Managing Well and Spotting Talent: Eugene Does It Right

The Eugene Symphony Orchestra (ESO) is as close to being a model small-community orchestra as one can get. They have a high-functioning board of directors that understands the difference between governance and management, and leaves the management to a highly capable staff. The ESO has a very wide range of community partnerships and collaborations, and spent a lot of their time with me exploring how to further grow that area.  The orchestra plays on a very high level - the performance I heard on May 15 of Bruckner's Seventh Symphony was deeply satisfying, played with a sensitivity to phrasing and dynamics that would have done many larger communities' orchestras proud.

Then there is the way the ESO does music director searches. Their track record is nothing short of astonishing. . Rather than take the safe route - a route taken by many of America's smaller and mid-sized orchestras - by choosing an "experienced" music director, the Eugene Symphony has approached finding a new music director with the viewpoint that "we want to be the first stop on someone's rise to a major career." I don't know if they have ever articulated it publicly, but I know that they have thought "if the music director we hire is still here in ten years, we probably made a mistake."  And what have they done since they've adopted that approach? They have hit three home runs. Marin Alsop, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, and now Giancarlo Guerrero are all at various points on the stage of international careers - and all got their start in Eugene. It used to be conventional wisdom that you could not build a major conducting career in America unless you were lucky enough to start at a major, international-level orchestra, as Bernstein did in New York, Tilson Thomas in Boston, or Leonard Slatkin in Saint Louis. The Eugene Symphony Orchestra, single-handedly, has changed the landscape.  And hundreds of similar-sized orchestras across the country have changed the profile of what they're looking for, and of how to do a music director search, copying the Eugene Symphony Orchestra.

Of course this also means that they have set the bar for themselves very high. One appointment like that might be luck - but three? That means they know how to do it right, and that, in turn, leads to expectations that they'll do it again now that they are once more in a music director search. And you know what? I imagine they will!