19 September 2012
Members of the Woodruff Arts Center Board,
Thank you for your service to our community and your generous personal support of the arts in Atlanta, both evidenced by the decision to invest your time and energy on this board.
In light of the on-going negotiations, I wanted to share a vivid memory that the September 11 observance last week brought back to me. In September 2001, I lived and worked in Indianapolis but frequently came to Atlanta for business meetings. The week of the terrorist attacks, I was scheduled to attend customer meetings here which required face-to-face participation. Since my commercial flight was cancelled, I hopped into a rental car for the 8-hour drive from Indy. I don’t remember if the meetings were productive or not – everyone was still in shock at the events of the 11th, and disbelief, anger, and profound sadness hung over every conversation.
The evening after the meetings, I came over to the Woodruff and bought a ticket for the Atlanta Symphony concert that evening, not really caring what the program was, just looking for an escape. I had been to the ASO on several previous occasions when I was in town, but never for an opening night, which this evening happened to be. So I was unfamiliar with tradition. I will never forget the moment when Robert Spano came on stage, the musicians stood, the audience stood, and the drum roll that opens the orchestral arrangement of the Star-Spangled Banner reverberated through Symphony Hall. In a situation where words had become powerless to express what most people felt, the brilliant and heart-felt playing of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, combined with the voices of the near-capacity audience (many informed by Atlanta’s choral tradition) provided in those moments a cathartic and powerful sense of community. It was not just patriotism, but the solidarity of a shared value system, where a belief that the best of which we human beings are capable was not only possible, it was necessary, inevitable, and would ultimately triumph.
Some of you were probably there on that evening and have similar memories. In subsequent years, we have shared many other powerful moments delivered by the artistry of our Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. One time I made that 8-hour drive in my own car, at private expense, to hear the ASO perform Messiaen’s Turangalila Symphony, a 20th-century masterwork rarely performed in the U.S., due primarily to the technical and logistical demands it places on an orchestra. The ASO, under Maestro Spano with Jean-Yves Thibaudet as piano soloist, knocked it out of the park. I was so blown away I came back the next night to hear it again.
These are indelible, transforming experiences that are only achievable in the immediacy of live performance, where we in the audience are witnesses to acts of creation. The greatest compositions of the greatest composers remain scrawls on paper until the performers bring them to life. When you have evolved an organization that can reliably provide the greatest performances, that organization deserves the utmost support that we, as audience, patrons, administrators, and custodians can give it.
For arts boards are entrusted with fiduciary responsibility, certainly, but also with custodial responsibility – in the present case for the artistic legacy and vision that has produced the ASO as we know it today; for the preservation and continued growth of the ASO’s reputation at a local, national, and international level; and for maintaining an active, vital presence in the community at the highest professional level. This institution, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, helps define our city, not just for Georgia and the Southeastern U.S., but for the rest of the U.S. and the rest of the world.
Please think back over your own memories in Symphony Hall and objectively consider how these shared values can best be preserved and cultivated, not only on a balance sheet in the short-term, but also in the years and decades to come.
Very respectfully,
Laurie Cronin
Roswell, Georgia
ASO Classical Season Subscriber, 2005-2012
Member, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus, 2005-2012
Board Member, Riverside Chamber Players, 2008-2012
Bravissima!
ReplyDeleteExcellent! One would hope that the members of the WAC Board could draw on many such transformative moments of their own in Symphony Hall. Alas, I have been told by a reliable source that Ms. Hepner never attends ASO concerts. In her position, doesn't that sound like dereliction of duty?
ReplyDeleteDoes that define the attitude from the top: lots of prominent parking spaces with names on ... but no desire to actually go hear the orchestra? Do they have something better to do?
DeleteThank you again Laurie. You are turning your sleepless nights into very productive ones ... and, once again, I enjoyed your piece very much. I stood with my fellow singers after 9/11 and it was a very emotional experience.
ReplyDelete