LACO Executive Director Ben Cadwallader. Photo by Lily Mellor Courtesy of Old Mill Road Media
By Steve Simmons – published 10 a.m., Aug. 21, 2020
Ben Cadwallader had just taken over the reins of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO), when the pandemic hit, forcing the well-known arts institution, like many others, to rethink how it was going to fulfill its mission –giving audiences and musicians the chance to connect though music.
“It was quite a shock,” said Cadwallader, who left the East Coast as executive director of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra to start in L.A. on March 9. The LACO office closed a week later. “As the month went on, we began to realize that COVID-19 may have an impact on our plans for the spring and in fact prove to be an existential threat.”
“We had to acknowledge that while we are privately heartbroken we can’t present concerts in person,” Cadwallader said, “we can present concerts online to stay relevant and in front of our audience.”
SummerFest – An Experiment And A Success
The result of “a brainstorming session,” Cadwallader says, is “SummerFest,” a series of five concerts streamed every other Saturday, beginning July 11 through Sept. 5.Recorded specifically for SummerFest, each broadcast ( filmed live in person a week before it’s streaming date) is initially available at laco.org/live at 5 p.m.on its broadcast day. The remaining two concerts are Aug. 22 and Sept. 5) and subsequently on demand at laco.org/laco-at-home.
Not reaching into its archives or recycling previously recorded material or piecing together from pre-pandemic performances or recorded by individual musicians at home, these are programs specifically designed for the series, curated by LACO Concertmaster Margaret Batjer, director of chamber music. For each concert she selects colleagues as collaborators who have major choices in repertoire. Principal Clarinet Joshua Ranz chose Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet and Principal Percussionist Wade Culbreath picked Golijov’s Mariel and Haydn’s String Quartet Opus 33, No. 3 “The Bird,” both featuring the marimba.(Both concerts are available at https://www.laco.org/summerfest-ondemand/.)
Tomorrow’s concert (Aug. 22) will feature bassoonists Kenneth Munday and Damian Montano, and cellists Armen Ksajikian and Giovanna Clayton in a program featuring Michel Courrette’s Le Phenix Quartet, Franz Christoph Neubauer’s Duet for 2 Cellos in B-flat major, Opus 10, Mozart’s Four Canons and “A Hollywood Tribute” featuring Gershwin’s Summertime from Porgy and Bess, Raksin’s Laura, the iconic theme of the 1944 film noir classic, and Gounod’s The Funeral March of a Marionette, popular as the theme for TV’s Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
For the Sept. 5 concert, Principal Bass David Grossman will lead violinists Carrie Kennedy and Joel Pargman and cellist Andrew Shulman in three early string sonatas by Rossini and play his own Jazz Solo.
For the recording sessions, orchestra members are gathering for live performances, with social distancing and no audience at the Colburn School’s Zipper Hall. “SummerFest keeps our audiences engaged and connected while also putting our musicians back to work–while keeping them safe—which is vitally important,” said Cadwallader. “It’s a controlled environment with smaller groups and precautions to protect everyone, from the performers to the technicians.”
Taking part in the series is optional for all musicians, Cadwallader points out, “They’re all paid, and of course there’s no penalization if they opt out. In general, when they’re offered the work it’s their first time in person with other musicians and there’s excitement and joy of getting together, but also apprehension about safety.” To that that point Los Angeles County has released guidelines on how studios can go back to work. LACO falls under that category, so along with input from its Orchestra Committee and Local 47, will follow the same rules as Sony, Disney, Paramount and others.
As part of the “new normal,” the two bassoonists in Saturday’s concert, who can’t wear masks, will be behind plexiglass while the cellists will be distanced.
“At one taping there was a musician who said, ‘I know we’re not quite clicking,’” said Cadwallader, “I listened to the mix, and it was perfect .So I said to the musicians, ‘how can we creatively address these acoustical issues.’” Conditions can be difficult for musicians who rely on listening closely to each other, body language and eye contact when a wind player is in a box and the violinist and cellists are 30 feet apart. One idea, Cadwallader says, is for musicians to wear one ear bud that’s tied back to the sound booth. Also, with no audience, the group can abandon traditional staging and have musicians seated in the round with the camera in the middle.
While LACO continues to have strong ties to the Colburn School and its Zipper Auditorium, Cadwallader is enthusiastic about creating “digitally native” concerts in nontraditional sites like a warehouse, studio or outdoors. “We haven’t announced our venues for the fall, and I think that will come as a welcome surprise to musicians and audiences.”
An Eye On The Future
“We know we have to hit the ground running in the fall,” says Cadwallader. “We launched SummerFest and we’re learning how to do this and how audiences will respond. We have to expand our internal competencies, especially the technology side, and learn how to market and translate viewers into dollars and cents.”
LACO has never done a summer performance, but staff and donors were eager to get the program off the ground, Cadwallader says. He cites art funders Terri and Jerry Kohl and LACO Board Chair Leslie Lassiter for “getting behind the project 100 percent. They trusted that we would do something awesome. We’ve been able to able to make these concerts stand out in what is now a crowded digital landscape.”
The model of free approximately 30-minute concerts, initially streamed on Saturdays and then available on free on demand “has been extremely successful and popular with donors,” Cadwallader says. After the first concert aired on Saturday, July 11, the entire series was funded by the following Monday.
The next step, says Cadwallader, is to explore how to monetize what is now virtually a gift to the public, available any time. “We wanted to get it out of the gate before we put up a paywall,” says Cadwallader. “We’ll look at the return on our investment and determine if there’s a market out there. We know LACO regulars are supportive, and viewership of the free concerts has skyrocketed and brought in new audiences.”
“We’re still learning about how audiences will respond before we articulate a long-term strategy and what the market will bear,” says Cadwallader, “but some ideas are kicking around.” They include access to artists and musicians at invite-only post-concert toasts and memberships to monthly happy hours.
“This organization has the ability to be incredibly agile and that agility can result in real success,” says Cadwallader. “Other institutions have a heavy reliance on ticket sales, and that can mean you’re in real trouble. In our case it’s 25 to 30 percent and some would see that as something of a liability. But as we contemplate a season with no ticket sales and the loss of nearly $1 million, it’s not such a tremendous loss, thanks to contributions from donors, foundations and corporations, that we are brought to our knees with mass layoff or go quiet.”
Cheerleader In Chief
In addition to fundraising, Cadwallader sees his role as “taking an asset like SummerFest and connecting it with the right personalities and donors who are excited about what it portends for LACO.”
He describes the position as “uniting a staff, the board, artistic team, musicians and constituents behind a shared set of challenges through communication and motivation. I like being the weaver at the loom, pulling all the strands together in a cohesive fabric. I love people and working with people to creatively solve problems and the joy of being on a team and creating conditions for people to work together.”
“And at the heart of it, I’m also cheerleader in chief,” says Cadwallader. “Optimism is in short supply these days and as a relentless optimist I think we’re going to come out of this on the other side feeling fundamentally different.”
He also sees this time as a chance to explore the organization’s role and relevance, particularly as it relates to race. “We are primarily a white organization and present white artists and I hope we can address that.”
To that end, the first two SummerFest concerts featured works by Florence Beatrice Price, the first Black female American composer to have a symphony performed by a major U.S. orchestra. Batjer and pianist Andrew von Oeyen performed her The Deserted Garden in the July 11 concert and Ranz and a string quartet played her Adoration, arranged by Ranz in the July 25 event.
Always On The Radar
LACO has been part of Cadwallader’s life from an early age. “I’ve long admired the organization and its great recording history (31 albums),” Cadwallader says. His first exposure to the ensemble was at as a high school “oboe geek” listening to records with his family, especially the 1983 account of Dvorak’s Serenade for Winds and Strings, Op. 44.
The organization’s size was also an attraction for Cadwallader. “It’s not so small that it’s constantly living from paycheck to paycheck and not so large it’s unwieldy. I’ve worked in large and small organizations (including the Youth Orchestras of San Antonio and the East Coast Chamber Orchestra), and I love the culture of smaller organizations, the intimacy, the degree to which the entire staff, board and audience know each other with relative ease.”
He was impressed with the management’s musician-centered culture and the fact that long-time LACO cellist Trevor Handy was part of the hiring committee. “I liked having that perspective and what the organization looked like for musicians. They love the organization.”
LACO’s story was another drawing card for Cadwallader. “The organization was started in 1968 as an artistic outlet for recording industry musicians. Founder cellist James Arkatovv wanted an outlet for conservatory-trained players to balance studio work, teaching and performing together. “The roots are an organization founded by musicians with the goal of playing music that they love,” says Cadwallader “These musicians care so deeply about their orchestra. LACO’s origin story is manifested in its history, and that’s really unique.”
Back in L.A.
Cadwallader is no stranger to L.A. He served as LA Phil’s Education Programs Manager from 2012 to 2015 when he worked with one of its teaching artists Derrick Spiva Jr. Spiva was named LACO’s inaugural artist educator in 2018, so Cadwallader is thrilled “ to have him at the helm” of LACO’s education and community outreach programs that reach thousands of young people annually. (Spiva joined LACO during the 2015-16 season as a resident composer and his Hum will have its world premiere at Saturday’s concert. This week, Cadwallader announced that LACO Music Director Jaime Martín has promoted Spiva to Artistic Advisor. He joins Martín and Creative Advisor & Composer-In-Residence Ellen Reid on the organization’s artistic leadership team.)
“LACO has a strong legacy of prioritizing education through its Meet the Music program and we do indeed have plans to continue as we move to all digital landscape,” said Cadwallader.
Since April, students haven’t been able to come to Zipper Hall, so LACO has experimented with online Zoom webinars. “We were shocked by the number of students involved and the level of engagement,” said Cadwallader. “In normal times, students sit in the space and listen with little interaction. With the webinar, the chat function exploded with students going back and forth with each other and we realized we were onto to something.”
So plans are underway for fall and spring virtual experiences with a pre-recorded component and a culminating live digital forum with Spiva.
Finding His Niche
Set on being an oboist, in college Cadwallader had a work study program with the New York String Orchestra seminar in Carnegie Hall that changed his life. “I was a production intern ordering pizza and making sure all the music was there and I loved it.” Then music director famed violinist Jaimie Laredo told him, “you’re good at this and as performers we need people like you. This could be a career.”
So, he dropped out of his master’s degree program— “I felt bad taking the spot of a better more serious performer”—and set off on a career as an arts administrator. “I realized that this art form I love is a constant in my life and the best possible way to serve, with my skills and ability is not playing the oboe. “
Still self-identifying as an “oboe geek,” Cadwallader looks back with no regrets. “I can experience a live performance and be in the moment and never think, I wish I were up on that stage. That ship sailed a long time ago and I couldn’t be happier, and I’ve never been bored.”
