`What happened with this orchestra is kind of like the stars lining up in the right place,” says Robert L. Hanson, adjusting his white tie in his dressing room backstage at Elgin’s Hemmens Theatre, just before going out on stage to conduct his Elgin Symphony Orchestra.
A slight exaggeration perhaps, but there is no denying the remarkable success story that is the Elgin Symphony, now in its 48th season as the largest and highest paid professional orchestra outside Chicago. Hanson himself has been guiding the orchestra’s artistic fortunes for half of its life, beginning as assistant conductor in 1974 and graduating to the post of music director in 1985.
Collective hard work–not just the stars in happy alignment–has made the ensemble a model for other suburban orchestras. Hanson’s own leadership and belief in the orchestra have been crucial, of course, but so has his ability to translate that belief into solid community support. All this has turned the ensemble from the scrappy, amateur-level orchestra it was until the early 1980s into a sturdy professional ensemble many consider the best of the 50-odd orchestras that dot the suburban landscape of northeastern Illinois.
“For any orchestra to have had, for nearly 25 years, a conductor with the consistent artistic vision of Bob is rare in our business,” says Michael Pastreich, the orchestra’s executive director since 1995. “He has seen the orchestra through so many transitions and he remains strongly focused on how we move up that next rung of the ladder.”
And it’s not just the music director and manager who are bullish about the orchestra. In a comparatively short time the Elgin Symphony has become the focus of the cultural life of Elgin, a predominantly blue-collar, old-money town (population 77,000 and growing) straddling Kane and Cook counties, better known for watch manufacturing than as a regional center of art, theater and music.
The Elgin Symphony is out to singlehandedly turn that around; in fact, the evidence suggests it’s more than halfway there. Consider:
The city of Elgin directly funds $150,000 of the orchestra’s approximately $1 million budget. Local restaurants have struck an agreement with the orchestra management to provide two-for-the-price-of-one dinners for the orchestra’s Classic and Pops subscribers. Big corporate sponsors like Sears, First Card and Panasonic have signed on, while several of the Elgin area’s top corporate honchos are among the orchestra’s 30-member board of directors.
Subscription sales, moreover, have increased 20 percent from 1996 to the present, while individual and corporate support has jumped more than 100 percent. This season the orchestra’s Classic series concerts have been broadcast nationally via Chicago’s fine arts radio station WFMT-FM 98.7. And former Sen. Paul Simon narrated Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” at one of the orchestra’s numerous educational concerts.
“The word is getting out about us,” says Pastreich, who is the son of San Francisco Symphony executive director Peter Pastreich.
When one talks with orchestra executives, it’s clear the strong support of the city is motivated by more than a love of music. “I understand that about 10 years ago Elgin got the image of a city with a serious crime problem,” the executive director says. “Such images die hard. The city knows the Elgin Symphony brings in 56 percent of its ticket buyers from outside Elgin. They see us as a means of really changing the city’s image.”
As for the orchestra’s 69 musicians, who are drawn from the Chicago area’s large pool of highly capable free-lance instrumentalists, it’s evident that their loyalty to the Elgin Symphony is closely bound with their respect for Hanson’s musical abilities and the veteran players’ familiarity with his conducting style. “We put our hearts and souls into every note,” says principal hornist Dan Fackler. The longest-tenured player is violinist Jean Hove, who has played in the orchestra every season since its inception and looks forward to her 50th anniversary in 1999-2000–which also happens to be the orchestra’s golden anniversary.
Prospective players come from as far as Russia, Germany and Portugal to audition for the eight or so orchestra chairs that fall vacant every season. Although a musician who performs all 50 concerts the orchestra presents annually in Elgin and at the Prairie Arts Center in Schaumburg would draw an annual salary of only about $8,000, those who know how to hustle grab multiple playing jobs with other orchestras and chamber groups around the metropolitan area. Some supplement that income with teaching, thereby making a decent, although hardly munificent, living.
Hanson admits his biggest problem is hanging onto his best players. “We get some great musicians but we know eventually most of them will leave for better-paying orchestras,” he says.
Because his players are so peripatetic, the music director must plan his seasons well ahead of rival orchestras and impresarios in the region. Concert dates at the 1,253-seat Hemmens are booked three years in advance; the musicians and the other suburban orchestras in which they play are apprised of those dates. This advance planning, Hanson contends, enables the orchestra to hire better musicians, while the musicians are able to make better salaries because they’re able to play in more than one area ensemble.
“I like to think of us as a Triple A baseball club, because this orchestra allows the musicians to play big solos they wouldn’t be able to do as a section player in the CSO,” says the conductor. “With us they can cut their teeth on big repertory like the Mahler First Symphony and learn how to lead a section of good players who have graduated from the top music schools.”
The music director, whose day job is teaching music at Elgin Community College (“I am probably the only conductor in the world who is tenured”) believes in challenging musicians and stretching the ears of his audience. Four of this season’s six Classic series programs contain 20th Century American works. Subscriptions began to diminish over the last six seasons because conservative listeners felt Hanson was leaning too heavily towards the moderns. So Hanson held back a bit, and today subscriptions are back up. It is a matter of keeping faith with the public, building loyalty from there, Hanson says.
“There are times when you go out to the podium and feel as if your family is out there in the hall. We don’t compare ourselves to the CSO. But I’ve always felt there is no reason we shouldn’t compare ourselves to some of the second-tier orchestras in the country. Because of the great player pool we draw upon, we are capable of playing at their level. And often we do.”
Why Elgin? As it turns out, the city has a long cultural tradition going back to its incorporation in 1854, only 17 years after the founding of Chicago, about 42 miles to the southeast. Pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff gave one of the final recitals here before his death in 1943. Elgin also has a first-rate adult chorus (the Elgin Choral Union), a fine children’s chorus and other arts institutions that play to the cultural needs of a northwest suburban corridor that is projected to experience considerable population and economic growth into the next millennium.
Founded in 1950 by Douglas Steensland, its first music director, the Elgin Symphony began as an amateur ensemble under the auspices of Elgin Community College. The late Margaret Hillis succeeded him in 1971, at which point the orchestra began a long, slow climb to artistic respectability.
The turning point came in 1981 when the organization became an independent non-profit corporation with its own board of directors and funding sources. When the Minnesota-born, Northwestern-educated Hanson became artistic chief four years later, the Elgin Symphony was the first suburban orchestra in the area to go from amateur to professional status. “We made the transition very gradually,” he recalls. “There wasn’t any huge bloodbath where we had to ask a bunch of players to leave, all in one season.”
Once the operation became fully professional, everything took off from there. Community interest increased. The orchestra was able to begin serious fundraising. Good players came out of the woodwork, eager to be part of Hanson’s ensemble. Management embarked on one of the most innovative series of family, children’s and in-school educational programs of any orchestra of its size or budget category.
“The crucial element (in building new audiences) is exposure,” Hanson insists. “If people outside the world of classical music go only once to a concert, chances are they’re not going to like it. If you can get them back two more times, they’re gonna like it.”
With Hanson’s 25th anniversary with the orchestra approaching next season, and his orchestra’s 50th anniversary the season after that, he and Pastreich are considering a statewide concert tour that would include presenting educational programs as well as concerts in each town the orchestra visits. If and when the tour comes to pass, you can be sure it will be carefully and deliberately planned.
“One of the mistakes so many orchestras our size make is trying to get there too fast,” Hanson says. “Our growth only worked (since 1985) because we took more than a decade to achieve it. If we had tried to do everything in two or three years, I’m sure we wouldn’t exist today.”
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The Elgin Symphony will present its fifth Classic series program of the season, music by Mozart and Gustav Holst directed by associate conductor Stephen E. Squires, at 8 p.m. Saturday and 3:30 p.m. next Sunday at Hemmens Theatre, Elgin. Phone 847-888-4000.
