Navigating an Artist-Led Organization
A couple of days ago we announced the appointment of Sæunn Thorsteindóttir as Artistic Director of Tertulia NYC. Sæunn’s addition to the team seeks to address some underlying issues related to leadership in our field - here are a few thoughts on the “why”:
Over the past year or so it has become clear to me that Tertulia’s success relies not on how successful I make it, but how successful I set it up to be. This seems relatively obvious, but if you look around our classical chamber music world it is not actually how most organizations are run.
The traditional model of organization-building in our field is for an artist-leader to create activity (usually via fundraising) and then to build out a team to execute that activity. This works reasonably well; it also contains inherent challenges.
Profound buy-in from the built-out team, usually consisting of current and/or former musicians, can be difficult to attain - they are, after all, fulfilling someone else’s vision, not their own.
No matter how deep the buy-in may be from the team, the extent of the organization’s activities remains beholden to the capacity of its director, which, by definition of them being human, is limited.
The organization is so leader-focused that their personal definition of the product - classical music - often ends up being the only version of that product that is provided - that is, artistically, inherently limiting.
Finally, because the artistic director builds everything - staff, audience, and oftentimes even board of directors - there exists no feedback system to help them realize when their efficacy has run its course.
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Having come to these conclusions, I began to consider how to address some of these growth-related issues and, in the process, set Tertulia up for success that is not dependent on me.
How to create buy-in? I have it in spades because, well, in a way, it’s mine. (That’s not quite true - it belongs to our founder, Julia, our board, and our audience.) But in practice, its activity is a reflection of my elbow grease, and its success reflects well on me as its figurehead. So I need more people like me, and I need to create a situation in which they feel meaningful buy-in, where the organization's output - and its success - reflects their work.
Capacity is an obvious one - if there are more people like me creating activity, there can be more activity: we can create more opportunities for artists to perform and for audiences to have meaningful cultural experiences.
What better way to avoid limiting an organization to the tastes of a single artistic director than by empowering someone else to bring their own authentic understanding of music to the table, by creating a broader platform within the organization to reflect their creativity, one which will (selfishly!) surely rub off on me too?
Is it time for me to go? That will be much easier to answer with colleagues around me offering honest feedback and demonstrating their own efficacy - to the organization and to the board.
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By empowering someone else to take a part of the organization for their own, we begin to have something that is, in a way, divided into parts and, thus, through collaboration, can become something greater than their sum. As a chamber musician by profession, I can’t believe I hadn’t seen it sooner. It’s the definition of chamber music.
So, who? Who is creative? Who thinks critically? Who has the communication skills required to make their love of this artform contagious? Who plays exceptionally, generously and with joy? Actually, a number of people. But I came to realize that, over the years, when we had our first of what has become nearly a dozen residencies at Serenbe, when we created the first of our now annual international trips, across so many evenings of music and food in San Francisco and New York, it was Sæunn whom I consulted. Her compelling artistry, honesty and joy in music-making has been a source of inspiration since we met and had too many happy hours way back in the summer of 2008.
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I’m grateful that she has agreed to take on the role of Artistic Director of Tertulia NYC. While I will continue to oversee the overall artistic direction of the organization, run our series in San Francisco and plan our annual trips, Saeunn will be responsible for our series in New York, for planning and programming, for bringing new people to the pleasures of Tertulia, for building upon what we’ve done and imagining new possibilities - ones that I never would have come up with without her - because they’re hers. We will work together like the chamber musicians we are - offering ideas and feedback, creating something greater than the sum of its parts. That work will continue to be assisted by Bridget, whose focus and attention to the many details of the organization keeps it ticking. I’m grateful to have a young, dynamic board that immediately saw and understood the benefit - the necessity - of trying something different from the usual model, and am especially grateful to our founder Julia who has, since 2014, put her faith in me to guide her very first baby.
I have a lot of my identity as an artist and as a leader wrapped up in the understanding that chamber music works best when you place it in the context for which it was created - in a beautiful, intimate space, with great food and drink, accompanied by friends new and old, performed exceptionally well. Spreading that gospel is not a task that needs to be exclusively mine. Cheers to you, Saeunn - welcome to the party.