If it had happened at a basketball game or a
beauty pageant or a spelling bee, it might not have merited a
second thought. But in the refined, tuxedoed world of symphony
orchestras, where etiquette follows forms etched more than a
century ago, an artist taking a bow at the end of a problematic
performance cannot mutter an angry remark to the symphony maestra.
Nor should the artist take her pretty congratulatory bouquet —
presented, as always, by the Symphony Guild — and toss it to the floor as soon as
she’s offstage, especially if Guild members are right there
watching.
Nobody knows this better than Marion van der
Loo, the widely respected conductor who led the Illinois Symphony
Orchestra Chorus for 12 years before being abruptly fired on May 2.
At the time, ISO officials said only that the governing board had
voted to “change the leadership direction of the chorus next
year.”
However, a few clues to the board’s
reasoning were released June 14, when John Newcomb, the
orchestra’s former executive director, sent chorus members a
letter describing van der Loo’s muttered remark and
flower-flinging fit — committed in the aftermath of Illinois Symphony Orchestra’s
April 2 performance of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s
“Requiem” — as “totally inappropriate.”
The letter also includes Newcomb’s
analysis of the Concert Comments speech given by Maestra Karen
Lynne Deal, music director of the ISO, just before the
“Requiem.” Newcomb states that Deal described van der
Loo’s singers as “mostly” white, middle-aged, and
Midwestern (and therefore challenged by the rock & roll section
of the piece) but says that his survey of a dozen concertgoers
proved that these comments weren’t derogatory. Chorus fans
say that Newcomb softened Deal’s words (they say that she
said “too white, too middle-aged, too Midwestern”) and
insist that her speech was every bit as inappropriate as van der
Loo’s postperformance snit.
This whole spat might have been much ado
about nothing were it not for the long history of tension between
van der Loo and Deal. Dating back to at least January 2003, it
revolves around such esoteric questions as whether it’s
appropriate for a conductor to chastise unpaid choristers in public
and whether Mozart’s “Coronation Mass” is as
musically satisfying as Verdi’s “Requiem.”
These issues apparently stumped even the
ISO’s governing board. Over the years, various chorus members
sent letters to the board asking for help in resolving the conflict
between the orchestra conductor and the choral director, but these
letters were seldom answered or acknowledged. Similarly, van der
Loo says that she sought meetings with board members but was usually rebuffed, leaving
her no way to speak for herself.
With no resolution, the tension grew until
subtle slights turned into final straws.
“My life was hell that week,”
says van der Loo, referring to the series of rehearsals before the
Webber “Requiem,” “and it has been hell for at
least three years. I guess I should’ve known that I would
snap at some point.”
Yet it took not just dismissal but the added
sting of Newcomb’s letter, six weeks later, to give the
choral director her voice.
“I have to say ‘ouch.’ I am
confounded that there are people who think I haven’t lost
enough or been humiliated enough or devastated enough,” van
der Loo says.
“My heart feels broken, my spirit feels
broken, and I feel as if there are people delighting in it and
dancing on my grave. It’s venom that is beyond my ken.”
To most people, the worst part of
getting fired is financial. To van der Loo, the lost income —
though certainly hurtful — pales next to the loss of her
musical instrument. Without a chorus to conduct, she’s like a
violinist without a violin, a guitarist without an ax.
“The money part is probably the very
last thing on the list,” says van der Loo, who is an adjunct
professor of voice at Millikin University. “The first thing
was the chorus. The second thing was the opportunity that gave me
to make music.
“Music is who I am. It’s not all
I love, but it’s what I love professionally, and my
profession is seven-tenths of who I am.”
Van der Loo received her bachelor’s
degree in opera performance from Temple University in Philadelphia.
She had been making her living for more than 10 years as a
mezzo-soprano when part-time jobs leading a church choir and a
chorus of 180 schoolkids convinced her that her true passion lay in
conducting. She returned to Temple and earned her master’s
degree, then began work on her doctorate at University of Illinois
Urbana-Champaign. But when the ISO needed a new choral director and
called UIUC seeking applicants, one of van der Loo’s
conducting professors recommended her for the job.
Van der Loo auditioned in 1991. Ken Kiesler,
who was then musical director of the ISO, has no trouble recalling
the impression she made in the interview before she ever lifted her
baton.
“Marion had a very strong command of
languages, diction, and pronunciation. There were other
[applicants] who could say the words, but she had a real love of
the words. She displayed the meaning on her face when she read the
words,” Kiesler says from his home in Michigan, where he
directs the orchestral program for the University of Michigan.
“So that was the first sign of something good, because good
conductors bring what’s on the page to life. . . .
“Since that time I’ve auditioned
hundreds of conductors, and the one who stands out is always the
one who has a personal resonance with the music,” he says.
“She offered helpful and concise vocal direction, she was
clearly motivated by the music, and she also made people feel
comfortable. She was clearly the one.”
Her residency at UIUC made it impossible for
her to accept the job that year, but in 1993 the ISO forged an
agreement with First Presbyterian Church to jointly hire van der
Loo. Under this arrangement, she would devote 25 percent of her
time to the ISO chorus and 75 percent of her time to the church
choir, and the two organizations would pay corresponding portions
of her salary.
Because of this somewhat unique situation,
van der Loo’s place in the ISO organizational chart had her
reporting to the executive director, not the musical director. But
as anyone who has worked with a symphony orchestra knows, the
musical director is the artistic top dog, the ultimate authority on
everything from who gets to play in the orchestra to what
repertoire the group performs. For this reason, van der Loo knew
that, as chorus director, she would always be second fiddle to
whomever was leading the orchestra — and that was fine by
her.
“That’s the nature of the
job,” she says.
She found a kindred spirit in
Kiesler. Having earned his master’s degree in choral
conducting, Kiesler loved the kind of big musical works that
combined orchestra and chorus. In fact, when he was hired by the
ISO in 1985, the organization had no chorus, so he established one.
In planning each season’s concert schedule, he began by
slotting in performances that would include the chorus, then
scheduled all the smaller concerts around them. And every season he
ensured that the ISO Chorus would have plenty of meaty music to
sing, because the music is the only payment singers receive.
“With choristers, their emotional
involvement is the way they measure the experience,” Kiesler
says. “Their enjoyment of rehearsals, their camaraderie,
their musical satisfaction, and the big payoff of a concert —
that is why they do it.”
Once the repertoire was set, Kiesler and van
der Loo would get together and pore over each score measure by
measure, marking tempos, phrasing, and pronunciations —
usually in complete agreement. But even though they were in sync
musically, they occasionally clashed. Kiesler, by all accounts,
reigned as a consummate musician with an artistic temperament to
match.
“Ken’s style was kind of
explosive,” recalls former ISO board president Fred
Stericker. “He would get mad, get it off his chest, get it
over with.”
“He could be difficult at times,”
says van der Loo, “but the minute I would sit down and watch
him work, it didn’t matter. He’s just so utterly
passionate about what he’s doing, and he’s so
incredibly good at it.”
Just 26 when he was hired by the ISO, Kiesler
says that he matured during his two decades here. “If you ask
the right people, you could get a list of all the things that I did
wrong,” he says. “I was a very different person when I
left.”
During his last few years here, Kiesler
commuted between Springfield and Ann Arbor while the ISO searched
for a suitable replacement. The 1999-2000 season consisted entirely
of concerts coordinated by Kiesler but conducted by finalists for
the job — concerts that, to keep the playing field level,
could not include the ISO Chorus. To keep the singers involved,
Kiesler added to the schedule a separate stand-alone concert
featuring the chorus with a small chamber orchestra and asked van
der Loo plan the program. It was like handing her a treasure.
“It has been a love for me,” she
says.
The first chorus concert was such a success
that ISO made it a permanent addition to the schedule. Van der Loo
had already planned her concert for the 2005-2006 season to feature
Gabriel Fauré’s “Requiem.”
“I assume they’ll have somebody
else do it, which kind of bothers me, because it’s my
program,” she says, “but I no longer have a say over
anything.”
ISO musical director Karen Lynne
Deal insists that she had nothing to do with van der Loo’s
firing — she wasn’t consulted and didn’t know
about it in advance, she says. “The people that are unhappy
about this are trying to make it a Marion/Karen issue, but
it’s not,” Deal says, emphasizing that she could not
have been involved because the ISO organizational chart did not
give her direct authority over van der Loo.
But orchestra and chorus members have ample
reason to assume that Deal wanted to get rid of van der Loo. The
discord between the two conductors is widely known and extensively
documented.
Their relationship started off harmoniously.
Van der Loo, who was informally included in the search committee,
thought that Deal was the strongest candidate to replace Kiesler.
In the summer of 2000, during one of Deal’s initial visits
from Nashville, where she was associate conductor of the symphony
for eight years, she stayed an extra day just to watch van der Loo
conduct Mozart’s “Requiem.”
“I was very flattered that she
stayed,” van der Loo says.
When Deal accepted the job, in the fall of
2000, van der Loo drove her around Springfield, house-hunting, and
hooked her up with a good real-estate agent.
But it didn’t take long for problems to
develop. When budget concerns forced the ISO to cancel some pieces
planned for the 2003-2004 season — including the Verdi
“Requiem” — chorus members believed that they saw
a pattern developing in which their performance role was being
steadily diminished. Replacing the Verdi with a bit of Mozart
failed to placate the group.
“I must say in all honesty that the
‘Coronation Mass,’ one of Mozart’s less memorable
works, is quite a letdown,” mezzo-soprano Julianne Glatz
wrote in a Feb. 20, 2003, letter to then-executive director Maureen
Earley. Not only was it “well below the technical level of
which the chorus is capable,” but it was also short on choral
substance, with only about 15 minutes of singing, according to the
letter.
Glatz, a former member of the of the Chicago
Symphony Chorus and a charter member of the ISO chorus, went on to
warn that more symphony seasons without consequential chorus music
would drive the volunteer singers away.
“I am absolutely convinced that if the
amount and quality of programming for the chorus does not
substantially increase, the Illinois Symphony Chorus will cease to
exist in the very near future,” she wrote.
A few months later, a group of 19 chorus
members met to brainstorm ways to improve the chorus. Some ideas,
such as having section leaders and marked score copies, were aimed
at enhancing performances. But most of the discussion focused on
what Glatz, in a follow-up letter to chorus members, called
“the marginalization of the chorus.”
And even though Glatz’s report of the
meeting contains no blatant complaint about Deal, it’s clear
that a communication gap yawned between the orchestra director and
the chorus.
“There was a general consensus that the
chorus should have a relationship with Karen Deal and the ISO
organization that would allow for expression of these
problems,” Glatz wrote.
On June 2, 2003, chorus members met with ISO
board member Rex Schaeffer, who described himself in a letter to
Glatz as the chair of a newly formed “conductor liaison
committee.” Notes of the meeting show that Schaeffer and the
choristers found little common ground (Schaeffer encouraged them to
recruit more singers; the choristers said that they couldn’t
recruit singers when there was so little music to sing). Schaeffer
presented a packet purporting to prove that the chorus was singing
more than ever, but the choristers discounted this analysis because
it gave short, simple four-minute church anthems the same weight as
sophisticated half-hour collaborations with the full orchestra.
One thing everyone agreed on, though: Deal
and van der Loo weren’t getting along. According to a log of
this meeting, “[Schaeffer] noted the lack of trust and poor
communication between the two directors. He stated this was not a
productive relationship for the organization.”
But that fruitless session was apparently the
first and last meeting of the conductor liaison committee. The
problems were acknowledged but not solved.
Six months later, the tension
boiled over in front of the entire orchestra, the chorus, and a
guest handbell choir. Deal was presiding over a rehearsal for the
holiday pops concert, and when it came time for the chorus to sing
“Carol of the Bells,” the altos came in flat. Deal lit
into the chorus and van der Loo, complaining that the singers had
not been properly rehearsed.
Whether Deal overreacted or simply dished out
criticism that the singers deserved depends on whom you ask. But
Deal herself apparently felt compelled to explain her behavior and
came to the next night’s rehearsal armed with a typed
statement that she read, from the podium, to the chorus.
It said, in part:
“The source of my frustration last
night and previously has not been your lack of devotion or talent.
I feel powerless when the music is not adequately prepared. This is
out of my control and yours, therefore, we all feel frustrated
because we know it can be better.”
She then chastised the chorus for the
meetings that had taken place months earlier:
“I was quite personally stunned and
hurt by actions taken in the name of the symphony chorus this
summer. . . . Some among you went over my head in a letter-writing
campaign to the Board to express your grievances. . . . This was
not only unprofessional, but represented you as far less than I
know you can be. It was also personally hurtful.”
Stericker, who was president of the ISO board
at that time, remembers that Deal’s comments during the pops
rehearsal provoked a firestorm not only from singers but also from
orchestra members.
“There were a lot of phone calls, a lot
of e-mails, a lot of letters came from a lot of people,”
Stericker says. “It was a very time-consuming several months
when all of this was bubbling up, creating a lot of emotion and
taking a lot of energy out of people, I’m sure.”
Stericker says that the board sent Deal some
sort of letter explaining how they wanted to move on, but Stericker
declines to elaborate. “I don’t want to comment any
further,” he says.
When the two conductors collaborated again,
on Webber’s “Requiem,” the outcome was even
worse.
van der Loo says she learned that
she would be preparing the Webber work when a symphony newsletter
arrived in the mail. Deal had not consulted or informed her of the
repertoire chosen for the 2004-2005 season.
Best known for its lovely soprano/boy-soprano
duet “Pie Jesu,” the “Requiem” is actually
a modern, atonal piece with grating dissonances, sudden screeches,
and shifting meters. Van der Loo calls it “probably the most
difficult thing I’ve ever taught the chorus.” At
rehearsals with the orchestra days before the performance, van der
Loo says, Deal told the chorus that they were singing the entire
section wrong.
But that wasn’t the only problem.
Besides orchestra and chorus, the piece calls for a
children’s choir and an organ. Because neither venue where
the orchestra performs (Illinois State University’s Braden
Auditorium in Bloomington and the Sangamon Auditorium) has such an
instrument, a donated organ was brought in.
At the first performance, in Bloomington, the
sound-system balance went awry. After that concert, Deal told van
der Loo to be ready to handle any similar problems at the
Springfield performance. So the next night, van der Loo went to the
control booth. Midway through the performance, the speaker system
began to hiss and hum. The noise (later found to be caused by a
faulty cable) became so loud that Deal stopped between movements,
gesturing to the stage manager.
For performers, this kind of unplanned,
unexplained pause can be excruciating. For van der Loo, who has no
training or experience with sophisticated speaker systems, the
realization that she was supposed to fix this problem made the
awkward lull even worse.
“It was horrifying,” she says.
“I was, like, ‘What’s going on? There is nothing
we can do about it, whatever it is.’ I was in a cold
sweat.”
By the time she was called onstage for bows,
van der Loo was furious. She turned to Deal and asked, under her
breath, what had happened with the sound system. The obligatory
congratulatory bouquet was more than van der Loo could bear.
“I had just been through a week of
compressed criticism and accusations and slights and humiliation
and blame for things over which I had absolutely no control,”
she says, “and when they handed me the flowers, it seemed
like this painful irony — a gesture of congratulations when I
knew exactly what had been thought of my work. So I threw them
away.”
It’s one flick of the wrist she would
take back in a heartbeat, if she could.
“Obviously I’ve relived and
regretted it,” she says. “I feel terrible about it.
There’s something about
Marion van der Loo that inspires intense loyalty and affection
among most of her choristers. They talk about how knowledgeable she
is, how dedicated, how patient. For example, Joanne Hott, a veteran
music teacher herself, can’t come up with anything negative
to say about van der Loo.
“I think she’s an extraordinarily
wonderful musician,” Hott says. “I wanted to sing for
her because I knew she did good music well. You don’t often
find a conductor who’s as professional as she is. We never
had a negative reaction from her. She was always trying to
accomplish things in a tactful way. I was really delighted to have
this experience with her.”
Yet somehow, van der Loo’s popularity
seems to have worked against her. In off-the-record conversations,
van der Loo’s detractors portray her supporters as
brainwashed groupies (they have been dubbed Marionettes). In the
days and weeks after her termination, they protested her dismissal,
creating a Web site that embarrassed van der Loo, who finally
persuaded the site’s creators to take it down.
It was the messages on that site that John
Newcomb, who recently resigned as executive director of the ISO,
was responding to with his June 14 letter. Besides revealing van
der Loo’s flower fiasco (unseen by the audience and most of
the musicians), Newcomb defended Deal’s Concert Comments in
which she talked about the chorus’s age and lack of racial
diversity.
“There were a few choral [spouses]
telling what they thought they heard, and I wanted to let them know
what really happened from my point of view,” Newcomb says.
But his conclusion that 10 audience members
told him that Deal’s remarks were not derogatory
doesn’t convince chorus and orchestra veterans, who have
witnessed Deal’s ability to pad a seemingly positive speech
with subtle barbs. Her 2003 holiday-pops lecture that provoked so
many letters was just one example; another appeared in a 2001 State Journal-Register article,
shortly after Deal took over the orchestra:
“Good leadership has to start at the
top,” Deal said, “and it is against human nature to
respond to someone who is mean or condescending or egocentric or
who doesn’t know what they’re doing.
“One of the things I’m enjoying
about the Illinois Symphony Orchestra is that I’ve changed
their work environment. The musicians now want to come to
rehearsal. They want to practice. They enjoy playing their
instruments again.”
Orchestra veterans recognize that seemingly
upbeat statement as a swipe at Kiesler.
“That’s the steamingest pile of
[excrement] I’ve ever heard,” says one musician, who
requested anonymity for fear of losing his job. “Just hearing
that she said that is pretty infuriating.”
Yet Kiesler is also the man on whom van der
Loo’s detractors have relied to justify her firing. In the
wake of protests about van der Loo’s termination, someone in
the ISO released a 1998 letter Kiesler wrote van der Loo, chiding
her for grumbling to the chorus about not being given music to
rehearse for a holiday concert as early as she had hoped.
Newcomb says that this letter proves that van
der Loo and Kiesler “did not have a good working
relationship.” He admits, though, that he’s basing that
assumption strictly on the memo; Newcomb has never actually talked
to Kiesler himself.
Earlier this week Kiesler told Illinois Times he
has mainly positive memories of van der Loo and doesn’t even
remember writing the memo Newcomb referred to. After having the
letter read aloud to him, Kiesler said that he must have written it
at a time when he was aggravated. “Does that letter mean
I’m not supportive of Marion? That she’s not a good
conductor? No,” Kiesler says. “All it means is: Marion,
don’t talk about those things in front of the
chorus.”
In fact, Kiesler says, he called van der Loo
the moment he heard she’d been fired.
“I was worried about her, so I asked if
there’s anything I could do to support her,” he says.
“I wrote a letter of recommendation for her for another
position within the week.”
Van der Loo just hopes the controversy will
end. “They’ve taken from me the love of my professional
life, and it’s absolutely devastating to me,” she says.
“I want them to know that it’s enough. They can stop
now.”
This article appears in Jun 30 – Jul 6, 2005.
