Pay More Attention to that Man Behind the Curtain

For us musicians, performing a concert is nothing unusual. We know the routine–arrive an hour or so before start time, find a practice room, warm up, get nervous, go onstage, play, de-stress briefly at intermission, play some more, accept the applause, mingle with audience members at the reception (if there is one), get in the car/on the train/on the bus, go home, sleep. We’ve done it hundreds of times, in hundreds of venues. Yet, how often do we stop to consider the collective effort required behind the scenes to put on a concert in the first place? With our minds primarily focused on the tricky technical passages and exposed solos we’re about to perform, it’s easy to forget that somebody has to open the hall an hour before we get there, unlock the practice rooms, give us water to take our beta-blockers with, dim the lights, implore the audience to shut down their iPhones, flick the lights on and off at intermission to shepherd stragglers back inside, spend most of the second half setting up the reception, clean everything up afterwards, and hurry out to the subway station to catch the last train home.

But unless you’re doing a gig at Hogwarts, these vitally important tasks aren’t going to happen by magic. Most likely, their completion will be ensured by a variety of administrative personnel employed by the organization hosting the concert, a formidable contingent of dedicated men and women who often go unnoticed. Sure, we know that they’re there, just like we know that a farmer out in Iowa somewhere slaughtered a cow so we can order a hamburger at Denny’s. But I don’t think most of us spend a great deal of time thinking of poor Bessie’s demise while we’re enjoying our double-decker with extra cheese (unless you’re a recovering vegetarian), and in a similar way, it’s hard to fully appreciate the effort that goes into making a performance happen unless you’ve contributed to it yourself. Indeed, I myself admit to having lacked such an appreciation–until this past week.

I am HERE.

This summer, I am privileged to serve as an intern for the Midsummer’s Music chamber music festival in Door County, Wisconsin, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Arts Leadership Certificate I am pursuing at Eastman in addition to my Master’s degree. For those of you unfamiliar with midwestern geography, Door County is that tiny strip of land in northeast Wisconsin that juts out into Lake Michigan, making it an ideal vacation and retirement destination. There remains a standing confusion as to why the peninsula is called “Door County”; the “bedtime story” version holds that it’s due to the many “doors” into the land created by the harbors of Green Bay and Lake Michigan, respectively, but the real reason is that the French explorers of the late seventeenth century named the treacherous strait at the tip of the Peninsula Ports de mort (Death’s Door) after a multitude of their ships fell victim to Lake Michigan’s unmerciful waters. In spite of this somewhat grisly nominal origin, however, Door County is a wonderful community and a fantastic setting for a chamber music festival. My parents have performed with Midsummer’s since I was an infant, and so I was very excited to have the opportunity to serve in an administrative capacity this year.

I arrived on June 4th, just three days prior to the festival’s opening night gala, which took place at the popular Birch Creek performing arts center. Almost immediately, I was saddled with a plethora of administrative tasks in preparation for the big event: ticket reservations needed to filed, posters and brochures needed to be distributed, and Midsummer’s social media pages needed to be constantly updated with various bits of promotional information. It was quite eye-opening to realize how much work was required just to process one ticket reservation, or to put up a handful of posters; after a couple days of entering countless credit card numbers and trekking around the local villages with my box of promotional materials, I gained a significantly increased appreciation for box office workers and salespeople.

In what seemed like no time at all, the day of the first concert arrived. Since this was opening night, we were including a variety of other attractions to contribute to the celebratory feel of the event: a “wine pull”, cupcakes catered from a popular bakery, potted geraniums, and pre-concert champagne were all in order, which meant that the executive director and I spent the afternoon driving to the wine place, the cupcake place, the flower place, and a storage shed where the champagne glasses were kept in boxes. By the time we finally set out for the concert venue, several items were perched precariously in the trunk of the car, but with the exception of a wayward yellow jacket that had buzzed in with the flowers, everything survived the journey. At the venue, we were running around like rabbits as we set everything up, only stopping briefly to run out and buy some salads for dinner at a local grocery store. Then, about half an hour prior to start time, the audience started flooding in. We had over a hundred people in attendance, and it was my task to take their tickets and check them all off on the attendance list, which required constant focus and energy. Finally, they all made it into their seats, eagerly consuming their champagne and strawberries, and at 7:30, the concert began.

Midsummer’s opening night performance on June 7th, 2013. From left to right: David Perry, William Helmers, William Billingham, John Fairfield, Walter Preucil.

I had barely made it into the back of the hall for the start of the first piece, a tranquil interlude for oboe and strings by the English composer Gerald Finzi. As the peaceful strains of the solo oboe washed over me, I was almost taken by surprise. In the midst of the craziness surrounding the concert, I had almost forgotten that, lo and behold, the musicians were going to come onstage and play music here. The nature of the setting–audience members sitting quietly in their chairs, reading the program notes, listening attentively–was so tangibly familiar to me, yet in the context of the hectic afternoon I’d just had, it seemed even more special than before. I realized that while it may seem that musicians are the sole contributors to a given performance, they are most definitely not alone–the stagehands and the lighting technicians are contributors, the box office workers are contributors, the caterers are contributors–anyone and everyone who puts some effort, no matter how small, into making the event a success. These people “behind the curtain” are, in a sense, the unsung heroes of a concert experience–for without them, there would be no concert to experience.

The evening ended up being a great success, and I couldn’t be more excited to attend the next twenty-three (!) performances over the upcoming weeks. And, if you’ll allow for me to indulge in some shameless self-promotion, we would love to have you join us if a trip to Wisconsin is in your future! We are offering six different programs through mid-July, in a diverse array of venues such as art galleries, town halls, a dairy farm on an island, and a palatial mansion that holds the distinction of being the largest private residence in Wisconsin. Visit us online at www.midsummersmusic.com or call (920) 854-7088 for more information.