An Intern's Adventures: Driving Miss Caroline

Tuesday night I was privileged with one of the best random intern tasks I've gotten in a while: driving our fabulous guest artist, Caroline Goulding, back to her hotel! We left after the delightful post concert party in high spirits...but quickly realized that the situation was essentially setting us as stars for the next horror movie. 

Evidence?

1. We left a party, where we were dressed all fancy, celebrating a great life experience.
2. We were both young, pretty and blonde. 
3. It was dark, and we were driving on an even darker road, essentially in the middle of nowhere. 
4. We had to stop for gas, causing us to get out of the vehicle, thus making us even more venerable.
5. We then got mildly lost...Okay, well really I just missed a turn, needed to turn around and then was a little confused as to which way I needed to go to get back on track. (Again, it was dark and I don't normally drive out that way!) 
6. The road to the hotel seemed abnormally long, and I was thoroughly convinced we missed it until we actually saw signs for the Ashbrooke. 
7. When we finally did arrive, in one piece mind you, Caroline mentioned that she left her key in her room...thus rendering us locked out of the building completely. Luckily, we could look up the number for the hotel, get connected to the night time security guard. 
8. This, however, could have been very dangerous. He told us to meet him outside the office and that he'd arrive in a few minutes. Really, that could have easily been all a part of his sinister plan to lure us in. We are lucky to have survived. 
9. Lastly, I had to drive all the way back to the office to unload our traveling box office and then home in the dark and quiet. It was dark and noisy you know things would be fine, it's the quiet you have to watch out for!! 
10. Oh, and nearly the whole way to Egg Harbor...we talked about scary movies. If that's not enough to have the Scream monster get us, I don't know what is! 

So, there you have it. I am happy to report that both Caroline and I made it home safely, no worse for wear. I did see some deer on the way home, which was kind of frightening in that I really didn't want them to run in front of my car, but otherwise all is well! 

What on earth do we do all day?!

I like to tell my friends at school and home that I pretty much have the best job ever. I mean, I get to work in an office with two hysterical bosses (plus all the fun and wonderful people who are in and out every day), drink all the coffee I want, and hear incredible music. What's not to love, right? 

However. Sometimes, the whole "selling tickets and doing office work" bit -- well, it gets a bit old. 

So, we have to find ways to entertain ourselves! To break up the time when I spend an hour and a half folding paper inserts and stuffing them into envelopes (not that that isn't thrilling. Gee, how I love keeping the postal service in business!). This subject came up tonight before the concert, and we (Sharon, Laura and myself) came up with our list of favorite activities to do in the office (in no particular order). Here we go!!

• Drink iced mochas. This is particularly important during the very hot and humid days we've been having, where we are caught in a catch-22 of needing coffee, but it also being very hot. We have even resorted to making our own iced coffees when we are really busy, by chilling mugs of coffee in our tiny fridge and using ice acquired from our neighbors at the Village Green. 
• Throwing things! This can be very dangerous, or just slightly irritating, depending on the object/piece of candy.
• On that same line: keeping away from sharp objects! Since we all get a little stressed and jumpy during the concert weeks, using safety scissors  is really just the best option for all of us. So, if your letters arrive with fun designs cut in them, or just appear to have been hand ripped: you know why!
• Enjoying the occasional Youtube gem.
• Eating oreos. Particularly mini ones. (Background: Sharon walked into the office the other day and announces: "I brought you guys coffee creamer and Oreos. Because I thought, you can't have coffee without Oreos.") 
• Organizing supplies in the back of the office and coming up with creative labels. For instance, a few weeks ago we sorted out holiday decorations into two boxes which I then labeled "Christmas" and "Not Christmas"
• Having adventures in the woods! Also known as: sending Alisa to the Coke machine at the Village Green (there is a small path connecting us through some trees that is kind of like the Room of Requirement, and it's sometimes tricky to get into!) 
• Listening to Pandora (my favorite station is the Film Scores one -- what's yours?)
• Every day is a great day for arts 'n' crafts! Break up the time by turning an every day project into something fun and creative! (Preferably with glitter)
• Use Laura's Android App to tell us what song is playing on WPR 
• Fire or give raises to each other as needed
• Share fun life stories (we all know everyone's pets by name, and could probably give you a brief life story/extended family medical history)
• Play 52 million pick-up with the tickets you've just spilled on the floor...
• Plan out fun t-shirts and calendars featuring various soloists/members of the orchestras (Because who wouldn't love 12 months of Victor?!) 
• Play Tetris with the items in the tote for the traveling box office (I hold the high score, thank you very much!)
• Delight in the random street names that patrons live on. (Hey, my street is named "June Ave" ANYTHING is more exciting than that!)
• Make detailed plans for this weekend's "Girl's Night"! (Having your boss's four-year-old pick out your nail polish is a must!)
• Plan fantastic "alternative" careers (Get ready for Alisa and Laura's hit book, and KT's traveling ice cream/cookie delivery service!) 

Sooo...now you're probably looking at this thinking "Well, when the heck do you sell me my tickets?!?!" But, of course, we must bear in mind that these adventures do not happen every day. In fact, it would get boring if they did. We would then need to come up with new activities to break up THAT monotony! And then we'd never get any work done at all!

An Intern's Adventures: Mystery Solving!

An intern takes on many different tasks, and is thus required to wear many different hats. On one particular day, this intern had to put on her Mystery Solver hat! 
 I was working on cataloging all of the recordings in our PMF archives. When we are in the middle of our 59th season, we have a lot of different recordings in a lot of different formats.You would think that in this advanced day and age, we would have most of our stuff on CD's. 

  But...Since CD's have not been around as long as we have...most of our records are actually records. And cassette tapes, beta max tapes (I barely know what those are!!!) mini CD's (I definitely don't know what those are...) and VHS tapes. 

Luckily for me, it seemed as thought most of records (in whatever form they may have come in) were neatly labeled with the concert year, number and even some of the pieces*. *The pieces were of course labeled in teeny, tiny writing in order for all of them to fit on those smaller than necessary scraps of paper included in a cassette tape.* However, at the end of organizing the stacks of recordings, I came across 4 CD's that were labeled "Concert #8" and "C0ncert #9" (two CD's per concert) -- but no year! No track names. No nothing, except what number the concerts were. 

Now, it's easy enough to rule out what years they did not come from, because I'm pretty sure Thor Johnson did not have access to that kind of technology. But! They could be from the last ten years, or so, when we were using them. So, my first thought was find out what was on the CD's. With any luck, it would be something very easy to recognize, like the William Tell Overture, Beethoven's 9th, Happy Birthday etc. No such luck. The first piece on the #9 Concert did sound familiar, but not close enough to put a name to it. After 6 semesters of music theory, though, I felt like I well prepared to solve this mystery! I listened to the beginning of the piece a few times, and concluded it was something on the modern* side. *By "modern" I mean in the last 125 years, of course.* So I start looking through our programs, trying to find pieces on our 9th concert that would fit. When I found something that I thought matched, I'd pull up a reference with some other new technology: Youtube! Eventually, I went through seasons 2000-2010, with no luck. Finally, I had the thought to go back another year and BINGO! There is was. Concerts 8 and 9 from our 1999 season. In the flesh (or, plastic and shiny bits, rather).  

The moral of this story is: label your CD's thoroughly! However, this story has a happy ending: for us, we now have a nicely organized recordings archives. For you, mention the word "Mystery" while ordering tickets and you will receive $5 off each ticket!!

1/3 of the way done! Or is it 3/9?

With Week One done, we look back on those first concerts with admiration. They were all absoultely fantastic and each brought some great moments! These include:

•  A record day of non-stop tickets sales on Tuesday, with a full and happy opening night! 
• The premiere of the voted-in opening overture: Overture to Nabucco!
• 5 minute standing ovation for the Faust Symphony on Thursday night, a real treat to all who attended!
• An incredibly full house on Saturday, who were delighted by the magic of Star Wars, the excitement of the "William Tell Overture" and the tender romance of "La Boheme".

So, you might ask: what lies in store for these next two weeks? With a breathless first week, we are a third of the way through -- but for many, it might seem more like there are still 6 concerts to work through! However, each and every concert is programmed to be a delightful and exciting musical experience, for the both the audience and the orchestra. And Week 2 will be no different! 

Stay tuned to the official blog of the PMF for more insights and stories from this week's concerts and happenings! This week will also include some fun facts about Berlioz and Liszt, our feature composers, and maybe even another "Intern's Adventures" installment, plus get the scoop on some new (ish) faces to join our stage next week! Keep reading and keep listening!  

More Words of Wisdom: An Article From Our Executive Director!

Check out another fabulous article written by the Peninsula Music Festival's Executive Director, Sharon Grutzmacher! She describes some of the changes and growth the PMF has gone through in order to become an exquisite musical experience for everyone!

One of the hardest parts about the service industry is our never-ending quest to try to please everyone. Though the adage says you can’t, we never stop trying!

In the symphony world, one of our greatest challenges is to attract and grow new audiences without alienating those who have been supporting us for many years. The symphony world is often accused of being stuck in an antiquated model of how it delivers its product and its message and there is truth to that accusation. The problem is, our long time ticket buyers and donors like the antiquated model and the new audience we are trying to attract does not.

So what’s an orchestra to do? The first thing is to move slowly. Don’t try too many things too fast. When the Peninsula Music Festival revamped its website a few years ago, it included the addition of video. Long ago, when the PMF first launched its website, it was like pulling teeth to get our patrons to make use of the website. Now that using the website is no longer an issue, the idea of using YouTube or iTunes was the next hurdle. The new audience we were trying to reach immediately subscribed to the iTunes podcasts and our YouTube channel, but our longtime patrons do not like to ‘leave’ our website.  The solution: all of our videos are imbedded on our website so viewing is easy for those who do not like to ‘leave’ or prefer not to have to establish any on line accounts to view video. For those who will not even watch videos on line, we created a DVD collection, which can be purchased for a nominal fee.

Once we began to see a comfort level in our revamped website, we moved into Social Media. Utilizing Facebook and Twitter, we have again, reached a new and younger audience without alienating our current audience. While our young fans grow through Facebook, existing patrons can literally ignore the whole world of Social Networking if they so choose. With a year under our belt in the Social Networking world, we are seeing a rising usage by our current audience as they join Facebook to connect with family.

Years ago, we shifted our concert nights from Wednesday, Friday and Saturday to the current Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. The old “two weekend” dates reflected the days when families spent the summer in Door County and the working husband/father who stayed home during the week, joined the family on the weekends in Door County. As people began to take shorter vacations and the amount of families spending the entire summer in Door County dwindled, a move to Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday reached a new group of people who vacationed in the County at the beginning of the week and had missed our concerts.

For our August 2011 season we have made two changes that are being met with a multitude of different reactions. The first new item is our  ‘From Broadway to Hollywood’ concert on Saturday, August 6. This concert features some great music from stage and screen played by our amazing orchestra. Our long time, hardcore symphonic music patrons feel that this is out of character for the Peninsula Music Festival, which prides itself on its commitment to new works and challenging repertoire.  Some of our long time ticket buyers have turned back their tickets for this concert, choosing not to attend what they feel is a ‘pops’ concert. Yet, the concert is selling well, mostly to people who have never attended and also to families. It is a good concert for first time attenders and also for children. In addition to the recognizable music, the Festival Orchestra will forgo the summer tuxedos in favor of colorful shirts to add a more casual atmosphere to the concert. The hope is to increase the comfort level of those who have never attended a symphony concert before.

The second new item is the 6:30 start time for all the Saturday concerts this August. Tuesday and Thursday concerts will continue to start at 8:00 pm, but the Saturdays will have a 6:30 start and end around 8:30/8:45.  Again, the reactions have been mixed. Many of our long time ticket buyers are again wondering why we would make this change. It makes it difficult for some people to have dinner before the concert and others have earlier plans that interfere with this start time. The reasoning behind this change is two fold. First, a 6:30 start time assists our patrons who can no longer drive at night and that is a growing segment of our long time supporters. Getting out of the concert a full hour and a half earlier means that it will not be dark at this time of year. Even if these patrons no longer subscribe, at least they can attend three concerts. The second reason is families. If we want to attract families to classical music we have to make it accessible  as well as affordable. With a concert ending at 8:30/8:45, young children can enjoy the concert and still have a reasonable bedtime. On the affordability end, the PMF instituted a $10 ticket two years ago for students and children. This price is good for any concert, any seat, anytime. This means that a family of four can attend a professional symphony concert for as little as $80.

It is also important to note, that the 6:30 start time is not carved in stone. At the end of the season, the board of directors will evaluate the change taking all of the feedback into consideration to determine if it will continue into the future.

Change is hard for all of us. It is important that the Peninsula Music Festival continue to reach out to find a new audience while continuing to nurture our current audience. Trying to please everyone all the time is impossible, but that won’t stop the staff at the Peninsula Music Festival from trying!

Sharon Grutzmacher is enjoying her twentieth season as Executive Director of the Peninsula Music Festival.