Transcript generated via AI - Not 100% accurate

Justin: 0:00

Today on amplified whole

John: 0:01

health. I like thinking about why did we enjoy playing music when we were kids? It really was playing music, right? I mean, when we were kids, maybe it didn't sound as good, but you know, we enjoyed playing it. It's supposed to be an enjoyable thing. And as any time something becomes a job, some of that enjoyment can go away. So it's really trying to stay focused that doesn't happen.

Justin: 0:42

Welcome to the amplified whole health podcast. We're personal and organizational health meat. I'm your host, Justin Collier. And my goal is to bring you insightful interviews with business owners and leaders from a variety of different industries. We'll be talking about employee development. Leadership company culture and quality products and services and how they drive success in business. Thanks for joining me and let's get started. well, thanks for joining. And today I'm joined by. John Jetter, who is the conductor of the symphony, as well as the director of the symphony here in Fort Smith. Is that okay? Accurate statement.

John: 1:28

Yeah, that is accurate. A music director and conductor is the title. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm this is my 24th season, yeah, 24th season. So 24 years, 24 years,

Justin: 1:42

you've been in this role in some form or yes. Capacity. Yeah. And where did you come from before this?

John: 1:50

I'm originally from Southern California, but before this, I was living in Indianapolis. And prior to that Oh, I went to school in Indianapolis and then on the East coast before that, but so I've been and lived in Texas for awhile. So I've been around a little bit, but came here and I guess that would be not like 96, 97 season, something like that. And you know, I didn't know how long I would be here, and then here we are, next year will be a 25th season. And so yeah. How do you get in

Justin: 2:25

to this kind of thing?

John: 2:28

Work. There's a lot of different ways that, my way was a little different. The real short version is I was interested in music as a kid because I really liked, I liked enjoyed listening to it. And I actually got into it from a friend of mine who always had music and his parents were his mom, I think was a. Had immigrated from Europe. So there was that tradition in their house. There's always a Wagner and Beethoven. And, I didn't know who any of those guys were. So I, interestingly, I got interested as a listener first, which is unusual at a young age. And then took Kana lessons more because I wanted to learn more about music, not necessarily to be a pianist, but that's the piano is your instrument of choice to learn about, to have a general knowledge of music and maybe composition or something. And I also was I had a love, drawing and painting had a graphic arts background. I got I soloed and did everything for my pilot's license when I was 17. So I had a lot of conflicting sort of interests or competing interests, I would say. But ultimately went to music school. Not necessarily knowing what I wanted to do in music school. I thought I might teach back at a university or something, but anyway, You one thing led to another and received, had a master's degree in conducting and that was in Indianapolis and I had a chance to work with the orchestra there and just one thing led to another. And here I was, I, there was a period of time where I was a candidate for a number of music director jobs. And the one here was Available. And I came and visited the orchestra and, I I've, I've been very public about, at first I was like, wow, there's needs to be a lot of work, needs to be done. The orchestra was okay, wasn't it, wasn't what it is now by any means artistically. But there was a at the time th there were a handful of board members, symphony board members who said, look, we really want to turn the orchestra around. And if you were to come here and be our music director, I'm sure you'd get a ton of support from the community. And that's exactly, really what happened. Wow. Yeah. So

Justin: 4:43

A long road, a lot of choices, it sounds like you had just from interests, right? So when you made the decision, Hey, I'm going to end up getting into this and, I'll be honest. I don't know a lot about the symphony. And I would imagine that there's a lot

John: 4:54

there. There's probably a lot of people

Justin: 4:56

out there that don't. And so maybe you could just take a moment and explain what's the difference between a symphony and an orchestra.

John: 5:02

Is there one I mean, an orchestra, you could have a jazz orchestra or a wind orchestra symphony orchestra, is that traditional woodwind, a brass percussion string orchestra. That's, that's been around really since the time of Bach. So it's. It goes back a few hundred years and it's know it's a great collection of music or you mean, if you go back ironic. It's one of the, the symphony orchestra is one, one of the pillars of, I guess you could say Western civilized interestingly enough, most of the instruments are actually middle Eastern in origin and they developed, and of course we have this great tradition of classical music and romantic music and that. Has really blossomed particularly in the last a hundred years. And I think for most people in the general public thinking about orchestral music, their connection with it is going to be film music and that's really a huge motion picture industry to films. Wouldn't be what. They were without music and particularly orchestral music. And you saw orchestral music in that golden era of film 1930s, forties, fifties, that were all huge film scores. It switched to popular music, jazz rock in the sixties and seventies. And then of course, John Williams brought back the full score for star Wars and it's been a, the preferred. Soundtrack for most films, to use a full orchestra. Yeah. The other thing I would say about for people who might not know a lot about symphony, a symphony orchestra going to concerts is yes. I know that for most of you, as soon as you hear the word symphony, it's nah, I don't think so. And it sounds boring. It's boring. It's a lot of, older people. Listening to old music and it's not really, it doesn't sound that exciting and I totally understand that. And I think there is some truth to that, which at which inset in the sense that's what it can be. And the sort of snobby elitist aspect is unfortunately, a big part of the orchestra industry. It's been that way for a long time. It's terrible. It's reprehensible. We, I have to say don't do it that way here. We've made, a great effort to remember that it's about having a fun experience. It's about listening to great music. You can have fun going to the concerts. There's a lot of really cool music out there. There's a lot of classical music that. Yeah, it's boring. We don't program it, and there's a lot of classical artists out there in the world that will just put you to sleep. I get it. So we don't do that. I really think we do. And we'd perform a lot of music. We perform a lot of different types. Yes. We perform Beethoven and Mozart. We perform Honda Zimmer and John Williams. We've done a history of rock and roll concerts, symphonic, jazz concerts, blues what makes. I think what makes orchestral music special is it's played by an orchestra and whether it's classical or Baroque or rock or film music, the special part about it is that a symphony orchestra is playing it. And just a great, it's a sound that you just can't duplicate. Yeah.

Justin: 8:18

I mean, it worked for Metallica. They did

John: 8:20

something with us. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. There's symphonic rock and sometimes it works better than others. A lot of times, actually, amplified like electronic music you know, I see you've got an electric guitar here. I there've been a number of electric guitar concertos. Haven't quite worked yet, but it's okay. Yeah.

Justin: 8:43

Okay all right, so that you've got the symphony, how many folks are part of the symphony here? Okay. So

John: 8:49

specific to the Fort Smith symphony, our roster Is around anywhere from 90 to a hundred musicians. We have about 20 music and they're all professional paid musicians. Yeah. We're considered a professional per service orchestra. And there's about 20 of these musicians who live in the greater Fort Smith area. And then all the other ones come from Dallas Oklahoma city, Tulsa, a few for little rock. We have people from Springfield, Missouri. We have two principle players who live in Ethica, New York, and we've had a lot of in previous years we've had a lot of musicians. Our second flutist lives in Fort Wayne Indiana now. So we fly in some of our players and we all get together for a very limited rehearsal time and give concerts. We give about six to seven concerts performances a year that are you know, where you're at the concert hall. And then we give a lot of educational. Programs educational concerts. We have in-school programs that go, as a jazz quartet that goes into the schools string quartet. We have we have uh, electronic string quartet that does all rock and jazz. It's called jolt and it's electronic instruments, all, electronic violins and cello and base. It's a very I think a really broad range of music that we present. I think for symphony Yorkers, especially. Yeah. Yeah.

Justin: 10:20

So you've got roughly 90 plus folks that are involved in some form of fashion. They're all paid. Yes. So that's interesting. I was going to be a question cause I didn't know how that particularly worked. Yeah. So you got these 90 folks. How do you work straight and communicate with these 90 folks to make a decision on music and then to move things forward?

John: 10:41

The programming is something that I do. That's one of my, as a music director. You know, I'll decide on a season of music that I think is very varied. Also the fact that we give a relatively limited number of concerts a year, cause we're in a smaller community and a smaller budget. So one of the things we do is I do his program over about a three-year cycle. So maybe one year might focus on a lot of a larger symphonies. Maybe it might focus more on the classics. Then the next year I would definitely want something different. So it might be a focus more on pop music. And then maybe the third year is a little bit more of a focus on film music. So there's the programming. And then, yeah, there's a process in place where we have this roster of musicians. Their sense, their music in advance and maybe four to six weeks before a concert. And they come together. All of our services concerts rehearsals are at the arc best performing arts center, which is at the Fort Smith convention center. And they're all terrific professionals. So we get together for a very short time and everyone has learned their part and we're there together onstage. And the the job there is to make it all. Come together. And what you're really doing is people basically are playing their parts correctly, but they might play them a little differently. So if you have a, you've got a violin section first, so in the strings, there's like a first violin section, second violin section Viola section cello section based section there's maybe 45 to 50 musicians total just there. So all the first violins, they play the, exactly the same music. They're parts of the same and they all practiced They're professionals. They know how to play the music, but invariably, if you had 12 people read something, read an article in a newspaper and they read it out loud, you're going to get all these different inflections, maybe different pronunciations. So the idea is to try to get at You know, maybe coordinate it or a little more homogeneous and that can be done by saying something some of it happens, as they're listening to other people, they figure it out. All the cellos have the same thing that we have and they played it this way. So we're going to do it this way. Or a lot of it as a conductor is just, you're doing it without anything. Cause that's your, you're waving that Baton around. And there's all sorts of things you can do. Non-verbally to You know, save time an, that's just part of that process. So yeah, when the conductor is up there, it's just not, yeah. It's just not, yeah. There's a little more to it than just waving that Baton. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. When

Justin: 13:22

it sounds like you have to have an incredible ear in order to pick up on these nuances.

John: 13:28

Yeah. Well, yeah, the ideally yeah, you have one has a good ear and I think just as important one has One has to know. What needs to be taken care of at any given time? Will this get better? If I say nothing, will it just get better? The next time based on my players, is this something where we need to stop? Is this something that maybe if I say something to one group, the other group has the same thing, so I don't have to stress maybe a lot of players. Sure. Or if for example, in the woodwinds. Brass and percussion it's one on apart. So for example, there's two flute players and or three, and they play parts that are similar, but they're their own little groups, so they have separate parts. So another thing is that's very important is you have these people who are musicians, who are creative. You also don't want to step on what they're doing. Maybe someone he listened to how someone has maybe a big solo and determine. Whether that works with what everyone else is doing. You kind of have a sense of how expressive they're being. Maybe they're trying to figure out some things, but you have to be willing to if you have a real strong view of how maybe the solo should go, you have to decide is your strong view worth, maybe not letting them do exactly what they want to do. Is it maybe letting them do exactly what the lions do more important than, Then because, because as we were discussing before, again, it's this idea of bringing everyone together. Yeah. And that's, and I'm being very, maybe I'm being too detailed, but that's the sort of things that can happen. It's really good perspective. Yeah. And it also depends on your situation this year, during COVID we, and we are, we can maybe talk about it. We are giving live concerts by the way, folks we've given for live performances since October and however, due to various factors, exposure we only have one rehearsal, you know that there's a, there's that practical aspect of doing what we need to do with our players, just to say, okay, we've got, 10 minutes on this piece. So you also, that's where the programming comes in. Don't pick a piece that takes 45 minutes to rehearse. Yeah.

Justin: 15:50

So intelligent about what pieces you pick. Yeah. And then giving your professional people, freedom and license, and then making a decision as to when you need to step in.

John: 16:01

Sure to put it all together. Exactly. Exactly. And that's a good description, but it I just say on a. I don't even, that was more detailed than I would think about it. I just, it's just natural now. It's like you, you just let them do. And also I've been with these players for a long time, so I'll, maybe I'll have an idea what, you know another thing too is is the physicality of it. We're playing in a space and the audience is out in the hall. So there are issues also about projection. And I don't mean just being louder. But our main goal is to be exciting for that person in row 30 and we're, X number of feet away. So sometimes we have to do things. Maybe there might be a musical gesture. That sounds perfect. Maybe a little crescendo decrescendo, but you know, is that gonna work? 40 feet away, probably not. So then we end up maybe exaggerating of what sounds like an exaggeration when we've we can talk about, we've made a number of really successful recordings. And when you're recording music, sometimes you really have to do things differently because there's no visual cues. So sometimes those shaping of phrases and dynamics get, get exaggerated a little bit, but it sounds fine. That sounds natural in a recorded context.

Justin: 17:26

But when you have to do things a little different when you're recording versus when exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Let's talk maybe a moment about how does someone get into the symphony and get on this roster? I mean, not necessarily yours, but it just in general,

John: 17:41

how well. It's re it, it varies in I can tell you for the very large orchestras let's say, you're, you want to join the New York Philharmonic. I mean, they would announce an opening of violin opening. They would receive hundreds of applications, hundreds, and they would send out. So you would send recordings. And I don't know if it's, maybe if it's changed, but typically you send a recording and they don't want to usually just an audio recording and basically if you're chosen, you would then go to New York. And there's a whole audition process there. They're blind auditions. They're called. So there's a, there's literally, something in front of you. So they can't tell if you're, male, female, any sort of ethnicity. And then if you're a selected, there's usually, a year or two. Pro probationary period. Wow. And there's just so you just take that idea and then as the orchestra gets smaller what we do is really unusual, and that is I don't. Do traditional auditions as much because I've been here long enough. I joke about this, but I have a terrific spy network in our region. So if a new musician comes, I usually hear about it. And if someone has, used to play in a big orchestra, And they're here maybe teaching at a university. I, I have a pretty good idea and also our musicians might say, Hey, this there's this new person in Dallas. And, he, or she would love to come and play. That said our roster has solidified a little bit more. So one of the things when is we don't have really necessarily spots available and I do have people reach out and say, Hey, I have my master's degree in. Trumpet performance and I love to play. And we have a list of substitute players. That's really huge already. And I remember, we, we have a list of substitutes that were like, everyone on the list has their DMS and, whatever the performance is. So there's a lot of super qualified people who will even come and play just a concert if it's, if it's if something opens up. I mean, I don't want to say it's hard to get into. I don't mean it like an exclusivity thing. It's just the practicality of a limited number of concerts and who we can who we can ask. I am happy to say that we get people just wanting to play all the time, just, and I, and there's a really good I know there's. Talk in our region and be people who play in the orchestra. And let's say they live in Dallas, they'll have people say in Dallas, I hear you, they'll say something like, Oh, I just played in Fort Smith. And those people say really, how do I, how can I do that? Because the orchestra does, I think people who don't know a lot about the Fort Smith symphony, we actually really do have a notable reputation regionally. Nationally and internationally because of the recordings that we've done. So it's really a pretty cool thing. No, I'm just telling, I'm just telling you. I'm not, I don't have a big head about it but my point is normally for an orchestra in a smaller community, wouldn't necessarily have this. Yeah, that's cool stuff.

Justin: 20:54

Yeah. But you've had the opportunity to build this stuff up. And so has that been always part of your strategy or have you just found opportunity as you've been doing this for 24 years and then taken the

John: 21:05

chance? It's usually been I I'm a planner And, uh, that's another thing for people to apply. They're yeah. You yeah. He's always really mean, he's always really organized and, I like things, the joke is, if I sent someone an email about some availability, they have five minutes to respond. Yeah. I didn't explain to the guy at five minutes cause I'm really, I try to keep things. Well I just like to have a plan and follow through so yes, there's long range planning and I think. The main issue has been that all of the artistic planning has always included the financial part. So I don't think I've ever gone to our board of directors and said, Hey, I'd like to, I think this would be a great project to do. This would be great part just to project. And then sit back, I'll say, I think we should do this project. And I believe we can raise the money doing this and asking this person or asking this industry. So I think. That has led to actually us being able to do a lot of things, instead of just having a lot of idea, I thought about doing that, but we couldn't do it, so

Justin: 22:18

you've been very detailed, not only in your ideas, but also how are you going to execute on

John: 22:23

them? Yeah, I think that's really important. And I think in the. I think in the creative world, you if I can say, I think that's one of the creative people, artists, if you will, that's one of their biggest downfalls is they're so wrapped up in the creation. Part of the, part of creating something is for lack of a better word selling it. So if you create it, no one partakes in it. I think it was a waste of time, or if you design a new car if no one buys the car. So I think, and I think now in this day and age, I think that's starting to be understood a little bit more that there is, music's great. The theater's great, but there is a, there's a business, the business side of it, and that has to be part of it or else. Yeah, exactly. And there's nothing wrong with a hobby. There's nothing wrong with it, but And I've Al I have to say I've really enjoyed the other part of it too. It's been nice to go to, for example, funding a project I've really enjoyed a lot of aspects of that is here's a project and talking to people about it, seeing if they, are interested in doing it, being a part of their generosity, the fact that they're saying, yes I'll be a sponsor as really is great. How do you go

Justin: 23:41

about. A fundraising campaign for something. What does that typically look like and who do I, maybe also,

John: 23:47

who does that involve? It involves, our board and staff and In addition, and I'm music director and conductor, and about 10 or 11 years ago I was made the executive director of the orchestra. So I'm also technically the administrative head of the orchestra. Typically those are two separate people. There is a whole story there, but, and then about three years ago, or four years ago, it's like you know, why don't you be the development director also? The fundraising is an all on deck effort and we do it primarily through sponsorships. A lot of nonprofits do sponsorships, a lot of nonprofits do special events. They'll might be a big gala or something like that. We've done that a little bit, but our main support has been through corporate sponsorships, individual sponsorships. We have different levels of sponsorship within the orchestra. So you could be a concert sponsor or a co-sponsor or a guest artist sponsor. You can also sponsor a musician in the orchestra there's chair sponsorship, which is really popular and there's a conductor circle level. And then we have a lot of people who sponsor our educational programs and we do a good job at recognition and I really enjoy as much as possible talking to people about it and, If they're interested in sponsoring, I wanna, I wanna hear w if they have questions about it, what do they yeah. Sponsors, what do they want to get out of it? Not necessarily in terms of marketing, although that's fine, but what do they want to see with this project? Yeah.

Justin: 25:27

Huh. You mentioned that you've done now. Four concerts, I think since October. Throughout the course of COVID you were doing concerts and there was a lot of symphonies didn't yeah. Wha, what was different

John: 25:43

for you? Well, some lucky thing, for one thing, we live in a state where not everything was shut down and, you could, I think people have different views on that maybe, but that gave us an opportunity. I'm also, this sounds silly, but you know, I think I've mentioned earlier, I love to read and I like reading about like astronauts and fighter pilots and explorers and scientists and all that. And it just seems like that people human beings can do anything if they put their mind to it. And it was just a cliche, know, when COVID first, happened, actually I was in Europe when it when it happened and I basically had to. I came back in the first flight where they just started the CDC just started like cracking down on, what you had to do in the, off the plane. But, so there was a period of time where we just waited. And then it was like, okay, there's probably going to be some way that we could do this. And we know there's going to be a lot. So we reached out to the Arkansas department of health and our concerts would be considered these large events and we just basically looked at every aspect of how we do a concert and then, okay, what's going to happen. How is it an option with COVID? We had, we have quite a bit of flexibility in terms of the size of orchestra that we could use. There was a lot of options in terms of health protocols. I mean, we had to follow a bunch. I think for indoor concerts, something that's not even the convention center people realized was that I went down or I think I called them and said, okay, we need to the key with giving indoor events and COVID of more than anything else is fresh air. You got to have fresh air. You know, what is your what is your ACH rate for the concert? All what's the maximum air change rate per hour. And they, the way the concert hall is set up here is, they have these really robust fan systems and air conditioning, and it's not really ever designed to be like all these units full blast. It's just not designed well, if you that, You they there's calculations and looking at what the manufacturer suggested, cubic feet of air will move. And basically it has an incredible air change rate per hour in there. It's pretty much fresh air, every four or five, six minutes, the whole thing. And it's not re circulated air comes in from blowers and it goes out through a very robus, exhaust fan system. That, I don't know. I don't know exactly why they had it. It might've been the exhaust fan system. Might've been something for if there were any fires or I don't know for, I don't quite know, but we just got really lucky. And so, and when you're at the concert, you really don't notice it, except when you walk in through the side hallways, to get into the concert hall there, these narrow hallways and yeah, you're in a wind tunnel there. Cause all the winds. It's kind the suction from the main auditorium. Yeah. So that was usually helpful. We you know, we limited our audience size at all, all that stuff. We built a plexiglass shields for there in front of all the wind players. Everyone's th the health requirements of everyone wearing a mask, the social distancing wind players even wear a mask. They've got a little slit cut here. So to play and limiting the concert times we're currently, instead of giving a concert, we give two shorter concerts. We repeat it. There's time in the middle for the whole hall to be disinfect. It did. So it's just a huge list of things. And you know, a shout out to some of our board members who are medical professionals and they were the best people and to be able to sit down and it's you know, very picky. Doctors and nurses who really and one of whom is very involved in COVID treatment currently, just seeing people and it was not, it wasn't necessarily let's try to convince these people, but if it's if they felt comfortable doing it, then I think that was a pretty good, indication that we could try it. So our first concerts were done outdoors, which that was that was two. That was to basically, those were concerts on the grounds of the Marshall's museum. We protocols for indoor and outdoor performances are very similar. So let's try the first one outdoors, the first thing. And we use so much of that indoors and we have, at the time of this recording, we've got actually four performances in about maybe five weeks that are coming up. So that'll be in you know, and it's, and we feel like these parameters, again, it's all been approved by the department of health. But I think

Justin: 30:44

that's really a wonderful story that you took the time to figure out how do we work or not around the system, but how do we work within the system? Yeah.

John: 30:53

In straints we've been given. Yeah, exactly. And obviously, you know, really feeling like, is this a safe option? It's got a real, it's gotta be a safe option and we feel really confident about it. Sure. I guess it's safer if you sat home and you're, in a room. But you, but our take is. There has to be, we have to have some balance of, we have to have some normal something, and a lot of the sponsors were, felt very strongly about we can't, we can't shut the city down, we've got to keep moving. This has worked and I think so we had a lot of good Just a good set of circumstances. A lot of the larger orchestras. Yeah. They're completely shut down. Actually, most orchestras are shut down. I think some of them do have issues. If you're a smaller orchestra like ours, in terms of the season throughout the country, there are many, there's about 1300 orchestras in the United States. There's a lot. Wow. A lot of the smaller one, Perform like, on university campuses, they'll use their auditorium. So many universities across the country. They're not, their auditorium is, are closed. So w and if you're a an orchestra and let's say you want to use a local church? Well, a lot of the churches aren't really just as an example. So there's venue issues lot of financial challenges with a lot of those orchestras that they just can't afford to. To do it. And I can't even, I, I don't an organization like the match to an opera company right now, because singing singing is a no-no, especially if you think about an opp thing about an operatic singer, they're just like, they're belting it out there and all this there's all this spray. I don't know when that's going to come back to normal. Oh,

Justin: 32:43

yeah. But you've been fortunate to be able to continue to do

John: 32:47

what you love to do. I'm knocking. You can hear it. Yeah. Yeah. Nice.

Justin: 32:51

Yeah. So what maybe have you learned from the process of having to shift into pivot over the last let's just call it 12 months.

John: 33:05

It's been, of course it's scary because you don't know what the long-term or short-term ramifications are for safety just financially for arts organizations. They're certainly scary. But I th there have been some real interesting things about just re. It gives you a chance it's given us the chance, forced us to really reevaluate, literally everything, from handing out concert programs. We can't do that. Now. We had started the year previously having an option to where you could have the concert program on your phone. And we're just doing that exclusively. And people really like it. We learned, we, during these shorter concerts, we used to do an intermission and an emission reception and all that. And we found. I think a majority of our audiences don't want an intermission. They want to, 70, 75, 80 minute concert, maybe a little longer and that's it. So we've learned some practical things. I've learned to just it's in the classical music world. We spend a lot of time on details. I'd say the worlds, the environment in general, there's picky. People who want things. I have good players, really. They're super nice people, but I know there's a lot of, being people being particular and the temperature's gotta be just right. And it's got the lighting just gotta be right. And everything's just gotta beat, these little things. And right now it's okay. You can play or you can not play kind of a thing. Yeah. And. Some of the, I don't know it's made it more real. It's more basic in some ways. And I'm hoping is that after when things get back to normal, maybe our industry will just, Chill a little bit. Yeah. And I mean, listen, I love music. It's just the, the, the arts industries, there's great people, but I guess it's like anything else, I was talking to someone the other day who was an engineer and just talking about, get a group of engineers in a room, which is going to, they're all going to be, one upping each other, just the way it is, but you have that in the arts and I'm hoping maybe this will help people learn from it. Yeah. Well, let's come

Justin: 35:26

back to the people for just a moment and an employee development. I mean they're paid professionals or employees, if

John: 35:34

you will. Yeah, we do have full-time staff. We do have a team. We have a business manager and a stage manager technical assistance. So there are, yeah. So you have

Justin: 35:44

employees that are there full time, and then you have these folks that come in and play performances. Let's start with the folks then that are part of Doing the performances, what's their professional development. Is that part of what you do or is that something that they do

John: 36:02

on their own, their professional development while these people are the performers, quite a few of them, that's what they do. All the time there may be playing in a number of different orchestras. We have a number of a university teachers, people who have their doctorates and music and performing. And, as part of what they d, we have, public school orchestra teachers who have bachelor's master's in music, education. Who've had a performing, element and they're all. No, they're all doing, of course their own sort of courses of development. I think when they come to perform with us, we're you know, w we're putting these programs together our way, which is, we have our own sort of our own version, of osmosis, of taking maybe a limited amount of time. And I think again, I like to have an orchestra that. Again, really projects out to an audience and you'd think every orchestra is that way. Some that's a real big priority for me. So I think when they perform, when they come and play in the Fort Smith symphony, there's going to be a certain style approach that they're going to use and they might not use it in. If they're playing in another orchestra, there might be a different dynamic. So there's that flexibility that they, and they need to do that without. Yeah, speech beforehand and they, they just, or maybe I'll just do something and they'll know, there'll be some indication, Oh, this needs to happen. Or this is the kind of sound or to make a few, you know, general comments about a lot of conductors, a lot of orchestras the way it sounds on stage. Of course everyone's playing the way. It's the way you play. If you're playing in a practice room, The way it is on stage, that's a number one priority because the ideas of it, even if it sounds great here, it's going to sound great. I'm not in the hall. Not necessarily. I mean, yes, but there's a kind of a different approach to really projecting. So there's that whole stylistic thing that I think we try to do. You know, for lack of a better term, our orchestra tends to sound really big, not loud, just big. It's a big, it's a big sound. Okay. It can be loud. Sometimes it can be loud sometimes when needed, but you know, that's a style that they, and they keep when they play with us, there's that approach and they play in other orchestra might be very different and musicians nowadays. To hint at what we were talking about earlier. They're performing, everyone's doing some teaching and everyone's learning more about technology and trying to incorporate that there's a little bit more of maybe the marketing online lessons, even before COVID there's that aspect, that's becoming a bigger part of it, of being a professional musician. Yeah.

Justin: 39:04

And how about your employees? You mentioned you've got several, I think it was three.

John: 39:08

There's three, there's usually been four full time employees with the symphony. So there's me and my job is usually a two or three person. There's a music director and executive director. And then maybe a development director. I guess I'm, I guess I'm a bargain although, so there's that we have a business manager who started with us. Recently, and that person manages all the day to day finances billing. Does things like our. Ar, audit you and gets all that materials. We get a yearly audit done was just involved in our PPP loan application for the second time. It's helped me a little bit with grants and this particular person has a music background, which is great. Person previous had a similar job, had been there for 20 years and And then we have another person who's that's a stage managing and basically manages all of our it stuff. So those folks, those jobs, we have had an office it's small staff and the people have generally worked very independently and I'm gently suggesting. Things, but we've always tried to have real self-starter employees because I think with a small office like that, there's so many different things you have to just be flexible and be able to jump in and help, no matter what it is, there's been a lot of cross training and it's an all hands on deck situation mentality really well.

Justin: 40:42

And you just mentioned that the person prior to that position had been there for 20 years. You've been there for 24 years. What about it draws folks to stay so long?

John: 40:55

It's a very, it's a very unique thing, and Becky eights, if I can say, she's, she, she was with us for 20 years and she loved being involved in, presenting music, and those people who aren't Performing and who are doing, maybe you could say behind the scenes, they're just as involved in it. I mean, it's just as important Lake and Emerson. Is there a, has this new role now and as a performer, she knows that really well about this. It's part of a huge project. And after a concert and even the selling, the tickets, doing all the logistical things, that's all part of it. And I think people just love it. And there are a lot of great jobs out there, but. It has also unique to do this. It's very unlike a more working like in a large company or like a, I guess you could say a corporate America type of position, and those are great, but this is very It it's it's not like being self-employed exactly, but it has that feel a lot of times, a lot of autonomy, it sounds like exactly. Exactly. And Tony eights is our stage manager, an it person. And then we have we are, we do answer to our board of directors. We're a nonprofit organization. So we have a board of directors of between 20 and 24. Members and depending on the non-profit, boards are involved in different ways and we very much had a board that has a respected, I think the. Staff's abilities and the musician's abilities. They've let us do our thing. And they're more of a keeping tabs on what we're doing, as opposed to maybe telling us what to do. However what's been terrific is they've been much more involved under the current circumstances with COVID and they've been great sounding boards and, we want it, we want board members, we wanted those medical professionals to really be picky in terms of putting concerts together and uh, cause at first it was I don't know if we're going to be able to do this at all, and to go from there to what's happening now. It's been really, it's been really terrific. Yeah. You're putting on

Justin: 43:17

concerts and a lot of

John: 43:18

folks aren't. Yeah. And I mean, we don't have gigantic audiences. We have to limit it. And a lot of audience members are still. Hesitant, which we totally understand, we do relate related to that i, starting with our last concert and with a majority of the concerts for the rest of the year. And maybe next we do offer, we do a live stream of the second performance, but w we offer that as a, an extension of the ticket. So we don't offer it separately, but you know, people maybe just aren't comfortable yet. We totally understand that. This is understandable. Yeah.

Justin: 43:59

Let's maybe talk about culture for just a moment. It sounds like you've created a pretty neat culture and unique culture at your time with the symphony. And so I'm just curious, what strategies did you put in place to, to create that culture?

John: 44:25

I wanted to have the orchestra run in a very professional and efficient manner. Mean, really try to just, in some ways, have it run like a large symphony orchestra, but with a lot less you know, I don't want, I don't want to say, I don't know what the word is, a lot less regimentation, it's funny. Like, it's two opposite things. Like how I haven't run really well, but have people feel like they have a lot of flexibility and they can contribute and have an open dialogue. So if someone has an issue or someone has a problem with something, they can immediately come to talk to me. If I'm the issue, you can talk to the board president, there's no. There's no. There were not a lot of hierarchies just feeling like we were colleagues and I think always feeling like people had say, could chime in. I think we've had a really great history of maybe if someone makes a suggestion that we do it. Or if there's an issue maybe with I don't know, with a number of people or something that we could do better for a number of people, it doesn't take a number of people to say that for us to act on it. It's maybe just one or two people. And I, I know over the years we've had that happen. A lot of times someone might say you know, can you maybe work on X, Y, Z? And then at the next concert is done, it's taken care of, and they're just. Yeah, very surprised at that. So it's getting things done quickly. I think it's crazy without it being cheesy, of course, really having it being a positive and enjoyable atmosphere. In terms of the symphony, I like thinking about why did we enjoy playing music when we were kids? It really was playing music, right? Maybe it doesn't when we were kids. Maybe it didn't sound as good, but you know, we enjoyed playing it. It's supposed to be an enjoyable thing. And as any time something becomes a job, some of that enjoyment can go away. So it's really trying to stay focused doesn't happen. And w one of the reasons we've had a lot of success. And one of the reasons we have so many people who wants to come and play here is everyone hears that it's really a fun time to come and play. And unfortunately our business are the symphony business. Isn't that way. And as one of, one of the saddest things is when musicians come to play and I get a chance to talk to them. They'll often talk about some recent experience they've had with another orchestra. And I just, I can't believe it. I'm not saying there aren't good experiences out there, but so frequently it's people just taking themselves way too seriously. And there's so much negativity and you're doing music. I mean, you're playing great music. Why. And that, and that is a in our, in our broader orchestra industry, it's really a pretty serious problem, I think. And I think going back to one of the first things we said about some people thinking maybe the concerts might be, if they heard symphony or maybe they went to a concert and they thought all that was boring. If you don't have a lot, if you have a people, a bunch of people on stage who aren't very happy, or who are looking at it like a job, it's only going to be so good. Yeah, and it's an emotional experience. So if that emotion is not coming out, it's, it's like the resilience performance of a play, where everyone's tired of going through the motions. So try to keep it fresh. All the time. And I, I talk a lot just very I interact a lot with the musicians, cause I am wanting to know how they're doing when COVID started. I called everyone in the orchestra over about a three week period, just to make sure, everyone was doing okay. You know how it was going well for them financially, without asking too many details, just checking in and seeing, if there were any. Real significant issue is maybe if there was something that we could do try to maybe get them a few more gigs or something, just something like that. So it's just having that kind of, thinking about other people and it's been that, and it's been a challenge because again, our industry. And people are going to watch this and think, Oh, I hate really? Doesn't like he doesn't like his industry. Yeah, I kinda don't. I remember years ago I went to a national conference for orchestras and they have these every year. There's a big national organization and Garrison Keillor was the keynote speaker, Prairie, home companion, And he got up there and he was talking and he started, he said a couple things and he says you know, you guys are, you're all a bunch of snobs and everyone got like this. And I was sitting in the bath thinking, he's absolutely right. It's great music maybe because it means so it's, there's so much art to it. People just have taken it you know, taken it to themselves to be the, I dunno, the presenters of this great art. Which is they do, but it's gotta be done in a way that's, don't take it. So take it seriously. But it's a living, breathing thing you don't see, like in the pop music world, you don't see that as much, people just do it. And I guess you could say you could get into as you know, is comparing the rolling stones, the Beethoven that, which is stupid, but there's just. I think that just part of the openness of the arts and, the fine arts, I think that's been one of the fine arts downfalls is we're. So we're so important. And young people it's a challenge sometimes for young people to get into, classical music, young people really pick up on that. Don't they? I mean, they really, if someone's not genuine or if someone has a chip on their shoulder, even without. Saying it boy, young folks, just man, you can't create a barrier to entry. Yeah. Yeah. And it's such a cool thing, right? Playing, I mean, Beethoven really cool Beethoven. There's some really cool Mozart. There's some Mozart that's really boring. So you don't play that stuff. Yeah. He wrote music. He started writing music. He was six. It's incredible. The stuff that he wrote when he was six, you know, it's a nice historical thing, maybe don't play it. Yeah. Yeah. It's really at the end of the day, it's really, if you think about it, it's not that hard to try to make people feel valued and having a good, have a good experience, making sure, be really appreciative of everything that people do for you. Why don't we, why do we not do that so much? That's a good question.

Justin: 51:17

I don't know the answer to it. I get wrapped up and lost in our own thing and.

John: 51:23

Yeah. And I understand, and your tequila work and family, and I get it, but you know, it's a real thing. Yeah.

Justin: 51:32

There's an opportunity to have a little bit more relationship.

John: 51:35

Yeah. Yeah. And where we are in this country, my gosh, we have a S we have so good in so many ways, if you get a chance to travel, I'm not saying there aren't cool things in other parts of the world, but just so many people struggle, and I mean, it's easy to, it's easy to forget that. For sure.

Justin: 51:54

Yeah. That's I think a, I guess a good way to maybe wrap up, which is take

John: 52:01

a step back and

Justin: 52:04

look at somebody else and recognize where they're at.

John: 52:07

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Oh,

Justin: 52:12

I guess maybe one final question I would have for you, which is, if people are curious about the symphony. Where do they go? How do they look it up? What's the process.

John: 52:23

We do have a website. Yeah, for it specifically.org. We have depending on the time of year, a pretty active Facebook page as we get closer to concerts and you know, I would, for people. Listening watching. I, you know, I think I understand all the, maybe some prejudice if you haven't been, but I have to say when people come to the concerts, they love it. Generally. They're EV everywhere from incredibly well, attended to sold out. We do over the last 20 years, we've sold out most, every concert. There's definitely a demand, but I do know that there are folks who I don't know how many times over the years, if someone has said, Oh, I. You know, I finally was able to drag my husband's a concert and we both loved it. I hear that so many times or people would say I lived in Fort Smith for 25 years and I'm so mad. Cause I finally went to the symphony. I w what was I thinking to have waited this long? And I hear a lot of that because it's a very, it's a very the professional standard is actually really high and the orchestra plays really well. I think people will be really surprised if they're thinking in it. Smaller, excuse me, a smaller community. We've had people move here from big cities who attended, big orchestras on a regular basis. They're real happy. Something we, alluded to is some of these recording projects that we've done. I mean, they've, we've been you know, we're up there being compared with. All the major orchestras and, it's getting good reviews and we're just fortunate. We've had this sort of growth development support. And it's here in town. Now with all of this said where this particular year is a challenge because of COVID. And actually what's happened is because of a strong subscription sales combined with. The parameters restrictions for social distancing were sold out for the year. Like we just don't have room. To accommodate anyone for health reasons. And last those people who have season tickets decide that they might not use it for a specific concert. And we do have a whole process to try to determine that. Towards the end of the season, I might be able to offer some tickets for certain concerts and we hope next year that with things start to improve, which they probably will probably slower than people maybe want. We can start to. Go back to normal. And we actually have the all next year is all planned and all the programs are in place. Cause I like to be organized. We're going to three years in advance. Yeah. It's, it's the next step. It's assumed that there will be some COVID issues still. Maybe we don't have to sit six feet apart. Maybe we can sit three feet apart. Maybe we could take our masks off when we play or something. We're it's kind a Th the season looks a little bit more like it normally does

Justin: 55:21

yeah. That's awesome. John, I just want to say thank you. Oh, sure. Thank you. And telling me all about the symphony and I learned a lot and there's that as well. So thanks for your time. I really appreciate it. And that's that?

John: 55:36

Thank you. I'm grateful

Justin: 55:39

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