Calling from her home in Florence, Italy, the Richmond Symphony's new music director, Valentina Peleggi, has laughter in her voice when she’s asked about the symphony's recent shift to female leadership.
“Female leadership?" she repeats. “I didn’t notice.”
Peleggi, the former conductor of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra in Brazil and director of its chorus, has led prestigious ensembles across the globe, including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London — the BBC called her a rising star of opera and classical music. The first Italian woman to enter the Royal Academy of Music in London, she’s constantly peppered with questions about being a female in the rarified, male-dominated field of music conducting.
“I reply with a simple comment: It doesn’t exist, female leadership or female conductors,” she says. “The only thing that exists are bad leadership and bad conductors or good leadership and good conductors.”
Peleggi joined the Richmond Symphony last summer as its first female music director. The symphony’s top leadership — its executive director, music director, associate conductor, chief planner and chorus leader — are now all women, which is nearly unheard of in the regional orchestra business.
The chairman of RSO’s 42 member board of directors, George Mahoney, says it just worked out this way. “We set out to find the very best we could, and we hired the very best we could,” he says.
He says it’s a pivotal moment in the history of the symphony, which has an annual budget of $6.5 million. “Every single one of our department heads, plus the two leaders of the organization, have come on the job in the last 15 months,” he says. “That's remarkable for any organization. But when you add COVID in, it really has been an amazing test.”
(From left) Valentina Peleggi, the Richmond Symphony's new music director, and Lacey Huszcza, RSO's new executive director (Photo by James H. Loving courtesy Richmond Symphony Orchestra)
Lacey Huszcza assumed the role of executive director in January, a position formerly held by David Fisk, who left Richmond last summer after 18 years to head the Charlotte Symphony. Huszcza says RSO’s stellar reputation was what brought her here from the Las Vegas Philharmonic. Richmond, after all, was prestigious enough to be chosen as host of the Menuhin Competition, the “Olympics of the Violin,” only the second U.S. city so honored. (The competition will take place virtually May 14-23 after it was postponed last year.)
And the idea of forming something unique was an exciting prospect for Huszcza, too. “One of the many reasons I was interested in the position was working alongside a woman music director,” she says. “And knowing the personalities of everyone here, I think that the public will feel a difference in the way we interact … but I don't know if it will be specifically because we are women.”
“We've had female leaders here in the organization for years,” says Erin Freeman, director of the 150-member, all-volunteer Richmond Symphony Chorus. She cites longtime principal viola player Molly Sharp and former associate conductor Marin Alsop, now music director of the Baltimore Symphony. “We've been here all along.”
Freeman has served since 2007 in multiple capacities within RSO, including associate conductor. She's also the resident conductor of the Richmond Ballet, director of choral activities at Virginia Commonwealth University and the artistic director of Wintergreen Music, an annual summer music festival at Wintergreen Resort.
“There are assumptions about what a conductor is, based on the history and the caricature and the characterization of conductors in the media,” she says. “I probably get questions because I’m not a man with shocking white hair, flipping around like we all saw in our first exposure to a conductor, which was probably [Disney’s] ‘Fantasia.’ ”
Concertmaster Daisuke Yamamoto performs at RSO's socially distanced concert “Metamorphosen.” (Photo by James H. Loving courtesy Richmond Symphony Orchestra)
Playing Through Uncertainty
Using only its 39 core, full-time, salaried musicians during this time of social distancing, the Richmond Symphony is also rare among the nation’s orchestras — including heavyweights such as the New York Philharmonic and the San Francisco Symphony — in that it hasn’t let the pandemic stop the music.
“We didn’t think it would be possible to continue playing unless we could do something different,” Mahoney says. “So we started a quiet fundraising campaign across the community, and we have had amazing financial support.” He declines to reveal how much has been raised — “it’s still underway” — but he says it made the difference. “We’ve been able to continue without furloughs, without layoffs, and we’ve been able to deliver our Masterworks performances every month.”
“It’s amazing that the symphony has continued performing throughout the pandemic,” adds Huszcza, “both to a reduced live audience and to a virtual audience. That’s really rare in our industry right now.”
“We didn’t think it would be possible to continue playing unless we could do something different.” —George Mahoney, Richmond Symphony board chairman
Pre-pandemic, the Richmond Symphony typically played for 850 to 1,100 patrons per concert. With socially distanced concerts, that number has ranged from 150 to 250 in person, with an average of 600 households purchasing “Watch From Home” tickets for the performances, says Frances Sterling, director of advancement and patron communications.
Uncertainty is the main obstacle going forward, Huszcza says. “We don’t know when we’ll get back to having a normal audience. We are approaching the immediate future in two ways. At least for the fall, we assume that we’ll have the same restrictions we have today, ... and then we have a secondary plan where everything opens back up and we have full audiences again.”
Assuming her music director duties in June 2020, in the thick of the shutdown, Peleggi says there have been many challenges during her transition. For one, it’s impossible to rehearse a symphony orchestra via videoconference.
“We are allowed because of social distancing to have up to 24 players at the same time onstage,” she says, adding that she hasn’t experienced the full RSO since March of last year, when she gave her audition concerts. “It’s been a tough challenge to think of ways for me to rehearse all of them.” Pre-pandemic, the symphony featured 70 musicians in performances.
She has gotten to know the orchestra in smaller combos “with everyone involved. So in the span of one month, I had a sense of the string section, woodwind section, brass sections.” She and the RSO brain trust also came up with musical choices that would lend themselves to a smaller ensemble.
RSO’s principal trumpet player and musician spokesperson, Sam Huss, says that he and many of his fellow players have become enamored with Peleggi. “The first time we played with her, it was a different kind of energy level than I’d ever experienced anywhere,” he says. “And many of my colleagues said the same thing. The conductor is kind of like the choreographer of the symphony, and the way she uses the baton is exciting to watch, and it makes the other players want to play more intensely.”
The feeling is mutual, Peleggi says. “Ten minutes into my first rehearsal in March, I instantly fell in love with this symphony. They have a way of playing that is absolutely generous ... they move together, they are in touch, they look at each other, they are family. ... I like to think that a piece of music is like the sea. You move together. Everybody has to be connected to the others. And the conductor leads the way.”
This past season, the orchestra used its limited players in creative ways, says Chia-Hsuan Lin, the symphony’s associate conductor. “Right now, you see a variety of configurations that go into creative programming, like a concert just for woodwinds, or for strings. Last year we did brass ensembles in the ‘Let It Snow’ concert.”
In her role as chorus director, Freeman has been forced to learn and use a lot of new technology — “I had avoided it for so long,” she says — piecing together individual performances transferred online and creating what are, in a sense, music videos for the symphony’s virtual presentations. “I make reference recordings, they sing along with them, then they record themselves in their living room. I line everyone’s voices, edit them, and put either video or still pictures with them.”
The symphony’s educational arm, headed by Walter Bitner, launched a virtual school of the arts for quarantined students, staffed by symphony musicians. “It opens up new opportunities for them to play virtually and show children and adults the kind of education we can provide,” Mahoney says. “Necessity created a need for it, but no symphony has been able to put together a school of music during COVID like we have and make a success of it.”
Principal cello Neal Cary performs at RSO's socially distanced concert in November 2020. (Photo by James H. Loving courtesy Richmond Symphony Orchestra)
The symphony’s livestreams of Masterworks and Pops concerts took a little time for the musicians to get used to, trumpeter Huss says. "You feel that the pressure is on, having the camera there and seeing it zoom in on you. You are maybe a little more conscious of how you dressed that night, or all the different motions that you do, but I think we got accustomed to it. It’s one of the things I hope that we continue when we get back to normal.”
Lin agrees: “Virtual is definitely different.” When she’s not conducting, she works with the camera crew to accentuate the drama of the online presentations. “I’ll be reading the score and calling out the different instruments or events that will happen, so the video director can assign the camera to get those timed shots. You get to see the close-up movements, how the bows bounce on the strings, the different finger movement."
She, too, hopes virtual concerts will continue when things go back to normal. For one thing, these online feeds have helped her to stay in touch with her family back home in Taiwan.
“They love it,” she says. “They’re like, ‘We didn’t know!’ My folks had never been to one of my live concerts. Can you imagine?”
Board chair Mahoney says that time will tell. “I do think that web streaming makes the music more accessible. There will be a time, maybe this fall, when we can bring full audiences back, but I don’t think we’ll totally go back to the way things were before.”
The Menuhin Competition Richmond 2021 will be produced, streamed and televised by VPM, with events viewable on the Menuhin Competition Richmond 2021 website, The Violin Channel and on social media. Competitors will submit videos of their performances for judging, and the prerecorded entries will be shown during the competition, with winners announced at the end of each round. Winners will be invited to Richmond for a live concert post-COVID.
Hourlong Rush Hour concerts such as this 2019 performance at Hardywood Park Craft Brewery have helped the Richmond Symphony reach new audiences. (Photo by James H. Loving courtesy Richmond Symphony Orchestra)
Music for All
Today, it’s all about diversity and remaining relevant, symphony administrators and performers stress. Most attribute the RSO’s recent social awakening to Jennifer Arnold, RSO’s director of artistic planning and orchestral operations. A former Oregon Symphony violinist, she arrived in Richmond in 2019 from her work as a Diversity Fellow in Arts Administration for the nonprofit Sphinx Organization.
“I never grew up thinking that the symphony was not for me. And I’m an African American who grew up in Cincinnati, OK?” Arnold says, laughing. “The music is for all of us. We are trying to get to a place where there is access for everyone to the symphony.”
“Since we brought in Jen Arnold, our programming has taken a huge turn to be much more inclusive of marginalized composers,” says double bass player Matt Gold, name-dropping Jesse Montgomery as one of the Black composers whose music the symphony has explored. “That is definitely not something we would have done before.”
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Jennifer Arnold, Richmond Symphony director of artistic planning and orchestral operations (Photo by Ashley Moore courtesy Richmond Symphony Orchestra)
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Chia-Hsuan Lin, Richmond Symphony associate conductor (Photo by Ashley Moore courtesy Richmond Symphony Orchestra)
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Erin Freeman, Richmond Symphony director of the Richmond Symphony Chorus and James Erb choral chair (Photo by Daniel Reisch courtesy Richmond Symphony Orchestra)
Huss says the musicians have been among those pushing hardest for more socially conscious programming. “Representation really matters,” he says. “I mean, to be an active art, you need to be active in these political issues. Looking at this past season, we’ve had an African American conductor, performer or composer on just about every program.”
Arnold says that RSO was already moving forward with progressive programming when she arrived. “It was one reason why I was drawn to Richmond. It was featuring the kind of programming that has more to do with how music makes you feel, and think — work that connects with people, week after week.”
Under David Fisk and Steven Smith, who replaced Mark Russell Smith as music director in 2010, the RSO did much to expand its reach beyond its home at the Carpenter Theatre.
In 2015, the organization bought a portable stage with a large canopy — “The Big Tent” — and began taking Brahms, Bizet and Beethoven directly to the people. Originally purchased so that the symphony could perform at the opening ceremony for the UCI Road World Championships cycling event, the Big Tent has been set up throughout the city and counties and has been the site of a bevy of community fundraisers, with more than $400,000 raised toward purchasing musical instruments for Richmond Public Schools.
“We are trying to get to a place where there is access for everyone to the symphony.” —Jennifer Arnold, director of artistic planning and orchestral operations
“The Big Tent has been a wonderful innovation for us,” Mahoney says. “There’s no other symphony in America that has something like this that travels out. Other orchestras go out and play in their community, but they don’t have a stage that can go out and bring the music directly to where the people are.”
The symphony also expanded its programming from its signature Masterworks and Symphony Pops programs to chamber music concerts, a family “Lollipops” series and so-called Rush Hour shows — one-hour performances in everyday places like parks and malls. Then there are the concerts given in schools.
“The things I do here really inspire me to look at music in different ways,” Lin says. She’s even conducted a chamber ensemble and a scuba diving team for a live art installation at the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU. “When I got here [in 2015], my first concert was at Hardywood brewery. I had never seen an orchestra playing in a brewery before. It kind of opened my eyes. I mean, why not classical music in a brewery with people enjoying themselves?”
Arnold reveals that the RSO will soon ask the public to submit personal stories of dealing with the pandemic for a special commissioned work to be performed in 2022, but there are many other possibilities.
“If you want to address the George Floyd Black Lives Matter protests, you can go many ways,” she says. “You can hire Black conductors or do pieces like ‘Seven Black Voices of the Unarmed,’ a choral work by Joel Thompson inspired by the killing of African Americans. But you can also program concerts focused on the environment: There’s Tchaikovsky’s “The Season” or Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” that’s old-school work you can put into a contemporary program. This is much more meaningful because it speaks to people.
“I mean, you can only sell so many tickets to Beethoven’s Fifth.”
If there’s a single concert that points the way to the future, Mahoney says, it was Peleggi’s first appearance as music director at a Big Tent show held at Maymont in September.
“It was an event that was much larger than just the symphony players playing. It was for the community, something that we’re really proud of and a model for us going forward.”
“I wanted my first concert here to be memorable because listening to live music at this time should be special,” Peleggi recalls. “We decided to tell the stories of the people who lived in Maymont. We put on a show with five actors accompanied by music on stage, reading the letters of the African American people that lived there. And the audience were really enthusiastic, in tears.”
It was a special night, she says. And it had the desired effect. “After the show, everyone wanted to know when the next concert was.”
‘Symphony Here to Stay’
Richmond would not be denied its own classical orchestra; the city kept trying until it got it right
In 1908, the first serious attempt to establish an orchestra in Richmond emerged, the Richmond Philharmonic Orchestra. According to researcher W.F. Masters Jr., who wrote a master's thesis on the Richmond Symphony at the University of Richmond, it was conducted by the well-traveled H. Henry Baker, who had previously raised a baton at ensembles in South Africa, England and Scotland. The company disbanded 10 years later in the flush of World War I.
The first organization to call itself “Richmond Symphony” was formed in 1932 by Wheeler Beckett, a conductor who had previously guest-conducted the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics. While initially popular, this symphony disbanded in 1936, mainly because of Depression-era financial difficulties and, it was said, a dearth of trained local musicians.
The founding members of the Richmond Symphony Orchestra in 1932 (Photo courtesy Richmond Symphony Orchestra)
What we know as today’s Richmond Symphony started in 1957, when a group of prominent citizens, led by its first board chairman, Brig. Gen. Vincent Meyer, formed a committee and enlisted Norfolk (now Virginia) Symphony conductor Edgar Schenkman, a former Juilliard music instructor, to be its first music director.
There was a $10,000 budget for the RSO’s first three-concert season, which featured a 60-piece orchestra. A hundred community “founders” gave $100 each, and the first concert was played at the Mosque, now the Altria Theater. With ticket prices purposefully set low, the initial concerts were successful enough that the Richmond News-Leader proclaimed in a headline, “Symphony Here to Stay.”
By 1969, the Richmond Symphony was firmly established and receiving funds from both the city and the state that enabled it to grow, as well as sizable grants from nonprofits such as the Ford Foundation.
Poster for the Richmond Symphony's inaugural season (Image courtesy Richmond Symphony Orchestra)
The pioneering Schenkman, who oversaw the RSO's integration in 1963 with the additions of Black violinists Thomas C. Bridge and Joe Kennedy Jr., resigned in 1970 and was replaced by French conductor Jacques Houtmann, who, among other things, established the Symphony Chorus, tapping James B. Erb to lead. He also increased the symphony's presence in area schools with an emphasis on a burgeoning youth orchestra. Under Houtmann, Masters wrote, “The Richmond Symphony and Sinfonia [gave] more concerts for children than any other orchestra its size in the United States.”
It was also under Houtmann that efforts to cross over to nonclassical audiences began — for a time in the mid ’70s, symphony concerts were broadcast on WGOE, a progressive rock station. A milestone occurred on April 24, 1977, when the RSO performed at the White House for President Jimmy Carter and King Hussein of Jordan.
After a nasty musicians' strike, George Manahan replaced Houtmann as music director in 1986, and Manahan was succeeded by Mark Russell Smith 13 years later. Through the years, the symphony grew in prestige and performed with an impressive assortment of music legends, from classical royalty including Yo-Yo Ma, Jessye Norman and Itzhak Perlman to popular music notables Aretha Franklin, Tony Bennett and Ray Charles.
“This organization doesn't believe in resting on its laurels," Richmond Symphony Chorus Director Erin Freeman says. “With each tenure, there's been evolution. All of the changes that have been made are part of the trajectory of this organization's willingness to move forward.”
