is producing wonderful experiences. I believe that the staff that is here in place now understands that and we take it very, very seriously. It's hard to throw a party every month for 800 or 1,000 people, but that's really what we're in the business of doing. It's exciting. It could be exhausting, but it's exciting, and the energy that exists in a room with that many people, with that much brilliance on the stage is something that really can't be touched.

Andy Truscott: 21:46

JC, thank you so much for joining me today. If you want to learn more about attending a performance, subscribing or what's next for the Delaware Symphony, feel free to join them at their website at delawere symphonyorg.