Unsung musical heroes: The entrepreneurs

In the past five years, the Philadelphia area has gained three thriving music organizations: Dolce Suono, Lyric Fest and Tempesta di Mare. Together, they've added about 15 concerts to the local music schedule. All three groups exist because enterprising individuals dreamed them up and invested the time and energy that lies behind every performance we attend.

This is a time-honored process, of course. Even the mighty Philadelphia Orchestra was once only a concept in the minds of some 19th-Century visionaries.

In the classic capitalistic model, an entrepreneur sees the possibilities in a new enterprise, rounds up financing from banks and investors, and assembles a crew of employees and associates. And the public benefits from a new railroad or grocery store.

In the arts, a cultural entrepreneur rounds up grants and donations and assembles a crew of performers, administrators and volunteers, and presents the public with a new music series or a new theater troupe. Performers get to strut their stuff and pay their rent. Nearby restaurateurs get to serve customers anxious to reach their seats before curtain time.

Oh, those grant proposals

The American system for financing the arts has become one of the most daunting combinations of maze and obstacle course ever devised. Our arts organizations generally derive about 50% of their income from ticket sales. The rest comes from private donors and grants from foundations, corporations and government (at three levels). One local choral conductor told me he sends out 80 grant proposals every season.

Each of these funding sources requires a different approach. Ticket buyers must be wooed with brochures and posters. Small donors receive mass mailings. Large donors get personal calls. The grant dispensers all issue different forms and pursue different objectives.

But funding is only a preliminary. Having obtained the money, you still must produce something. The go-getters who launched these organizations tend to be talented musicians who seem to possess an encyclopedic knowledge of their specialties. The latest Dolce Suono program awed me with the knowledge of the repertoire that had to lie behind a program crammed with unfamiliar pieces for flute, oboe, clarinet and piano. A typical Lyric Fest program combines a knowledge of the song repertoire with all the research required to string 30 songs along a thematic framework composed of excerpts from letters and other historical sources. The Tempesta di Mare programs, like all Baroque concerts, require scholar-musicians who understand the changes in styles and performance practice that took place during 150 years of musical history.

And, of course, the organizers also must recruit musicians, rent performance space and schedule rehearsals around the calendars of busy performers.

The names, please

The people behind these three organizations should have their names inscribed on some kind of civic honor roll. Flutist Mimi Stillman is the live wire responsible for Dolce Suono. Baroque musicians Gwyn Roberts and Richard Stone produce Tempesta di Mare. Lyric Fest is the brainchild of two vocalists, Suzanne DuPlantis and Randi Marrazzo, and pianist Laura Ward.

But much as I appreciate their efforts, they are only the newest members of an elite club. My full list of Philadelphia's currently active musical entrepreneurs would have to include James Freeman (Orchestra 2001), Karl Middleton (Philadelphia Classical Symphony), Joan Kimball and Robert Wiemken (Piffaro), Elissa Berardi and Bruce Bekker (Philomel), Vera Wilson (Astral Artists), Valentin Radu (Vox Amadeus) and Tony Checchia and his colleagues at the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society.

Past members of this gutsy elite include Marc Mostovoy, founder (in 1964) of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. And let's not forget Michael Korn, who in 1972 created the Philadelphia Singers, an organization that survived his premature death in 1991.

So here's a New Year's toast to the cultural entrepreneurs of our city. They brightened our past. They light up our future. And they would all love to get a check along with the thought.





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