(Photo credit:  Jen Packard)

Washington Performing Arts is celebrating its 61st year. Last year it made a tough decision to leave the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in a move to fan out to several venues in the DMV region in order to reach new audiences and communities. These venues have included 6th and I Synagogue in downtown Washington, DC, The Music Center at Strathmore in Bethesda, Maryland, the Mansion at Strathmore, The National Theater (Dance Theatre of Harlem – Firebird), Barrell House Café and Bar, the Atlas Performing Arts Center.

The concerts have been broadened to include jazz, classical piano, theater, dance, music, violin, gospel, and great vocalists. The genius behind these programs is the articulate and dynamic Jenny Bilfield. In this interview, she speaks about her life in the performing arts, what drives her, and how she sees her role in promoting excellence in music and experiences for audiences.

OperaWire: What were some of your earliest musical influences?

Jenny Bilfield: Music was hardwired into me from my earliest memories. My mother used to put three LP’s on the record player when I went to sleep at night (from the age of three) —  but I listened to each one: Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” Leonard Bernstein conducting (and I believe narrating) “Peter and the Wolf,” and then a wild-card album: sometimes Louis Armstrong singing “Hello Dolly,” or Hula music, or Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, or a comedy album by Elaine May and Mike Nichols.

We had a piano at home, which I started to play when I was three, climbing onto the piano bench. My mother played a bit (not intuitively) and I played by ear and copied her playing, with her mistakes faithfully rendered. She recognized my musical orientation, and we started attending concerts together: the Little Orchestra Society at Lincoln Center, concerts in churches and art galleries as I got older… every nook and cranny of NYC. Over time, I started composing as well and exploring the different sonorities that the piano could generate (plucking/muting strings, etc.). So, she found me a few teachers around the time I was eight or so, and an excellent one when I was about 11 or 12.

OW: You have remarkable accomplishments including being president of Boosey & Hawkes, Artistic Director of Stanford Live at Stanford Uuniversity and Executive Director of the National Orchestral Association. Since 2013 you have been President & CEO of Washington Performing Arts in Washington, D.C..

JB: Each job I’ve held has prepared me for the next one, even though I’ve worked in very different areas within the arts: from commercial music publishing to arts presenting, to orchestra management, and higher education. I never had a “plan” per se: I was drawn to opportunities that felt like a great creative stretch and a fresh way to serve the arts and build community. The opportunity to do this in NYC, Silicon Valley, and Washington, D.C. has been the privilege of a lifetime and I have loved and learned from each.

OW: Did you set out to be an executive in the arts? When did you know that’s what you wanted to do?

JB: From the time I was very young, in junior high school, I became interested in presenting concerts, actually. We had a “library concert” series and I volunteered to program concerts: choose the music and performers, introduce them, and play my own music. This interest continued, with some volunteer opportunities at the regional arts presenter on Long Island, where I lived, “Friends of the Arts.” I was really drawn to this role: the producer, presenter, artist liaison… talking about music with “seasoned professionals.” I also read “Musical America” from cover to cover, along with various Grove dictionaries, and Rock and Roll history books. Around High School, my mother subscribed to the American Composers Orchestra and we went to Carnegie Hall to hear them every few months. We struck up a relationship with the executive director; I spoke with her about orchestra management and arts management, and she pointed me to a few programs to learn more.

A whole new world opened up to me. So, I continued to volunteer, pursue internships; as a college rising sophomore, I was the Assistant Coordinator of Friends of the Arts’s summer Beethoven Festival – a paid internship and a big deal for me in terms of exposure to professional musicians and ensembles, with lots of responsibility, a fair degree of pressure, and some unique visibility. At that point, my path was set: I wanted to continue in arts administration and I jumped at every opportunity to produce, organize, connect. I was about 17 at this point (I had graduated early from high school, so was a relatively young college student). And I never considered another profession.  This was it.

OW: How did you acquire your business skills?

JB: Mostly – especially early on – “on the job” (and often pretending I knew more than I actually did and soaking in a lot of information and metabolizing it quickly). In my early days in NYC, I met a number of truly outstanding women and men, who took me under their wing and counseled me in my boldest ideas, and provided mentoring where I needed it; I trusted them, listened, and absorbed.

I sought leadership opportunities very early on – and started the New Music Orchestral Project (of the National Orchestral Association) when I was 23, serving as the Executive Director and reviving an organization that had gone dormant (I was hired first to be the office manager while the Board determined a feasible direction; I offered a “white paper” on creating a training orchestra to perform works by living American composers, and they decided to pursue the idea and put me in charge).

I gravitated towards small organizations where I could lead comprehensively (and often, in solitary!) versus pursuing a staff position at a bigger organization; each has its challenges and upsides. I learned by reading endlessly…books, board minutes, files, press kits, marketing materials. I took classes, and reached out to several trusted, seasoned professionals as needed.

When I joined Boosey at 29, the corporate environment provided me with a “crash course” in formal business operations and finance and I was surrounded by people with serious chops: finance, intellectual property law, royalty administration, etc. A business model built around 20th- and 21st-century composers: I was a kid in a candy shop. It was there that I perhaps absorbed the most, with mentoring from excellent people around me, in the U.S. office and abroad (Germany, U.K., and Australia). And, through my 12 years at Boosey (the final five, as President of the North American company), I built a sophisticated and deep portfolio of business acumen, including catalog development and valuation, publishing mergers, public-to-private ownership transitions, financial reporting, all within a multinational company. A pretty unique role. I also worked on a number of deeply meaningful commissions, including John Adams’s “On the Transmigration of Souls” and Steve Reich’s “Double Sextet” – both of which won a Pulitzer Prize – and Ned Rorem’s opera “Our Town” (the only opera setting authorized by the Wilder estate).

OW: Do you have any career development advice for those in music programs and conservatories?

JB: Internships and volunteer opportunities abound. However, most conservatory programs focus on building up students for solo or other dimensions of performance careers, and deemphasize (or even fail) to provide any information about non-performance opportunities in the arts. This is a huge gap and frankly a disservice; a musician who is cross trained in other areas — who is an excellent writer, can raise money, can create compelling social media and promotional campaigns — serves their own career as an artist, and can plug into an organization on a part-time or full-time basis.

My advice would be for musicians to reach out to staff at arts organizations and schedule informational meetings: more often than not, arts management executives will welcome the opportunity to speak with a student. We all remember getting started ourselves and there is a strong sense of “paying it forward.”

OW: The concerts this year include a Miles Davis and John Coltrane Centennial. These are important performances in the Washington Performing Arts season. Can you give us some inkling about how this change is influencing other concert series around the country?

JB: Washington Performing Arts has actually long been presenting more than classical, although classical is our anchor; jazz, gospel music, and culturally specific art forms have definitely been part of our season. There is quite a bit of cross over in our audience; people are rarely exclusively focused on just one creative genre — their interests are more expansive, in my experience. At Washington Performing Arts we always seek to present excellent performances, to support artists when they suggest programs that stretch and challenge them (and therefore, our audiences), and to think long-term about the relationships we build. This fosters trust and builds deep connections within our audience, and these are catalysts to longevity and collaboration.

OW: Do you feel that the main conservatories are getting the same message of including Jazz, Gospel and other types of music in their preparation of the next generation of performers? When I attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, there was no Gospel Choir. When I returned for my reunion, I was very happy to hear that Gospel Choir had become a regular part of the program since the 1980s.

JB: I love that you attended LaGuardia! Some of our country’s best performers got their start there. I think that Jazz is now strongly anchored in so many conservatories, yes, but that’s only in the past two to three decades, really. Gospel choirs abound at universities and in some conservatories (for music majors and non-majors) but you’d be most likely to see gospel music studied as part of vocal pedagogy and musicology.

I find it truly baffling that gospel music performers, composers, and its history are so often overlooked in general music study especially given that it is one of our country’s earliest and most enduring musical styles with significant historical impact and resonance. When I’ve raised this issue, many people have pointed to the music’s grounding in faith and worship; however, these same folks go quiet when I note Handel’s “Messiah” and every Bach Cantata. This makes the crux of their argument about “who” is singing and writing and creating versus “what” is being sung and “where” it originated (in church). And that scratches the surface of some pretty uncomfortable realities around race in our country and assumptions made about whose music matters and is therefore part of the canon of study.

For this reason, I think that having resident gospel choirs that are part of Washington Performing Arts, alongside great classical artists, feels like a visionary flex: great music, side-by-side in our season. Gospel music was part of my personal soundtrack from my early years (thanks to my mom, taking me to hear “concerts” at various churches in Manhattan and Brooklyn).

OW: Tell me about commissioning new works. These include the recent musical experiences composed for Tregaron Conservancy, “Shimmers in the Field” a GPS guided walk-through in a garden by Lucy Yao and Dorothy Chan, a new commission for violin composed for Midori, and the Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg memorial concerts and commissions.

JB: I love helping bring new works into the world! It’s one of my favorite things to do, collaborating with a composer or performer(s). We’ve commissioned around 40 works (or accompanying visual elements) in my time here of all sizes and scopes. Most of the works we’ve commissioned are performed more than once, because the performers who learn them are committed and often tour with them. We will often co-commission with other presenters, to ensure new work has multiple audiences.

This is how we build repertoire for the future. Not every work will be a “forever” piece in the cannon, but a commission offers insights into a creative mind, speaks eloquently to a theme or narrative, and offers a new way to hear a treasured performer or instrument (or ensemble); this is, or can be, exciting for audiences. And so, even if the work is heard only once, the sense of discovery and shared journey is multidimensional and meaningful.

OW: What is your favorite part of your work?

JB:I love connecting artists with audiences and bringing a bold vision to life. For me, excellence, community, and connectivity are of equal importance; they don’t exist in isolation. So, I am constantly thinking about our patron’s journey and experience, as much as I’m thinking about an artist’s program and if we’ve provided sufficient breadth of opportunity for them to stretch creatively and engage authentically with our audience. I also love seeing our team get excited about an artist we’re presenting. Their sense of discovery is all the more special because we work very hard as a team on the granular details, most of which are behind the scenes. The reward is a transformative moment at a performance.

OW: Do you think your programs are reaching younger audiences?

JB: I see younger audiences at our performances. One of the upsides of social media, especially during the pandemic, was that so many artists streamed their performances online from their homes or from unusual settings. They eliminated the “fourth wall” and spoke meaningfully and authentically about myriad topics (musical, personal, etc.) and developed a large viewership of people searching for interesting content online.

As we welcomed folks back to live performances in 2021-22 and asked how they’d heard about the performance, so many of the younger (under 40) attendees pointed to the introduction through those streamed performances. But, in addition to this and well before the COVID-19 pandemic     , Washington Performing Arts started a Junior Board, now in its 10th year! It’s designed to model a board of directors in terms of governance and support for the organization; audience engagement is a core function. And so, with this incredibly smart group of 50 professionals, we benefit from how they cultivate and connect their own networks of friends and contacts for our programs; many of the members also serve on our Board committees, and a number have matriculated to our Board of Directors.

Every member of the Junior Board has a “why” – they played an instrument, studied music or dance in schools, currently sing in a choir – and it’s often a part of their life that they want to reactivate even as they’re building a career in a different area. So, not only are we working intentionally, to build our audience, we have also created a dynamic role within our governance structure for real mentoring, visibility, and impact.

OW: What is your process for deciding on an artist and program?

JB: My colleagues and I do a great deal of listening, both online, in person, and connecting with other presenters, artists, writers, and managers. We always start with many more performances than we can reasonably present and then narrow down based upon the arc of the season, the feasibility of presenting (size, reach, venue and production requirements); and the economics.

We also consider our audience and whether Washington Performing Arts is the best presenter for a given program. We bring our advancement and marketing colleagues into the picture as early as we can (and our Board, of course), so that they can offer feedback on the programming from the vantage point of mission, patron engagement and revenue (if it’s a ticketed performance).

All of these different elements need to align. Our presented programs are in-progress 12 to 24 months ahead (there is a longer timeline with bigger projects or tours); whereas our free performances through our Mars Arts D.C. program are often set six to 12 months ahead ahead of time. Mars artists are drawn from the reservoir of talented creatives who make their life and work in our region, and this program, which we started about 12 years ago, reinforces this commitment to artists at all stages of their work and careers.

OW: What is your message to your audience and followers?

JB: Support live performances; dip your toe(s) in something unfamiliar; discover new venues, styles, cultures through the arts. Share what you love with other people in your life. The arts are best shared, and we need community – our artists need community—now, more than ever.

OW: I am truly amazed by what you have accomplished and what you are currently accomplishing. You and Washington Performing Arts are making Washington, D.C. and DMV a center for the arts, enriching a center that is usually focused on politics, yet so in need for the spiritual nourishment of the performing arts.

When I attend Washington Performing Arts concerts, your presence feels like a friend and an advocate for all artists. Thank you for that.

JB: I love being part of this community and am especially proud to represent an organization I have admired and continue to love in every dimension of its mission, history, and future potential.