Alex Cruz
Andrew Sewell: “I want audiences to leave emotionally satisfied with their attachment to the music.”
Whether in business, music, or the business of music, success stories often begin with a good idea. The Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, Madison’s second-oldest professional large-scale ensemble, continues to adapt and innovate as it turns 60 this year.
In 1960, the late Gordon B. Wright, a Madison musician and bookstore owner, established the Madison Summer Symphony Orchestra to provide live classical melodies during the otherwise musically barren summer. After its initial four-performance concert series at the East Side Business Men’s Association, the ensemble began a 10-year residency at Edgewood College.
In 1969, Wright moved to Alaska to become director of the Fairbanks College Symphony Orchestra and the Arctic Chamber Orchestra, yielding his baton to successor David Lewis Crosby. By 1974, the orchestra had expanded beyond summer, changing its name to the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra. Under Crosby’s direction in 1984, the ensemble inaugurated the now wildly popular Concerts on the Square series, which these days attracts as many as 40,000 listeners for each of its six Wednesday night performances.
The orchestra is poised for continued growth under the new leadership of CEO Joe Loehnis, who, at age 16, played cello for the Green Bay Symphony Orchestra, and later became a professional golfer. Before being hired for the position, he served as executive director of the nonprofit First Tee of South Central Wisconsin.
“WCO has a unique culture of innovation and nimbleness, which is where this industry needs to go,” says Loehnis, an Appleton native who holds a music degree from Lawrence University and an MBA from UW-Madison. “We ultimately want to grow in cooperation with various partners and develop a national presence.”
Loehnis understands the landscape. Competition for audience share is keener than ever, not only from the 94-year-old Madison Symphony Orchestra and countless UW-Madison Mead Witter School of Music performances, but also from an increasing number of city entertainment venues and even university sports events. Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra seeks to adapt and evolve with the changing marketplace, says music director Andrew Sewell.
“My modus operandi has always been to blend familiar and less-familiar works with something new and fresh that will educate, entertain and inform audiences,” says Sewell, a New Zealand native who this year celebrates his 20th season at the podium. “I want audiences to leave more emotionally satisfied with their attachment to the music.”
Sewell was associate conductor with the Toledo (Ohio) Symphony Orchestra when a chance run-in with one of the orchestra’s violinists at a Toledo Kroger food store put WCO on his radar.
“She was from Madison, told me that the chamber orchestra’s conductor had passed away, and encouraged me to look into the opportunity,” Sewell says.
In 1998, on his way to that year’s final Concert on the Square, Crosby had a heart attack and died while driving along University Avenue. The orchestra mounted an 18-month search for Crosby’s replacement that attracted 240 candidates, from which Sewell and two others auditioned by conducting one performance each of the outdoor concert and the indoor Masterworks series.
Sewell came on board as Crosby’s temporary replacement, and conducted that year’s holiday performance of Handel’s The Messiah. By 2000, he was hired as the music director for the growing ensemble. “We grew the orchestra in size to 34 musicians, increased the number of Masterworks concerts from three to five per season, and increased the orchestra’s budget from $900,000 to $2.6 million, where it’s been for the past eight to 10 years,” Sewell says. “The musicians have become a more finely tuned ensemble over the years.”
Its quality notwithstanding, Loehnis knows that to compete effectively WCO must extend its influence both geographically and demographically, as well as reach deeper to attract a younger crowd.
“A friend described an orchestra to me as one-part museum and one-part laboratory,” he says. “How do we become the laboratory that moves forward an art form that’s still behind times?”
One way the orchestra is reaching out to younger audiences is by hosting youth concerts and the Young Artist Concerto Competition. “Forty years ago we complained that our audiences were going gray, and we’re having that same discussion today,” Sewell says. “It boils down to what we do with our young people in school and their exposure to live music. We’re competing with technology, but it can’t replicate the physical feeling of a concert hall performance.”
Loehnis agrees: “These days it’s about finding meaningful human experience. With the proliferation of screens that experience is now in short supply, but we’re going to have to keep up with how consumers want to receive their arts experiences to succeed.”
Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra has tried playing in other markets, holding concerts in Monroe, Mineral Point and other neighboring communities; none proved workable over time. This spring the orchestra will attempt to build a sustainable relationship with the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts in Milwaukee’s upscale Brookfield suburb.
First up this spring, Loehnis says, will be “Beethoven Lives Next Door,” a dramatic and musical hybrid that reconstructs the composition of Beethoven’s well-known Fifth Symphony with the help of local actors. The orchestra also has joined the Waukesha Business Alliance with the hopes of gaining visibility by performing at one of the group’s meetings. The Brookfield program ends May 9 with the Masterworks V concert featuring Madison-born trumpeter Andrew Balio.
“By no means do we think that we have topped out in Madison as far as concert attendance goes, but we want to fulfill our mission to be Wisconsin’s chamber orchestra,” Loehnis says.
