Sinfonietta CEO reflects on tenure
Jim Hirsch prepares to step down after 16 years
2004; we were half a million in the red, needed to replace two (of four) senior staff members, and the board’s morale was pretty much nonexistent.”
Hirsch immediately focused on fundraising, board recruitment and, perhaps most important, articulating to anyone who would listen what made the Sinfonietta unlike any orchestra in Chicago and, really, the country.
“To me it was obvious even before I joined: It was the organization’s unique and important commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion in classical music,” explains Hirsch. “While that was already an important part of the Sinfonietta’s brand, I didn’t think it was explicitly stated.
“When I started, they were doing their flagpole event — the Martin Luther King Jr. concert — every other year! I went to Paul Freeman and said: ‘Why are we doing this only every other year?’
“He said, ‘Because we thought we’d overplay it.’
“I said: ‘But look at these audience numbers!’ We immediately started programming it on an annual basis, which helped cement the Sinfonietta’s identity.”
And its purpose: to welcome minority musicians and audiences to a classical music world that still has a long way to go to diversify. This was central to Freeman’s vision when he explained it to me over lunch roughly 35 years ago, as he was conceiving the orchestra, which he launched in 1987.
But making the Martin Luther King Jr. concert an annual celebration was just one part of Hirsch’s strategy. He and colleagues created Project Inclusion fellowship programs “to address the dearth of minority musicians playing in U.S. orchestras,” as the Sinfonietta’s website puts it.
And Hirsch has made sure that the Sinfonietta’s programming similarly features voices otherwise infrequently heard in symphony halls.
When music director Chen curates each season, “He will always say: ‘Do we have enough championing for minority composers on every concert?’ ” she says.
“I know what the Sinfonietta stands for, but when you’re carried away with giving each concert its narrative theme, it’s easy to forget about the core mission. And he always has done that for me.”
An unexpected turning point for the Sinfonietta came in 2016, when Hirsch suggested to Chen that the orchestra perform in concert with the rather unconventional, Chicago-based performance-art marching band Mucca Pazza.
“He said, ‘I think they have a strong following,’ ” remembers Chen. “And I’m thinking: I’m a classically trained symphonic conductor. What am I going to do with this unique, 30-piece marching band? I lost two nights of sleep. I almost left my job.”
Chen went along with the plan, leading a concert that featured the Sinfonietta and Mucca Pazza in, of all things, a battle-of-thebands rendition of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture.”
It so happened that several staffers of the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation were in the audience.
“And these people apparently went back to the MacArthur Foundation offices and said: We saw something last night that you just couldn’t believe,” says Hirsch.
“Later that year, I got a phone call in December from the MacArthur Foundation. They said, ‘Jim, we’ve got some exciting news to share.’ ”
The Sinfonietta would be receiving a MacArthur Award for Creative & Effective Institutions, which comes with a check for $625,000. Considering that the Sinfonietta’s annual budget at the time was about $2.2 million, that was a significant figure. Hirsch and colleagues used that windfall to launch a fundraising campaign to match that amount, generating a total of $1.25 million within the first year, he says.
“I’m glad I didn’t quit over that suggestion,” says Chen, with a laugh. Her contract recently was extended through the 2023-24 season.
Thanks to the MacArthur grant and the funds it leveraged, the Sinfonietta now has an endowment of received contributions and pledges valued at about $1.6 million before the coronavirus, says Hirsch. The Sinfonietta’s campaign to push that cushion to $2 million has been put on hiatus during the current crisis.
How will the organization weather the storm?
“I have to be honest: It is devastating,” says Chen of current events. “I think our magic happens so often with live performance, with Sinfonietta programs such as the Dr. King tribute program we do now every year.
“You probably remember, maestro Paul Freeman’s famous encore is (for everyone) to sing ‘We Shall Overcome,’ with the audience holding hands.
“That’s going to be a hard reality. Are we going to hold elbows? We’ll have to be creative in new ways to honor old traditions.
“But in some ways, I think we’re positioned quite well, just because at the Sinfonietta, outside the box is where we live, constantly.”
Hirsch agrees that the Sinfonietta is built to confront the unexpected.
“I think it’s going to make it the way that it has made it over the last 16 years — through innovation and through a unique and important position in the local and national classical music ecosystem,” he says. “Through a very committed staff and board and donor family that is deeply invested in ensuring that the country has at least one orchestra that gives two hoots about serving the entire community, not just a slice of it.”
As for Hirsch, he says he’s not retiring from work, just handing over the Sinfonietta’s reins.
“My successor, Blake-Anthony Johnson, who’s going to do an excellent job, I don’t envy some of the things that he’s going to have to figure out how to navigate around,” says Hirsch, who was executive director of the Old Town School of Folk Music from 1982 to 2000, and executive director of an organization that managed and programmed the Chicago Theatre, from 2000 to 2004.
He’s interested in staying active in arts management, but “I’m ready to just life live at a slightly different pace. The nights of waking up at 2 in the morning and trying to figure out how to deal with this or that — I’m kind of done with that.”