Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
#311: Michael Sachs (Musician) (pt. 1 of 2)
Today we released part one of our interview with Michael Sachs. He has a portfolio career at the highest levels of classical music: he’s in his 37th year as the principal trumpet of The Cleveland Orchestra, he's the Music Director of the Strings Music Festival, an active soloist, author, instrument designer, and he's on the faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music.
Though our interview mainly focuses on his entrepreneurial activities as a music director and musician outside of The Cleveland Orchestra, Michael offers a wealth of information to anyone aspiring to become a professional musician! https://michaelsachs.com/
Hi Nick Petrella here. This episode is sponsored by Volkweins Music, a full-service shop that's been meeting the musical needs of musicians for over 135 years. They offer a huge selection of instruments, accessories, music and more. They also have an unmatched instrument repair department with some of the most experienced technicians in the business. For years they've serviced my personal and school instruments, and their attention to detail is why I and professional musicians from around the globe trust Volkweins to service their gear. Head over to volkweinsmusic. com to see what they can do for you. That's V-O-L-K-W-E-I-N-S music. com, helping people discover music since 1888.
Announcer:Welcome to the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast. Making Art Work. We highlight how entrepreneurs align their artistry, passion and vision to create and pursue opportunities to capture value in the arts. The views expressed by guests on the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the podcast or its hosts. The appearance of a guest on the podcast, the venture they represent or reference to any product or service does not imply an endorsement or recommendation by the podcast or its hosts. The content provided is for entertainment and informational purposes only and does not constitute business advice. Here are your hosts Andy Heise and.
Andy Heise:Nick Petrella. Hi Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast listeners. I'm Andy Heise.
Nick Petrella:And I'm Nick Petrella. We're very excited to have Michael Sachs as our guest today. He has a portfolio career at the highest levels of classical music. He's in his 37th year as the principal trumpet of the Cleveland Orchestra, the music director of the Strings Music Festival, he's an active soloist, author, instrument designer and he's on the faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music. There's much more to Michael's bio than we can read here, so we'll link to his website as well as those of the Cleveland Orchestra and the Strings Music Festival. With Michael's background, we could cover a wide variety of topics, but since we focus on arts entrepreneurship, a large part of our conversation today is going to be about his experiences as a music director and musician outside of the Cleveland Orchestra. Michael, thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to join us today.
Michael Sachs:Thank you very much for having me. Nick and Andy, it's a pleasure to be with you.
Nick Petrella:Let's begin by having you give us a thumbnail sketch of your background, from when you left graduate school to the portfolio career you enjoy today.
Michael Sachs:Well, a little bit of background. Actually, a little bit before graduate school, I took a very different route to being a musician in orchestra than just about every other musician these days takes, and that is that for my undergraduate degree I don't have a degree in music. I actually have a degree in history from UCLA, where my focus was mainly US history from Civil War till World War II, Cold War, and also with a little bit of a sidebar of some Japanese history as well. Oh wow.
Andy Heise:Did you play trumpet during undergraduate though?
Michael Sachs:Yeah, throughout my undergraduate degree I was playing trumpet and I was playing in all the ensembles that any musician would be playing who was a music major, but I just wasn't taking any of the theory, piano, music, history, et cetera.
Michael Sachs:Then I started doing some summer festivals. After my sophomore year at UCLA I started doing let's see, my first summer festival was at Tanglewood doing the Empire Brass Quintet Symposium, where I met Sam Palafian, a wonderful tuba player with the Empire Brass, who became very much a mentor and an older brother who was very instrumental in really guiding me and encouraging me to go forward with the musical part of what I wanted to explore. And then I spent the next summer between my junior senior years at the Aspen Music Festival out in Colorado and for nine weeks just playing music at Aspen was really where everything really gelled for me and I decided that this is really the direction I wanted to go when I was about 20 years old, at which point I started looking toward music schools, which led me to wanting to study with Mark Gould at Juilliard. Yeah, right, and that kind of brings me to starting all over again as a freshman at Juilliard, as a 21 year old freshman.
Nick Petrella:And how long were you at Juilliard? One or two years.
Michael Sachs:I was at Juilliard for three years. At the beginning of my third year I won the audition for fourth utility in the Houston symphony on October 31st of that year and then switched over from what was technically the beginning of my junior year over to a professional studies program which was more just taking lessons and performance groups. So I technically have no music degree.
Nick Petrella:You're not encumbered with a music degree.
Michael Sachs:No, so I'm sure there are actually probably some state schools that if I was to try to gain employment at them, they would probably not be able to employ me because I do not have a music degree.
Nick Petrella:What's the phrase? It's not a phrase, it's professional equivalency.
Michael Sachs:Well, when I was in Houston it's funny you mentioned that when I was in Houston, my second year there, the dean at Rice University Shepard School asked me to join their faculty and we had this wonderful meeting and at the end of the meeting he offered me the job and I said you know, I have to be honest with you and upfront that I don't have a music degree. And he laughed and he said you play in the Houston Symphony, right? I said yeah. He said well, to us that's the equivalent of a doctoral degree. You have a DMA in performance, so that's the equivalency. We have no problem with you joining our faculty, thank you, but thank you for your honesty nevertheless.
Andy Heise:So, that's, I think. In the business school, I think we call that practitioner qualified or practice qualified, I can't remember. Yeah, but yeah, yeah, it's crazy that whole world, but very interesting. There's probably not many like you, I'm guessing.
Michael Sachs:No, I'm a bit of a unicorn that way. I know a couple of other people, mostly the older generation, my father's generation, were guys who came out of the armed forces with the GI Bill after World War II and went to college and some studied economics and math and history and philosophy and psychology and did the playing and ended up going this direction. But nowadays you know, it's actually a pretty formidable hurdle not to be in a conservatory environment right from the beginning, as an 18-year-old right out of high school, beginning as an 18 year old right out of high school. It does put you behind the eight ball a little bit, unless somehow you end up in the circumstances, like I did, where I had these wonderful mentors and teachers along the way, wonderful playing experiences and learning the other parts of it kind of by osmosis and also partially just my own curiosity on my own and then kind of codifying it once I got Juilliard as a 21-year-old. Yeah.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, so it's almost just like an apprenticeship in a way, the way you did this.
Michael Sachs:Yeah, yeah, it was a little bit different. I mean, really, truth be told, the whole thing was that, coming out of high school, I grew up in Santa Monica, california, and in the Santa Monica School District, which is its own school district. It's not part of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Santa Monica is its own school district. So you have I don't know what it was maybe 10 elementary schools feeding three junior highs, feeding one high school, and the music in the elementary schools was very strong, as was the theater into the junior high. So by the time you got to high school where they had these terrific educators one in particular I remember, named Gerald Anderson, was the orchestra director and James Heil, the wind ensemble director and Mr Anderson by the time we got to high school we were playing in an 80-piece orchestra, playing Mussorgsky, ravel, pictures, at an Exhibition, beethoven Fifth Symphony, tchaikovsky Fifth Symphony, hinnemann, symphonic Metamorphosis, rimsky-korsakov, scheherazade. I mean we're playing all this big rep, real rep, in a high school orchestra. So I had all that experience and was around all of that and these were all people. Some went on to be musicians, most did not, but carried that kind of creativity and that kind of artistic mindset forward into whatever they did, and that appreciation of music forward.
Michael Sachs:But my father ran an advertising agency. My father ran an ad agency with, you know focus on children's toys. He was my dad was straight out of Mad Men. My parents grew up in Brooklyn and my father was working for an ad agency on Madison Avenue through the fifties, got married to my mom in 1959. She was working for Cody Cosmetics in their marketing department and they were both going to night school at CCNY. It's a classic Brooklyn Jewish family story. Anyhow, my dad's ad agency was opening up an LA office and wanted him to go out there and help run the LA office, and my mom jumped at the opportunity and pushed him to do it. He didn't want to leave New York, so that's how they ended up in LA and then a year later I was born.
Andy Heise:And I have an older sister. I think that is a storyline in Mad Men actually.
Michael Sachs:Yeah, oh yeah, it definitely is. I mean, although I personally don't watch Mad Men and haven't because I feel like I lived it, I feel like I was surrounded by it.
Michael Sachs:As a kid living through that, wow, I saw enough. But my dad's whole thing was the music thing is like great, fine, you're successful, you're having a good time. Yeah, go to college, get a broad degree and then go to law school. He kind of wanted me to go to Berkeley for law, eventually, swing around and take over his business. That was his plan.
Michael Sachs:My mom grew up playing piano and very much surrounded by classical music. My dad was tone deaf. He knew nothing of this and my mom was very nurturing with the music and very, very supportive of that end of things and her whole thing was like look, go to UCLA. You always wanted to go there, keep doing your music, keep playing, keep taking the lessons and as things go, you're going to find your way, you're going to find what resonates.
Michael Sachs:But ultimately you have to be you. You can't do it just what your father wants you to do. You have to do what you want to do and what's in your heart and what's really in your creativity and your wheelhouse. So ultimately, going to these summer festivals, I really came to the realization by the time I was 20 that this is what I wanted to do. And when I went to Juilliard. My dad was funny. His whole thing was like yeah, all right, fine, go go to New York, go do this, get this out of your system. When you come to your senses, come on back, go to law school, take over my business. So I I kind of messed up his plans.
Andy Heise:Yeah, yeah, I'm imagining the phone call where you say hey Dad, I got a job playing the trumpet.
Michael Sachs:Yeah, it's funny. When I was in the Houston Symphony he still didn't quite get it.
Andy Heise:OK.
Michael Sachs:You know he's kind of like hey, you know you started with him, you finished with him. Yeah, you know he still thought I was like I was in school or something. And you know my mom pretty much got it from the beginning but it was, it's funny, it wasn't until I got this job and so I did take this audition in. It was May of 1988, I was 26. And I didn't tell anybody I was taking this audition. I told maybe two or three people. Funny enough, one of the people I told, who I was very, very good friends with, ended up becoming my wife. I was just very good friends with Yolanda, and it wasn't another, you know, three years before we got together, but we were just very good friends. But she was one of the few people I actually told Anyhow.
Michael Sachs:So I call my parents when I get offered the job and my mom worked with my dad in the office, so I got my dad's assistant to get them both on the phone and picture this it's down this long hallway and my dad's office is at the end of the hallways. President of the ad agency. My mom's office is at a right angle to his and right across from my mom is my dad's assistant so she can see both of them. So I tell then with Steldam Mulligan Mrs Mulligan, get my parents on the phone. They both get on the phone. I tell them the news.
Michael Sachs:My mom starts crying. She's like, oh my God, george Zell, and you're going to be playing in Carnegie Hall, we get to see you and this is like you know, you being called up to the Dodgers and you're the starting, you know, outfielder for the Dodgers. This is like the most incredible. And she's crying and going through this whole thing. After about three minutes, finally, she gives my dad an opening and there's a pregnant pause and my dad goes Cleveland. Are you out of your blanking mind? Cleveland, the worst, the worst. Are you kidding me? Because he had come here on business. He did business with what? Was it? The greeting card company here.
Nick Petrella:Oh, American Greetings.
Michael Sachs:American Greetings and those guys from Cleveland, and he was here quite a bit through the 70s and 80s when the town was a little down. And so he goes off on this rant about Cleveland being awful and like are you out of your mind? And my mom then starts giving him the business yeah, I bet. And then finally they start arguing. She drops the phone, goes into his office to yell at him, he puts the phone down and they forget that I'm on the phone. So that's a microcosm of my parents.
Michael Sachs:Yeah, but eventually it wasn't until my first year in the orchestra. In January that year we played three concerts in Carnegie Hall and my parents created a business in New York to be there and were there and the first concert had them come backstage and at that point over 50% of the orchestra were still people that George Zell had hired. So it was all people their age and older. And one by one, these people are coming up to them and I'm introducing them and they're saying how great it is to have your son as a principal trumpet and talking to me as a colleague, as an equal, as a you know somebody that they, you know, they look toward and that there was, you know respect.
Michael Sachs:My dad was never at a loss for words, ever. He's kind of the master of ceremonies, he was just always kind of a just bright light. My mom was talking away and you know, doc Nani, my boss, comes over and I introduced him to my parents. My dad is just silent and my mom is talking away and it was at that moment I could tell it was like a light bulb went off in my dad. He's like oh, this is really some serious business.
Nick Petrella:This is not that's when he got it.
Michael Sachs:Yeah, mikey's not coming back to run my business. You know it's like, it's like that's. And from then on he, you know he came to concerts, he was, he was a big fan and you know, and he, he, I think he got it.
Andy Heise:He's always a little wistful.
Michael Sachs:I didn't take over his business. But anyhow, that's that's kind of how I came to this and it's a circuitous route that is different, but everybody's route's different. Everybody's professional route has those corners and those kind of crossroads where you go left instead of right and I was very lucky along the way that the opportunities came up when they did and I happened to go in the direction I did.
Andy Heise:Yeah Well, I was going to ask you about the role of mentors or role models in shaping your vision for sort of where you wanted to go, and you kind of touched on that. So maybe I'll kind of reframe that question as, like, you know the importance of having mentors and role models, particularly in the performing arts. Can you speak to that a little bit?
Michael Sachs:Oh, having mentors and role models is everything. Yeah, and for me I mentioned Sam Palafian, the wonderful tuba player in the Empire Brass. He was coaching my group there at the summer festival and he didn't have to do this, but he took me aside and he said you have the goods If you want to do this. You really have the goods. And he was very encouraging to a point where he said you know my buddy, mark Gould, who plays principal trumpet in the Met, and I he knew I had told him that I was going to go down and be in New York for two weeks after this festival in Tanglewood in Western Massachusetts. He said I got to connect you with my buddy Gould and it turned out that Gould came up to visit him and he introduced me to him and he connected us and you was really, you know, glowing about me and gold said yeah, I'll listen to you.
Michael Sachs:And I went to go have one lesson with gould, turned into three during those three weeks. I read those two weeks because we just hit it off. The chemistry was there and that's the reason I ended up going to juilliard, yeah, and then I kept running into sam over the years and sam was always like man. I hear nothing but great stuff anytime. Anytime I talk with him he was like this you know this, this like great cheerleader for me and this, you know he buoyed me and there were a couple of times I was down and you know he reached out to me and he just really encouraged me to keep going and you know it. Just, you need people like that and I was lucky. I had people like Sam, people like Mark Gould, people like Tony Plogue, who was my teacher out in Los Angeles, a number of other people along the way. You know I mentioned the people in high school who were like that. You know, any number of people like players like Tom Stevens, who's the principal in the LA Phil, who I grew up idolizing and that was kind of the beacon orchestral sound of what that meant.
Michael Sachs:On recordings, listening to. My mom loved anything with Bernstein and so I was listening to New York Philharmonic. I was listening a lot to William Vacchiano and Johnny Ware. She loved NBC Symphony with T tuscanini, so I was listening to harry glance. She loves chicago symphony, so I was listening to, you know, bud herseth, um. Early on I got um turned on to maurice andre, the incredible french soloist who was a huge influence, and then over the years, also people like roger voisin and armando gattala, wonderful players from the boston Symphony, became very trusted advisors and friends.
Michael Sachs:I always looked at things that I was always very curious as a student and in many ways my whole philosophy is that I want to be an internal student. I always want to maintain that curiosity and that seeking and searching for new information to new ideas. And you know, over the course of my life I really got that a lot from these people. Yeah, because I saw these people toward the even the ends of their careers, even beyond their playing career, still very curious and very much wanting to talk to me and wanting to share with me. And I was just a sponge with all these guys. And I had these, you know, all these people I would call periodically for different things and different ideas. Like you know, roger Voisin.
Michael Sachs:I would call him and just because he was such an expert on French repertoire and I would call him with some softball question, just because I knew that he would start going off on tangents and going all over the place and it would take me into realms and things I didn't know about that I could ask him about and kind of probe with him, and I just I love that and I was very lucky that I had all of these different people who were extremely supportive in that way, and I also swore that if I ever got the opportunity, that I would then pay that forward and give that back as much or more than any of these people ever did. And that's why teaching became, very early on, something very important to me and something that, um, you know I found also was extremely helpful with my playing. Um, I mentioned that I taught for a year at Rice, my second year in Houston, and I feel like that year teaching at Rice was instrumental in me getting the job here in Cleveland because all of a sudden, teaching that level of students, I had to think to myself okay, what is it that I want to say? Why do I want to say it? How do I do it? How do I communicate that with eight different people, eight different ways?
Michael Sachs:And so it made me look in the mirror and think, okay, what do I do? Why do I want to do it this way? How do I do it? How do I communicate it? What's the relevance amongst all of that? And all of a sudden it got me thinking about it in a much deeper way. And it's just. I mean, you know, if you, if you teach, it's like peeling away an onion. That's infinite, it's, it's there's, there's never. You never get to the bottom and like, okay, I know everything, it's just the cliche.
Michael Sachs:The more you know, the more you realize you don't know, is the beauty, is the beauty of teaching and information, and for me, the great part of teaching is that you learn as much as you hopefully impart, or vice versa.
Nick Petrella:What you're saying, too, about the mentorship yeah, that's important. Or vice versa. What you're saying, too, about the mentorship yeah, that's important, but being a cheerleader in some ways is almost more important in some ways. And to your point about the lifelong learners any successful person, whether it's a performing artist or a scientist, they just maintain that lifelong learning.
Michael Sachs:Well, it's one of the things that I have to say that I learned very deeply, very early from my father and watching my father work. My father was extremely curious and always evolving. He, you know, I mean again, it's a cliche I mean, if you stand still, you you atrophy. You have to keep moving, you have to keep searching, you have to keep exploring. And he was always like that. He was always searching for new information and new ideas and always had his ear to the ground, listening to different people.
Michael Sachs:Actually, a perfect example, probably his biggest success, was that my dad was actually the guy who was behind the Mutant Ninja Turtles. Oh, wow, that what he was is his ad agency. He knew the toy manufacturers, he knew the TV guys, he knew all the advertising portals to go through, he knew the animators. I mean, he knew all the pieces needed for that kind of, to create that kind of a show. And I guess these guys had been shopping the idea around to many, many different studios and different agencies and nobody wanted anything to do with it. And somebody said, hey, you should go out and see Jerry Sachs in LA. You know he's somebody who might be able to help you. And they went to see my dad. My dad immediately was just light bulb moments Like this is a gigantic hit, if I can kind of you know, get it, get it focused the right way and and so. So that's what he did, and you know, it was just again one of those things where he took an idea. Most people passed on.
Nick Petrella:Yeah.
Michael Sachs:And he saw this kernel of there's something really great here that nobody else saw and I just I don't know he just you know my father, these other people that I mentioned you know had a great influence on me this way and the positivity that my dad approached his work. I mean he never felt like he was working. It was always kind of kind of like he always said it was his soccer game, yeah, and that kind of enjoyment is also something that the you know many of the people I mentioned. You know specifically Sam Palafian that I mentioned first the enthusiasm and enjoyment that he brought to things.
Nick Petrella:Yeah.
Michael Sachs:And just from an artist standpoint, and the creativity he brought to it really was infectious and, you know, really hit me on a very, very deep level. That resonated for me, that I've really gone forward with it and you know that's to me. That kind of enjoyment, is why I do this. I mean, it's why I got into it in the first place. I enjoyed doing it as a kid. I kept doing it because I love doing it and the more I did it, the more I enjoyed it. So I feel very lucky that I get to do something that I care about that much and I want to bring that enthusiasm to anybody that I work with, to anybody I'm collaborating with, to anybody I'm teaching, Any circumstance. I want that to shine through. That that's at the crux, at the core of where I'm coming from. Yeah, at the core of where I'm coming from. Yeah, as far as mentors and role models outside of music, I'm a big baseball fan and there are three players that in many ways have influenced the way that I approach trumpet playing. One is Nolan Ryan, the great pitcher. One is Lou Gehrig, of course, the great Yankee first baseman the 20s and 30s, and the other is Roberto Clemente, the great outfielder for the Pirates, who I actually got to see play twice, and in Nolan Ryan's case, when he was pitching for the Astros. I was in Houston when he was with the Astros and I would go watch him pitch and he always warmed up down the first baseline. So I'd get there early and watch him warm up and it was always the same thing. It's just some easy soft toss to his catcher from you know, 20 feet away, 30 feet away, 40 feet away, 50 feet away, he's on the mound, the catcher's still standing. It's getting a little faster. Catcher finally squats behind the plate. He's doing a quarter wind up, half wind up, three quarters wind up, full wind up and with each throw it's getting faster and faster and faster and faster and finally he's doing you know the nolan ryan thing and throwing 100 miles an hour. And just watching the way he used his core and he used his legs, that it wasn't his arm, just his arm doing it. It was like just the way his fundamentals, the way he did, and he did the same thing. It seemed like the same number of pitches, the same thing in the same order every single time, were similar enough, were similar enough. Yeah, and it's just the efficiency and balance and just the way everything came together for him during that warm-up. It really got me thinking. It's like what I do is. You know, muscles in the lip are no different than any other muscles in the body, the way you condition them, the way you work on them. My warm-up, how he warms up there's some definite correlation here. So it got me thinking about how I warmed up and how I could be more efficient and balanced and just the way he would do things. It was stunning.
Michael Sachs:And then Lou Gehrig, for the fact he was such a great player and he was just very easygoing Not always the easiest thing for me. I'm a little more emotional when I was younger and I needed to cool my jets a little bit, especially in a job like this where you can't afford to have big ups and downs. I mean, it is like playing baseball. It's a 162-game season. I've got a lot of concerts. I play a hundred concerts a year. I can't get two up or two down. If I play a good concert, great, that's fine. But I can't get too high on it, otherwise I'm going to tank the next. Or if something doesn't go quite right, I can't bring that forward even into the next entrance that I play.
Michael Sachs:And just Lou Gehrig for his perseverance, just the physicality, the fact that he played when he was afflicted by this disease toward the end of his career, and just the gentleness and humanity that he brought in many ways, generosity that he brought. Yeah, and in some ways I think of Lou Gehrig. I also think of Ryan Anthony, who is a wonderful trumpet player, principal trumpet in the Dallas Symphony, who was one of my students at CIM. And Ryan was diagnosed with this multiple myeloma, this brain disease, when he was in his mid 40s, which is a disease usually at that age that you don't last very long. And they gave him two years and he lasted I think six or seven. And Ryan, instead of just going into a fetal position and feeling bad for himself, turned it around and looked to raise money and awareness for multiple myeloma and give back to research for that disease and finding a cure for the disease and helping others who are afflicted with the same diseases. So in many ways that's that kind of mentor. You know you'll talk about mentors and role models.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, ryan, for me is right there at the top we might, we can link to that. I think it was. It was cancer blows, wasn't it? Cancer Blows yeah, is that still in existence?
Michael Sachs:Cancer Blows is still being run by his wife, nikki, and a number of people, and they still do events. There was a large event. The first one was in Dallas in 2015, when there are a number of recordings that came out. 2015, when there are a number of recordings that came out. There are a few of them online that are really, really beautiful that you should definitely check out.
Nick Petrella:I'll send you guys the links to that We'll link to it, yeah and anyhow.
Michael Sachs:and then the other, when I'm thinking about role models as baseball players. Roberto Clemente was such a great player In baseball. There's such a thing as a five-tool player.
Michael Sachs:Somebody hits for average hits for power, has a great arm, runs fast, feels great, and I love the way Clemente played. I mean it was just this abandon, just the way he would run and his helmet would fly, and he was just really just this incredible, incredible, beautiful ballplayer to watch. And you know, in thinking about him I thought you know, I want to aspire to be the five-tool trumpet player. Yeah, and for me, the five-t tool player is somebody who plays in the orchestra, has a teaching position, has recordings, has books and published material, does chamber music or solo you know solo playing. So I wanted to be that person that could kind of have a foot in all of these different places and aspire to be that five tool person.
Michael Sachs:And that's how I kind of aspired as a, you know, when I was a student. That's kind of how I looked at things, especially once I got this job and had this vehicle to look forward as like what I wanted to do, that I just didn't want to just sit here and, ok, I've got this job, great, I could just sit on it. No, somebody gave me the keys to the fastest Indy car and I'm on the track. How do? How fast do I want to drive it? Do I want to tweak it and go that extra half mile an hour? How fast do I want to drive it? Do I want to tweak it and go?
Andy Heise:that extra half mile an hour.
Michael Sachs:Yeah, and that's kind of how I approached it all with Roberto Clemente in a way as kind of a model for that.
Nick Petrella:And you can see how it scaffolds up. Based on what you said, you know your story, yeah, so Michael. This next question is in three parts. What is the Strings Music Festival? How did you become the music director?
Michael Sachs:And what activities fall under your purview as the music director. So the Strings Music Festival was one of those. Really I was already doing, but not in one particular spot. So the Strings Music Festival, by nature of its name it was originally called Strings in the Mountains was very strings piano centric. The board chair at the time, in 2013-14, was a spine surgeon who was one of the surgical team for the US ski team and living in a steamboat. He was a very good friend of mine, a very close mutual friend that I'd known for a while, asked if I would be willing to help him out and consult with him, just because he'd become board chair and he wanted to kind of get up to speed and wanted somebody who had a classical music background to help him with some of the stuff with the festival. And so Adam sent me a bunch of materials and I consulted with him about the repertoire they were doing, about the musicians they had, about what else was out there. And next thing, I know he says you know we're thinking about making a change. Is this something you'd be interested in? Sure, so what came from me being kind of blunt and honest turned into a job. And you know, basically what I said was just that you know, while what the festival was doing was wonderful, there was all this other instrumentation and repertoire and wonderful players that I could access, along with that central pillar of keeping the central pillar of strings and piano there for the festival. It's not like we're uprooting the anchor. What we're doing is just evolving things forward and just kind of having some other elements surrounding that anchor, surrounding that pillar, and so that's how I ended up becoming music director and what I've done is because I've been involved in many, many other projects, taught at many different universities, colleges, done a number of summer festivals where I played with a lot of people.
Michael Sachs:I have a lot of relationships with many, many folks throughout the music business in all different genres and orchestras chamber musicians, soloists, jazz musicians, rock musicians, et cetera, especially from a classical standpoint. It gave me the opportunity to be able to gather a lot of different forces and one of the things that I told the festival from the beginning, before they hired me, is that if you want to hire me, I need to work with the people that I normally work with. So I need your support to be able to bring in members of the Cleveland Orchestra, people from the Chicago Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the LA Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, atlanta Symphony, pittsburgh, houston, dallas, et cetera, that level of players and chamber music players and soloists, and they were very enthusiastic about that. And from the beginning that's where I went with it. And then with the repertoire I kind of branched out and augmented the kind of center seed piano, string-centric repertoire which of course we still do. But I also kind of challenged myself that if I was lucky enough to do this for 10 years that I would try not to repeat any pieces during that 10 years. Great that there's enough repertoire that we don't have to repeat anything. Because that was one of the things that I saw was there was some repeat stuff and that I thought you know there's some composers we're not exploring here that I think these people might really like.
Michael Sachs:And like one of the challenges one of the board members said you know, at some point I would love to hear the 1812 Overture on July 4th and the stage can only hold up to about 45, 50 people max, so you can't have a big orchestra. And I looked at him and I said no problem. And he looked at me like what? And I said no, no, no, I have a very good friend of mine who's in the San Francisco Symphony, who is one of the great arrangers of all time for a group of brass players and percussion players, and he will arrange 1812 for brass and percussion. So that's one of the things we did.
Michael Sachs:My first year was have brass and percussion concert on 4th of July and we played a bunch of John Williams pieces and marches and all sorts of different things in 1812 Overture Cool and I just I love that kind of a challenge, that it may not be in the exact manner that you would normally hear it, but we're still able to bring different repertoire in different ways and unique ways and creative ways to broaden our audience. And and so you know that's, that's part of what I've been tasked with and what I've been trying to do for the last 10 years.
Nick Petrella:So you select repertoire, you hire musicians. What else do you do in your capacity as music director?
Michael Sachs:As my capacity as music director is pretty wide ranging. I mean, first and foremost, I'm responsible for all programming. They give me a budget parameter so I have to do the budget. We settle on our fees and everything and then within that I have to make everything fit the budget. So I do all programming, all procuring of getting all the players and personnel involved. I negotiate all those contracts with anyone doing any solo pieces or anything like that. I mean there's pretty much a standard fee that we do for everybody, so nobody's getting somebody's getting $8,000 for something and somebody else is getting $2,000. I mean there's none of that. I mean it's very egalitarian in that manner.
Michael Sachs:I also help them procure all the music, organize all of that. I'm also involved in elements of marketing development, really permeating throughout the entire organization. I mean there's a team of people really incredible staff that is up in Steamboat year round, a board which I believe is about I think it's like 20 people, 22 people, something like that who is very, very supportive. A lot of longtime people have been on this board, very supportive community, so there's a lot of continuity. That I walked into and was very fortunate that there's some incredibly supportive staff and people who know what they're doing to help guide me through this. And then I brought a little different perspective that now is you know, has evolved the culture in you know together, in, in, in a new way.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, so so you're doing this most of the year, then I would imagine it would have to be oh, this is this is.
Michael Sachs:This is a year round gig. I mean my, my, um, eight concerts are over four weeks in Steamboat during the summer, between the end of June, the beginning of August. But that said, this is year round. I mean, right now I'm just finalizing the last couple of people for the personnel. I'm about to order all the music that we need to get. You know we're thinking about. You know, if there's any multimedia events, we have to make sure that any of those elements are in place.
Michael Sachs:You know, over the course of time at Strings in Steamboat I've done some films with music. We did the original Frankenstein from 1931. We did a chaplain film, gold Rush. We've done some things with dancers. We do different things with lighting. We did a chaplain film, gold Rush. We've done some things with dancers. We do different things with lighting. We did a Civil War brass band concert where we had narrators reading battlefield letters and photography kind of Matthew Brady, you know Gardner photography kind of a mini Ken Burns Civil War in concert, if you will, gardner Photography kind of a mini Ken Burns Civil War in concert, if you will. And you know curating those kind of events, because I think that those kind of multimedia events it's interesting. It's a little different take on things and it's extremely entertaining for the audience. I'm looking at it. I have a summer audience. People are up in Steamboat. I'm not going to have a Berg Schchoenberg Festival for people. You know the second Viennese school festival up there, although that stuff is interesting, not, you know, not there, right? I mean, I'm going to do.
Nick Petrella:You can do that once.
Michael Sachs:Yeah, and then they're not going to see me again because I'll be fired and then your friend's going to call you.
Michael Sachs:Yeah, all 12 people who show up to the concert will leave. But no, but at the same time, I'm not watering things down and going lowest common denominator either. What I'm trying to do is create things that are accessible and fun. Yet still, every year, I try to bring something new to the festival, something different, something surprising, maybe a composer they haven't heard of, maybe a piece from a composer that they didn't know existed, maybe a different combination of instruments or something unique that they hadn't thought of. It's a different sound. So I'm always trying to, in a sense, one-up myself every year and just get the audience you know, so that hopefully they trust me that I'm not going to put something in front of them that's going to piss them off, that they can trust that they're going to come and they're going to leave with a smile on their face, and that's what I want.
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Nick Petrella:I'm.
