Nordic American Voices Nordic Museum

Interview of Kristine Ewing June 20, 2017 , Washington

Interviewers: Gordon Strand; Arnfridur (Affa) Sigurdardottir; Judy Kramer

Judy Kramer: [0:01] This is an interview for the Nordic American Voices oral history project. Today is June 20, 2017, and I’ll be interviewing Kristine Ewing. We are at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, Washington. My name is Judy Kramer, and with me today are Gordon Strand and…

Affa Sigurdardottir: [0:22] Arnfridur Sigurdardottir.

Gordon Strand: [0:27] Welcome, Kristine.

Judy: [0:29] Welcome to the Nordic Heritage Museum, which you’re very familiar with. You said you’ve been here for 21 years.

Kristine Ewing: [0:35] Yes. [Laughter] Thank you.

Gordon: [0:38] If you could start with your name, year of birth, where you were born, and a little bit about your family history, and then we’ll get into the main part of the story.

Affa: [0:48] And your parents’ names, also, please.

Kristine: [0:50] All right. My name is Kristine Louise Ewing. I was born in Spokane, Washington in 1950. My parents are Albert Howard Ewing and Beuna Dean Flower Ewing. My grandmother’s maiden name was Stenson. That’s my connection to Scandinavian things. That’s a Swedish name. That was her maiden name, as I said. I was born in Spokane, as I said, and I started playing music professionally at 16. I went to Eastern Washington University, where I was a music major for three years.

[1:29] Then I switched to chemistry, and got a bachelor’s in chemistry there, and a master’s in chemistry at Washington State University. Then I moved to Wisconsin for five years. I worked there at the Institute of Paper Chemistry. Then I came back to this area, and moved to the Seattle area, and worked for Weyerhaeuser for 28 years. I traveled to a number of times. One of my trips was to Denmark, , and Norway, so I have visited those countries.

[2:03] Soon after that, I joined the museum. Then there was a music festival, called the Grieg Festival, celebrating, I believe his 150th anniversary, held partly at the University of Washington, and partly here at the museum. Sometime either there, or shortly thereafter, was when I met Lisa Bergman. About that time, Lisa and Olaf had the idea of starting the Mostly Nordic concert series.

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Gordon: [2:34] Olaf Kvamme.

Kristine: [2:35] Yes. Olaf Kvamme. They had the idea of starting the Mostly Nordic concert series— chamber music, classical chamber music. There was an article in the museum newsletter asking for volunteers. Since I had been a musician, and also since I had performed in a quartet, and had arranged concerts, and because I had research skills, I felt I had something to offer to the program.

Gordon: [3:06] Could you talk a little bit about your concert time?

Kristine: [3:11] Sure. I played with the Spokane Symphony professionally for seven years on string bass. I put myself through school that way. As I said, I moved into chemistry, and went on to graduate school. Since then, I have mostly played amateur, but some playing professionally.

Judy: [3:35] What instrument did you play?

Kristine: [3:36] I played string bass in the Spokane Symphony, and I also play bass clarinet, saxophone, timpani and percussion. I’ve played in a number of groups around the area. So, I felt I had something to offer to the music series. We started our meetings here at the museum. There were about seven of us. We met here, and in the dining area, the auditorium. I remember once, we met up in the library. Marianne was part of that group. She was very involved in this procedure. She not only came to the planning meetings, but she helped me set tables for the dinners.

Gordon: [4:20] Marianne Forssblad.

Kristine: [4:21] Yes. She was very involved in the series, getting it going. We started out thinking, well, we might get 25 people, wondering how we would do, because there is a lot of music in the Seattle area, particularly chamber music. But we actually have been quite successful, and sometimes even sold out.

Gordon: [4:42] What was the mission at the start? How did you define…

Kristine: [4:45] The mission was to have five chamber music concerts. We were expressly staying away from the folk music genre. We were going for classical. One concert would focus on each of the five countries. Then the idea that Lisa had was to include the dinner, because we felt that would really draw people in. There is lots of competing chamber music in the Seattle area. It’s interesting that our audiences come from different areas.

[5:23] Some people are music lovers that have no Nordic ties whatsoever. Some come to just the concert for their country. And some come to the whole series. So, we have a variety of reasons why people are here. It was my idea to include, also, a free visit to the museum when they came. People like to come to concerts early, get a good parking spot, and I thought then if they take a quick look at the museum, they might want to come back for a longer visit. That was my idea.

[5:55] The “mostly Nordic” concept… We started thinking about local musicians, most of whom don’t know this repertoire. Everybody knows Grieg, and Sibelius and Nielsen, but there are a lot of

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other composers that we have discovered through this process that have equally delightful music that was never very well-known outside the local countries. I think part of that was due to the Nordic countries’ remoteness from continental Europe. The music didn’t go that direction that much.

[6:37] But we’ve found some wonderful composers— Wilhelm Stenhammar, and Friedrich Kuhlau, Toivo Kuula— names that we don’t know, but that have very delightful music. By doing “mostly Nordic,” we would still have some familiar songs, so-to-speak, to bring people in. Familiar music, but also expose them to new pieces. So, that’s been one drawing card of our series. The meal would also reflect the food of that country.

[7:16] We started out… the museum ladies would do the cooking for the first year or two. Then we’ve had various catering organizations since then for the meal. What I contributed… I did several jobs at this series that I’ll talk about. The big thing that I did was research. I’ll get back to that in a minute. The first ten years or so, I set tables. After that, Lisa said, “You’ve done your share. Let’s get a younger crowd in here for that.” And I seconded that theory. I’ve also sold CDs. My record was 22 that I sold at one concert. And I’ve tried to pass on my techniques to whoever is doing that. I had a methodology there for doing that. The artists, we’ve allowed to sell CDs at the concerts. I’ve handed out programs, taken dinner tickets. Once I even did box office, but I didn’t enjoy that so much.

[8:26] My biggest role was in the research end. I happen to collect CDs. I have over 6,000 in my own personal library. Of those about 150-200 are Nordic chamber music. I bought a lot of them with this series in mind. At the beginning, before things were on the Internet, I would take my collection over to Lisa’s home, and we’d spend a day playing excerpts. We didn’t have time to sit there and play a whole 45-minute piece. But we’d play little excerpts to decide if we liked the piece. And we’d think about how we wanted to program. Obviously, she’s the Artistic Director. About ten years ago, she gave me the title of Artistic Assistant.

[9:15] So, we would do that. We’d try and change the genres, particularly for the people coming to just one. [For example], if one year, if Denmark was a woodwind quintet, then the next year it might be a string quartet, and then next year it might be a soprano. So, we’d try and vary the types of groups that were coming. We started with the thought of it being local. Then, as the years progressed, our fame spread. She established contact with the Nordic countries particularly with trying to get the actual sheet music for the musicians to play.

[9:57] Over there, music, as you know, is more state-funded than it is in this country. A lot of times, they’d say, “Well, we’ve got somebody coming to the U.S. on tour. We could have them come by and hit your series, too.” So, we started getting some overseas artists as well. In our 20th anniversary year, we particularly wanted all artists from the Nordic countries. So, we had them for all five concerts, from overseas. Sometimes they are people of Nordic background that actually live in the U.S., and were maybe born over there, or they were funded, a lot of times from their organization.

[10:39] I’d do a lot of research, also, besides my own collection. I’d look at CD lists on databases on the computer, as that became more readily available. As I learned composers, I’d do research on them, and find out what kind of pieces they had that might fit our needs. So, that was a lot of what I did.

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Gordon: [11:02] Did you ever reach out to the Nordic countries for ideas?

Kristine: [11:05] [Lisa] did. She had the contacts over there. In fact, I believe she made at least one trip, if not more, to go over to visit with people and get music.

Gordon: [11:17] Would you pick the music and then look for the artists?

Kristine: [11:21] Usually. Sometimes people would send her tapes. Once our fame started spreading, they expressed interest in playing in our series. I would say… this is a guess on my part, but I would say 80-90%, we would pick the music first, and then find somebody to play it, with respect to the genre— we’ll look for a woodwind quintet. We even had some unusual groups. We had a tuba quartet. We had a bassoon quartet. A couple times we had a little more towards the folk genre, we had a Karelian ensemble that was Finnish/Russian. The Habbestad family came and played.

[12:08] Generally, we find the music. Sometimes you have to mix and match. You’ve got a flute player and a violinist, but maybe there’s only two pieces for that, so maybe you need a cellist for a third piece, or something like that. Lisa, as you know, is herself an accomplished pianist. A fine pianist. She had an unwritten rule that she was only going to play every other year. She didn’t want it to be the “Lisa Show.” I thought that was a very good decision on her part.

[12:40] We’ve been quite successful. We’ve had some other volunteers that helped quite a bit during the years. Mary Mohler, who worked at the museum, and her friend Vince Jolivet ushered with me for a number of years. Some of the other early volunteers went on to other things.

Gordon: [13:01] What was the opening concert like? What do you remember about that?

Kristine: [13:05] That we were more successful than we thought we’d be. We had a lot of people. Originally, we had the tables in the back, waiting, and just regular seats in the front. About five to ten years ago— I don’t remember the exact year, we decided to go to seating around the tables if you had bought a dinner ticket, and then seats in the back for people that bought the concert-only. So, we did that.

[13:39] As far as ending the series… One day, Lisa sent me an email, and said, “Give me a call when you’ve got a moment.” So, I called her up, and she said, “I’m thinking of retiring at the end of the year.” That was at the end of our [20th] season. And I said, “Wasn’t that interesting? I was kind of thinking of that, too.” So, we decided that we’d retire together. She proposed Laura for her successor as artistic director— Laura Loge. I agreed with that. Laura had performed on our series, so she was familiar with it. She came the next year. I guess we talked about this at the end of 20, and we decided we’d go one more year.

[14:34] And Laura came and actually observed that transition year before she took over. I thought about staying on to work with Laura as her assistant, but I thought, no, it’s kind of like the Mariners. You get a new manager, and they want to bring their own team. So, I’m going to go, too. I’m still attending, but not volunteering.

Judy: [14:57] What year was it that you retired from volunteering for that?

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Kristine: [15:01] A year ago. So, this year I just came as a guest. [Laughter] And watched. And I still send Laura stuff once in a while when I run across it, but I’m not actively seeking it.

Gordon: [15:18] Are there any favorite memories that you have of a concert, either a near-disaster [Laughter]… Or especially exciting?

Kristine: [15:29] Well, one of them Lisa talked about in her interview, was the one where the violinist had to leave, and another violinist had to fill in. That was interesting.

Affa: [15:42] When was that?

Kristine: [15:45] I don’t remember. In all the 21 years that we worked on it together, we only had to cancel once. That was a year or two ago. There were some artists… I don’t remember which country. I’m thinking maybe , but I don’t remember. The pianist was ill, and they just couldn’t pull it off. That’s the only time we cancelled. I, myself, in the 21 years, only missed three. I missed one due to snow, one, I had pneumonia and was coughing too badly, and one where I had to play, myself, on a Sunday afternoon.

[16:25] We chose Sunday afternoon at four for our time, because we could nicely have the concert, and then dinner. Sunday seems to be a pretty good day. We’ve had a number of musicians. I remember one concert where they had to play… It was either the symphony or the ballet, and then they had to rush here afterwards. That’s always a little nerve-wracking. You hope they’ll get here, but you know Seattle traffic. But that worked out.

[16:55] There was one concert that was quite modern, and people didn’t really care for it. The concert that is the most difficult to program is Iceland. [Laughter] Unfortunately. Iceland didn’t get a classical music tradition as early as the other countries. So, a lot of their music is 20th and 21st century, and some of it is quite modern. But we’ve managed to put some on. We had a really nice flute program that had a lot of modern pieces.

Affa: [17:30] It was very difficult to get anything from Iceland for a long time. But one of the young musicians who came here, who also played very modern music— he got friends the next year, who got friends. So, that made it easier.

Kristine: [17:49] Yes. We’ve had Icelandic performers come. I remember there was one woman who came and played the piano. I don’t recall her name now. She came twice, I believe. We’ve had some musicians repeat. Lisa put together a really nice spreadsheet of all the pieces we’ve programmed, that she passed on to Laura. So, she has that, all through the years. That was good. I really enjoyed working with Lisa in our sessions. We just had a great time playing music at her place, and choosing what we wanted to do.

[18:26] “What should we do? Should we get this group? This group is interested. Should we have strings here for Denmark, or should we put woodwinds on Denmark, and brass for Finland? What should we program, and make variety?” Being a wind player myself, I kind of pushed for them, because it seems like so much is always strings. I wanted winds and brass to be represented as well. We’ve also had some unusual instruments— guitar, and I believe we’ve had harp. Laura had a

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harpsichord.

Gordon: [19:00] Sometimes vocal, too.

Kristine: [19:01] Yes. Sometimes vocal. About every other year, we did a vocal, I believe.

Affa: [19:09] Are you still playing professionally?

Kristine: [19:11] Not anymore. I’m kind of retired from that, too. Just kind of listening nowadays. [Laughter] Playing all my CDs.

Gordon: [19:21] Yeah. Wow, 6,000.

Kristine: [19:23] Yeah. I have a really nice collection.

Judy: [19:26] Did you have any students that you taught?

Kristine: [19:29] No. I only did that a little bit. Mostly, I just played and had my career in the chemistry field. I didn’t teach too much.

Affa: [19:38] What did you do for Weyerhaeuser?

Kristine: [19:42] I did research in the library, using my chemistry background. So, I used the computer to find information to aid the researchers. And I was there for 28 years.

Gordon: [19:55] Did you go out to the headquarters?

Kristine: [19:59] I was in the R&D building, which was about a half-mile from the building you can see from the freeway. But it’s equally big. They moved the main headquarters to Seattle. My understanding is the research building is still in Federal Way.

Gordon: [20:11] Oh, okay. What can you tell us about your Swedish grandmother? What do you know about her and her story?

Kristine: [20:22] My family has been in this country a long, long time, so I don’t really know. When she was still alive, I wasn’t that interested… I don’t know if interested is the right word, but I didn’t ever talk to her about that. My understanding is, some of my family came over on the Mayflower. But that may have been on grandpa’s side. I’m not sure.

Gordon: [20:45] What was her name?

Kristine: [20:48] Naomi Ensley Stenson Flower. Stenson was her maiden name. When I was in Stockholm, I looked in the phone book and saw lots of Stensons in the phone book. But I didn’t contact any of them, because it was so far back, I didn’t know who might be related to me.

Affa: [21:09] Do you know what part of Sweden?

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Kristine: [21:11] No, I don’t.

Gordon: [21:13] She wasn’t an immigrant herself?

Kristine: [21:16] No, she was born here, I believe. So, it’s back a few generations, and I don’t even know how many.

Gordon: [21:26] Any other stories about the concert series?

Kristine: [21:34] Let’s see… Three times, Lisa was not able to host the series, and I took that over. She gave me the printout of what I was going to read and discuss at the beginning. So, I did the intros three times. Two times, she had to play, and once her husband had to go to the hospital, so she was obviously with him. He worked on our series, too, a bit. Sometimes he’d serve as stagehand, to move the equipment around on the stage, and that kind of thing, between numbers. And he has come to most of the concerts. A great deal of them.

Gordon: [22:08] We used to get regular reviews in the paper, too.

Kristine: [22:11] Yes, we did. We had very good press coverage from Philippa Karoly and Melinda Bargreen. Then there was a lady from a radio station that was here that helped fund the series a little bit, too. I don’t remember her name. She had a program that was Nordic music. I helped fund one concert. I belonged to an organization called Women in Music International. We were disbanding, and had a chunk of money we were going to do something with. That was the time we decided to put on a concert featuring Elfrida Andrée, a woman composer. There was a woman from Eastern Washington who had already put together a program, and had done a lot of research on her. So, I put the money toward that concert, and helped fund that.

Gordon: [23:14] I remember that one. That was quite a story about her. Basically, she was hidden until after her lifetime.

Kristine: [23:23] Yes. She was not well-known in her lifetime. She actually had a career as a telegrapher, sending telegraphs, I believe I read.

Gordon: [23:35] Do you remember anything else about her, her music?

Kristine: [23:40] She has quite a bit of organ music, and I believe some string music that we programmed. I believe the lady that came was a violinist, as I recall. So, we’ve had that. We had the Reykjavik Wind Quintet come. I thought that was probably one of the most well-known groups we’ve had. Our first year, we had Ilkka Talvi, who is Finnish, and his wife Marjorie. They played in our series the first year. There was a flautist named Paul Taub that played here a couple times. I believe he is no longer alive, but he was a local man that played at a couple of our concerts.

Gordon: [24:24] We had a husband and wife… Do you recall? I think pianists?

Kristine: [24:29] Oh, there was a violinist and cellist who are acquainted with Lisa. I believe she went to school with them. They are in the ballet orchestra. A number of our soloists have been from the ballet orchestra. We’ve had some from the Seattle Symphony, too. The first couple of years, Lisa

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and Dave would host parties after the concerts in their home, for the artists, and I was able to meet some of the Seattle Symphony musicians at those. That was nice. Another thing she has always promoted is having the musicians stay for dinner, unless they had to catch a flight, and to spread out at tables, so the audience got to meet and talk to the musicians. That’s always a neat experience, too.

Gordon: [25:15] Absolutely. Yes.

Affa: [25:16] She also had the people that came from outside the country or outside Seattle stay at somebody’s house.

Kristine: [25:25] Yes. She did that a number of times.

Affa: [25:27] So, they had homestays.

Kristine: [25:30] Yes. That was nice. And the homestay person would get a comp ticket to the dinner and concert for hosting the guest artist. That’s been nice, too.

Gordon: [25:42] What do you know about the future at the new museum, for the concert series?

Kristine: [25:52] Next year, we’re going to kind of be in limbo. My understanding is, this building is going to close, and the new one won’t be ready yet. So, Laura is actively looking for a place to hold the concerts. She has some ideas, and I sent her some ideas. One idea I proposed… One thing I had always wanted us to do was an organ concert, but then we’d have to go elsewhere. The nice thing about having everything here is you can park your car and stay put. Since we’re going to be in limbo next year, I said this would be the perfect time to at least have one concert in a church with some organ repertoire.

[26:40] The other thing Lisa has tried very hard to do— it has been 99%, probably— is stick with the country of note. So, at the Finnish concert, we don’t play Swedish music. The “mostly Nordic” would be Finnish, and American, or German, or whatever, but not Swedish, Finnish, and Danish all at one concert. We did, however, do one that was kind of a mixed bag like that, but generally we try to stick with the country of interest.

[27:13] Anyway, back to where we might go— there are a number of schools that have very nice auditoriums. In many of them, the auditorium is even close to the cafeteria, which would work out nicely for us. I was looking at the map of the new museum on my way in today. I saw the auditorium is over at the end. I’m not sure where the eating place for the dinner is in relative spatial…

Gordon: [27:45] Just across the hall.

Kristine: [27:47] Is it just across the hall? That’s always nice.

Gordon: [27:54] Yeah. It should be exciting.

Kristine: [27:56] Yeah. The last few years have been nice. We’ve always had a museum person here to assist us while we’re running the concert, but it kept changing. Sometimes we’d have a different person every concert. So, part of my role was to pass on to them some of the details, like, “Oh, you

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need to get that flag up on the stage.” Little things like that. The last two or three years, we’ve had Jonathan. It’s been nice to have a consistent person doing that. They used to mail out tickets. Now they do a pick-up at the desk. And actually, you don’t get a ticket. You just get a little thing for dinner. So, I’m sure that saves printing costs, and whatnot.

Affa: [28:46] And you can buy tickets for the whole concert series.

Kristine: [28:49] Yes. You can buy the whole series. As with any concert series, you can buy the whole series, or individual concerts. There is also a price discount for museum members. I don’t remember how much. You can buy concert-only, or concert and dinner. So, it’s pretty flexible. Sometimes we’ve got university people come, students in particular, that might not want to spend as much to come for the dinner, but they’d like to hear the concert.

[29:19] I’ve also passed on to Lisa when we’re doing the programs… I know someone on the museum staff did the publicity, but I funnel things through Lisa, and onto the museum staff. So, I’d say, “We’re doing a flute concert. We should let the Seattle Flute Society know we’re going to do this concert.” So, we try and increase our audience that way.

Affa: [29:44] Are there quite a few people that come from outside, that are not members of the museum? Do you know that?

Kristine: [29:49] I think there probably are. Lisa did a survey at the end of every year. That was one of the questions. “Are you a member?” “How did you hear about the series?” “What did you think of the music?” “Is there anything you would like to hear?” “How about the meals?” “Any other comments?” “Do you want to be on the mailing list?” She did that every year, and passed that idea onto Laura, and she did that this last year.

Gordon: [30:17] Is she still doing the creek up there?

Kristine: [30:24] Icicle Creek? Yeah. I think she’s not running it, but still teaches piano classes there. Something like that. I think she’s stepped back a bit, but still has some ties to that. And I believe she’s still doing that NOISE— “Northwest Opera in Schools, Etcetera.” I believe she’s still doing that.

Gordon: [30:45] She’s on the radio, too.

Kristine: [30:46] And she’s on the radio for three hours every day. And she has that little program at 6:00, called “Exploring Music,” a ten-minute (or less) segment on a composer or an instrument, something interesting. And she got some kind of an award for that series.

Gordon: [31:05] That’s right.

Affa: [31:09] I know the Seattle-Reykjavik Sister City has been supporting it.

Kristine: [31:15] Yes.

Affa: [31:16] The last ten years, probably.

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Kristine: [31:17] Yes, they have.

Affa: [31:18] Is Bergen also doing that, do you know?

Kristine: [31:21] I don’t recall. I know she put that on the program all the time, but I don’t recall. And there was some of Seattle 4-Culture, and the Seattle organizations, too.

Affa: [31:33] Because when the woodwind quintet came from Iceland, that’s kind of when Iceland finally started being more involved, easier to get performers.

Kristine: [31:47] Yeah. We had some very interesting things in the early days, before Internet, trying to get the music. She’d call people, and sometimes they’d have to run out to the garage, and see if they could find the parts. All kinds of things. Because of this music being rare, it’s hard to find the parts. Now, sometimes the parts are actually available on the Internet. You can just print them off. In those days, we had to really scramble. That’s partly how she got her ties over there, is working with the various living composers, or libraries over there. There is a library, I believe, in Ohio or Iowa, one of the big universities, that has quite a Nordic sheet music collection, as well as recordings. So, we’d be on the phone while we were at her house. She’d call up somebody, and we’d do that.

[32:45] I was telling you about the tables. We originally had the tables in the back. So, we’d ask the audience to go off to the sides, and people would bring the tables up, and put the chairs back around them. That was quite a procedure. We actually never broke any dishes doing that, so that was pretty good. The other nice thing is, Lisa always did this herself— she would supply the flowers for the tables. She would come over before the concert and set up all the flowers. They always looked so nice. We tried to do the napkins in the country colors. Like Sweden, we’d have blue and yellow napkins. People always made such a comment about the visual effect when they walked in the door, with the flowers, and everything. It was always very nice. One of the things I said to Lisa when we were emailing back and forth after we decided to retire is that she did this with class. I thought it was a very good series, and I was proud to be part of it.

Affa: [33:57] Talking about the food, or the tables… Now you have caterers who try to have the food of the country.

Kristine: [34:08] Right.

Affa: [34:09] You did that before, but now you have caterers.

Kristine: [34:12] Yes. A few years ago, she established a committee of one person from each country who were in charge of the food ideas, to work with the caterer. Partly, that stemmed from people saying that wasn’t a traditional Danish smørrebrød sandwich. So, she’d try and get that input to the caterer. I don’t know if the caterer has any Nordic ties, or not. I believe the current caterer is from Edmonds or Everett, somewhere up north. But that committee kind of disbanded at the end of last season. We thought they had that pretty well under control now.

[34:55] The other idea that someone had along the way (maybe it was Olaf), was to have a bar, to

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increase our intake of funds that way. We had beer and wine that people could purchase. We used to have a couple of them. Being an auditorium… Most concert halls, no way can you have any food or drink during a concert. That’s definitely a no-no. But here, since we were a dinner operation, people could get a drink before the concert and enjoy it. The other nice thing— after the concert, people don’t go home. They stay and chat, and visit. It’s a nice social event, as well. All in all, I think it’s been a great success. I really do.

Gordon: [35:42] Remember the days when Mary Henry was in the bar?

Kristine: [35:45] Yes.

Affa: [35:49] How much was Olaf involved in this, in the beginning?

Kristine: [35:51] He was at all our planning meetings at the beginning. He came pretty regularly— he and Mary both came. I don’t recall that he actually did anything during the performances. The last few years, we had the gentleman who just passed away… What was his name?

Affa: [36:15] Rich.

Kristine: [36:16] Rich was our bartender the last few years before he passed away. Now there’s a young fellow that seems to be pretty steady at doing that. We’ve had good volunteers. I’ve tried to pass along what I know to them, in terms of… it’s good to have people handing out programs both at the handicapped entrance and up here. And a technique for selling CDs is to know what’s on the program, and then look at what’s on the CDs. Because people come up, and hear the String Quartet No. 3, and want to know if they’ve recorded that. And if you know that recording has got that piece, that helps your sale. So, I passed that on to Laura, too, that technique that works.

Gordon: [37:05] Was there ever pressure from anywhere to include more folk music?

Kristine: [37:09] I don’t think so. Because the museum puts on some of those concerts elsewhere in their general operations. This, the focus was strictly classical. We veered a little bit towards jazz a couple times, and towards folk a couple times, since it worked out with what the artists coming wanted to do, but generally we’ve stuck with the classical repertoire. That was the focus of this series.

Gordon: [37:43] Great.

Judy: [37:45] I’m interested in your creative mind as well as scientific. You said that your music interest was first, and then you went to the university. How did you decide to go into chemistry?

Kristine: [38:04] That was a very tough decision, because I couldn’t get unbiased opinions from any of my faculty advisors. The music department wanted me to stay in music, and the chemistry department wanted me to switch to theirs. There was a gentleman playing in the Spokane Symphony at the time, on the French horn, who was a Ph.D. nuclear physicist and taught at my university. He later went on to play principal French horn in the Boston Symphony. So, you know he’s got good talents in both fields. One day, he gave a recital, and invited everyone to his house afterwards for a party. So, I went and I talked to him, and he said, “Get your science degree. You’ll never be sorry.”

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So, I was glad I did. He was kind of my unbiased advisor. But I kept a hand in both. The nice thing was, I could do my science during the day, and play music in my free time.

Judy: [39:03] Are you involved in any science today?

Kristine: [39:05] No. I’m strictly retired now. [Laughter]

Judy: [39:08] So, your heart is in music.

Kristine: [39:10] Yeah.

Affa: [39:12] Did you have any problems being a woman in the science field?

Kristine: [39:18] A little. When I was an undergraduate, there were only one or two of us. But in graduate school, one-fourth of us were women. Now, I think it’s lots more. I had one advisor who seemed to be giving me problems. He had a woman post-doc, and we put our heads together and decided he just didn’t like women. It wasn’t me. So, I had that experience, but generally it was just fine.

Affa: [39:49] What about at work?

Kristine: [39:52] No problems at work. The library field where I was actually working, was predominately women. So, that didn’t happen there. I worked with a lot of male scientists, but that was fine, because they were so thrilled that I understood what they were saying, because I had the chemistry background. So, after graduate school, I didn’t work in the laboratory at all. I was strictly in the information area.

Affa: [40:17] Were you ever interested in working in the laboratory?

Kristine: [40:20] I just kind of went that other direction. I have a lot of allergies and asthma, so it’s probably good I wasn’t in the laboratory. [Laughter] I went that other route.

Judy: [40:34] Had you ever thought about teaching at a university?

Kristine: [40:37] No, I didn’t go that route. The place I worked in Wisconsin was called the Institute of Paper Chemistry, and it was a graduate school only. There were 100 graduate students, and 250 staff and faculty. There, I did bibliographies. I produced publications. I indexed books in the library. I indexed abstracts for the database, and I did literature searching. So, I actually had a little more variety there than here. But I hated the weather. [Laughter] I wanted to come back to Washington.

Gordon: [41:23] Is there anything else you would like to share?

Kristine: [41:26] Gosh, I think I covered a lot of stuff.

Gordon: [41:28] You have.

Kristine: [41:29] I talked for 45 minutes. I can’t believe it.

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Judy: [41:32] This was so interesting.

Kristine: [41:34] I thought [the concert series] was a great success, and I’m hoping that Laura can continue that success.

Gordon: [41:40] I want to thank you for your years of service, because I did say once… I remember I referred to the concert series as “the jewel of the museum.”

Kristine: [41:50] I remember that.

Gordon: [41:51] And I really believe that. It’s one of the greatest things that we’ve produced. Certainly something that I’ve enjoyed a lot.

Kristine: [41:58] And I think it brings a lot of people to the museum that wouldn’t necessarily come here.

Gordon: [42:02] Absolutely.

Kristine: [42:03] And that’s why I put in that deal about attending the museum.

Affa: [42:05] I don’t think people realize all the work that goes into this.

Kristine: [42:10] I think you’re absolutely right. They don’t. Lining up artists, and [Lisa] has to work with their schedules, and the museum’s schedule, and what else is going on… So, she worked a lot with Marianne, and then Eric after her.

Gordon: [42:24] This is the first time I’ve heard about your 6,000-CD collection, and how that was the beginning— the only tool you had at that point. Plus your knowledge and background.

Kristine: [42:34] Right. I collected a lot of CDs, and we’d play the excerpts, and decide what we were going to put on the program.

Gordon: [42:47] Thank you, Kris.

Kristine: [42:48] Thank you.

Affa: [42:49] This was wonderful. Thank you.

END OF RECORDING.

Transcription by Alison DeRiemer.

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