There are lots of things I have been missing. One thing is the arts. Attending a play or a concert. Seeing haze slowly fill the room, people taking their seats, the artists getting ready. These spaces have been empty and quiet. Such the case for the North Carolina Symphony who has had to pivot the offerings online but guided by their mission, they are making sure that the show still goes on. We talk to Sandi Macdonald, President & CEO, of the NC Symphony about what pivoting has looked like for them and what this time means for art and cultural organizations.
There are lots of things I have been missing. One thing is the arts. Attending a play or a concert. Seeing haze slowly fill the room, people taking their seats, the artists getting ready. These spaces have been empty and quiet. Such the case for the North Carolina Symphony who has had to pivot the offerings online but guided by their mission, they are making sure that the show still goes on. We talk to Sandi Macdonald, President & CEO, of the NC Symphony about what pivoting has looked like for them and what this time means for art and cultural organizations.
Website: https://www.ncsymphony.org/
Social Media: @ncsymphony
North Carolina Symphony Youtube Channel
(sound effect of orchestra warming up)
[00:00:00] Kenneth Brown Jr: Sandi Macdonald grew up around music.
Sandi Macdonald: So, I was the kid in your family, who took piano lessons and violin lessons, a little bit of guitar and, studied voice, actually I had a singing teacher.
Kenneth Brown Jr: But she wasn't the best average or mediocre is what she would say.
Sandi Macdonald: But I was completely mediocre at it all. I didn't love practicing. I wasn't drawn to practicing the way a professional musician, the way that it is required, that is required of a professional musician.
Kenneth Brown Jr: However, she found the right notes when she discovered a new path.
(music plays "The Summit" by Blue Dot Sessions)
[00:01:00] Sandi Macdonald: And I could never imagine becoming a teacher. So, I discovered that there were people who made the circumstances and who created the circumstance that allowed people to, who are much better performers, much more committed to the creation of the art and I wanted to be part of that group. I wanted to be around those people. I wanted to make their life as great as it possibly could be. I wanted to bring people, I want to just tell their stories. I wanted to bring people to the performances.
And this has been her job with the North Carolina Symphony since she joined as president and CEO in 2011. And you can imagine that this year, her job, like many others in the artists has been a bit tough. Has she figured out ways to bring music to North Carolinians and educate children across the state?
(music break)
[00:02:00] Kenneth Brown Jr: This is Pivots, a podcast about navigating transitions, negotiating change, and reimagining our world. I'm Kenneth Brown Jr and I chatted with Sandi to talk about the steps they have taken to pivot during the pandemic, how they are leaning into their mission and what this time means for them and for the arts. So, sit back, and let's take a trip to the symphony.
(music break)
Kenneth Brown Jr: How do you define pivots? What does pivots or pivoting look like for you?
Sandi Macdonald: For our organization, it has meant rethinking, almost every aspect about our program delivery. And there isn't one [00:03:00] bit of our organization that has not needed to shift, first in our thinking and then in how we are approaching our work and, and then delivery. So, I think of it as a, maybe a somersault, pivot sounds so lovely, doesn't it? But and I think of myself as a bit of a whirling dervish in all of this where I'm just like, Oh, okay. Yeah. So, I, you know, I would say that I think we've all pivoted in our lifetime and in our work, when, you know, the situation has arisen. And but this has been a little bit longer than those momentary pivots.
Kenneth Brown Jr: Speaking of, kind of shifting first, your thinking and then shifting the actions what has that looked like for the symphony?
Sandi Macdonald: So, on March 12th, I, after having a meeting with our [00:04:00] executive committee, interrupted a rehearsal of the orchestra. It was a fantastic rehearsal for sold-out concerts that weekend and I indicated to the orchestra that we needed to all go home, that, that weekends' performances were about to be canceled as we could no longer gather as a large group. And I reflect on that moment in the time I thought it was a short intermission. I thought we were canceling that week. Maybe we'd cancel four weeks of performance and little did I know that that was going to be our final full orchestra gathering, music-making moment for a long time. So, as you think about the important photographs of your life, and you've got a record of, of, of all of those...those moments, there's no record of that moment. There's just the memory etched in my [00:05:00] brain of me saying. You know, we will be back with you with what the plan is going forward. And at that point, we thought we were in postponement mode, which was what we were, and then it became clear that we could not perform together for the health and safety of ourselves and of our community.
Kenneth Brown Jr: Yeah, what was that transition moment like when you? You were thinking initially like we're just going to be postponed like a few weeks, a month or so, like, we'll be fine but then realizing that, oh man, this is bigger than postponing for more than a few weeks. What was that moment like when you realized that there was something bigger, at hand?
Sandi Macdonald: Very frightening. It was very frightening because, you know, I've done a lot of planning in my career and it's very sequential, very, you know, sort of straight line with a few curves, [00:06:00] which, you know, unanticipated opportunities, challenges that come your way and this was...this was very, very different. So I relied on my past experiences in planning and, um, and there was a moment when I realized straight-line thinking is not what we need here. We need to, we need, you know, it's the Rubik's cube. It's the, it's the four dimensions kind of planning that we, that we need to, to have in place. But one of the things that you are very fortunate to have at, there's a couple of things that we're very fortunate as an institution job. One is a fantastic board of trustees that I could rely on for advice and counsel, fantastic community partners, leadership from your organization, in fact, were civic [00:07:00] leaders who were thinking also about what was happening in, in our world. We also had made a shift in our education. Concerts, which are a huge portion of our mission, and we had actually moved those onto a digital platform. We had done so as a proof-of-concept project, and before we got to April, we had moved all of those programs online and we were able to be continuing to serve the fourth and fifth graders from across the state of North Carolina and as it turned out beyond. So...and then, you know, those were the days of lockdown and so now I've got, you know, we all have the benefits of now hindsight on this and, I've had the benefit to look back on some of my documents, [00:08:00] some of my thinking during that time and we knew first and foremost, we would always be guided by health and safety. I did not want, I couldn't bear the burden of anyone on, in our family getting sick and, and worse. So, you know, that is that once you're clear on that, you know, you've got more clarity about all of the other things you're going to do. And anyway, at that time we were all in lockdown, but our musicians are a creative force. We are lucky to employ the largest group of performing artists between Washington DC and Atlanta and we turned that force loose. And they became very, very creative on what they were able to produce from their homes to keep the connection with our audience.
Kenneth Brown Jr: Yeah. I was watching on your YouTube page and just watching [00:09:00] the, I think it's the "From our home to yours" and just seeing all the mashups of people from the individual houses and wherever they were at and all of those different sounds coming together which I could imagine, you know, being in a big hall and that's easier to do, but when you get individual pieces, putting all of that together must be a big lift.
Sandi Macdonald: It, it absolutely is, and we are very fortunate to have one of our colleagues, a member of our orchestra has a dual degree from Rice University in cello performance and he has a recording degree. And so, he has been our archival audio recorder, recording engineer and has become, has been developing his skills in film filming and so he is certainly continuing to be a leader in our organization in a very different way than we originally thought he would be.
[00:10:00] Kenneth Brown Jr: I wanna dive back into a sentence you mentioned earlier talking about relying on your previous planning experience to kind of help you navigate this pandemic and pivoting to different ideas and different solutions. And I was wondering, was there a specific moment or any specific, specific instances in your life that you have kind of drawn on to help you?
Sandi Macdonald: It has required all of the tough and happy moments of my life to, to, uh to get me through this. And as I also mentioned the external resources that we have, but, you know, there's nothing that matches this time, and we are a performing organization. We love to be with people, we like to be in the same room with a lot of people [00:11:00] and so that, that, that just, you just had to say, okay, this is it. So, I would say it's mostly, you know when you, you had to face the truth of your circumstance and there's many times in your life where you've made the small little decisions that were moments of truth for you where it's like, this is it. "This is, this is, uh, this is the next step I need to take." And so that's, that's what we've, I've, I've relied on.
Kenneth Brown Jr: Has there been anything that you have been learning in general over the past few months or any new about the work that you do over the past few months?
Sandi Macdonald: The past few months have reinforced for me the importance of the orchestra as a community asset and if I could just take you down a trip down memory lane, this orchestra was created as a WPA [00:12:00] project. So, it was the...way back in 1932, when the federal government was seeking to employ the artists across our nation. And so, this orchestra was created. And so, imagine what it was like, let's imagine you were in your twenties or thirties in 1932. Imagine what your life had been like those previous two decades, you had seen a pandemic you've been old enough to know that someone in your family might've been ill, you would have known perhaps someone in your family had gone off to fight in World War One. And you knew what you know, you were deeply affected by the depression. And so, imagine that group of musicians getting together and at that time we were getting, they were getting together in Chapel Hill. They would gather together, and they would get on school buses [00:13:00] and they will travel around delivering music education concerts that you know, sort of up and down for that early day of the organization and in the forties when the legislature made the decision that they wanted a state orchestra and that that orchestra was going to serve the third, fourth, fifth graders across the state with a music education program. So that I've been thinking a lot about that service that has continued to this day and how we have been able to continue it online. And...so I spend a lot of time saying yes to people. Yes, we can do that. Yes. We can be involved in that civic activity. Yes, we can. How can we help you? What, what can the creative minds at the North Carolina Symphony help lift up in your, in your world? How can we make your students think differently? How can we help your [00:14:00] employees feel more relaxed in their workforce, in their workplace?
Kenneth Brown Jr: Wow, that's good and I think that's a point that lots of folks are trying to realize is how can I help and where can I be helpful? And all of the yeses you have said, what do you hope sticks around long after the pandemic is over?
Sandi Macdonald: You know, I'm, I am an optimist and I, we have been able to use technology in a very different way, which is...enable it enabling us to reach even more people so I hope we can continue to keep that. I hope we can continue to be creative and say yes and I also hope that some of our programs that we are about to [00:15:00] launch, I'll give you two examples. One is our state, nope, sorry. "One State. One Score." So, take one piece of music and have people, regardless of their, their instrument of choice, play that score. Now we have to come together online. And so, you might've seen "The Planets” on YouTube that we did where our musicians recorded that at home. So, when we, when we have this program in place, this fall the students who I'm thinking of, classroom students. So, these are elementary and middle school students who are taking music class, involved in their band program, or, you know, whatever program, their jazz studies program at their, at their elementary, middle, or high school are contributing their piece, we mix it all together and we have this statewide offering. I hope we [00:16:00] can keep the germ of that idea and actually get together in person. So, that would be a hopeful thing. Another is we're launching "Musical Meditations" so five-minute clips where you can in your busy day, you could be a teacher at your home, you could be the family teacher. You could be, you know, a busy, busy banker and tired of, of zoom and you know, just click on a musical meditation and with the visuals, from one of our state parks in front of you and listen to five minutes’ worth of music to lift you out of where you are.
(music plays "Sals Piano Solo" by Blue Dot Sessions)
Kenneth Brown Jr: Time...this moment in time, what do you think it means for the performing artists and for cultural organizations?
Sandi Macdonald: This has been a time where, [00:17:00] you know, your mission matters and as it does in any tough moment. And our mission has the word "statewide service and music education”, and we are living that and so being guided by that and absence does make the heart grow fonder and so there is tremendous desire for, from our communities, because we do serve the entire state for us to be able to gather back together again in the performance of full orchestral performances. But, you know, we help the communities tap into their humanity. We help people tap into their humanity. And so [00:18:00] It's just reinforcing all of those positive influences that the music-making from the orchestra can, can bring to all people.
Kenneth Brown Jr: What words would you offer to someone who might be going through various shifts, various pivots, and that this, this time...this pandemic has really put someone through the wringer and they're listening just to hear how other people have navigated and process this time. What would you, what words would you offer?
Sandi Macdonald: I'm told this is not going to last forever and I'm, I have a belief that it can't last forever. So, this is a moment in time. Use this time wisely and that might be self-reflection. I think we're all leaders, no matter what our role is in the community, within which we live and whether it's in our home, whether it's in our classroom, we are all, you know, we have to [00:19:00] tap into our leadership and understand that we're the, the concept of being part of a bigger community gives me great solace and...and so I would ask us all to think about that the bigger community and something that I personally depend on is, is the joy of helping someone else and, you know, in those tough moments knowing that someone else is having perhaps a tougher time than I'm having, how can I reach out and offer some assistance to those people?
Kenneth Brown Jr: What gives you hope?
Sandi Macdonald: The history that I told you, you know, as we reflect back. We have had, so these past two, the two decades that proceed the current COVID-19 circumstance had been pretty easy going compared to the musicians and the administrators that started the [00:20:00] North Carolina Symphony, Holy cow and so maybe I've got it easy, so maybe that gives me hope. I don’t (inaudible) anyway. I'm a hopeful person. I believe I believe in science. I believe in that, I believe that the scientists are going to figure this out, that we're going to get a vaccine and that... it will be a different world, but that we will, we will be a healthier place than we are today.
Kenneth Brown Jr: Well, thank you so much for joining me and thank you for this conversation. I really do appreciate it. How can people learn more about the Symphony and all the happenings that you all have going on?
Sandi Macdonald: Well, our website is available in North Carolina Symphony N C symphony dot org. We are working remotely for [00:21:00] the health and safety of our staff. And so best we, we've got a skeleton staff here, and certainly, you can reach out to our telephone line there, but I just strongly recommend that you go to our website and I'm listed direct email to me. I respond to all of our communications, the communications that I receive so.
Kenneth Brown Jr: Thank you very much.
Sandi Macdonald: Thank you and best, best of luck and best wishes to you and in your career progress. And I thank you for your work at the Fletcher Foundation
(music plays "Sals Piano Solo" by Blue Dot Sessions)
Kenneth Brown Jr: You've been listening to Pivots, a podcast about navigating transitions, negotiating change, and reimagining our world. You can also connect with the North Carolina [00:22:00] Symphony on social media by looking them up on Facebook or on Twitter and Instagram with the handle at NC Symphony. Pivots is a project the A.J Fletcher Foundation produced and hosted by me. Kenneth Brown Jr. Our music is composed by blue dot sessions. Sound effects from free sound.org. You can hear this episode and more wherever you listen to podcasts or go to our show page at www dot pivots-a-j-f dot simplecast dot com. See you next time. [00:23:00].