Lexington Observer recently spoke with Jonathan McPhee, Music Director of Lexington Symphony
LexObserver: What do you feel makes the Lexington Symphony so special?
JM: It’s two things that are related: First, it’s the way Lexington Symphony was created. Second, it’s how that has led to Lexington Symphony being integrated today in a unique way with the community.
The symphony was originally started by professional musicians who lived in Lexington. Some of them had received music degrees, but subsequently gone into other professions, so they were professional-quality musicians working in other fields. They got together with the desire to bring musical performance back into their lives, and thus Lexington Sinfonietta was born.
LexObserver: Lexington Sinfon—?
JM: Exactly. It’s not a name that is easy to pronounce or spell, which is why we eventually changed it. But when the Lexington Sinfonietta was started thirty years ago, it was begun by the players, for the players, and they performed primarily for family and friends at the Scottish Rite Museum. The auditorium there is a nice space, but it only seats 450 people. When I took the position as the Music Director twenty years ago, we were sold out from our first concert, and I knew there was an opportunity to grow if only we could find a bigger space.
In speaking with Fred Johnson, who was a board member at that time, I learned about Cary Hall. Back then, the hall was open only a dozen or so times per year for lectures, Town Meeting, and elections. Truly, it was seldom used. Fred told me, “It’s not a concert hall, but I’ll get you in it.”
Fred did get us in, and to my delighted surprise, Cary Hall is a concert hall! It might not be what we think of today as a concert hall, but similarly to Faneuil Hall, it is a beautiful historical space with great acoustics and plenty of seating. We moved the orchestra to Cary Hall as we were changing our name to Lexington Symphony, and our audience expanded to fill the hall’s 800 seats.
The Town of Lexington recognized in that process that Cary Hall is an incredible performance space that draws people in, so they carried out a renovation on the building to make it what it is today. Cary Hall is a significant part of our story. The symphony inspired a new chapter for the building, and today it is intertwined with our identity, which is one of the examples of how Lexington Symphony is integrated in a unique way with the community.
LexObserver: Are there other examples you can share?
JM: I have so many, but another example that stands out is our educational series. Years ago, when families were being charged fees for their children to participate in music programs in schools, we recognized that the added expense meant that too many kids would never get a chance to play music. From the time when the fees were imposed, Jeff Leonard (then head of music in the schools in Lexington) tracked the trajectory of how many kids started playing instruments. It went down dramatically. High school ensembles suffered because the feeder player numbers plummeted.
We were sitting around that kitchen table at Liz Whitfield’s house (Liz was the concert master at that time), discussing the problem, and decided that our solution would be to create an educational program that would provide kids with at least some exposure to classical music and hopefully directly influence the culture of the town. We came up with our Orchestrating Kids Through Classics (OKTC) series, which offers a one-hour performance “tour” of Western music, starting from 500 A.D. to end with John Williams’s Star Wars. Fourth-graders in Lexington get to come to Cary Hall and experience this hour not only of music evolution, but also history, geography, and foreign languages, as we explain the various instruments and offer important context about what was going on in the world during the time each musical piece was created. It’s an injection of creative inspiration.
We started this series, and student involvement in music immediately rose. In fact, it surpassed where it had been before by a significant amount. It was so successful that we’ve since opened it up to neighboring communities, but we remain strongly rooted in Lexington.
LexObserver: What about the musicians? Are they still Lexingtonians?
JM: Many of our performers are from Lexington, yes. That is also unique to Lexington Symphony. Everyone is a professional, paid musician, but that includes Lexington music teachers and Lexington residents for whom Lexington Symphony is the only symphony they play in. Early on, in fact, we had a critic from the Boston Globe comment that he didn’t recognize a lot of the performers, and that’s because so many of them only play in Lexington. We also have musicians from farther afield, including recent graduates from music schools in Boston, and for larger events, we bring in extra musicians for those specific performances.
Several of our past musicians have gone on to play with larger orchestras – Lexington Symphony is that professional, that rigorous. We are one of the top regional professional orchestras in the country. And yet, we are a supportive and collaborative orchestra, too. Every year, I ask the orchestra committee for a wishlist of what they want to play. Most professional orchestra musicians are not asked. They’re told. But I want to incorporate the interests of our musicians so that it’s fulfilling for them, too, and they feel like they are part of a meaningful community. Substitute musicians invariably comment on how nice we are as an orchestra, and we cherish that, because that’s what we want to be: a warm, friendly environment where people are super supportive.
LexObserver: What made you decide originally to take the position as Music Director?
JM: For the same reasons that I continue to be impressed and inspired today: the quality of musicians, and the quality of the audience.
I was Boston Ballet’s Music Director until seven years ago, I’ve traveled all over the world as a conductor, for both ballets and symphonies. But despite that experience and exposure, I feel there’s something very special about Lexington. We have a highly-educated, intelligent audience base drawn from a community of high achievers, across all ages, which presents a huge opportunity for the kind of service that Lexington Symphony provides – because Lexington Symphony is a service organization. People don’t often realize that.
We strive to serve the community not only in improving quality of life, such as with our drive to restore Cary Hall to a space that is used and celebrated, our relationship with music programming in Lexington Public Schools, and our special Holiday Pops concerts that have become a seasonal tradition, but also through expanding the community’s horizons. That unique audience base in Lexington is open to new experiences. If there’s something in a program they don’t know, they are open to listening and may even come out with that being their new favorite piece. That’s a success story.
Lexington Symphony celebrates its 30th Season: Visit https://www.lexingtonsymphony.org to subscribe to the 2024-2025 season (single tickets also on sale), developed in collaboration with the Lex250 Commission to celebrate the semiquincentennial anniversary of the Battle of Lexington.