Michael Jonnes, executive director of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, will retire on December 31.
Michael Jonnes, executive director of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, will retire on December 31.
“They’re my other family,” said Springfield Symphony Orchestra Executive Director Michael Jonnes, fondly referring to the SSO staff he will leave behind when he retires at the end of the month.
He added, “We’re a hard-working group at the Springfield Symphony, but at the end of the day we can let our hair down and pull out the Boggle game and have some fun. The best way I can describe the relationship is, we’re infused with the sense of belonging to something really good in Springfield.”
Jonnes, 62, and his wife, Barbara Blackwood, will relocate from Springfield to the Washington D. C. area to be near their elderly parents.
For 15 seasons, Jonnes has brought what colleagues have described as his even-tempered wisdom, courtesy, respect, and vision to bear at the administrative helm of Springfield’s orchestra. He oversaw a period of growth, health, and superb music making in Symphony Hall, and complemented the artistic direction of Maestro Kevin Rhodes in bringing the group to a high-level of proficiency and popularity.
Jonnes came to Springfield in 1998 from the Jackson, Tennessee Symphony. With a city population of 153,000 and SSO budget of $2 million, the operation was more than twice the size of Jackson’s.
“When you’re in the business of orchestra management and you want to advance, you go to a larger budget orchestra in a larger city. I’d been in Jackson for six years, had thoroughly enjoyed working with the musicians and staff, and had grown as a manager, but the reality was, it was time to move on,” he recalled.
Jonnes visited Springfield for a couple of days between the orchestra’s summer residency at the Berkshire Choral Festival and the beginning of its fall season, as part of a nationwide pool of 60 applicants. He was offered the job before he left town.
He remembers quite clearly being “bowled over” by the 1998 opening concert, his first as executive director.
It was a “musicians’ choice” program, consisting of the Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner’s opera “Tristan und Isolde,” the “Four Last Songs” by Richard Strauss, sung by soprano Bridgett Hooks, and Bartok’s “Concerto for Orchestra,” all works selected and voted on by the SSO musicians, and was conducted by then-music-director Mark Russell Smith.
Jonnes’ strategy as he became acclimated in Springfield was to listen.
“It’s unfair – and unwise – for a new manager to come in and make lots of changes,” Jonnes said. “Sue Davison (his predecessor) had done yeoman’s work seeing the orchestra through some bad times in the early 1990s, and it was getting stronger financially.”
“Starting with absolutely zero knowledge, I took the reins of day-to-day management, but then I just listened for five, six, or seven months, met people, picked up the rhythm of the orchestra, let it all wash over me and settled in. They got used to me, I got used to them – it was a very natural process.”
The aspect of his tenure that Jonnes is most proud of is the cordial, positive relationship between musicians and management that he has built, fostered, and maintained.
“My job has been to provide the best possible circumstances in which the orchestra can do its work to the best of its ability,” Jonnes said. “We have arrived at a place where there is a sense of trust, a sense of collegiality. Every three years when it’s time to renew the contract, it has been a smooth process. Both Kevin and Director of Operations Renato Wendel have been a great help in that regard as well.”
A cursory glance around the American orchestra world will reveal how rare and treasured this atmosphere of mutual respect between musicians and management is.
Jonnes has much more that he will remember warmly about his 15 years in Springfield.
“Some of my favorite concerts were the educational concerts we’ve been able to put together with people like (author) Jane Yolen,” he began, “and the collaborations with local composers like Avery Sharpe, the events featuring our chorus under Nikki Stoia’s direction, and recent concerts featuring the Children’s Chorus of Springfield.”
Jonnes recalled the concert performance of Verdi’s opera “Aida” which was broadcast on Public Television, WGBY, as a coup, and chuckled about another Verdi performance, the “Requiem,” gathering 700-plus musicians in the MassMutual Center. ”I still have nightmares about the logistics of that concert – and you can quote me on that!”
He is very proud of the orchestra’s involvement within the Greater Springfield Community, working together with the Stone Soul Festival presenters, the Community Music School of Springfield, and other organizations in the past, and just this fall, collaborating with Heriberto Flores to bring the Arturo Somohano Puerto Rican Philharmonic Orchestra to Symphony Hall and arranging for Rhodes to guest-conduct.
“The SSO is becoming more community-centric,” he said, “and needs to continue developing a more intense relationship with the Greater Springfield area.”
“Kevin has been a friend, colleague, and partner-in-crime,” Jonnes said. “He brings an extraordinary touch as a conductor, speaker, and musician. I have enjoyed his bringing in the works of American composers from the 1940s and 50s like Roy Harris, Peter Mennin, and William Schuman. This repertoire is exciting for our musicians, and our audience generally agrees, ‘Hey, this stuff isn’t half bad!’”
Jonnes might say of his career, along with his favorite classic rock quartet, The Beatles, who he saw in Paris’s Olympia Theater before they invaded America, that it has been a “Long and Winding Road.” He described himself as “a little bit of a daydreamer” in high school, who “never thought about the future.”
Around his junior year, Jonnes became interested in theater and acting, and went on to earn a degree in that discipline from Syracuse University. In Washington D. C., he found acting jobs at the Arena Theater and other houses, appearing in Bertold Brecht’s “Galileo,” Ben Jonson’s “The Alchemist,” Eugene O’Neill’s “Touch of the Poet,” and Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” among many plays, and meeting his wife-to-be.
While she earned her degree in costume design, Jonnes worked for five years as a retail store manager, then went back to school himself, pursuing an interest in orchestral management sparked by attending Brooklyn Philharmonic ballet performances, and completed a master of fine arts in arts administration at Brooklyn College and interned as assistant to the manager of the Brooklyn Philharmonic.
Leaving at such a high point in his own career and in the history of the SSO, has a bittersweet quality, but Jonnes wants to be physically closer to his parents and father-in-law in the Washington D.C. area.
“Bobbie and I have been discussing this for quite a while,” he said, “and we just decided it was time to be closer to our family.”