Major: This is November 21, 2008. I’m Jean Major, and I’m talking with Betty Harmon Edwards about the Virginia Symphony.
Her first question to me was how this project got started. The Symphony and the Symphony League wanted to give their archives to the University Library at the time that they moved, I believe at the time they moved into their current offices, and in the arrangements with the Library they really wanted someone or some people to do oral history interviews with a number of the community leaders who’d been instrumental in ensuring the continued success and vitality of the symphony over time. And the University Library agreed to that, but all things considered, other work projects and so on, it emerged that I was the one who was eager to do it and had the time because I am retired. I was the University Librarian until 2002, and I’ve been retired since then, and I have lots of interest in the Symphony and in the local arts community. This year, in fact, I’ve begun singing with the Symphony Chorus-- my first year with the Symphony Chorus-- so that’s how the project started, and we—Karen and I-- have met with a number of board members from over a long period of time, from the Russell Stanger period on up. We have talked with a number of Symphony League leaders from a long period and a number of musicians, some of them from the Stanger period and some of them more recent, but mostly people who’ve had enough years of experience with the Symphony to give us some perspective. And we’ve asked more or less the same kinds of questions-- a little bit different for the musicians and a little bit different for the League members. I’ve also interviewed JoAnn and Dan Hart and a couple of the other executives. So we are—and we think we are coming close to the end of the project. It will appear on the University—the interviews will be on the University’s web page in Special Collections, and I plan to index them so it will be easy to find all of the commentary about a particular topic or particular incident.
So, can you tell me when you began your involvement with the Symphony and the Symphony board?
Edwards: Well, that’s interesting. I think I talked to you—I really couldn’t remember the year, but it seems like it’s been 15 or 20 years ago, and I was asked by a friend if I would be willing to sit on the Symphony Board. Up until that time, my interest had been in hospitals, and I’d been on boards at the hospital and also in education at Norfolk Catholic. And so, I hesitated because I had not been on an arts board before, and it was an interesting experience my first couple of years… being on that board. I arrived, and my first meeting was a three-hour meeting, which I absolutely [Laughter] didn’t know anybody who had a board meeting that lasted three hours, and then I began to look at their structure, and they had all kinds of presidents and vice presidents and vice, vice presidents, and I thought, “This seems somewhat bizarre to me.” It was an
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onerous structure. The board meetings last; they’re just indefinite in terms of how long they are going to be, and so I just started asking questions and saying, “This is a bit crazy.” And so, as you know, when you make waves, you become the person that they call on to make the changes, so my first job was to chair the by-laws committee. And I did that, and I was the new kid on the block, and I clearly did not understand how things always had been, and so we made some dramatic changes to the by-laws and certainly without the help of a couple of long-term members of that board, they would have never passed. It was--it was quite an upheaval. It was a reduction in the size of the board, and it was a very simple format. There was a chair, a vice-chair, treasurer and a secretary, and it eliminated about 15 different positions. So, the very beginning was a little rocky, I might add [Laughter] in terms of my participation,… and then Dan Hart came to town, and I just thought he was great. He was one of the best things, I think, that ever happened to the Symphony in that era, and we were living with a really bad reputation in terms of how money was spent, and I think most people really did not believe the organization was credible. It was terribly difficult to raise money because many organizations had given us money, and it had been used inappropriately and/or had not been managed wisely. And so, his job was just, I think, pretty overwhelming when he first came to town. I teased him much later that [when] he came to town he was trim, he had all his hair and his fingernails, and when he left he was bald, a little chubby, and he had no fingernails. [Laughter] And he just, you know, we had this great relationship, and so while he was there, I—they asked me to chair the board, and I accepted absolutely having even at that time no clear understanding of the responsibility of that, and it really was a fulltime job for us.
Major: Talk a little bit more about the responsibility involved in being the chair.
Edwards: Well, when I began the chairmanship, they were in debt. Musicians would go from time-to-time and not be paid. As I mentioned before, they had little credibility in the community. Their board—members of the board that were continued on the board were not always active. There was a very small core group of people who were active… it was… I think the most difficult board I’ve ever chaired. So, what Dan did and what I did was to—I spent an entire summer interviewing each board member and giving them the opportunity to leave the board if, in fact, it was not that which they wanted to participate in, and [laughter] that was a pretty rough summer, but in doing that, we developed a group of people who were really willing to work, and I brought some new people on the board with a board development process. And Dan and a few of us wrote a strategic plan because they did not have one. So… we had—we were in debt; we had a responsibility to the musicians which we were not fulfilling. We did not have a strategic plan when I started chairing the board that was working, and we had some very lackadaisical board members. So my motto to them was, “Give, get, or get off,” and I think I was really—I had people who had very definite opinions about my leadership, and people who didn’t like it, and some people who thought it was okay, but we—as we began to look at the orchestra and the
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community which had completely… in my mind had disregarded the talent in that orchestra, and JoAnn was relatively new to us, and the orchestra was getting better and better. We were trying to think of what we could do to bring credibility back to the orchestra and the symphony and the organization itself. So Dan called me one day, and he said, “What do you think about taking the orchestra to Carnegie Hall?” And I said quote -- unquote, “Are you crazy?” We had five thousand dollars in the bank. [Laughter] He said, “Well, I want you to think about it.” So the next day I called him back, and I thought about it all night, and I called him back, and I said, “Why not? There’s nothing more we can lose. Let’s see how we can do this.”
Major: I knew that you were in the midst of the trip to Carnegie Hall, so I’m very eager to hear a lot about what it took to take the orchestra to Carnegie Hall.
Edwards: Well, it took engaging a lot of people from all the communities and engaging the political sector and going to the Legislature and asking them for money. And I had a good friend, Kay Kemper, who had just started her business, and I said, “Kay I need your help, and how can we get some money from the state to take the Virginia Symphony-- since it’s got the Virginia name, it’s great for economic development-- how can we get some money from the state, and you are the only person I know that I can call to help.” And she said, “Well…” and I said, “And I don’t have any money,” and she said, “Well, I can’t do it for free because I’ve just started this business.” And I was her first client, and I said, “Well, let me see how much—le me see if I can find some money or get some people to help.” And so, my husband at that time was Oz Edwards, and he was a great guy, and he loved the symphony. And he was a physician in the community, and so I said to him, “I need to be able to pay Kay,” and he said, “Whatever it costs, I’ll give you the money to do that.” So, I don’t know that she ever knew that I paid her, but… Oz really paid for that whole process, and she was wonderful. She helped us organize the people in the community – senators, the people locally-- and we wrote a grant went—she took it with all the backings of all these representatives, and they gave us a hundred-thousand dollars, and that was pretty unprecedented at that point in time. And so we had a hundred-thousand dollars, and then we raised money throughout all the communities just to take the trip, and interestingly people would give money for that as opposed to money for an annual gift or for a capital campaign, and then we asked the cities, and all the cities I think—I can’t remember—Newport News was wonderful, Hampton, Norfolk, and I can’t remember if Virginia Beach and Portsmouth participated, but most of all the cities participated and gave us some money as well. And as a matter of fact, many of their mayors came to Carnegie Hall that night. And so we had the state money, then we had some individual contributions that we had raised. We had the cities who gave us money from their economic development because we told them, you know, “This will be great for you.” Vince Mastracco was very instrumental in helping us kind of wade through some of the folks in New York who would be donors and also providing some credibility to the powers-that-be in regards to our trip. So… in the midst of
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all this, of course the board had to approve it, and you can imagine when Dan and I went to the board and said, “We’d like to take the orchestra to Carnegie Hall,” and you know, they were very aware that we had no money. And so we said, “If we can raise the money, will you all approve it?” and they did. So, it was probably the most exciting time the orchestra has ever had.
Major: I would say so.
Edwards: And along with going there, the reporters from WVEC and the newspaper got involved, and they sent a reporter, and I don’t if you remember, but daily they would send stories back, and it would be in the Hampton Roads section as this is what’s going on today with the Virginia Symphony as they prepare to play at Carnegie Hall and… It was probably as difficult as that board was to chair, the greatest satisfaction I’ve ever had, and even including CHKD, in terms of just a monumental feat to take that orchestra there, and the musicians were so excited, and there was just—and JoAnn was thrilled. JoAnn—I used to say that JoAnn and Dan and I were just the trio. She was calm, and Dan was very emotional, and he was pretty difficult in terms of his management style, and I was the marine sergeant, and so we had a great chemistry, the three of us. It was just wonderful, and we have subsequently remained really good friends. But we took the orchestra, the--the… the musicians went up on a bus, and it had a great big banner, and the reporters were with them. And when we got to Carnegie Hall, the bus drove by Carnegie Hall, and it had huge posters, and it said, “The Virginia Symphony Plays at Carnegie Hall.” Well, I can get teary talking about it because the musicians were so thrilled, and Dan was just—because without his management, we certainly could not have done that, and… And then we had—we had parties before that were hosted by--Minette and Charles Cooper hosted a party at one of the hotels. Then we had some donors who hosted parties, and then the economic development from Norfolk did a party the night before the orchestra played, and we were supposed to have a hundred people to come to the party, and I think there must have been 500; I mean it was just crazed. It was absolutely just—and the—it was amazing because Carnegie Hall was full, and the majority of the people there were from the Tidewater area, and it was also a testament to how much, how many people cared about what we were doing. And there were, you know, certainly out-of-town people that were there that had nothing to do with us at all, and I think most of them came to all the parties afterwards [Laughter] because I had never seen half of these people before, and so the orchestra played, and after the first piece that JoAnn played, I’ll never forget looking at Dan—we got to sit in the president’s box—that was so fun-- and he got up, and I thought, what in the world is he doing? I went out to see what he was doing, and he was crying… and he said, “I just can’t believe we finally did this,” and I said, “Well, we did, and they sound great.”
Major: The reviews were great, weren’t they?
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Edwards: Pardon – the reviews were fabulous. The Pittsburgh Symphony had played there the night before and had not received a good review, and we were concerned, but the reviews were terrific and… But it was-- and we had people who were in charge. I had a group of women who were in charge of ________ and a couple of other people who helped her, and she was the chair of the after—after-- the musicians after the concert. She was in charge of that, and she had managed to buy bottles of champagne, or she got bottles of champagne for all the musicians, and they were all wrapped, and again we were supposed to have like a hundred people at this party, and it was just, you know, and the bill of course was outrageous. That’s all I could think about is, “Oh, my gosh, how are we going to pay this bill?” [Laughter] But the people there were also very responsive to us, and we had a decent working relationship with the people at Carnegie. They have very specific rules, and so you really have to follow everything that they tell you to do, or it’s not really very pleasant. But I had tee shirts made for all the musicians for there, when they rehearsed, and they were really cute, and we had hats made for all of them, and so they all had on their tee shirts and their hats when they rehearsed that afternoon, and then that night, of course, they were all in their tuxes, but JoAnn was—when it was over, she was so emotional… which, you know, it was her first time to play at Carnegie Hall, and of course it was the Virginia Symphony’s first time to play there as well. And there’s—you know, we later subsequently took the orchestra to Kennedy Center, and it is clearly not the same dynamic. It is—it is a very special event when your orchestra appears there, and Dan subsequently told me that he took the Buffalo Symphony, and he said it wasn’t the same.
Major: Really?
Edwards: He said they sounded great, and I was pleased they were there, but it just wasn’t the same. He said, “I don’t think I’ll ever feel like that again.” So, but he has, as you know from talking to him and JoAnn, he has a great relationship with her as well.
Major: Yeah, I interviewed him last summer when I was in New York, and we talked--I had a chance to ask him some about the Carnegie Hall concert.
Edwards: Well, he was terrific. JoAnn, of course, is terrific, and the musicians were just something else, and-- I had a great relationship with the musicians. It was business-like, but it was a good relationship, and I think… I think a couple of the hardest things I ever had to do as the chair was to tell them that we weren’t going to be able to pay them.
Major: Oh, really?
Edwards: And… because the money just wasn’t there, and you know, they got paid later or their…their…-their salary got delayed until four months—that one
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salary was delayed until four months later when we raised the money, but there were times, yeah, that I had to say that to them, and it was really very difficult.
Major: Of course. The times that you had contact with the musicians, were there other situations other than where you had to tell they were going to have to miss a pay day?
Edwards: I met with them quarterly.
Major: Oh, really?
Edwards: Mmm, mmm. I would go in before rehearsal, and JoAnn would give me 15 minutes, and I would just kind of tell them where we were as a board and as an organization. I did that because I think it’s very difficult for management always to have to give bad news, and its okay, I mean that’s part of being the chair of the board. You have to take the heat for the good and the bad, and I think they had a great deal of respect for that.
Major: I’m sure they appreciated getting the information.
Edwards: They did, and it was not always pleasant, the questions that I had to answer, and they weren’t always pleasant [Laughter] particularly when they weren’t getting paid.
Major: Going back to the way your board worked, how were major steps decided? How were major problems solved on the board?
Edwards: Well, there was an executive committee, of course, and I think a lot of the major decisions and problems were dealt with at the executive committee level. It was active, when I first started chairing the board I started the meeting at four o’clock, and at 4:30 half of the board still wasn’t there… so I just put all of the major decisions at the top of the agenda and I explained to them that I was not going to repeat what had gone on for the 30 minutes that they had not attended. And so, it was not very long till everybody got there on time. So, we had a very good executive committee, and they worked hard, and they made a lot of difficult decisions, and then because of my position, I sat on the foundation board, and there was always tension between the foundation board and the symphony at that time.
Major: Really?
Edwards: Mmm, mm. Because we owed them money that had not been paid back and for the most part we asking them for more money.
Major: The Symphony had borrowed from their principle?
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Edwards: They had borrowed from the foundation because we could not, we could not get money from any of the banks. They wouldn’t lend us any money all.
Major: Oh really?
Edwards: Their line of credit had been extended, and I think at one point we had a guaranteed line of credit from board members. Then—and it was minimal because I think—I think I remember, and this has been awhile ago because I’ve done it in other organizations, but I think we reminded them that if they signed the guaranteed loan of credit that they needed to recognize that that may be a contribution and-- But we...I think during my chairmanship, we asked the foundation for a greater percentage of their interest, and we then asked them for another amount of money, and, you know, it’s all foggy at this juncture because it was a long time ago, and that was really difficult. They were not pleased to give it to us.
Major: Other than the executive committee, which other committees were particularly active or influential?
Edwards: The finance committee, I had a wonderful treasurer, Fred Westphal, who is from Newport News, and had his own firm but is now with Goodman and Company, and he worked tirelessly to get the books back in order that had not been in order for years, and he worked with Dan, and he had a decent finance committee, but he would go over sometimes and spend—he was just a bean counter—and he would go over occasionally and just go backwards two or three years and try to find out what had happened. What happened with the admission fees? What happened with taxes? And he was able to show the city that we did not owe them as much money as they said we owed them for admission fees because we owed the city money, too. We owed everybody money.
Major: True.
Edwards: And so, he worked tirelessly, so that was a very, very important committee. You know, I always feel like the nominating-board development committee is probably the most important committee on the board because that’s where you get the people who are going to be on your board to make the tough decisions or the easy ones.
Major: Before your time, was the board very hands-on? It sounds as though it became hands-on when you became president.
Edwards: I don’t know if it was hands-on. I think I mentioned the first meeting I went to was three hours long, and they had a president and a chairman, and I just thought that was the most insane thing I’ve ever-- And the president would talk about one thing, and the chairman would talk about another, and it was as
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though we were dealing with a high power corporate entity when it was just—it was just this not-for-profit board who was struggling, and they had fired the executive director, and Rob Cross had become the interim director, and they had fired their marketing person who had used money that he was not supposed to. I mean it was just a mess. I don’t know if they were hands-on or not.
Major: I was very interested in your describing how your encounters with the longtime board members and asking them if they would or would not like to continue. Do you know why some board members were on for 30 years?
Edwards: Well, the one thing I was never able to change when I chaired that board and even later after I sat on the board was term limits, and I don’t think they have term limits as—even as of today. I think… the mindset was if you had 60 people – I think the max was 63 people you could have on the board when I first encountered it. If you had 60 people, at least part of them would be there some of the time, and you could ask them all for money, and I think that many of them felt that it was representations from everywhere. And you know, it was fine to-- in your resume to put, “I sit on the Symphony board,” and several of the people had not been to a meeting in years and-- nor had they given anything in years. So it was—it was a very peculiar arrangement, to say the least, in my mind.
Major: What made some board members effective?
Edwards: Well, you have the Minette Coopers of the world who have such a passion for that orchestra that-- and it causes people to be effective and ineffective, just simply because of the amount of passion they have. And so, that’s the number one reason, to have a passion for what they are doing, and the other, I think, and certainly this is true for me in any board that I sit on, the basic rule is that if you don’t have a passion for this, don’t do it because I don’t care what organization it is, it’s going to get tough at some point, and the second thing is leadership. And I think some people will sit on a board and do—and be good board members because they have good leaders. So those are the two things, in my mind.
Major: Besides the trip to Carnegie Hall, what were other high points of your time on the board?
Edwards: I think reorganizing the board. I think developing political relationships that fared well for them for some time… and my relationship with Dan and JoAnn; it’s just spectacular. It is just great.
Major: Can you characterize the JoAnn Falletta period with the orchestra?
Edwards: As opposed to Russell?
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Major: Or…
Edwards: As opposed to anything?
Major: Mmm, mm.
Edwards: I think that JoAnn could sell ice to Eskimos, and I think she could get those musicians to do pretty much anything she asked them to do because she is a quiet force, and I have seen her walk into civic leagues, chamber of commerce, hostile areas where donors have—they feel like their money has been abused, and she just has a way that is quietly passionate and strong about what she is doing, and it just comes right through. I think it’s a wonderful era to have her involved in this community, and plus she loves the community, and that’s very important.
Major: Did you have contact with any of the earlier music directors – Richard Williams or Winston Dan Vogel or…
Edwards: I did not…
Major: Okay.
Edwards: …because they were before my time.
Major: Okay…
Edwards: I went to the symphony, but I had no contact with them at all.
Major: All right. How did the VSO become a nationally recognized orchestra?
Edwards: Well, I think that JoAnn has clearly had expectations of the musicians at a higher level than--than clearly they ever had before, so she’s very careful about it, and she ______ a member of the orchestra. They do not play the same humdrum pieces that many lower level orchestras play and-- not that they don’t play some really popular pieces, but they also play very difficult music. I think that it gives the musicians—that it really just gives them energy. I believe that it’s all about, in terms of the quality of that orchestra; it’s all about JoAnn and her expectations.
Major: What additional things do you think need to happen to increase the symphony’s viability?
Edwards: Don’t get me started [Laughter] …
Major: Oh, but we came to get you started. [Laughter]
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Edwards: Well, I was on the search committee when we hired… Carla, and I just thought she was terrific, and the search committee except for, I think, Susan Colpitts and myself -- was Susan on that committee? Any how, I don’t think that the guys were—we had not interviewed her, and we just did a phone interview, and they had kind of settled on another person, and I said, “This woman just sounds fabulous. We have to bring her in,” so they did; we brought her in. She was; she has been fabulous. But the symphony tries to be all things to all people, and we cannot be that. They have services in so many different arenas. The budget is just, has just gone sky high, and I don’t think this community is willing to support that kind of an orchestra, unfortunately, and they just had their debt paid off last year, and now they’re a million dollars in debt, and that just—I just have a difficult time dealing with that. It’s like what happened… that you have to have a two million dollar debt paid off? Well, I know what happened. I mean, you have a large number of musicians; you have—there’s an increase in the number of musicians. You have increased the number of places you’re going. We have more people coming from outside to direct because JoAnn is not directing as often, and every time you bring somebody in, and every time you up the number of musicians, it’s money, money. It’s just—I mean I can sit in the—at Chrysler Hall and just go cha-ching. And so, they have to get their budget in line, and you know, I’m on the outside looking in now, and so I think Blair Wimbush will be a wonderful leader, but it’s just mind boggling that you have your debt paid off, and a year later you are a million dollars in debt again,and I do think that the symphony business is a very tough business, and it’s hard to get your arms around it because you have union workers who are bright, and you have numbers, you have big salaries. And it’s hard; it’s very hard, and I’m not sure what they are going to do.
Major: Let me clarify, you said you have musicians who are union members, and then the next thing you said is that you have big salaries. You don’t mean big salaries for each musician?
Edwards: Not for each musician but in total.
Major: The total payroll.
Edwards: The total payroll is really—that’s a big nut to crack every two weeks, a very big nut to crack, and it takes a lot of administration to have a symphony with that many players, going to that many different places. You have to have a lot of folks who are on the outside of that and staff taking care of it.
Major: It’s a large staff.
Edwards: It’s a big staff, and you know, if you ask me what I think they should do, Blair would probably just hate it if he heard me say this. I would say, “Cut your staff; renegotiate your contract with the musicians, and anything that involves a tremendous amount of travel where you are not getting income back
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from it, don’t go.” But you know that’s—again, I’m just a trustee on their advisory committee now. I’m not on that board, and that’s probably the good news.
Major: How has the foundation contributed to the symphony’s viability?
Edwards: Well, I can’t speak to the foundation—about the foundation presently, and I think they’re much… They have a greater sense of being connected to the symphony now than I ever felt that they did before. When I was asked to give money to the capital campaign for their endowment, I said, and this is how I feel about the Foundation because it is not under the Symphony. It is separate by itself. If the symphony goes away, their assets they can take, and they can start another symphony somewhere else. Those assets from the foundation do not go to the Symphony. So when I was asked to give to their endowment, I said, “There’s absolutely no way that I would give to the endowment if it goes to an endowment that is run by the Foundation because that money could be there, and it could be used for other purposes other than the Virginia Symphony.” So, and of course when they asked me for the money I don’t think they realized that that was a possibility, and I said, “You all need to check the by-laws and the articles of incorporation for the Foundation and then get back with me and let me know how you think I can give to you in an endowment that has nothing to do with the Foundation.” So that’s how I feel about the Foundation. I don’t think the people who had thought that was their money before, I don’t think as many of them are there, and I do think it is different but I don’t know because I haven’t had any association with that.
Major: What about the contribution of the Symphony League to the Symphony’s viability?
Edwards: I think they are the greatest ambassadors for the Symphony, and they work hard, and I think sometimes they work hard and spin their wheels, but I think they work hard, and they’re wonderful to the musicians, and they do a lot for them, and they’re, simply because of numbers, it’s just great that they can be in the community and talk about how wonderful the Symphony is, and I think they’re such a positive.
Major: My understanding is that the merger of the several local ensembles that now make up the Virginia Orchestra Group… my understanding is that when that happened in 1979, that was well before your involvement with the Symphony. What vestiges of the struggle existed during your time?
Edwards: Well, certainly that there were people in Virginia Beach that we would ask to give us money that would say, “You know you took our symphony, and now it’s the Norfolk Symphony,” but of course, it was the Virginia Symphony, and just because we were located in Norfolk, they did not feel the ownership as much. I think the Patsy Carpenters of the world in Newport News and the David Peebles in Newport News provided the continuity from that side of the water that
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people didn’t have the same resentment as the Virginia Beach folks did, and now that the Symphony is playing at the Sandler Center, I think most people really don’t even know about all of that.
Major: Maybe not.
Edwards: That it’s not part of the history that they recognize with the Virginia Symphony.
Major: In 1985 the musicians were put on salary. For the first time it was a fulltime salaried orchestra. Do you have a sense of how it happened finally after so many years in which the Symphony was not a fulltime salaried orchestra?
Edwards: [Pause] Well, they were… I guess I’m not sure because when I began negotiating their contracts, they had 273 services, and they were fulltime. I mean, we had part-time players, but they were fulltime. I don’t know how that whole deal went on.
Major: Okay, were there… in your time were there notable incidents in the area of labor relations?
Edwards: Well, I think the contracts became increasingly more difficult to negotiate. I just think that the musicians until recently felt underpaid and overworked, and the reality is there was not and still is not enough money to pay them what they deserve, and there probably never will be, and so I think during contract negotiations that there is certainly—there were times that were very difficult, particularly under Win Short’s chairmanship.
Major: Particularly?
Edwards: When Win was chairing. You know, musicians are interesting people because they either like you or they don’t, and that’s one week and the next week they can really dislike you because you know—they’re just—they’re very—they’re temperamental; they’re creative, and I think when Win was chairing the board, that it was hard for them to identify with him, and so it made their negotiations more difficult. That’s just my personal feeling. I don’t know that for certain.
Major: Are there things that you would like to comment on that I haven’t asked about?
Edwards: Only that, you know, it’s—it’s… it’s worrisome to me that we might not have a symphony in this area if they don’t get the financial aspect of the organization under control, and I’m concerned that we might lose the leadership that’s presently there, with Carla in particular, because she is a good CEO, and she loves the musicians; they love her. And, you know, I would like for them to get their budget and their finances under control. It’s just very worrisome to me
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because you know it is the center of what goes on here culturally. It’s with the opera; it’s with the arts festival; and I’m presently the chair-elect to the stage company and that’s kind of—it’s another story but… You know, I just--- I see the Symphony so central to what goes on, and I hope that they’re able to get it together, and now with the economic times as they are, it‘s very scary to me because I certainly, just as an individual, would have to rethink what I was thinking about doing because it’s just a very difficult time for everyone, and I think that will certainly show up in fundraising for the Symphony-- for all the arts organizations in particular, and I wish that they had… a greater support from the political arena, particularly in Norfolk. So that’s, you know… I think all of us who have chaired boards can go—can say, “Gosh, I wish they’d do this, or I wish they’d do that,” but if you’re not walking in those shoes, you just don’t know.
Major: You’re right. This has been wonderfully informative, and I’ve enjoyed it very much. Thank you very much.
Edwards: Oh, you’re welcome.
END OF INTERVIEW
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