Interview with John Lindberg

on August 29, 2007 in Diehn Composers Room - Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia

Interviewer: Dr. Jean A. Major

Major: I’m Jean Major. This is August 29, 2007. I’m talking with John Lindberg, principal timpanist of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra. John, how long have you been a member of the orchestra?

Lindberg: I’m starting my 42nd year, so I’ve completed 41 seasons with the orchestra… starting in 1966 which was Russell Stanger’s first year; he hired me.

Major: Right. What was your professional experience before the symphony?

Lindberg: Well, the truth of the matter is, I was supposed to go to Julliard. I was 19 years old, and I was conscripted before I got my deferment, so I decided that it might be a good idea not to fight in the major part of the war, just to take a minor part of the war, so I came down here and auditioned at the Armed Forces School of Music, an audition that lasted over an hour and a half, and I’m thinking, my Julliard audition was only 20 minutes, and they took me. What’s this? I’m just trying to get into the Navy, right. Well, finally a guy came in and said, “Young man,” pretty much the voice by the way, “Young man, if you sign your enlistment papers today, you’re an instructor here.” I signed. Okay, so now we know how I got to the area. [Laughter] Pretty interesting stuff.

Major: You’re not a native of this area?

Lindberg: I was in the Navy for four years as an instructor at the Armed Forces School of Music, yeah.

Major: Tell me something about what a career with the Virginia Symphony is like, what are its various facets?

Lindberg: Well, that, this is going to be a long one, and I will do the best I can. You have to understand when I joined the orchestra in 1966, Edgar Schenkman, who had been in the orchestra for years as the conductor, had left. He had decided—he had been with the Norfolk Symphony and was asked to start an orchestra in 1958, I believe, in Richmond, and there were some hard feelings that Richmond was doing a little bit better than the Norfolk Symphony at the time, and Dr. Schenkman left. Dr. Schenkman also had been an instructor at Julliard, a conducting instructor. And they hired a young man who had been with Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic as a Metropolis Conductor and also had been an associate conductor with Minnesota under Skrowaczewski to take

[2]

over the symphony. Now, as far as I can tell, there was not a conductor’s search. Minnesota Orchestra came through town; they played in the old Center Theater. Somebody went back and said to Maestro Skrowaczewski, “We’re looking for a conductor.” He said, “I’ve got one for you,” and Russell Stanger was pretty much hired on the word of Skrowaczewski, and so that’s when I joined the orchestra in 1966, and Russell Stanger was in his first year. And I say that—now that might seem like a long introduction to how—what’s it like being with the Virginia Symphony. In 1966, the budget was $66,000; approximately half of that money went to Maestro Stanger as the conductor, which was a nice chunk of change in 1966, leaving half of the budget for the musicians, to move the equipment, to rent the hall, to you know, rent the music, to hire soloists, and it was truly, truly a community orchestra, and I say as candidly as I can, I don’t think Maestro Stanger had any idea what he was getting into. He used to call it “The Housewives Club” behind their back, and it truly was a housewives club. From that time and a $66,000 budget, we have seen the orchestra grow into a major symphony orchestra, a member of the International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians with 54 fully professional complement fulltime musicians. And now, you know, I have to admit it; I’m in my 60s. These, and I call them the kids coming in, although they’re not kids; they are incredibly qualified professionals playing so far above their compensation level with the Virginia Symphony, it scares me. It has been the metamorphosis from a small caterpillar in a chrysalis to the most beautiful butterfly you have ever seen, and that’s my take on the 41 years I’ve experienced, and you can fill in all the blanks along the way, and I’m sure we’ll fill in a few.

Major: Can you give me some sense of the various facets of the ____ being a symphony player now; you do this, and you do this, and you do this; what are those things?

Lindberg: Well, you know, I’ll tell you. I haven’t been timpanist the whole time. I’ve been timpanist for about 21 years now. I was principal percussionist before that. I’ll tell you the truth. The better the orchestra gets, the easier everyone’s job is, and I say that because in the old days, -- and I have to give tremendous credit to Russell Stanger. Russell Stanger came in here, and it was not a very solid orchestra. He changed a few positions, and he was a man of electricity, incredible, and he got so much more out of this orchestra than anyone ever deserved, and I don’t think people realize that he was just a ball of fire on the podium. He had this orchestra playing things that were just tremendous, I mean on the edge, William Schuman’s Third Symphony, Pacific 231 of Arthur Honegger, Shostakovitch symphonies. You have to understand that Russell had been with Bernstein when the amazing recording of Shostakovitch Five was done with the New York Philharmonic, and Shostakovich was there, and Russell was immersed with Dmitri Shostakovich, and I think we did…oh my goodness, maybe six or seven of his, of Shostakovich’s symphonies in Russell’s tenure here. We did One; we did Three; we did Five; we did . . . I’m sure we did Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven. I mean, it was amazing, and he brought new literature into the

[3]

community. He was an amazing, an amazing man, not without flaws because the problem was he was dragging the orchestra into the 20th century, and the orchestra was still—they had no idea what they had or what the potential of their orchestra was. I’m talking about the board. When he came there was no professional management; that’s another story. So yeah, it’s, it’s been an amazing, an amazing run. I hope I answered some of what you asked, anyway.

Major: What work do you do besides the symphony?

Lindberg: Right now, I’m adjunct professor of percussion at the College of William and Mary. I’m able to put that in on my day off because you know, with the Symphony now we work six days a week, and I’m also President of the American Federation of Musicians Local 125, and with that I’m Vice President of the Greater Tidewater Central Labor Council. So, I understand when you talk about the growth of the orchestra, the growth of the orchestra has been in large part due to the growth of the musicians and the people that we hire in necessity to move forward and to establish ourselves as a cultural presence. Well, and now you know I think it is the cultural presence in the area.

Major: What have been some of the high points of your career in the orchestra?

Lindberg: Gee, you know I’ve had so many, and I’m going to tell you something. Musicians— there’s a wonderful book—Peanuts--it’s a compilation of Schultz’s cartoons, and the title of it is, Why Are Musicians so Sarcastic?, and of course I think ten people have bought me that. I just keep putting them in the library. When you have an opportunity to play in a symphony orchestra of the quality of the Virginia Symphony, you have so many high points that you really don’t have—you know it’s hard to pick one or two out. I premiered the Johan Franco Concerto Lyrico #4 for Percussion and Chamber Orchestra with the orchestra; that was a tremendous high point. The reviews were astounding, and it was a relatively difficult concerto, and I pulled it off relatively well, and then I also did the Thomas Rice Concerto for Timpani and Orchestra with the—with the orchestra, which was not a stellar performance because the conductor that they had, the guest conductor, had no idea what was going on, so I had not only to drag the orchestra along with me; I had to drag the conductor, too, but as far as Thomas Rice’s concerto being written for me and having the opportunity to play it with an orchestra, those were two really, really outstanding . . .

Major: And both of them are local—were local conductors—composers?

Lindberg: Both of them were local, yeah, yes, yes. Johan was actually from the Netherlands, and Tom Rice, who I thought was just a wonderful, wonderful composer; everything that could go wrong in a composer’s life would go wrong. He had a serious debilitating health problem which caused muscular atrophy. He was to have a wonderful recital of his music at Town Hall in New York, and the papers went out on strike, so he had absolutely no publicity for it. I mean, and

[4]

his music lies in wait for someone to discover it, I believe. He’s a tremendous man, and I enjoyed him with a fine sense of humor. They’re the two things; they were nice, and I can’t say—JoAnn Falletta has asked me many times, “Oh, play a concerto; people want to hear you play,” and I say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, right JoAnn. I’m going to do The Worried Drummer,” which is the shtick, you know, a piece called Der Pauker in Angsten is the actual title of it, and oh I guess five or six years ago JoAnn, oh maybe more than that now seven, I was up in an orchestra festival in Ohio, and I’m looking up the new schedule, right, oh what are we doing this year? I look at New Year’s Eve, and it says Der Pauker in Angsten, soloist, John Lindberg, and I noticed she had assigned it to the associate conductor just to get me. It was a highlight of my career because I didn’t take it seriously. I take my life seriously. I don’t take myself seriously, you know, and we made a comedy schtick out of it where I ended up jumping into the orchestra pit to get away from people, and people were slapping their knees and stomping their feet and laughing, and then JoAnn said, “If I had any idea, I would have been on the podium. I had no idea.” [Laughter] But yeah, I’ve had many highlights. I mean then you get opportunities to play great music. You know, this year we’re doing Shostakovich First, a great piece of music. I mean the guy was 17 years old, and it was his, it was his college exit exam at the Moscow Conservatory, one of the great pieces ever written. So, I can’t say anymore highlights than that, yeah.

Major: Are there memorable moments in your symphony career particularly, other than high points, things that were memorable but not because they were high points?

Lindberg: [Laughter] Yeah, sure, lots, I think when I first moved over to timpani, it was when Winston Dan Vogel first became conductor. It was after a man by the name of Richard Williams, and Winston was a very fine musician. Winston also was not very astute to the ways of the world and how to treat people, and he would go through the orchestra, and he would just absolutely devastate people to the point where, at the end of two years a third of the orchestra had either quit or been fired, and he picked on everyone. He wasn’t, you know, and I remember, I was playing timpani, and we were doing DeFalla The Three-Cornered Hat. The Three-Cornered Hat, now it’s not a hard piece, but it’s not an easy piece, either. It has some timpani solos you have to get through. “I don’t like the way that sounds, try this stick, try that stick,” 25 minutes in rehearsal I’m going around, and I’m thinking, this is my test, you know, this is —this is the hold it to the fire, see how long you can go, and I just said, “Maestro, obviously there’s a problem here, and I would like to go home tonight, and I would like to rebuild some sticks, and I think I know what you want, and we’ll do it tomorrow, “ and he said, “That’s fine.” And I went up to him at next rehearsal, and I said, “This is what I’ve done,” which was just a pair of sticks that I had in the backyard. I mean it was nothing that I had rebuilt. It takes hours to rebuild sticks, you know, and he said, “Let me hear them,” and I went bom bom bom bom, and he went, “That’s exactly what I want,” and he never said another word to me. And he just wanted to see what kind of pressure you could take. This is one of the things people don’t

[5]

understand, Jean, about being in a symphony orchestra. It’s brain surgery; the only difference between brain surgery and playing in a symphony orchestra, if you’re a soloist, is if you’re a brain surgeon, and you mess up, it doesn’t show up in the paper for two or three weeks—a month--whereas a musician gets it the next day for everybody to read about, and I’ve been very fortunate about, you know, not having dastardly things said about me in the paper, but some of my colleagues have had things, and it just—I can think of one case that I won’t remember still every time that piece of music comes up is, you know, “Oh my god, here we go again.” It’s tough, it’s tough, and another thing that I can honestly say about things that aren’t so nice. Sometimes the reviewers that are reviewing you are so blatantly incompetent, unbelievably incompetent that we have, you know, 89-90 musicians even if they are not all full time who have studied this, most of them with master’s degree, many with terminal degrees, and they’re—some guy that, you know, took a music appreciation class is writing about it and has no idea. A good example of this is we were doing a Mahler symphony which required the brass to play off stage and then walk in, I’m think a Mahler Five or something on that order, and the reviewer the next morning said that she couldn’t understand why the orchestra started because the brass was late and came in, in the middle of it. Now, she was fired, but can you imagine; can you imagine that they had that person out there; I mean very frustrating, very, very frustrating. So next question, where are we? [Laughter]

Major: Well, I know that you joined the orchestra at the same time as Russell Stanger became the conductor. Do you have any observations from the Edgar Schenkman period?

Lindberg: Yes, I do . . . and this is interesting, too. And this is--I’ll try to abbreviate this as much as I can, too. When Edgar Schenkman was the conductor of this orchestra, his wife Marguerite I believe was her name, she was concertmaster, and I think he had a daughter who was a cellist or something . . .

Major: His son is a cellist.

Lindberg: Yes, well anyway it was all happy, a happy environment, and there was a man in town by the name of Isadore Feldman.

Major: Right.

Lindberg: Now Isadore Feldman is a unique man because, although his name is venerated now as the founder of the Feldman Chamber Music Society, he was actually a Navy chief who kind of lived on a boat, and he taught strings, not just violin he taught strings, and started a little string quartet amongst some very, very talented people. He and Schenkman, how can I put it delicately, did not get along very well; they did not exchange holiday cards, okay. So, any of the people that were involved with Feldman could not be involved with the Norfolk Symphony. Ah, my goodness, well they hired Janet McCarron who became

[6]

Janet McCarron Kriner as a cellist, and she wasn’t making any money although she wanted to do chamber music, and finally she went to Isadore Feldman and said, “Listen, I have to play with the symphony,” and she joined a year before me. It was Schenkman’s last year in 1965. When Stanger came, they—obviously the concertmaster was gone, so the Feldman String Quartet took the principal chairs for the most part. Janet--I take that back; Janet was principal cellist, and Dora Marshall Short Mullins became the concertmaster. The second, I can’t remember who the second violin was, and a wonderful man from right here at ODU was the principal viola, a man by the name of John McCormick who should have a statue outside of this music building although that he was so good that the faculty at Old Dominion at the time didn’t understand what they had. Unfortunately, Dr. McCormick understood what he had, and--but that’s another long story. Okay, I think they’re all dead; it’s okay, Jean. [Laughter] At any rate . . . that transition was an amazing transition because—let me tell you something; there was a lady in the orchestra by the name of Kathleen Kovner, and she played in the Feldman String Quartet. She was I think second to Dora in the Feldman, and she went to the Academy of St. Cecilia for a summer in Italy to study. Feldman fired her because he said that she could learn as much from him as she could at the Academy of St. Cecilia in Italy. That’s the kind of music environment that we had. Let me give you another story. There was a lady who was a very fine violinist, but a lot of these players--and again I’m going to libel a lot of people because they won’t believe this if they hear this, that a lot of these players who studied with Feldman played beautifully; they could have had careers, they could have had national careers with much, much larger orchestras except they gained so many bad habits that they couldn’t—they couldn’t move on. Although they played beautifully, they would never fit into another section. Their students would go away to major conservatories and have to start from scratch. It was devastating to a lot of these people, and I can collaborate most of that, you know, I don’t feel bad about saying it because I know these people are still alive, and some of them lost very promising careers because of it, but that’s what was going on. Am I answering the original question, Jean?

Major: Yes.

Lindberg: Make me focus. [Laughter]

Major: Is there anything more to add about how the Edgar Schenkman period ended?

Lindberg: The Edgar Schenkman period ended very simply. The board decided Edgar should go because he was spending more time in Richmond than he was in Norfolk, and this brings me into another story. So we have Russell here, but we had a man who was a part time manager by the name of Otto Steenmoller at the time, and they had a little office which I never went to on Olney Road, and basically Otto would sign the checks and make sure they had a truck to get the equipment around, and there was a personnel manager by the name of Dean Derby who always got mad me because I crossed my legs on stage, but it was a

[7]

real mom and pop kind of an organization. Schenkman, who started the Richmond Symphony in 1958, in 1964 or ’65 got a Ford grant of $100,000 for the Richmond Symphony because they had professional management, and they owned a truck, and they looked like a bigger orchestra than the one that had started in 1921, and to his credit, Schenkman, one of the reasons he started the Richmond Symphony, is that he could get no movement whatsoever on professionalism. So suddenly when the Norfolk Symphony lost the Ford grant and Richmond, that upstart orchestra up the street, got it they started scratching their heads and saying, “What did we do wrong or what did we do right?” There was no answer to that, the answer was “What did we do?” and the answer was nothing. They were just happy to go along. They decided they needed professional management, and in 1970, I believe, they brought in their first full time professional manager, Peter Smith.

Major: Really.

Lindberg: Mm, mm. [Laughter] How far should I go with that one? He ran the first deficits the orchestra ever had--$36,000 his first year, which he explained to the board would be very simple; he would pay it off from ticket sales from the next year. Up until last month we ran a deficit the whole time from 1970 on.

Major: There is no way to cover deficits with ticket sales in any arts organization.

Lindberg: That’s right, that’s right, but you have to build a firm foundation so you don’t run those deficits. The deficits were always funded by a lack of musicians’ salaries here. It wasn’t—they weren’t funded by hard work on the board, and that’s, a lot of people would be very angry to hear that. I hope they do, but that’s the way it was. This orchestra, the largest donor up until I would say 1986 or ’87, the largest donor to the Virginia Symphony was the musicians themselves, and even today, the musicians of the Virginia Symphony make approximately $5,000 less than their nearest peer orchestra a year. [Laughter] Take a deep breath, and we’ll go with the next question.

Major: You’ve talked some about the change and the progress that Russell Stanger brought. Is there anything more that you’d like to add about characterizing the Russell Stanger period?

Lindberg: Well, you know the truth of the matter is, and I said I love Russell; Russell hired me for this orchestra, and I will not say too many disparaging things about him. The problem that Russell had is when he took over in 1966, there was no professional management. He was the symbol of professionalism, and he used to ride me something terrible, and I went back once and said, “Maestro, don’t tell me to follow the woodwind sections—pulling me all over the place. This was in the William Schuman Third Symphony; I was doing a snare drum solo—they are pulling me all over the place, and you’re telling me I’m not solid. How are you going to keep them solid?”, and he said, “I know, John, I know, but you’re

[8]

the only person I can correct.” [Laughter] So my life has not been all simple. Now where Russell’s flaw was, Russell should have stood up and said I’m out of here unless you start running this as a professional organization, but he married Mil—Mildred

Major: Millie.

Lindberg: Millie, Mildred, I can’t speak anymore, Sheffield, who was a wonderful lady and a great interior designer. They moved onto a place in Stockley Gardens; they both had lived in The Hague Towers, and they had a wonderful life together, and there was no reason for them to leave. Russell started getting a lot of guest conducting—did Japan, did Mexico, still headed the Youth Orchestra at Saratoga Springs. He had a wonderful life here, but he could not get that board to move. It’s tragic, it’s a tragedy.

Major: Why did the Russell Stanger period end?

Lindberg: He had been here a long time. He couldn’t get the board to move. They had a manager at the time. Oh let’s see, which one was it? Okay, Francis Crociata, who a . . . who knew that we needed some more dynamic leadership, and Russell—although a lot of people wanted Russell to go because he was putting pressure on the board to do something that they didn’t want to do, and the musicians were very frustrated because they had—because there was no movement. Although some of the people absolutely loved the fact that there was no movement because an expansion of the season, an expansion of musical quality would have meant loss of their jobs. So, over 50% of the orchestra back then, although they were very, very torn, a lot of them were sad to see Russell go just because they thought the new guy was going to be smarter than this and he’s going to—he’s going to put the heat on. And I thought it ended fairly well. Russell and I had a few words because I felt that Crociata really aced him out and that got back to him, and he said that wasn’t the case, and we did have some words although we are very good friends and I consider him a very fine musician and a fine friend. We had some words over it that I regret, but I think that Crociata did ace him out, and Crociata did some wonderful things for the orchestra. We played the—it was called at that time the Virginia Philharmonic.

Major: Right.

Lindberg: And we combined three orchestras; we combined the Peninsula Symphony under Cary McMurran, and Walter Noona had the Virginia Beach Pops, and Russell had this thing, you know the old Norfolk Symphony which is the Virginia Philharmonic, and we went to the . . . Kennedy Center and played under that name, and it was a wonderful thing. Crociata—we did a creation of the—Joseph Hoffman concert. Incredible things, I mean, and here we got wonderful reviews, and Crociata was running a deficit again, and a board member had paid for the entire trip to the Kennedy Center, and Crociata used

[9]

that money to pay off other debts, and then the bills starting coming in to the board member who had signed on all of it herself, and she had to pay it twice. Francis was gone. You never heard that story? Gee, am I getting something new?

Major: I have heard various people touch on the fact that over time there had been gifts—financial gifts to the orchestra that were used for purposes other than the designated purpose but I hadn’t heard any specific . . . Let me be certain I understood you that the executive Crociata . . .

Lindberg: Crociata, Francis Crociata.

Major: Was he the person who eased Russell out?

Lindberg: Yes, he was one of the people that thought Russell should go, and he made it possible for Russell to leave; let me put it that way; that’s about as diplomatic as I can be. And Russell, you know, again his career didn’t stop, and Russell could walk in and fire an orchestra up and have the greatest concert you’ve ever heard, and he did time after time, after time, after time with an orchestra that was far below the level that he ask it to play and he insisted that it play.

Major: This was all these guests conducting engagements?

Lindberg: Yes, yes, you know he was invited back to Japan a zillion times, and many of the state symphonies of Mexico. He would be asked back, and he used this as a home base. And you know Russell is in his 80s now.

Major: I know.

Lindberg: He still lives down here, and he’s a great guy; he’s a great guy. I enjoyed—I was proud to play in his orchestra, although I knew that it had to grow.

Major: Both Richard Williams and Winston Dan Vogel served short times as conductors. Can you tell me why that was?

Lindberg: Again, my own personal thing, and we should probably edit some of this. Richard Williams came in here. The board was doing a search, and we had people like Isaiah Jackson, a wonderful, first rate African-American conductor from Richmond who was just a super guy. We had Milton Katims who had been principal viola with—under Toscanini, NBC Orchestra. These people want this job, and I can name some others.

Major: Was this the search where Yoel Levi was a finalist?

[10]

Lindberg: Pardon.

Major: Was this the search where Yoel Levi was a finalist?

Lindberg: I never met Yoel—I don’t believe Yoel Levi was ever a finalist here. He may have withdrawn, but I never remember him conducting our orchestra. He was in Cleveland at the time. This would actually have been a little before Yoel Levi was in Cleveland. So, I would say no.

Major: Okay, well I have it mixed up with another incident.

Lindberg: Yeah, possibly so, but I--because I would remember Yoel Levi, of course. He went to Atlanta [Laughter]

Major: Right, absolutely. So anyway they had these. . .

Lindberg: They had these things. The Calgary Philharmonic was open at the same time. Richard Williams was the first person conducting. We saw another guy by the name of Thomas, Thomas Conlin, I don’t know if it was Thomas or not. At any rate he’s with the West Virginia Symphony. He conducted the Sibelius Second which was very good. It was very fine. Richard Williams called them up and said he was taking Calgary if they didn’t hire him on the spot. This is before Isaiah Jackson, Milton Katims and all these wonderful people. The board hired him. You know something. They didn’t call Calgary. The position had been filled by somebody else three weeks ahead of the phone call. [Laughter] He also said that they had to use his wife because she was giving up a tenured position at the university in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She was being fired at the time. Although she was a nice lady, she just didn’t fit into their system. I’ve been fired from this university twice, so I can’t complain about people who have been fired, you know. I’ve always said I’ve been fired for integrity. It’s one of those things.

Major: Right. She was a composer, wasn’t she?

Lindberg: She was a bit of a composer, but she also did a lot of—and I’m trying to think—she worked for a music publishing company, but she was a lovely lady and of all of the people that were torn apart by Richard Williams, I feel the worst for her because she lost her family and everything else. This guy was not a very nice man, and I don’t think I should go into it on the tape but he caused so much dissension within the orchestra and . . .

Major: Is that right?

Lindberg: Would you like me to tell you? I don’t know if I should or not, Jean.

Major: It’s up to you.

[11]

Lindberg: Well, he would take advantage of couples that were having trouble within the orchestra. You can interpret that any way you want. Yes, and the bad thing the board did was they realized that Williams had to go. They realized that he had to go. So they fired him, but they didn’t tell the orchestra that they had extended his contract one year, and he had a year to find another job. So when the press called up, a lady by the name of Diane Goldsmith, who had been a reviewer; a nice lady, she called people out of the orchestra pit. We were down with Peter Mark and saying, “Richard Williams has just been let go; what do you think?” And I went dingo—he was a drummer in all sense of the word, and I said, “It’s been a very interesting experience to be conducted by a percussionist, and I wish all the good luck in his endeavors.” Some people said, “He was as divisive as he could possibly be, and I’m glad to see him gone,” but the board had not let the orchestra know first hand that he had another year left. There was nothing in the contract to protect those people, and he fired them his last year as retribution, it’s called. Yeah, it was an ugly part, absolutely ugly, yeah.

Major: So after a period of dissension and so on, the board did fire him.

Lindberg: They let him go. They terminated his contract, and of course it always reads in the paper, “has decided to go on to pursue other interests.” [Laughter]

Major: Right, right. What—can you characterize his period in terms of the orchestra’s vitality or excellence or growth or all of those things?

Lindberg: Absolutely stagnant, absolutely stagnant. We were starting to grow as an orchestra, and I would say it was absolutely level. He would do things like—he liked the George Crum Voice of the Whale, and he liked it so much that he did for youth concerts twice in a row, not realizing they were the same children and almost lost the Youth Orchestra, and then no one in the managerial side had the guts to say, “Richard, you’ve got to have another program.” So, oh there were—it was a catastrophe, absolutely a catastrophe, and he hated me because I was actually a drummer. [Laughter] I actually knew what was going on, and he had me do some of the stupidest things in the whole world, and he would threaten me—this was before we had a really strong contract. I missed the 100th anniversary family reunion because he wouldn’t let me off work; things like that. Now and you say, why is there a union? Why is there a contract? Why shouldn’t we all get along? Yeah, yeah, so it’s really too bad.

Major: What about the Winston Dan Vogel period?

Lindberg: You know, I’m going to shock everyone who hears this. I loved Winston Dan Vogel. Winston put pressure on me; I’ve told you about it all ready. He put pressure on everybody. Some people didn’t want the pressure. Some people said, “I’ve had enough of this.” There were still many, many

[12]

advocationists in the orchestra, and a lot of them quit. He fired a lot of people. I felt terrible about some of the people he fired. We had a man going through a divorce that hadn’t really looked at his music because he was in depositions with his ex-wife, you know, the whole day and walked in. Winston would do strange stuff, and we were doing a suite; I can’t remember what it was, but he said, “We will do it three, five, one, two, six, four.” So, the guy comes in on one with a snare drum solo, and he’s fired. You know, and there was nothing you could do, nothing you could do; I mean that’s the way it was, the way it was. Now Winston tried to make music. He also would do the strangest things on the podium that, if you left your eyes off of him for one second, you were dead in the water, and if you were dead in the water, you had the chance of losing your job, so you never took your eye off the conductor, and we became one of best not only orchestras for watching but when we go to an opera pit where you have to watch because these crazy fools that sing, Jean, on stage [Laughter] You have to, and the orchestra became just probably one of the most versatile orchestras in the country because of Winston Dan Vogel doing crazy stuff on the podium, trying to make music, trying to get people to do it, and it translated into everything else we did. He fired a lot of people; he made a lot of good hires. He’s the guy who moved me onto timpani, and I said, “Maestro, I know you’re taking a chance,” and he said, “I can fire you; it’s not a chance.” You know, but that’s the kind of thing, and he would conduct—he would do program things like Medea’s Dance of Vengeance which were dastardly difficult stuff, and I remember him running from section to section to section, and he was coming to the percussion, and he was like he was going to go on, and he looked up and he caught my eye, and he smiled, and he went, “Percussion.” [Laughter] I was the timpanist, and we nailed it; we nailed it to the wall, and he just went____and everybody—you know you applaud an orchestra, not by applauding; you have an instrument, and you shuffle your feet, and we got the shuffle of the feet, and he went on and again he did some bad things and people—our principal bass is now a pediatrician in Williamsburg because he just said, “This isn’t worth it,” went back to Duke, got a medical degree and makes lots of money fixing babies now. I mean things like that, and I played a job with him at William and Mary, you know, just a faculty thing where we brought him in to play some bass. Tremendous bass player, just a wonderful bass player; would have been with the orchestra the rest of his life, but he just couldn’t take Winston any more. But on the other hand Winston was a dear soul, and my colleagues will never believe that I ever said that.

Major: And how did his period end?

Lindberg: Once again some things--he had done some things that were a little bit abstract, and the board had to recognize it. Now the orchestra had been complaining bitterly about this guy because he was such a nasty guy on the podium, but finally he had an idea that we were going to do Beethoven’s Ninth, but because we were in the technical age, we were going to have the tenor in Berlin, and we were going to have the soprano in Zurich, and we were going to have the alto in L.A. and a bass in Seattle, and we were going to feed it all

[13]

together with the television, and we were going to play it from here but everything else would be videoed in, and then he was fired. [Laughter] He was kind of terminated again; no one’s ever fired, yeah so.

Major: How important have the various executive directors been in the—in your ability to be an effective orchestra?

Lindberg: Okay, this is going to amaze you. I’m going to have to get my glasses out so ____ the tape. We’re going to count here one, two, three, four, five, six, oh sorry wrong spot, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. We’ve had eleven executive directors in my tenure with the orchestra, and one of them was part time, Otto Steenmoller, and you can directly look where the orchestra’s highs and lows have been, not by the conductors as much as by the executive directors. They are absolutely critically important to understanding the business, as far as understanding the vernacular, being able to talk, being able to move, understanding that if you’re going to do this recording or that recording you need to have this and this and this together—tremendous. Some of these people have been absolutely, absolutely wonderful, and I take it back, there have been twelve because I missed one of the most important, Dan Hart. As I said, Peter Smith ran the first deficit. He also had an affair with my first wife. [Laughter] He was fired. [Laughter] Yeah, we had dinner at his place all the time. He was fired, and before he was fired, somebody called him up from the American Symphony Orchestra League and told him who his replacement was -- he didn’t know he was gone yet, but there was an old money guy in town that needed a job. How hard could managing a symphony be?

Major: All right.

Lindberg: So, he was the next guy, and he was—by the way, he was a fine gentleman, and I loved him. His name was Matt Werth. He didn’t know the industry, but he was a great, great man.

Major: His name is mentioned very fondly by former board members.

Lindberg: Yes, yes and, and should be and should be. Now, I don’t know if I have all these in order. Francis Crociata was the guy that was kind of, you know, paying off things with the other—he would also, how should I put this delicately, and you’ll edit this, I’m sure—but he would use—if there was a board member that he didn’t like--our offices were now in Chrysler Hall—he would use mind- altering substances in a private room on the third floor of Chrysler Hall before the board member would go there for the meetings so he could get through the meetings. Everybody get that, okay. [Laughter] He was also let go. Jerry Haynie had been head of the Virginia Commission for the Arts and had also been a French horn teacher in Louisiana, I believe. I liked Jerry, good and bad, but Jerry had some problems, and we found out—Jerry actually in the Strike of ’87 was one of the victims. Winston Dan Vogel was a victim of that because the

[14]

board needed something, and somebody who Jerry had not treated very well let some private papers out and discovered that the babysitter of one of the office people was making more than a musician with the Virginia Symphony, so Haynie was gone, too. Yeah, it’s pretty interesting stuff, isn’t it? Then we had Michael Tiknis.

Major: That’s a name I’ve heard.

Lindberg: Michael Tiknis was an interesting man . . . when we were looking for another executive director, we were interviewing some people, and I called a man by the name of Lenny Liebowitz. Leonard Liebowitz is the counsel for the IMPSOM, and I said, “Well, we have these people and these people coming in, what can you tell me?” And he said, “Oh, my god.” He said, “Why don’t you ask Michael Tiknis to come in, too, and you’d have all three idiots, “and I said, “Well, Mr. Liebowitz, he’s just left.” [Laughter] And they did hire one of those idiots, by the way, but Michael did some interesting things. Michael was the guy that hired JoAnn Falletta and I think, I honestly think that he thought that he could control a woman; stupid move on Michael’s part. I remember a story, and this is second hand, but they got into a screaming match in rush hour traffic in Michael’s car, and he made JoAnn get out in the middle of rush hour traffic and drove away. [Laughter]

Major: This is—was . . . right here in Norfolk?

Lindberg: Yes, yes, yes downtown Norfolk. The office by that time had moved into the Plaza One building, which was torn down, and he did that. He also—we had a wonderful woman, and this can be verified, also—as production manager by the name of Caroline Dorsey who’s now the production stage manager with the Chicago Lyric Opera, and she called up to get flowers for a soloist. We had a trade agreement, you know, enough money into the program for the thing, and we would have flowers, and it was like November, and we had flowers til May. Caroline called the florist, and no, no, no, no you have no more trade agreement. You’ve used all your money, and Caroline said, “That’s impossible.” “Well, Mr. Tiknis sends his wife flowers every week.” [Laughter] The financial director, the CFO, had two nervous breakdowns and finally quit the orchestra. She said that she would do financial reports, and when they would go to the board none of the numbers were hers, and she was afraid she was going to lose her CPA license. He went on to the Buffalo Philharmonic and almost sunk them. He went on from there to the San Diego Symphony, and they were out for five years in bankruptcy. The Honolulu Symphony he went after that, and Honolulu has a deficit equal to half of their annual budget, and I don’t know if they’ll survive the month. Yeah, and he left us with a two million dollar deficit that no one knew because he had been giving away tickets and putting them in as paid into the books. Was he, no he was not prosecuted because it’s not the way we do it in Virginia. We just go on. Yeah.

[15]

Major: A couple of particularly good executive directors.

Lindberg: Yes. [Laughter] You want the great side now? I don’t know about you, ma’am. I’ll tell you, there have been a couple of really, really great executive directors. One was Dan Hart. Dan Hart came in after Tiknis, and he realized that this was an orchestra that should be growing in a region that had a million, at the time 1.5 million in the standard metropolitan statistical area. This is a major metropolitan area. We don’t act like it, but we are, and he really took it. He took us to Carnegie Hall. During his tenure before Carnegie Hall, he started us recording. There used to be a reviewer here by the name of Mark Mobley who got a job—and Mark, as nasty as he was to the orchestra, he reviewed us honestly from what was not all good. If it was good he said it was good; if it was bad he said it was bad, and that hurt a lot of people’s feelings but he liked—when he got out away from The Virginian- Pilot, he got this job at Music and The Arts, a magazine which didn’t last very long, and he went around hearing different orchestras and realized that the Virginia Symphony had come a long, long way. So when they were doing their first recording for Music and The Arts, he asked Virginia to do it. It was our first recording. I had to go to the union. I flew up to the union in New York with Mark Mobley, and we convinced Steve Young, the president at the time of the union, to allow us to have a release on this magazine of 75,000 copies for the price of a limited recording. It was--It is the most recordings produced by a classical orchestra in the last 25 years, and suddenly it’s a good recording, not a great recording, a good recording. We start recording, we start doing things like the Seascapes, we went to Carnegie Hall and did the Elgar Variations, and the Elgar Society in London said finally an American orchestra that understands Elgar. I mean that’s the kind of reviews. Dan Hart was a wonderful, wonderful man. He went to Columbus. They were kind of jerks to him, and when the executive director opened in Buffalo, JoAnn said, “I want Dan.” And they’re doing splendidly well together again. We could have kept him here for an extra $25,000, by the way. Yeah, crazy. Okay, there was a man by the name of David Gaylin. Gaylin was out of Boston, was a financial advisor, loved music, made some mistakes while he was here, but I think he would have really grown into being a wonderful executive director. Unfortunately, they didn’t give him time to do that. Everybody was worried about it. Dan had paid down the deficit to—Tiknis’s deficit which had grown actually to about 2.2, down to, I think, $400,000 or $500,000. He was doing it; he was getting down. Gaylin kept it even; he didn’t pay any more down. They let Gaylin go. They hired a guy, and we had a million and a half deficit in the one year that he was here. Gaylin was not a bad guy. John Morison had been head of WHRO. A wonderful man and when we were really hurting ‘cause we had this deficit again, John didn’t know anything about the music business, but he knew business, and he called in his markers and said, “John Morison is putting his name on the Virginia Symphony; you better kick in,” and he stabilized us enough that we got a manager with incredible experience, and I cannot say enough good things about—now I butt heads with Carla Johnson all the time. What she wants; what I want. I have a vision; I’ve always been a dreamer. If I wasn’t a dreamer, I

[16]

wouldn’t have stayed with the Norfolk Symphony in 1966. Carla’s a realist, and we do butt heads. Carla is an incredible manager. The only thing I worry about is the relationship with the board and them understanding that they have hired a true, true professional who understands—I met Carla Johnson in Ottawa, Canada. I was at a union conference, and she was brought in as one of the experts of what a manager should do . . . and the other guy was Henry Fogel from the Chicago Symphony. The next thing I know is Morison’s retiring, and Carla Johnson ends up on the thing. I go, “Carla—that can’t be; the Virginia Symphony’s not this lucky,” so I called some people—yeah, that’s the Carla Johnson. I called a guy in St. Louis where she was coming from, I said. “Carla Johnson,” he said, “Yeah, that’s Carla. Man, if you can get her, you get her.” Why does she want to go to Norfolk, Virginia? That was the attitude. She’s been phenomenal, and she has vision like you can’t believe, and do I disagree with her? Yeah, sometimes, sometimes I do. Yeah, and I could go around and tell you all the really bad guys, but the truth of the matter is Dan Hart and Carla Johnson saved this orchestra, and Carla has done some wonderful things. She stabilized us. You know that David and Susan Goode made an incredible donation this summer to pay off the symphony deficit. That could not have happened without Carla Johnson in place running the board, running the staff, running the orchestra and having a perception of this community that this is a winner, not a loser, and I cannot say enough good about her. She’s wonderful. Go ahead, ask a couple of more. How long do we have here?

Major: I have all the time in the world until . . .

Lindberg: As do I.

Major: Oh, wonderful.

Lindberg: How much tape do we have? We’re good, okay. [Laughter]

Major: Tell me how it happened finally that the musicians were put on salary in 1985?

Lindberg: Okay, this is very interesting. What a long thing; I have to go back a little bit and take a little bit of credit for this. Peter Smith was not all bad. He got here in 1970. I got myself elected chairman of the orchestra players’ committee. The man I was running against put up a strong opposition. He got up with my little flier that said why I wanted to be this, and he was an English teacher at this very university, and he corrected my punctuation. [Laughter] I was a shoo-in, just absolutely a shoo-in, although my punctuation is no better now than it was then. [Laughter] And I went to Peter Smith, who had been with the Minnesota Orchestra, and I said, “We’ve got to get off of ground zero here, you know we’re flat out, we’re stuck,” and I did shuttle diplomacy between the union —it was a guy by the name Norman Olitsky who’s a judge in Portsmouth now, a retired judge, a big attorney who was head of the union, and Peter Smith and we shuttled diplomacy the first contract in 1970 back and forth, back and forth, and I

[17]

basically said, “We’re not accepting this,” back, “We’re not accepting this,” back and forth, and we ended up, I think, with a four page agreement, and we signed our first professional contract between the union and the symphony. A wonderful thing, now pages added, pages ____ suddenly it’s eight, suddenly it’s twelve. Every page of a contract is somebody that feels there’s been a transgression, either on the management side or the union, you know, but it protects everyone. That’s what you have to understand, and finally Winston was doing crazy things to the orchestra . . . Jerry had got painted into a corner, Jerry Haynie, and it was just the time to say, “Let’s have a contract here.” Also, and I wish I could say I was a part of this, there were some people in the orchestra, Tom Reel, a guy by the name of Kim Peoria, and I’ll offend some people; I won’t name everybody. But there was an organization just starting out called the Regional Orchestra Players’ Association (ROPA), and they were a union organization, and we joined ROPA, and ROPA explained they had a union negotiator come in by the name of Ellen McClung, and we walked out of there with a contract that established, I believe, 29 fulltime players, maybe a little bit more, and every year we added a few, added a few, and then we said, “Okay, they can’t add anymore,” so we had A players, B players, C players, which meant they made a different salary, but they still had jobs under the contract, and then in 1987 things really got blown out of whack. It was contract renewal time, and we had a strike. And the orchestra folded. The orchestra said no, we can’t go on any further. We’re not making any money as it is now; we can’t lose. So they had offered a three year deal, the management, and we went back and said okay, we will take the first two years just to get us back, and they said no, three or nothing, and the orchestra had kicked in their heels. And by the end of it, Haynie was gone; Winston was out of there; we had hospitalization; we had instrument insurance; we had all of these things because no one was going back. It was, you know, it was time, and I thanked that board at the time, and now the sad thing about that. There was an attorney who was president of the board at the time by the name of Ray Dezern, who is now a judge in the general district court. One of my very, very best friends. I mean a wonderful man, wonderful beyond comprehension. I love Ray Dezern; he had played cymbals in the orchestra, a good guy, and I finally had dinner with Ray, and he said, “You know, that should have never happened, but there were people in the management that were lying to me, and I was president of that board. Everything’s fine, everything’s fine, I know what I’m doing,” and Ray took all of the burden on that. They all walked away, and he was left in the community as the guy who had the strike; terrible. He got the short end of the stick beyond anyone’s comprehension. He stayed with the board for a while, and finally he had so many other things going on that he left the board, but he’s a fine man, so we can always say that musicians have been oppressed; board members have paid incredible sacrifices, also, yeah.

Major: After the orchestra was put on salary, did that make a difference, a dramatic difference in your ability to recruit musicians?

[18]

Lindberg: Oh yes! It’s much easier to get somebody to audition for a position if they know they have hospitalization and a retirement plan and that their instrument is going to insured and that they’re guaranteed a certain amount of work. Oh, yeah, and that’s the thing. Right now we have a tremendous orchestra, but we—JoAnn, you know, people come up to me and say, how do we get JoAnn to stay longer? She’s just signed for another four, and I’m glad for that because I’m very old, and I don’t want to have to break in a new guy, but the easiest way to get JoAnn Falletta to stay here is to pay her orchestra so that she can hire the people to make a great orchestra. Now we have a nucleus here that are just some wonderful players, Stephen Carlson has been principal trumpet for 20 years. Now he’s moved back now, but you know something; that was 20 years of pretty phenomenal playing, and they are so lucky. His wife, Patti, is still principal clarinet. She was just a gift. You know great musicians marry great musicians and, and it turned out that she was this phenomenal clarinet player, and she took a national audition and won. Who cares if her husband is—it was behind a screen; nobody knows. Phenomenal players, Debbie Wendells Cross, just some great, great—Scott McElroy, our principal trombone right now. He would be in any orchestra in the country right now except his wife is a scientist at NASA. You know, we’ve had people come in here that played very well that want to be close to CBN, that want to be close to the Association for Research and Enlightenment, yeah kooks, yeah you might call them kooks but there’s—you know, I don’t audition my friends, you know. If they want to play their instruments that well, they can go anywhere they want on their day off; its okay with me. So and this—I’m a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania—this is a beautiful place to live, absolutely a beautiful place to live.

Major: It is; it certainly is.

Lindberg: Now I love Pittsburgh, too, and I still watch the Steelers, but, but and Pittsburgh—you know what’s great about Pittsburgh. I dated a bank president’s daughter when I was in high school, and every year they would buy her two season tickets to the Pittsburgh Symphony for Friday nights, and of course they didn’t want to take her. I volunteered, so I heard every concert of the Pittsburgh Symphony for two years, and then I played with the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony, and they were let into the same concert on Sunday afternoon after the symphony—after the Youth Symphony rehearsed, so I got to hear each concert twice for two years. It was phenomenal.

Major: Where did you go to high school in Pittsburgh?

Lindberg: I went to Wilkinsburg High School.

Major: That’s not one I know. My husband grew up in Pittsburgh.

Lindberg: Oh really, Wilkinsburg is just one town out, you know, from on the east side of town.

[19]

Major: Okay.

Lindberg: Yeah, it was a wonderful place to grow up. I mean it really was. Now the demographics of that area have changed, but you know something. I still—you know, I just sold my mother’s house. My mother passed away, and I can still go back and walk through that town and feel like it’s my town, yeah. So, where is our-- next where are we now.

Major: Let’s talk about the merger that happened in 1979. What do you think were the real opportunities that that merger presented?

Lindberg: There were tremendous opportunities, and what it was is we were able to consolidate things. It was basically—you’re talking about 1979. The Opera had started in 1975. They had established themselves as a regional arts company, brilliant by the way, as you can say good things and bad things about Peter Mark, but doggone it, he understood how to put it together. He put together a corporate council, had money on both sides. The Peninsula Symphony was floundering. In 1979 Richard Williams was just starting, and he was, you know, things weren’t going well, so they offered—you know they had the Virginia Classical Orchestra; they had the New York—the Virginia Philharmonic; and then they had the Virginia Pops, and three different conductors who would have stabbed each other in the back on any given occasion except for Cary McMurran. Cary McMurran was a fine gentleman, not a great musician, not a great conductor, I mean I take that back, not a great conductor; he was a good musician. He played piano, harpsichord in Williamsburg, did some nice stuff but he understood that if we were going to have arts, that we had to grow as a region and not these isolated little communities. Walter and Richard fought; I mean they would go out to dinner together, and they wouldn’t even go Dutch treat. They would fight with each other about who’s turn it was to pick up the bill that time, you know just stupid stuff. Stupid, you know, I mean they’re making big bucks, and here there are people like making $10,000 a year working for them. So, so the merger was actually a good idea. They had this wonderful letterhead, and it had obviously the silhouettes of the conductors. One was conducting this way, and one was conducting this way, and one was conducting this way, and as they got fired, we would take whiteout and X over them [Laughter] It was tragic, it was absolutely tragic, but it was absolutely a necessity, absolutely a necessity, and Cary finally gave it up. They gave up the Classical Orchestra and the Virginia Symphony and became the Virginia Symphony after Richard Williams left, and they took—we work on the Peninsula as much as we do on the Southside now, the Ferguson Center, we work in Williamsburg; it’s wonderful. The Pops . . . Walter had some personal problems and left the orchestra, and he took a lot of board members from Virginia Beach with him, and they started the Virginia Beach Pops and again brilliantly, and I’m trying to think who it was; it might have been, somebody brought in Skitch Henderson, and we did back to back concerts. One on one side, one on the

[20]

other side, and Skitch was one of the most brilliant people I have ever met in my life. I loved Skitch Henderson. Again the kids are not going to agree with me. I would go in early, and Skitch would be sitting there doodling on the piano, magnificent, I mean a great, great man, and I would sit down, and I would say, “I don’t want to bother you, maestro,” and he would know I wanted to talk, and we would talk. He was an associate conductor with Toscanini. I remember how Skitch and I got to be friends. I played something, and I knew it was too loud when I played it. He was just there, and he went . . . right. I went up afterwards, and I said—he was a real curmudgeon, “Maestro I’m sorry about that entrance,” “Nah, nah, it’s over; don’t worry about it.” I said, “No, no you don’t understand,” I said, “I saw the palm of your hand, and I wondered how many times Karl Glassman had seen that very palm.” Now, Karl Glassman was the timpanist with the NBC Symphony who was the loudest player the world had ever known. I mean this guy—everyone was deaf for 20 feet around Glassman, and he looked at me, and he just absolutely fell apart laughing and goes, “I used to cringe when I saw Glassman’s name on my roster.” [Laughter] We became fast friends. I mean you know he knew Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. You know what he called Jerome Kern? Jerry. He took arranging lessons, “Jerry always felt he was born too late; he wanted to be another Sigmund Romberg; and he just hated the fact that he was writing for movies, and here’s Jerome Kern, one of the great, you know, wrote Roberta . . . Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, I mean this was one of my favorite composers, and he would just… Anytime you would sit with Skitch, name a name, boom, you know, I said, “There’s a Kern tune called, The Folks Who Live on the Hill, one of my favorite tunes. We got to do that someday,” and you know he didn’t answer me. He was at the piano, and he played it for me. You talk about magic moments; they’re not all on stage.

Major: Yeah.

Lindberg: He was a tremendous, tremendous man and bailed us out, and they didn’t treat him very well at the end because here was the kind of guy, “Oh come on, you know this, you know this. Turn it over, and we’ll play it at the concert,” and orchestras, believe it or not, have a lot of integrity. They want to play every note. They want to rehearse before they go on, and Skitch, “I’ve done this a million times; I know what you’re doing; I can get you through it, next, next, next,” and he’d say, “Okay, this next two and a half hour rehearsal is over in 40 minutes; see you at the concert.” [Laughter] And you know something; he’d play great. He’d play great; the orchestra would be sweating bullets; they’d play great, wonderful.

Major: Make sure I understand one thing. You said that the Skitch Henderson concerts what—pulled you out, or I don’t remember exactly what your expression was but saved the day, in other words. Was that save the day? Explain that to me.

Lindberg: Okay let me explain what happened. When Mr. Noona left, he took a large portion of the Virginia Beach board with him, and they started putting

[21]

concerts in the old Pavilion Theater at the same time we had pops concerts in the main auditorium, kind of Boston Pops kind of thing, and it was like dueling orchestras in the same building, concerts starting at 2:30 at the same time on Sunday afternoons, and we had some guest artists in, and we weren’t doing very well, you know, ‘cause there’s a constituency there that the old Virginia Beach Pops was back, and that’s where they were going, and suddenly and I wish I knew; it might have been Dan, might have been Dan Hart; somebody had the brilliant idea of hiring Skitch Henderson as the principal guest conductor, and within a year he had people eating of their hands. If you were late for a concert, Skitch would turn around and talk to you as you were walking to your seat, “Have a nice dinner? The next time make reservations for 5:45.” [Laughter] You know he was an older guy, so he would get confused at times, and he was a curmudgeon, and he would say, “What are we doing next, what are we doing next?” And somebody would say, “Well, gee Mr. Henderson, we’re doing--” and he would turn to the audience and say, “Talk amongst your selves for a moment. I’ll be right back.” And we would take him to Fuller’s Restaurant in Phoebus. We would do concerts at Ogden Hall at Hampton University, and we would take him in, and Nelly Fuller would reserve a room for all these guys in the backroom and Skitch, and we would eat like clam chowder. I remember once Peter Nero wanted to go with us—Skitch and Peter Nero, so I walk out and say, “Nelly, Peter Nero is in your backroom tonight,” and Peter—and Nelly comes in, and he’s got all these gifts. He’s got aprons with “Eat Dirt Cheap at Fuller’s,” pencils and other things, you know. Nelly was a colorful guy, and I said, “Nelly, I’ve been eating here for ten years, and you’ve never gave me anything,” and he looked at me and said, “You’re not Peter Nero.” [Laughter] But that’s the kind of relationship that-- and not only with Skitch. We’ve had relationships with some other people; you know, the greater the artist the more down to earth they are and, and on a few exceptions, few exceptions, you know.

Major: Did you ever work with the Youth Orchestra?

Lindberg: You know . . . a little bit, a little bit. I have gone in when they have concerts coming up where they have a lot of percussion, especially when they’re doing the side by side, and I’ll do some clinics, but I’m such a busy man that its—I just don’t have that time. In fact I’m not teaching anyone on the secondary education level at all, and that’s really a shame because JoAnn Falletta says every orchestra she goes to in the country somebody walks up and says, “Say hello to John; I studied with him in 1972 or something.” I’ve been very successful with students, and it’s a shame that I don’t have that thing any more, but you know you have priorities, and I wish I was teaching. I liked the kids a great deal, but with the union and everything else going on, it’s a lot to do.

Major: Did you ever work with the Community Music School?

Lindberg: No, I didn’t. No, I didn’t, and I think that’s a wonderful thing that they do but again by the time the Community Music School started, I was so far along

[22]

doing other things that a—and there are other percussionists here. I mean of the three guys that play percussion I taught two of them when they were in high school. Tim Bishop and Rob Cross both studied with me. I wish I could say Scott Jackson studied with me, too. He’s a phenomenal player but he--so—you know there are some great, great people here doing it. When I came to Virginia there were hardly any percussion teachers at all; I mean it was just—and I was just swamped, not only with kids who wanted to play in a high school band but rock and rollers. A lot of these guys that played in the Beach in the ‘80s, you know, ‘70s and ‘80s, were my students, and they played great, and I was very proud of them, you know, but those days are gone.

Major: Have you had significant contact with the Symphony Board over time?

Lindberg: The more—the longer I’ve been with it . . . the more involved I’ve gotten, plus the fact you know I joined the orchestra when I was 20; I had just turned 20, and you know I was just so thankful. In fact, I was still in the service. They had so few percussionists Russell Stanger came in here, had a couple of rehearsals, and said that no one could play the parts, although Dezern played great cymbals; he’s probably the best cymbal player we’ve ever had. Rob’s great, too, but Dezern was wonderful, and they called on the School of Music, and they said, “Listen, we understand there’s a young guy out there that might be able to play with the symphony, but you know we’ve got the union’s allowance; will you allow this guy to come off base?” That’s how I joined the symphony in ’66. I was in the Navy for, you know, with the symphonies so I started when I was actually, had no beard and a hair cut, so yeah that a—so and I was just thankful, just thankful to be playing, and as I got going more and more and more, I got to know people, and there were some wonderful people, some presidents that I thought were very good but very good business men, and some of them in some ways held the orchestra back because they knew that some of us weren’t going anywhere, and they weren’t paying —we pretty much had to take as musicians what they gave, you know, it wasn’t like there were national auditions like there are now.

Major: Right, who were some of the people you thought were especially effective as board presidents?

Lindberg: There’s a man who was Vice President of United Airlines by the name of John Hodgson.

Major: I’ve heard that name.

Lindberg: I loved John Hodgson. He and his wife, Dot, were just super people, and he was one of the first presidents that made an effort to come back and say, “My god, thank you. I’m proud to president of this organization.” I mean, there were other people that I knew that didn’t do much, you know, didn’t—we were the musicians, and they kept that wall up. Hodgson was great, although in Hodgson’s

[23]

defense he was a great businessman. We had a totally inept union president once who negotiated a contract and signed it without ratification. It was one of the worst contracts you’ve ever seen in your whole life, and you know what Hodgson did with the extra money? He threw a party for the board. [Laughter] He’s the best president they ever had. He got the musicians—and it was our fault because nobody wanted to be union president, and they elected this guy who had absolutely no idea what he was doing and signed a contract who just took us back, just flattened us, but it was a great lesson. That president was not reelected the next time. That was the same guy who edited my, my little pamphlet when I ran for the board—or the committee the first time. [Laughter] Didn’t know much about unions—I liked Hodgson, and I do have some names here. You know there were some interesting things, Richard Spindle was here, and Guil Ware, the attorney, there’s an interesting story with him, John Hodgson of course, Nate Bundy who ran a lumber company.

Major: I know Nat

Lindberg: These were good people, these were good people, but they really didn’t have the expertise or a manager that said, “Ok, this is how we need to do this.” A manager is not responsible for managing the orchestra; a manager manages a board and gets that board excited and, and, and that was one of the problems we had with management. They don’t know their jobs. You know they think that they’re managing an orchestra, and they’re not. The orchestra will manage itself if they can come up with the money and the leadership within the community. There’s an interesting story . . . Guil Ware had been president, and he really didn’t like the fact that we had a union contract at all; he was very upset about that, and now Ludwig Diehn, who this very room is named after, had given his entire—he had no heirs—had given his entire estate to the symphony. Winston Dan Vogel came in, heard his music and said, “We will never play your music,” and Guil Ware was Ludwig Diehn’s lawyer, and Guil Ware—there’s some questions of ethics here—went in and changed the whole thing to the Music Department at Old Dominion, and all those millions of dollars that were supposed to go to the symphony were lost, five, yeah, were lost. [Laughter] Yes, and so I didn’t have much love for Guil Ware for a while after that, but the truth of the matter is I think his hands were tied. You know that Winston Dan Vogel had done such damage, all he had to do was play Voices of Spring Triumphant one more time, and there were five million in the bag, and no one at the board level was bright enough to tell him to back off. There’s another story about things like that. Have you heard the name Frye Spivek?

Major: No.

Lindberg: Frye Spivek, now you have to understand, and some of this is painful. When I joined in 1966 there were no Jews and no Blacks on the symphony board.

[24]

Major: That I knew.

Lindberg: Yeah, and Frye Spivek was the first Jewish person on the board. Spivek is an amazing man because during the 1967 war with Israel, Frye Spivek raised more money in Hampton Roads, Virginia, per capita than any region in the United States. Frye Spivek was a genius; he knew everyone. He had the Gentiles giving to Israel; he was amazing, and suddenly they put him on the board. The first thing he did of his own volition was to write up a plan where, by 1970, the symphony would have 25 fulltime musicians. They voted him off the board. He moved to Philadelphia and was very, very fine for the Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra for a long, long time, but they voted him off the board. The next I think Jewish member, I think, was Minette Cooper, who had been running Young Audiences on the national and local level forever, and there’s another person who should have a statue somewhere. She’s a—her and Charles are wonderful, wonderful people, and although she’s incredibly opinionated and was one of the people, I think, that Francis used to alter his mindset for, she has always, always been here for this orchestra and is a wonderful person, and Charles also, although Charles is very laid back, Charles is very laid back, and they have also wonderful people within the community, Neal, Jeff, their sons, great, great, great people, and I enjoy them, I really do. At any rate the ( ) Spivak story is something that needs to be told, but not many people in those days are going to tell it, but he was—I never got to meet him, by the way, I just know the story and I’ve shed a few tears every year since, but that’s a—you know we had in my 41 years, we’ve only had Stanger, Williams, Vogel and Falletta.

Major: That’s right.

Lindberg: And JoAnn, I never thought that JoAnn—JoAnn’s a brilliant musician and not only that, a wonderful humanitarian. So, you know the truth be told, not only has it been a wonderful musical experience for me in the second half of my career, but it has also been an intellectual journey and, and that’s the thing about music. So many musicians, I think, isolate themselves because it’s so difficult to be an accomplished musician, loneliest job in the world, loneliest job, and JoAnn is one of those people that has the intellect to write poetry and know history and love fine art and love nature, and it’s, it’s, you know, as I tell my students at William and Mary, “Fine, you can play the notes, but unless you’re the full package you’re not going to make it in this business; you have to understand the world to be a great musician,” and I’m still trying, by the way. [Laughter] I better get on it but—do we have any more questions?

Major: Yea, how did—how did the symphony become a nationally recognized orchestra?

Lindberg: You know, this is really funny. Mark Mobley, as many people that hated him . . . when we put out that CD under JoAnn Falletta, we did the

[25]

Hailstork Piano Concerto; we did the Gottschalk symphony, I’m trying to think which one it was. Steve Carlson played the solos just gorgeous, gorgeous, and 75,000 copies went out, and people are going, “Oh, my God! This is not a bad little orchestra.” It wasn’t a great little orchestra. Then Carnegie Hall, when we went to Carnegie Hall and part of the orchestra played on the Today Show in the morning, and we put out a recording of national international renown, and the reviews were so good that Dan Hart said, “This is embarrassing, we would have never written these for ourselves,” that it was so good. One guy said, “It took him back to the days of Metropolis and the old New York Philharmonic Society, and that it was the most magic evening,” and suddenly the Virginia Symphony was there, plus, now this is something—are we running out of tape? Are we okay? We’re okay. I just want to make sure you don’t miss any of my good stuff, okay that’s edited. We did this tremendous you know concert and, and suddenly people are saying—USA Today--deserved to be considered amongst the top orchestras in America. The ball was dropped something awful by the board. Dan, I’m sure, was bugged. They all sat around patting themselves on the back and . . . didn’t follow up, no follow up. We needed to go back to Carnegie Hall every three years. We need to do that to have—then Dan leaves; we get David who is fighting with the board. We get a guy, and I won’t mention his name, a new executive director the guy who created a hundred—$1.5 million deficit, and we go to the Kennedy Center, also rave reviews, stealth, no publicity, no publicity whatsoever. That year we went—and this was my idea; I’ll take credit for this. I went to JoAnn and said, “JoAnn, the legislature is in session. Why don’t we stop by? We’ve got to go to Washington anyway, stop by and play a concert in the rotunda.” We got $175,000 out of the legislature that day after we played in the rotunda. They didn’t want us to play; you got to get in and get out, you got to get in and get out, and after we played the ladies that run the rotunda at the Richmond were crying saying, “Can’t you play that once more?” And we go, “No, no, our time’s up. This is what we’ve got.” The manager, the executive director, stood in a corner, did not say a word to any legislator. By that time I was in the Central Labor Council. I knew all of them. I walked around, and then things worked just--I catch JoAnn carrying music stands. I took them out of her hand and said, “You’re still our conductor and music director. Go talk to the legislators.” This guy never did a thing. We call it the stealth, and the reviews again were wonderful, wonderful but again, you know we need to be the state’s orchestra. We need to be the state’s orchestra but until we start serving the state and again Carla Johnson-- we’re doing residencies on the Eastern Shore this year; we’re doing one in North Carolina; we did a residency in Matthews County in Kilmarnock, until we get to Abingdon and to Roanoke and to Wytheville and whatever else we can do and do these residencies, that’s what we need to expand, and we have to understand that the symphony is not only a regional economic engine, which it is; it’s an international economic engine. Cleveland in Ohio sends the Cleveland Orchestra to China; they played in the Great Hall to 600 Chinese officials and now wonder why we have economic—we don’t have the economic—I mean it’s what we need to do, and it cost, it cost a little bit of money. They don’t understand the arts, the arts are not part—you know in

[26]

Pittsburgh they were just inbred in you, you know. If you were anybody you went to the symphony; you went to the opera; you knew every picture in the Carnegie Museum. You know, that was the intellect, and I’m from a family of steelworkers. I’m not from a rich family, but you know my mother would give me a quarter and say, “Take the streetcar down to the Pittsburgh International and try to understand modern art. I’ll never do it; I’m not going with you; I don’t think I can understand it, but you have a chance.” My mother-- she was a homemaker, ninth grade education, and that’s what we need to do here. This is—if I can do it, and I’m a kid’s, you know a steelworker’s kid from Pittsburgh, there’s no one in this community that can’t be enriched by what we do, and it’s just—opera, symphony, Chrysler Museum, I mean what a wonderful thing. I hope I’ve answered some of that.

Major: Yeah, is there anything that you expected I would ask or that you wanted to talk about that hasn’t come up yet?

Lindberg: No, not really. I think we’ve done must of the stuff. You know, one of the big things that we did was add associate conductors so that JoAnn could move around.

Major: Right.

Lindberg: That was a big growth point, and we’ve had some good ones. One I have an incredible story to tell you about Cab Calloway, again I know Skitch. Cab Calloway comes in, Cab Calloway-- I’m going to be on stage with Cab; this is tremendous, and Skitch comes up to me before the rehearsal and goes, “What are you doing after the concert tonight?” and I said, “I’m going home, you know, it’s going to be a long day.“ “Come to dinner with me.” I said, “Come to dinner with you, yeah, sure; this is great,” you know I always--he goes, “No you don’t understand. I was music director for Calloway in the late ‘50s, and we did the Apollo, and the show bombed and Cab has never spoken to me again. He said it was my fault because his show bombed at the Apollo, and the truth of the matter is, you know, people by that time were considering Calloway white, and he had a white music director, and it was just a—could never—we have not spoken a word, and no one told me that they were going to book this guy, and now I have to conduct him.” So I had dinner with Skitch Henderson and Cab Calloway at the Galleria, and they never said a word to each other although I kept the conversation going quite [Laughter] highlights of career?

Major: Yes.

Lindberg: Wonderful. I mean Carol Lawrence, the original Maria on Broadway, Skitch had her in here, and then she came back about six years later, and it was Skitch’s last year, and I was playing drum set, and “Aw sweetie aw that’s lovely deary,” and I’m right up front you know ‘cause I’ve got to be right with Skitch, and after the rehearsal, she walks off, and Skitch comes and puts his arm around me

[27]

and says, “How can you do the same show for six years and not change a note?” [Laughter] And it was, it was exactly the same show, exactly, “I don’t know, Mr. Henderson,” and that kind of thing but some of the highlights for me—Henry Mancini would come in and conduct this orchestra.

Major: Really?

Lindberg: And the nicest, most brilliant man, lovely stuff . . . what’s his name—Billy Rose conducted, and he wrote all of these wonderful film scores and everything, and he stood up in front of the orchestra one day in a rehearsal and said, “You know, I’ve gotten Oscars and Emmys for my scoring. When I die they’re going to say the composer that wrote The Stripper died.” [Laughter] But I remember Billy Rose and Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, all these amazing people, Cab Calloway, Rita Coolidge; Rita Coolidge when she was really on top, they got her to sing with the orchestra and of course, Marvin Hamlisch. Marvin was, and this is a great story, too, Marvin could really be a pill. Marvin’s wonderful, I mean, you listen to what he writes. This guy wrote A Chorus Line; he wrote you know some great stuff, but he’s always kind of a jerk to the orchestra. I don’t care about the orchestra boom bomp, bomp, bomp, bomp. They booked him for a concert after 9/11. He was our first service after 9/11. He was afraid to get on an airplane. Planes were flying again. He took the train, and then a board member drove to Washington and drove him down here, and you have never seen such a change in a man, and he changed his program to patriotic music. He said, “I know that by your contract you can’t do this, is it okay?” and you’ve never seen such a change, and I don’t know, when he comes back in he might be a jerk again, but that was—you could see the depth to the man. That’s pretty amazing stuff, and I can’t—I mean there are things like, I have soloists here my first couple of years; Robert Casadesus. I’ve been on stage with these people, Isaac Stern did the Symphonie Espagnole and, and a lot of these people we didn’t have the money to pay for them; they did it as favors to Russell. You know John Browning did the Barber Piano Concerto with us, and there’s another story. We did it with Russell; it wasn’t good; we couldn’t play at that time; I mean it was falling apart, but we did it with JoAnn. JoAnn comes up to me and she said--And I knew Browning just a little bit, you know, I don’t know these guys—“I understand Browning came be very difficult. I’m nervous, John,” and I went, “Don’t worry about it; you’ll be fine.” Browning comes in, and I walk up, and I go, “John, thank God you’re here. We’re out of jokes,” ‘cause this guy was like the repository of bad jokes of all time. Now, he’s got all the guys because they’re guy jokes back cracking up, slapping their knees, laughing. We go out to rehearsal, and JoAnn, there is something she doesn’t like in the strings. She goes, “Mr. Browning, we’re going to cover this for just a second,” and she’s working on it. Browning remembers a joke. He gets up from the piano, walks all the way around the back of the orchestra, crawls up on my thing, and he’s telling me this joke. I’m going, “Browning you’re going to get me fired, what are you doing?” “Na, Na, don’t worry about it,” he tells me this joke. It wasn’t all that funny; I laughed politely. JoAnn goes, and she looks at the piano, and he’s gone,

[28]

“Where’s Mr. Browning, where’s Mr. Browning?” “I’m back here, JoAnn, just hang on a second,” and he finishes the joke. I’m bright red; I’m going, “Oh my God, no.” [Laughter] He walks back around and goes, “Okay, where were we?” JoAnn looks at me and goes, “Humph.” I remember another time we were out. We had a percussion quartet out in front of the orchestra for a Chinese piece. It was called____ or something like that. At any rate we’re ready to go on; we’re all in our white tie and tails, and JoAnn is very straight, very reserved, and we’re ready to go out on stage to do this work, “JoAnn, JoAnn,” “Yes, John, what is it?” “Can you smell the whiskey on my breath?” [Laughter] And of course she knows; she goes, “Why do I listen to you, why do I listen to you?” [Laughter] But she has just been . . . there is so much respect for JoAnn and the orchestra after all of these years, after all of these years. It is just amazing, and I’m on top of that list because she is accessible, and she’s just a brilliant human being, and it’s been great fun. I’m trying to think of anything else I wanted to—oh, do you have time for Alicia de Larrocha?

Major: Sure.

Lindberg: We’re doing--Alicia de Larrocha is coming in, and we’re going to do Nights in the Gardens of Spain, of course, her signature piece.

Major: Yes.

Lindberg: And maybe a Ravel concerto, and Russell Stanger’s conducting and he goes, “We’re going to start with the de Falla.” “What de Falla?” Her manager is with her, “Alicia, didn’t I tell you you’re doing the de Falla and the Ravel?” She went, “No, you didn’t tell me; okay, de Falla,” played it perfectly, just beautifully, and the other one was Igor Kipness. This is wonderful; he was playing harpsichord, Igor Kipness, and he’s a wonderful player, and Russell who never ever rehearsed the concerto accompaniments before the soloist got there because we had so much trouble putting the main works together, and he’s going, “We want to run this a little bit bump, bump, bump,” and Kipness is going, “Maestro,” “Just a second, bump, bump, bump, just a second,” “Maestro, it’s the wrong concerto.” [Laughter] and somebody—they had changed from Bach to Handel and forgot to change the numbers. He was going from Bach number one to Handel number two or something, and they put Handel number one, and they had the wrong concerto out. Luckily we had the right concerto. Somebody ran to the library and got it and passed it out, and of course we played it, but things like that, you know, it’s amazing.

Major: The stories could last all day.

Lindberg: You know, we haven’t even scratched, we haven’t even scratched.

Major: Well, this is a wonderful afternoon. Thank you very much.

[29]

Lindberg: Well, thank you for asking me, and I hope you can edit this, and I do appreciate it. [Laughter]

END OF INTERVIEW