Author:
Alan D. Valentine
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Date Posted: 05:58:29 02/17/03 Mon
I'll start this one off - I did, Debbie. At the start of my senior year at Marshall, I was all set to go to A & M to study Aerospace Engineering, but the music bug got the best of me. Three weeks into that year, I dropped Calculus to switch to Music Theroy, without even asking or telling (in advance) my scientist father, or math teacher mom, and came home to announce that I was not going to be an engineer, but a MUSICIAN. I wanted to be a professional symphony player at that point. After my freshman year at the University of Houston, where I played in the marching band and the orchestra, I landed a work-study job as the "orchestra manager" for the university orchestra, and a whole new world opened up to me. by my junior year, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the rest of my life - manage symphony orchestras.
I landed a job right out of college managing a small budget community orchestra in southeastern Washington state, and moved on in two years to Greensboro, N.C. as the Executive Director of my first fully professional orchestra. Since then I have served as the Orchestra Manager of the San Antonio Symphony, Managing Director of the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera, Executive Director of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic (10 years) and now for the past five years I have been Executive Director of the Nashville Symphony.
What a ride it has been! During my tenure in Nashville, we have raised $20 million for the endowment, toured the Eastern U.S., including an appearance in New York's Carnegie Hall (which Allan Kozinn of the NY Times called a "knockout"), recorded and released 5 of the world's best selling classical CDs to rave international reviews, and we are now $65 million into a $100 million capital campaign to build a world-class concert hall scheduled to open in the fall of 2006.
During my career, I have also been priveleged to work with and have gotten to know the likes of Itzhak Perlman, Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, and an endless list of other world renowned classical artists. On the pops front, I have worked with the likes of Doc Severinson, Marvin Hamlisch, Ray Charles, the Electric Light Orchestra, Faith Hill, the Moody Blues, and, again, another endless list. I have been to Europe and back in private jets (I work for rich people, but am hardly rich myself - at least in the monetary sense!). I have had a major hand in producing some 10 national television broadcasts, several CDs, and countless radio broadcasts. (Among those broadcasts was a sad event - I organized and produced the memorial service for the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing that was broadcast around the world.) I have also been luck to have played a significant role in the major renovation of three concert halls, prior to the current project in Nashville.
I have been quoted by the "Wall Street Journal," NPR's "Marketplace", "Symphony Magazine," "Forbes," "Fortune," and a plethora of local newspapers, many of which are in cities I've never lived in. I have traveled to nearly every state in the U.S. (I think there are only five or six I've never set foot in), and to Canada, Mexico and five European countries. I feel truly blessed - I LOVE my job and my work, and I pinch myself everyday when I get out of bed just to make sure this isn't all a dream.
BUT, the most important reason for my telling you all this, is that it ALL STARTED with the RAM BAND, and a man named CHARLIE KUENTZ. He changed my life and my world forever...
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