Conference 2015
This year, over 1,000 orchestra professionals, volunteers and business partners gathered in Cleveland for the League's 2015 National Conference. Here are some of the highlights. Check back soon! This page will be updated regularly with videos and new session materials! Scroll down to see the videos posted to date.
Address from Jesse Rosen: The New Work of Orchestras (Transcript)
League Luncheon and Annual Meeting
Opening Session (VIDEO)
League Luncheon and Annual Meeting (VIDEO)
Closing Session (VIDEO)
Pre-Conference Sessions
- Patron Growth, 2015 Edition: An Integrated Approach to Sales, Fundraising, and Loyalty
- Seminar for New Executive Directors
- Boards on Fire!
- Building a Culture that Values People, Places, and Purpose
Thursday Sessions, 8:45am-10:00am
- Belief and Confidence: Creating an Environment in which Philanthropic Partnership Thrives
- Building Bigger Pops Audiences
- Developing and Sustaining High Impact Community Engagement Programs
- Recruiting, Developing, and Retaining Talent
- Unleashing the Power of Collaboration (VIDEO)
Thursday Sessions, 11:15am-12:30pm
- Creating a Dream Board
- Evaluating Impact
- Diversity Progress Report: Learn from Your Peers
- Driving Growth through Digital Innovation
- New Music for New Audiences: Connecting Ideas with Communities
Friday Sessions, 8:45 am - 10:00 am
- Check This Out: Innovations from Across the Field
- How Well Financed is Your Orchestra?
- Making Music that Matters
- The Public Benefits and Value of Arts and Culture
Constituency Meetings
Volunteer Meetings
Opening Session
Getting Real About Relevance: Our Value through the Eyes of Others
The question of relevance—how our orchestras can matter more in today’s world—burns in the minds of leaders across our field. During the opening plenary, we considered how orchestras can employ the music to address community needs. A panel of government, business, community, and artistic leaders shared their perspectives on the priorities of the constituents and stakeholders they serve; how orchestras can help provide what the public values; and how we can develop relationships with the community that enable us to be involved in meaningful ways.
View the PowerPoint Presentation.
Moderator: Michael Rohd, Director, Center for Performance and Civic Practice
League Luncheon and Annual Meeting
The League Luncheon and Annual Meeting included an address by President and CEO Jesse Rosen; an announcement about SHIFT: A Festival of American Orchestras; the presentation of the Gold Baton and Helen M. Thompson awards; and a performance by American Idol Season 6 Finalist Melinda Doolittle. It was emceed by Peabody Award winning broadcaster and producer, Elliott Forrest.
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Address from Jesse Rosen: The New Work of Orchestras (Transcript) |
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News from SHIFT: A Festival of American Music (presented in cooperation with the League of American Orchestras) by Jenny Bilfield, president and CEO, Washington Performing Arts, and Deborah F. Rutter, president, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts |
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Presentation of the Helen M. Thompson Award by Jesse Rosen, president and CEO, League of American Orchestras to Jennifer Boomgaarden, executive director, South Dakota Symphony Orchestra Presentation of the Gold Baton Award by Mark Volpe, managing director, Boston Symphony Orchestra to Anne-Marie Soullière, retired president, Fidelity Foundation |
View the Powerpoint Presentation.
Closing Session
The Next Frontier is Center Stage: Enhancing the Relevance of Our Core Artistic Work
A quiet revolution has been underway for over a decade as orchestras experiment with ways to create deeper connections with communities. This mostly happens at periphery of our work, carried out by soloists, small ensembles or teaching artists, rather than the full orchestra. Now it’s time to connect what we’re learning by listening to our partners and answering their needs back to our core passion and strength—live symphonic performances that matter deeply to everyone in the room, including community members who normally do not attend.
We’ve made some promising starts. We asked some of the creative minds involved in compelling, community-connected artistic projects how they envisioned this work could evolve and amplify into relevant musical expression by the full ensemble.
Moderator: Eric Booth, President, Everyday Arts Inc.
Patron Growth, 2015 Edition: An Integrated Approach to Sales, Fundraising, and Loyalty (Two Day Seminar)
Taught by seasoned practitioners, Patron Growth, 2015 edition explored how to attract, incentivize, and earn a relationship with patrons; practical strategies for developing a robust patron base; constructive linkages between traditional marketing and development functions; assessment tools to evaluate underlying sales and fundraising; and the fundamentals to build patron loyalty and engagement.
View the PowerPoint presentation for this seminar.
Seminar for New Executive Directors
You’re a new executive director, in your first couple of years on the job. Not only are you navigating your way as the new CEO, but you are asked to be proficient in virtually every area of management, from fundraising and finance to board governance and human resources –and everything in between. This seminar offered an executive-level overview of the fundamentals of orchestra management to give new executive directors the skills to be effective leaders. Participants explored how orchestras are structured and how they function, as well as what is unique to their culture. Participants were also introduced to a number of best practices for working with board, staff, music directors, musicians, donors and community stakeholders. Attendees had the opportunity to share ideas and best practices, create practical take home action plans, and strengthen their collegial networks.
View the materials for this seminar.
Seminar Director: Melia P. Tourangeau, President & CEO, Utah Symphony/Utah Opera
Boards on Fire!
You need your board members to be strategic leaders, compelling ambassadors, and powerful fundraisers. This session explored obstacles in their way, and how to remove them, leaving participants with concrete, practical solutions that don’t cost any money, and don’t require any more time.
View the materials for this seminar.
Building a Culture that Values People, Places, and Purpose
In today’s changing environment, leaders must be adaptive and strategic thinkers, balancing long-term priorities while managing day-to-day concerns. Such times require that leaders act as agents of positive change, igniting creativity and innovation in their organizations. No matter what we do to put in place the best systems and thinking available to us, it is often the human factor that brings us up short. In complex organizations involving multiple stakeholders, how do we manage expectations, avoid burn-out, and handle conflict? How do we hire the right people for the right staff positions and hold on to them over time? And, most importantly, how do we leverage people’s talents and nurture a healthy organizational culture in order to propel our institutions forward productively?
View the PowerPoint presentation for this seminar.
Belief and Confidence: Creating an Environment in which Philanthropic Partnership Thrives
Everyone—including board members, staff, musicians, and volunteers—has an important role to play in building and sustaining a strong philanthropic culture throughout an organization. Engaging all stakeholders in this process is critical in building the belief and confidence necessary for productive philanthropic partnerships. Leaders from various orchestras shared their strategies and successes in developing long-term, effective fundraising efforts.
View the PowerPoint Presentation for this session.
Presenter & Moderator: Ron Schiller, Founding Partner, Aspen Leadership Group
Building Bigger Pops Audiences
Orchestras are challenged to align pops programming with rapidly changing tastes. Yet some orchestras are finding success with new formats, new genres, and innovative presentation elements. These approaches have been successful in growing the pops audience. Our panel of artistic planners discussed what can make a successful pops season.
View the PowerPoint Presentation for this session.
Moderator: Shelly Fuerte, Popular Programming Consultant, SSF Consulting
Developing and Sustaining High Impact Community Engagement Programs
Music can serve as a powerful tool for addressing civic priorities. Yet effective community engagement practice requires orchestras to work in new ways—as artistic collaborators and facilitators of community creativity—and on long time horizons. This is true whether your orchestra is working with public schools, healthcare providers, community development corporations, tribal councils, or other agencies. This session explored relationship-building, co-design, and translation (between the arts and other fields) as key organizational and individual capacities to build when authentic community engagement is a goal.
View the PowerPoint Presentation for this session.
Recruiting, Developing, and Retaining Talent
Recruitment, development, and retention of talented personnel—from trustees to executive and artistic directors to staff and volunteers—are key determinants of organizational success. Yet orchestras devote few resources to talent development, and many underestimate the costs of turnover. This session explored strategies your orchestra can employ to improve its performance by developing and keeping good people.
View the PowerPoint presentation for this session.
Speaker: Pratichi Shah, Flourish Talent Management Solutions, LLC
Unleashing the Power of Collaboration
Teams in which all members strive toward a common goal are more successful. To that end, a number of orchestras are focusing on motivating musicians, artistic directors, staff, trustees, and volunteers to work together on an ongoing basis to secure their collective futures. We heard from members of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and The Cleveland Orchestra about what they have achieved thus far.
Moderator: John McCann, President, Partners in Performance
Creating a Dream Board
Want to know how to recruit amazing leaders, retire others with grace, and get everyone on your board operating at a higher level? This session offered concrete tips for identifying, orienting, and sustaining extraordinary trustees you may not have realized you had access to before.
View the materials for this session.
Evaluating Impact
Sustaining and scaling community engagement and education programs supported by foundation and government funders requires not just delivering service but assessing outcomes. To do so well, data collection, evaluation, and reporting processes must be built into your programs from the beginning. In this session, participants explored what these activities require in terms of time, money, and expertise; how to integrate them into busy schedules and tight budgets; and why they are worth the investment.
View the Resource Guide for this session.
Driving Growth through Digital Innovation
Around the world, cultural institutions are forging bold new paths in digital culture. Among the results are larger and often younger audiences, deeper audience engagement, new community relationships, new revenue, renewed program vitality, and landmark artistic projects. We unpacked findings from a new study, Like, Link, Share: How Cultural Institutions are Embracing Digital Technology, which includes research on such organizations at the San Francisco Symphony, New York Philharmonic and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Lessons learned are relevant to orchestras of every size.
View the Like, Link, Share Study
View the PowerPoint Presentation for this session.
View the materials for this session.
Moderator: Sarah Lutman, Principal, Lutman & Associates
Diversity Progress Report: Learn from Your Peers
The League’s Diversity Work Group has been studying the factors that contribute to low diversity within American orchestras and developing strategies, tactics, and tools that orchestras can employ—independently and collectively—to begin to move the dial.
Detroit Symphony Orchestra: A Case Study
Houston Symphony Orchestra: A Case Study
Chicago Sinfonietta: A Case Study
New Music for New Audiences: Connecting Ideas with Communities
Living composers can take us anywhere with their music. Giving voice to their visions on our stages is essential to the continued vitality of the art form. And, the creation and presentation of new music provides orchestras with authentic avenues for reaching new audiences and connecting with community. A panel of distinguished composers and administrators reflected on important aesthetic developments in American composition and how new work is playing an integral role in developing new audiences.
View the reading materials for this session.
Moderator: Daniel Bernard Roumain, Composer/Performer/Arts Administrator, Sozo Artists
Check This Out: Innovations from Across the Field
This session featured snapshot presentations on innovative projects that you may replicate or adapt for your organization. It included multiple strands of orchestral endeavors, from audience building and artistic projects, to development and marketing, education and community engagement, and technology.
View the Project Descriptions for this session.
Presenters: Meghan Berneking, Director of Communications, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra; Eric Booth, President, Everyday Arts Inc., Elaine Cousins, Volunteer and Board Member/Vice President for Education and Community Engagement, Illinois Symphony Orchestra Guild of Bloomington-Normal; David Fisk, Executive Director, Richmond Symphony; Brenda Nienhouse, Executive Director, Spokane Symphony; Luke Ritchie, Digital Director, Philharmonia Orchestra; Todd Vigil, Director of Marketing, The Phoenix Symphony
How Well Financed is Your Orchestra?
Orchestras that are properly capitalized have the cash to do what they want to do when they want to do it. This session, led by Susan Nelson of TDC, helped participants explore where they stood and how to recognize whether they are undercapitalized or have a business model problem; how to conduct an honest appraisal of the bottom line; and how to understand your orchestra’s financial challenges more fully.
View the PowerPoint presentation for this session.
Susan Nelson, Principal, Technical Development Corporation
Making Music that Matters
The creation and presentation of great music is central to orchestras’ work. We are driven to share this music with others because we have experienced its transformative power. Yet to many Americans, our music seems irrelevant. Can the artistic choices we make—about what music to create and perform, when and where to play, and for and with whom—change their minds? Across the country, some orchestras are experimenting with using music to help communities address complex challenges by giving voice to the concerns of marginalized populations, expressing wonder at the beauty of the natural world, helping addicts recover from substance abuse, and more. This session offered strategies for helping the communities we serve leverage the power of live orchestral music to address complex challenges.
View the PowerPoint presentation for this session.
Speaker: Jesse Rosen, President and CEO, League of American Orchestras
The Public Benefits and Value of Arts and Culture
In 2014, Cuyahoga Arts & Culture, Northeastern Ohio’s public arts agency, commissioned a study of the public benefits of arts and culture. Public funding for the arts depends on a broad recognition of a positive return on public investment. Not surprisingly, the research found that the arts and culture do generate substantial public benefits. It also found, though, that public value is not a static concept: it grows from individuals’ private experiences. Most significantly, the study found that shifts in cultural participation and in regional demographics provide a significant opportunity to help grow the value that all community residents derive from and ascribe to the arts by reinventing and expanding the roles arts organizations play in making communities more vital and lives more meaningful.
What are the challenges and opportunities that these shifts imply for orchestras eager to create value for audiences? What roles do board members, staff members, conductors and musicians need to play to keep orchestras connected to these core issues? How do we help orchestras navigate these changes successfully? This was a lively discussion about how this public value orientation plays out with artists, board members, and the public at large.
View the PowerPoint Presentation for this session.
View materials for this session.
Constituency Meetings
Artistic Administrators
Materials: Presentation - Shana Mathur
Board Members
Materials: Bolstering Orchestral Relevance, Constructive Board Culture Presentation, Presentation - Kjristine Lund, Presentation – Susan Nelson
Development
Materials: Patron Growth Presentation, Art of The Ask Presentation
Education and Community Engagement
Materials: Program Development Presentation
Executive Directors, Group 1
Materials: Patron Growth Presentation
Executive Directors, Group 2
Materials: Patron Growth Presentation, Integrated Media Agreement Presentation, Leading Change Presentation - Group 2
Executive Directors, Group 3-4
Materials: Patron Growth Presentation, Strengthening Board Engagement, Leading Change Presentation - Groups 3-4
Executive Directors Group 5-6
Materials: Patron Growth Presentation, Leading Change Presentation - Groups 5-6
Executive Directors Group 7-8
Materials: Thriving through Personal Leadership Presentation
Marketing, Groups 1-2
Materials: Integrated Media Agreement Presentation, Patron Growth Presentation, Presentation - Shana Mathur
Marketing Groups 3-8
Materials: Patron Growth Presentation, Creating an Emergency Response Plan
Public Relations
Materials: Integrated Media Agreement Presentation, Creating an Emergency Response Plan
Youth Orchestras/College
Materials: HR for Small Shops, Leading Change - Youth
Volunteers
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Gold Book Awards: Youth Leadership Council Sharp Flat Loft Tours Symphony in Flowers Guild 101 Intermezzo Candelight Tour Sky Ball Wine Pull Scouting and Symphony: A Partnership:
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Milestone Achievements Panel: The Emerald City Soiree Symphony Ball 2013 Concerto a Venezia Houston Symphony Centennial Ball
New Members to Future Leaders – Secure Your Organization’s Future Leaders Here! (Board Game): Membership Board Game – Develop Cards Membership Board Game – Engage Cards Membership Board Game – Mentor Cards Membership Board Game – Potpourri Cards Membership Board Game – Recruit Cards Membership Board Game Instruction Sheet
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For a full list of sessions and Conference related materials, visit americanorchestras.org/Conference2015.
Who attended Conference 2015? View a list of delegates by organization or last name.