Major: It’s May 29th 2007; this is Jean Major. I’m talking with Dr. Ula Motekat about her experience being active in the Virginia Symphony Orchestra League. How did your involvement with the symphony begin?
Motekat: One of my colleagues was Anne Daughtrey, who was about to become president, and she--.
Major: Of the League?
Motekat: Of the League. And her office was a couple of doors from mine. And one day she said, “You ought to become a member of the League.” So I said, “Okay.” And I joined.
Major: And that was about when?
Motekat: Early eighties. 1982, eighty-three, something like that.
Major: Okay. In in the work that you did with the Symphony League, what has been your particular expertise or what has have been the areas where you were very active?
Motekat: Since I’m a professional accountant, I served as treasurer and and assistant treasurer. As a point of interest I was a woman who had served as treasurer forever. And so they changed the by-laws that you could only succeed yourself once, which meant you could serve serve only four years, and then you had to quit. So I served four years; then I became assistant treasurer for four years, and then I was elected treasurer again for four years, and then I decided that was it; that was enough of handling the money [laughs].
Major: What does the treasurer do, compared to what does the assistant treasurer do?
Motekat: The assistant treasurer is responsible for keeping the accounts for the raffle, that is the car raffle that is the biggest fundraiser the League has. And the treasurer gets all the other money, the dues and any donations and pays all the bills.
Major: Aside from the car raffle and its expenses, what what are the expenses of the League? What money does the treasurer handle? I understand it’s dues and stuff like that, but what’s it used for?
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Motekat: There are other fundraisers besides the raffle. We used to have a fashion show for several years, and then everybody else had a fashion show, and we decided we’d get out of that. And of course somebody had to take in the money that the people paid to come to the fashion show, and somebody had to pay the expenses. That was the treasurer’s job. And we had some other fundraisers, small fundraisers, and I would take in the money and disperse the money. And that was my job.
Major: Okay. What can you tell me about how the League organization was structured? Or is structured? Was or is?
Motekat: Was, because I haven’t been very active the last couple of years.
Major: Okay.
Motekat: With my health what it is I just couldn’t depend on anything.
Major: Right.
Motekat: What it was, there was a president, a vice president, a president-elect who would succeed the president, and then the treasurer, the recording secretary, the corresponding secretary, and some board members. The committee chairs were generally elected to be board members, so the board meetings were very large, something like 20 people, and the decisions were made at these large board meetings, and it depended very much on the president whether she would be able to keep control, because for many of these women, this was a social meeting, and they wanted to visit with their friends. So there were little groups of people talking here and there, and the president was trying to run the meeting [laughs].
Major: Was there never an executive committee or a smaller group that would facilitate some decisions?
Motekat: No, there was the, the executive committee was the president, the president elect, the treasurer,and the recording secretary, and maybe an ex-president or somebody who had special expertise; for instance, when before the raffle started, each year the executive committee and raffle committee would meet together to decide what car to buy, how many tickets to sell, at what price, and when to start, and when to have the drawing and all that.
Major: So certain kinds of of work was done with the smaller group, but there were there were some decisions and some work was done with the entire board of 20 people.
Motekat: Right.
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Major: And a number of the board members were also chairs of committees.
Motekat: Right.
Major: Besides the executive committee, and I’m guessing from what you’ve just said, the raffle committee, what other committees were particularly active?
Motekat: There was the committee in charge of the ushers or finding the ushers and you know getting for the children’s concerts. The children would come in 10 or 20 school buses, and league members were there to at the doors, and we had lists of what school would go where, and we would stand there and direct traffic to get them all into their seats.
Major: At the children’s concerts.
Motekat: At the children’s concerts. That was the usher committee.
Major: Oh boy.
Motekat: Yeah. And that that was quite a job. Since I lived in Ghent Square I was walking distance from __ so I did it for a couple years. And it was fun. However, it was strenuous. Then, there was the welcome committee. Some, one member of the welcome committee went to the airport and met the guest musicians or the guest conductors and drove them around to their hotel and and wherever they wanted to go. Somebody had to be in charge of them, leading them around. And there were two or three people on that committee, and the chair usually did the most of the work, but when she couldn’t do something one of the other people would jump in and take the person around.
Major: Mmhm. I’ve wondered how that worked.
Motekat: [Laughs] Oh you stood at the airport with a sign For the Virginia Symphony. And then whoever was the guest conductor or the guest artist would say, “Ah! It’s me!” [Laughs]
Major: [Laughs] In the time you spent in the leadership with the the league, what were some of the high points that you recall?
Motekat: The beginning of the car raffle. We were raising only something like five or 10,000 dollars for the symphony every year until somebody came up with the idea of the car raffle. I forgot who it was. And so we decided to sell a thousand tickets at 100 dollars each which would raise 100,000 dollars, and we would buy a car and raffle it off. Well, the first year we did that, we gave the symphony a check for 30,000 dollars. It was made of in a great big check, and at the end of the concert some league members with the check walked across the stage with the check [laughs].
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Major: Oh, great.
Motekat: And after that the amount went up up up. We were, as we got better at it, we would negotiate with the car sellers, that we’d got a better price. We always had some really attractive cars like a Mercedes or what, a BMW, and you know some luxury car and a convertible or something like that that would attract interest. And it was a huge undertaking because somebody had to put all these payments on the computer, keep track of who had what ticket number, keep track of thousand, a thousand tickets to make sure none of them got lost, and all of them were sold, or if they weren’t sold they were still there. And Grace Deans was the one that did the, the accounting for that all that these these people that had bought tickets. And then at the, on the day of the drawing, it was usually the last symphony concert of the season, everybody would be in in great style, and we had the big drawing. In the beginning we had it on the mezzanine with some refreshments afterwards, wine and and hors d’oeuvres, and and that ran into several hundred dollars, and we decided, you know, in order to pay for that we’d have to sell more tickets. This is ridiculous. We’re trying to sell tickets and give to the symphony, not feed people. Well, there were a couple of people on the committee who insisted that the refreshments were something that people wanted to see, and they also got free tickets for the night of the drawing because at that, in those early days the symphony seldom sold out. So you know for the hundred dollars, you got one or two tickets, and you got wine and refreshments, so which, and the the concert, so people would would buy tickets. But then we finally won over the ones that wanted the refreshments, and we made the announcement from the stage. John Lindberg would have a drum roll, and he would be blindfolded, and he would draw the tickets, and they would, the first one drawn was for the car was put in an envelope and stapled on the board, and then the second, the third, and then they were opened in the reverse order. Number three, number two, number one, and the people that won of course were very happy. The second prize was generally some piece of jewelry or some art, something like that. The third prize in the beginning was a trip on the Concord to London or Paris for two [laughs], which was very very nice.
Major: I should say so. My husband won second prize one year and got a travel credit, but I can assure you it was not a trip on the Concord
Motekat: No, no. The only person I know who won the trip on the Concord Concord was ____ Steingold. She’s also at Westminster Canterbury.
Major: Oh.
Motekat: Do you know her?
Major: I think I know her son, maybe.
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Motekat: Yeah. Yeah that could be. Can you turn this off? I’ll tell you a story.
Major: All right. Let’s start it over.
Motekat: That’s more about the Concord than the Symphony League. But the raffle, every year we would increase the number of tickets to 125, 150, but we were generally limited to about 1,025. Usually about a thousand, and and we would reduce it when we wouldn’t sell, and then everybody else got into the act. The the museum has one, and they are given the car, the Chrysler. So they they make all the money they get off the the tickets. And the opera had a raffle for a couple three years that they didn’t do very well, so they gave it up and concentrated on the opera ball. Which made a lot of money, so.
Major: Were there other high points beside the start-up of the raffle?
Motekat: Well, every year the the raffling, the end of the raffle was, you know, a highlight. Everybody was looking forward to that. And we would sit at each concert and sell tickets and get this done. What else. The league was, the boutique was a big success. You know, we would sell t-shirts and and sweaters and CD’s and books about music and all that, and that made around ten or 15,000 dollars a year which was a nice fundraiser.
Major: Right. Other than high points, are there other memorable moments particularly in your experience?
Motekat: There were a couple of them when we had fights with the symphony.
Major: Oh?
Motekat: [Laughs] We felt that the symphony did not appreciate us. They were telling us how to do things. You know, we should be doing this with the raffle and that with the raffle, and we figured we are doing it our way, and we’re raising the money, and who are you to tell us what to do? And we had one rather heated meeting where one of us, who shall remain nameless, pointed out to the symphony that they didn’t balance their books while the league did [laughs] So we told them we did know something that they apparently didn’t. But we really resented them, you know, they they only were there for us when we handed them the check. And they would call us. Under the law in Virginia we could not distribute the money we raised in the raffle until after all the expenses were paid. We had to have at least enough money in from selling tickets to pay all the expenses, like the car, which cost 30, 40, 50,000 dollars, and they said, “Well you’ll get enough you’ll get enough,” and we said, “No. Under the law we can’t do it.” So that was a constant battle. They were, they were just short of cash all the time. You know that was not a nice part of the the relationship.
Major: Hm.
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Motekat: No.
Major: Who were the executive directors that you worked with? The symphony executive directors?
Motekat: Oh God I can’t remember their names. There was one …you have the names?
Major: Some names, and and I, I don’t have them all, no.
Motekat: They they they didn’t last very long, didn’t make a big impression, I’m afraid [laughs].
Major: There were, there have been a number of names that have been mentioned in the time that we’ve been doing this project, and I guess it doesn’t surprise me to hear you say, then, that none of them lasted very long.
Motekat: No, they were there maybe two, three years. They came, eager to to upheave for great upheavals straighten everything out, and one of them--I can’t remember his name--he was all for starting new series. He started a modern music series which flopped. Oh, yeah. They didn’t sell hardly any tickets. It was all modern music, and people didn’t buy it. And he also wanted to offer concerts in, on the Peninsula. And he had a series there which didn’t quite make it, so he was losing some money, and he was one of the people that was pressuring us for cash, and and one day he up and left.
Major: The, all this procession of executive directors, did they come from the outside?
Motekat: Yeah. Yeah they always came from the outside. They had a search committee.
Major: A search committee.
Motekat: Yeah. We met them after they were hired.
Major: Right. Were there any of them that you regard, you recall as being particularly effective?
Motekat: No. And I have no information on the current one. What’s her name?
Major: Carla Johnson.
Motekat: Carla Johnson, yeah. When she came in, I was, you know, backpedaling with my service. Yeah.
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Major: Do, has the league normally interacted with other symphony staff besides the executive director?
Motekat: No. Very little.
Major: Who, when when the league did all that ushering for the children’s concerts, was there some interaction with the education person at the symphony?
Motekat: For a while Ernestine--her last name escapes me-- was the education director, and she had regular meetings with the league. She would, she would become a member of the league board, and at each board meeting she would tell us what she was doing and asking for help with this, that, and the other, volunteers to do something. She also offered a course in Symphony 101, which was very interesting. And--.
Major: I participated in that sometimes.
Motekat: And it was very cheap and lots of fun.
Major: Yes it was.
Motekat: So and then when Carla Johnson came, she thought that was not a good idea, so she killed it.
Major: Really.
Motekat: Yeah. And we were all disappointed.
Major: Well that’s interesting. I hadn’t noticed that it had stopped, but I know we’re not going to it anymore.
Motekat: Yeah, it stopped.
Major: Ah. You said you came here in the early eighties, I guess, so--.
Motekat: I came in 1980. I came to ODU.
Major: So there were two directors in the, the decade of the eighties. There was Richard Williams and Winston Dan Vogel, and I’m curious. Both of them served short terms, and I wonder, what can you tell me about Richard Williams?
Motekat: Next to nothing. I I didn’t get involved, you know, maybe one year or so, I was more involved with Winston Dan Vogel.
Major: Tell me about him.
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Motekat: I thought he, he was a very, an extraordinary musician. He had also survived years--he did one thing. He had a night in Vienna where he showed--it was sort of a take-off on the Vienna Philharmonic’s A New Year’s Day Concert. He had pictures of Vienna, a horse-drawn carriages going along and he would play Viennese music, and he ended like the Vienna Philharmonic with the Radetzky March, and everybody was clapping, so it was great fun. It was a fundraiser. Yyou had to pay more for the ticket, and that was a big accomplishment of his. He also was very good at the children’s concerts. When I was ushering, he was doing them. And he was just fascinating, the children just sat there, “Ooh,” watching him.
Major: Really.
Motekat: Yeah. I don’t know what happened. All I know is rumors. Rumors I heard was that he was too European. He was from Israel, but he his education was in Europe, and European conductors are czars or dictators, and they will shout at the musicians, “You Goddamn idiot, can’t you get it,” and he was doing the same thing, and the musicians here are not used to that kind of treatment.So they resented that, and I think that played a role in his leaving.
Major: Mmm. How did you like his programming and how (…) do you think do you think that he developed the symphony as a musical organization at the time he was--.
Motekat: I don’t think I can judge that. I liked his programs; he played very little modern music [laughs].That’s what I like [laughs] I don’t know that he did, you know, further the the symphony as an orchestra. He had a very good and close relationship with the league. He came quite often; we had a preview before concerts. And he would come quite often and talk about the concert, and he treated us like adults. Not like the executive director, who quite often treated us like as if we didn’t know what we were doing
Major: Like girls
Motekat: Yeah, little old ladies, to tell the truth, which is what we were, but we were doing a good job.
Major: Right. [Laughs] I’m interested in in the various forces that have continued to make the Symphony viable all these years. What do you think that the Symphony League has contributed to the viability of the Symphony over time?
Motekat: Money, volunteers, ushers. I don’t know who does the ushering at concerts. We were never asked to do that; apparently the symphony had other ushers. But we had the boutique. We bought and sold all the stuff and raised money with that. Oh, when I first joined the Symphony League, we also did the telephoning about subscriptions.
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Major: Tell me about that.
Motekat: We were given a list of people who hadn’t re-subscribed and were asked to call them. That was a disaster. Some of them had already re-subscribed, so they were angry about being called. Others had no intention of subscribing; they said, “You’ve already called me, and I told you I wasn’t going to subscribe.” With others the telephone number was wrong, so we did it a couple of years, and we said, “This is ridiculous.” Though we could--. I don’t know whether they continued it, but the League wasn’t involved with it anymore after the couple of years. I don’t think it was very effective.
Major: There was a period when the symphony league handled all of the subscriptions.
Motekat: Yeah. That was before my time.
Major: Long ago.
Motekat: Yeah.
Major: Right. Right. And do you have any sense when the balance changed, when the Symphony League stopped handling the subscription campaign, and it went over to the staff?
Motekat: Probably in the early eighties because I only remember a couple of seasons when I was involved with the telephoning about the subscriptions, and then, you know, we had just said, “This just makes no sense,” and we gave it up. I forgot to mention our annual auction. The league had an annual auction. And usually at somebody’s house, somebody had a big house. We would have lunch; you would pay, you know, for your lunch, paid an amount to cover the food and then some, and then we would clean house and bring all the white elephants, and they were auctioned off. One of the league members would do the auctioning, and we raised three 4,000 dollars every year, which was nice. And it was a social meeting. Very good lunch. And nice entertainment; you know, we would visit with each other, and we sold a lot of stuff [laughs]
Major: [laughs] How effective is the league now at fundraising, do you think?
Motekat: I think that they’re still doing the the boutique, which is done by Leroy and Cora Collins.And they have a lot more CDs than we had in the early days.And they, they’ve split it up. Leroy does the CDs, and Cora does the rest of it, and they are raising 15 or 20,000 dollars a year. We only raised something like eight to 10 with the boutique so. That makes a difference.
Major: Well, it does make a difference. And how effective do you think the League has been at promoting the symphony?
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Motekat: I don’t really know. We we we talk to people we know; we tell them we are in the league, and we’re going to symphony concerts and--. Went--. Oh we’ve done a small thing at the arts festival. Not not the Virginia Arts Festival, the one on in Ghent.
Major: Stockley Gardens.
Motekat: Right. We would have a table where we would, you know, sell tickets to the the Symphony and and subscribe and and all of that, and whenever there was something where the symphony wanted to have a table and a presence, the League would go there, you know, and sell whatever they wanted sold.
Major: Right. Right. In 1979 and 80 the Norfolk Symphony, the Virginia Beach Pops and the Peninsula Orchestra merged into a single group called the Virginia Orchestra Group. Even though you came onto the scene a year or two after that, were you aware of processes or measures taken that advanced that merger, that that facilitated that merger?
Motekat: No. I, the thing I was aware of was a certain tension between Virginia Beach and Norfolk.
Major: And that tension was obvious on the board even when you joined.
Motekat: Yeah.
Major: Is it still?
Motekat: I don’t think so. The the Virginia Symphony Orchestra is really a nice little orchestra; they make nice music. They’re just not on the same level as the Virginia Symphony.
Major: Well, that’s right.
Motekat: Do you know about the suicide? Of the associate or assistant conductor?
Major: I don’t know much about it.
Motekat: He was a really nice guy, and and the League felt sort of like his grandmother or great aunt. He would come and do previews for us, and when he left, he was very unhappy when he left, and that could have been a reason why he killed himself.
Major: He was unhappy here or unhappy with the symphony or--?
Motekat: Unhappy, unhappy that he lost his job.
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Major: Oh.
Motekat: And apparently there were some tensions between him and Falletta, or him and the orchestra and Falletta. One rumor has it that Falletta didn’t want to keep him. If she had fought for him, she might have been able to keep him. And he had a job as conductor for the Joffrey Ballet. But that came to an end because they were running out of money. So he left here, and we had a luncheon for him and gave him several hundred dollars as a farewell present because we figured cash was what he wanted, not some cup or something.
Major: Right.
Motekat: And he was very touched when we did that, and he left, and we never heard from him until we saw in the paper that he killed himself here in Norfolk. And nobody knows why. There’ve been all sorts of suspicions. Apparently, he was gay. And one rumor was that he was afraid he had HIV or--. Nobody knows.
Major: Thinking broadly over time, can you give give me a sense of the overall importance of the contributions of women in this community to assure the continued viability of the Symphony?
Motekat: You go to a concert, and 80 percent of the audience is women [laughs]. And 80 percent of the audience is over 50. Or over 60.
Major: That is true.
Motekat: I don’t know how the opera attracts young people, but the symphony is not attracting the young people. You go to the opera, and you see people under 50, and I was active in the opera guild, and I’m still, to a certain extent, and the women running the opera guild are younger than the women running the symphony league. The only way I can explain it is the younger generation is more visual, and the opera has a picture; there’s action. With the symphony you just sit there and watch a bunch of musicians. There’s no action. I think that may be it but…But if it weren’t for women, the symphony and the opera would both have folded up long ago. It’s the women that are carrying the organizations.
Major: Mmhm. In terms of attendance or attendance and other support or--?
Motekat: They they are the ones that come.That attend. The only men you see are escorting women. You rarely see two or three men going. But you see two or three women going.
Major: Yes. Yes. How strong has the symphony been in the last ten years or so?
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Motekat: Well, it it still hasn’t solved its financial problems. As an accountant I could tell them how to do it [laughs]. I think what, the way they budget, is they say, “This is what we need.” And then they tell everybody, “This is what you have to raise.” And if they don’t, then there is a big deficit at the end of the year. In my opinion, what they should do is sort out whether how much money can we raise? What can we do with that money?
Major: You’re saying that that they, they start the year with deficit budgets, with With unbalanced budgets?
Motekat: They they start the year hoping the donations will come in. Because it’s donations that have to make up the deficit.
Major: I understand that the Virginia Symphony is now … called a nationally recognized symphony. Do you know how that process happened?
Motekat: No. I think they did did it themselves. [Laughs] They went to Carnegie--. Anybody can play at Carnegie Hall. You just rent the hall. And pay. And then you go. Some orchestras are invited, like the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, they’re invited to play to play there.But most--or not most--a lot them just say, “When can we hire you?” And they pay, and they go. And so the Symphony made a big deal out of playing at Carnegie Hall, which anybody can do. But most people don’t know that you can hire Carnegie Hall.
Major: Right. Aside from starting the year with a balanced budget, what additional things need to happen to increase the symphony’s financial stability?
Motekat: Either they have to cut back on their costs, or they have to raise more money. One of the, there are certain things that they do that I don’t quite understand as an accountant. For one thing they get these guest artists. I don’t think they bring in anybody unless it’s a big name. Most of them are not big names. So if they say Joe Blow is going to play the cello, or Anne Doe is going to play the violin, that does not produce a lot of ticket sales.Now Perlman produces ticket sales. But he costs.
Major: Course he does.
Motekat: Yeah. But at the the Met, for instance, I was on the tour, and they told us how Perlman pays for it. They sell on average 80 to 85 percent of the tickets. They hire Perlman for 30,000 dollars; they sell all the other tickets, which brings in more than 30,000 dollars.
Major: Sure.
Motekat: But here the the guest artists don’t bring in that many more tickets, in my opinion. And in my opinion the chairs of the violin section or the the cello
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section could be the soloists and wouldn’t cost nearly as much. Then they have the guest conductors that they have to pay for.And they have an assistant conductor who ___the same thing, and that costs money. But then the other thing that Falletta does--I’ve noticed with her in the last few years--last concert I went to, she had a Haydn, which requires a very small orchestra and a Bruckner which requires a very large orchestra. But she has to pay all those musicians for the whole evening. So why not have a concert with Haydn and Mozart, both of whom take a small orchestra and save some money? She’s not an accountant. I am.
Major: Do you know anything about when the the orchestra became a salaried orchestra?
Motekat: No.
Major: That happened in the mid-eighties.
Motekat: I, I know there was a big to-do. I think there was a strike too, wasn’t there?
Major: There may have been, but tell me about the to-do.
Motekat: Well, they they wanted to become salaried and make a living, but there wasn’t enough money to do that. So they compromised and promised them a certain number of services a year. And I think, I think at the time their average salary was something like 20,000 dollars. Nobody could live on that.
Major: No.
Motekat: No. I had one student who was the, a English horn player. He majored in accounting, made straight A’s, and he he asked me, he said, “What do I do?” He said, “I want to get married, I want to have children.” And I said, “Take an accounting job. Play for the symphony when they like to have you.” But he knew he could never do it with the symphony, so he left the symphony and became an accountant. Probably a very good one.
Major: Hm. But at the time that transition occurred, it was highly publicized?
Motekat: It was; it made the paper.
Major: Yeah. Yeah. There was a time also when the symphony worked, had a partnership with Norfolk State to work together to recruit faculty members of Norfolk State who were also members of the symphony. Were you aware of that arrangement or how that all played out?
Motekat: No. They didn’t tell us about that.
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Major: Okay. In the time you were in active in the league, did you ever work with the youth orchestra?
Motekat: No.
Major: With the community music school?
Motekat: No.
Major: Or with the symphony chorus?
Motekat: No. I have a voice that drives away people.
Major: Are there things that you wish that I had asked that haven’t come up? Things that you’d like to get on the record?
Motekat: I don’t know. I think the symphony has to somehow or another find a way to attract young people. Otherwise, it’s going to die. Because we are all going to die. I’m going to die. All the old people that sit in the audience will sooner or later die. And who will go to the concerts then? And that’s a real problem. That’s a real problem. I think Falletta also likes modern music. And she’s lost some subscribers with that.
Major: Really?
Motekat: Yeah. I know several people who quit subscribing, me included, because why pay all that money to hear music you don’t want to hear? So. They tried this modern music series, and it didn’t sell. But so, she she thinks we ought to be educated to appreciate modern music. Well some people just don’t want to be educated. I can’t think of anything else. Oh! Between you and me, did you know Ludwig Diehn?
Major: I’ve met him a time or two.
Motekat: Yeah. He was from Germany. And so my sister and I were closer to him. When the symphony played one of his symphonies, we asked the symphony whether they were giving a party for him, and they said, “No,” so I said, “Okay, we’ll give a party.” And I asked him, and he said, “Oh yes, please,” and he told me who he wanted invited, so we had a party. And he enjoyed that very much. He was looking for immortality. He had no children, and he had lots of money. I don’t know how much, but he sold his father’s factories, chemical factories, before the second World War. And lived on his money. And composed. So he must have gotten quite a bit of money. To live from the late thirties until he died a few years ago. So he was looking for immortality, and I remember ODU sent around these questionnaires, you know, who do you think
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we ought to give an honorary doctorate to so I wrote them, “Please give Diehn an honorary doctorate.” Well, they didn’t, but they must have done something right because he gave them a bunch of money.
Major: Yes.
Motekat: The symphony didn’t do it right.
Major: Really?
Motekat: They they didn’t get the any money when he died. He he was looking for immortality. My sister and I visited him. He lived here at, on Hampton Boulevard. And I would make a German cake and take it there, and he was so happy and and--. His wife was very happy too when we came because it took some of the entertainment pressure off of her.And he he was really, he was a very nice person. He just wanted somehow or another to be remembered. And ODU came through.
Major: That’s right. We we have the music library.
Motekat: Yeah, and the building.
Major: That’s right.
Motekat: And the the Diehn series of concerts.
Major: That’s right.
Motekat: But the the the symphony--. Oh that reminds me of, when I was teaching, one of my students came and told me that two big accounting firms, CPA firms, were merging, and they were throwing out all the computers and the furniture of one of them because everything was supposed to be the same. So I sat down and wrote a letter to the symphony. I said, “These firms are merging. They’re throwing out computers and furniture. Contact them. This is the phone number; this is the person. Right away, because they’re about to throw it all out.” Six months later, I got a phone call, “Who should we call about these computers?” [laughs]They never got them of course. And they didn’t get any of the furniture. I didn’t see how I could do any more than tell them about it.
Major: No, no, that’s right.
Motekat: They they were dysfunctional under a lot of these executive directors. That was Michael--God what was his name?--he was, he was doing all sorts of things, but they, their organization wasn’t organized right.
Major: Something like--. Is there’s a guy named Titkus(ph) or Titmus(ph) or some--.
[16]
Motekat: Yeah. Yeah. Tit
Major: That’s who you mean, right?
Motekat: Yeah. Yeah.
Major: Michael Tiknis or--.
Motekat: Yeah. Something like that.
Major: Yeah.
Motekat: Yeah he he was just disorganized. The symphony didn’t function.
Major: Mmhm. Hm. Well this has been wonderfully informative and enjoyable, and I’m very grateful to you for being willing to do it. Thank you very much.
Motekat: You’re most welcome.
END OF INTERVIEW
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