{"id":3434,"date":"2025-04-01T22:20:02","date_gmt":"2025-04-02T02:20:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=3434"},"modified":"2025-04-01T22:47:15","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T02:47:15","slug":"whats-an-orchestra-for-and-the-crisis-in-soft-power-diplomacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2025\/04\/whats-an-orchestra-for-and-the-crisis-in-soft-power-diplomacy.html","title":{"rendered":"What’s an Orchestra For? — and The Crisis in “Soft Power” Diplomacy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A montage from Peter Bogdanoff’s continuous visual track for the SDSO “New World Encounters” concert<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Addressing high school students in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, a few weeks ago, former US Ambassador to Russia John Beyrle said that the US State Department faces \u201can existential crisis.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking on my latest NPR \u201cMore than Music\u201d feature, \u201cWhat\u2019s an Orchestra For?<\/a>,\u201d he further comments: \u201cSoft power\u201d \u2013 the use of music and education as an instrument of foreign policy \u2013 \u201cstill exists. The\u00a0question is whether we as a country understand that it, too, makes America great. And I am afraid that President Trump does not understand that well enough, that his view of the world is \u2018might makes right.\u2019 I think that\u2019s a potentially cataclysmic mistake<\/strong>. I fear that we will compromise our ability to influence other countries, to pursue interests that dovetail with our own national interests.\u201d Beyrle also described a destructive \u201cclimate of fear\u201d within the government. You can hear it all here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ambassador Beyrle was visiting South Dakota for a week-long \u201cNew World Encounters\u201d festival exploring jazz as an instrument of cultural diplomacy. The participants included the ebullient French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, who delivered a lecture\/recital on \u201cRavel and Jazz\u201d at three universities two hours apart. The culminating orchestral concert included narration and a continuous visual track. My radio program showcases the SDSO festival (part of the NEH-funded \u201cMusic Unwound\u201d consortium that I direct) as an exemplary exercise in how orchestras can (and should) proactively foster mutual understanding throughout a community of patrons and students. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

SDSO Music Director Delta David Gier, who personally superintends the orchestra\u2019s thematic festivals, says that his profession is undergoing an overdue \u201cmetamorphosis\u201d — that the template of the \u201cjet-setting maestro,\u201d<\/strong> with multiple jobs and no genuine home base, is receding. On NPR, I comment: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The British music critic Richard Morrison, in a recent piece for BBC Music Magazine, wrote: ‘The age of the jet-setting maestro is over, or should be \u2013 for environmental, financial, social and indeed musical reasons.’ Morrison was responding to the Chicago Symphony\u2019s choice for its next music director: Klaus Makela, <\/strong>who is not yet 30 years old and will concurrently take over Amsterdam\u2019s Concertgebouw Orchestra. A veteran music critic of my acquaintance called that \u201cthe stupidest decision\u201d <\/strong>he\u2019d seen in decades on the job. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I continue: \u201cThe template in question \u2013 now a dysfunction crippling classical music internationally \u2013 originated with the late Ronald Wilford of Columbia Artists Management. Wilford realized he could maximize the income and prestige of his marquis conductors by stationing them on multiple podiums, preferably an ocean apart. This strategy was commercial \u2013 it had nothing to do with making better music. In Chicago itself, the orchestra\u2019s first two, formative music directors \u2013 Theodore Thomas and Frederick Stock \u2013 were civic fixtures whose combined tenure lasted half a century. Concurrently, Boston\u2019s Serge Koussevitzky and Philadelphia\u2019s Leopold Stokowski famously pushed the artistic envelope. It would never remotely have occurred to any of them to seek additional employment elsewhere.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to Beyrle, Bavouzet, and Gier, participants in the NPR show include composer John Luther Adams (whose An Atlas of Deep Time<\/em> was premiered and recorded by the SDSO), and faculty members and students from South Dakota State University (Brookings, SD), Dakota State University (Madison, SD), and Lincoln High School (Sioux Falls, SD). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For me \u2013 and I\u2019m sure for many others \u2013 what most lingered afterward wasn\u2019t an idea, or an apprehension, but Bavouzet\u2019s sublime performance of the slow movement of Ravel\u2019s Concerto in G \u2013 music that exemplifies how beauty is a fleeting experience somehow sad but consoling. It ends the broadcast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LISTENING GUIDE<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4:10 — Ambassador John Beyrle addresses high school students: the Voice of America in Soviet Russia<\/p>\n\n\n\n

8:50 — Ambassador Beyrle addresses university students: an “existential crisis” at the US State Department<\/p>\n\n\n\n

14:00 — SDSO Music Director Delta David Gier on the importance of moving to Sioux Falls<\/p>\n\n\n\n

16:00 — “The age of the jet-set maestro is over — or should be.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

18:15 — Composer John Luther Adams on the South Dakota Symphony<\/p>\n\n\n\n

19:25 — A Sioux Falls high school orchestra plays Dvorak<\/p>\n\n\n\n

22:45 — Dakota State University sophomore Nora Zoller on the importance of arts education<\/p>\n\n\n\n

32:00 — Ambassador Beyrle reflects on “might makes right” diplomacy — a “cataclysmic mistake”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

39:15 — An under-reported story: the major US charitable foundations have given up on orchestras<\/p>\n\n\n\n

41:00 — Jean-Efflam Bavouzet talks about and performs the sublime slow movement of Ravel’s concerto in G<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three of my most popular (and still resilient) blogs address the jetset conductor:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What’s an Orchestra For? — Mulling Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Resignation from the San Francisco Symphony<\/a><\/blockquote>