Support our future!
As part of the fund drive campaign each season, the Great Falls Symphony shares a spotlight about a special musician and their story. This year, Maestro Emeritus and current Artistic Advisor, Gordon Johnson is taking the stage. He reminices about his early days with the Symphony and shares exciting details about our future and how our supporters can help us get there!
FUND DRIVE SPOTLIGHT
_tif.png)
Maestro Emeritus, Gordon Johnson
The Future is Bright, Invest in Making
it Possible
PAM LEMELIN
MUSICAL BEGINNINGS
How did you come to connect with music? When did that grow into conducting?
​
“I received this old trumpet my dad and aunt had played,” Gordon Johnson recalled. “We attended this little neighborhood school, and the band class was the most pathetic you’d ever seen in your life, two clarinets, a trumpet, and three kids that played drums with sticks on old wooden chairs. The band teacher came once a week, Mister Kitzenberger. He hated us. Oh, I wanted to quit. But I loved the music.”
​
That love deepened across the street, where his grandfather listened to the Saturday Metropolitan Opera broadcast. “Whenever I went to visit him, I was told to be quiet if he was listening to the opera. There was something about that music that was so moving. I didn’t understand what they were saying since they were singing in Italian, French, or German, but whatever they were singing about was incredibly important and came from the depth of their soul. That resonated. I just thought, I want to be a part of that.”
​
In junior high, Johnson switched from trumpet to horn. “I had to carry my trumpet to and from school every day. Then the band director said, ‘I don’t have any horn players. Who wants to play horn?’ Nobody raised their hand. He said the horn belonged to the school and had to stay there.Right away my hand went up since I wouldn’t have to carry it around. I picked up the horn and started to play it. And I thought, oh, I like this. The trumpet was just too loud for my taste. The horn was more mellow.” Gordon poured himself into it, listening to LPs of horn recordings borrowed from the public library, saving paper route money to buy a professional German-made Alexander 103 double horn, and playing with community orchestras in Saint Paul. “One of the first pieces I played was Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5. It was my first real orchestral experience. The music was powerful ... so powerful that I realized I wanted to make sharing music my life’s work.”
​
By his mid-teens, Johnson’s fascination with the music itself had grown beyond any single part. “The one line [in the music score] wasn’t enough for me,” he said. “I wanted to know what everybody was doing.” That curiosity led him toward conducting, and to learning new instruments. “I played viola. I had this junker instrument, I don’t know where I got it, but I thought, well, if I want to be a conductor, I have to learn to play a string instrument. So, I played viola and some violin– just at the utmost rudimentary level.”
“My father—my mother too, but my father in particular—was so concerned. He said, ‘You don’t wanna be a musician. You’ll end up living in my basement.’ When I was twenty years old, I got a scholarship to be a resident conductor with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. (See inset photo above.) I did my first concert with a professional orchestra at twenty, and afterward my dad looked at me and said, ‘Yeah, Okay.’”
​
Gordon remembers, “One time a fellow conductor asked me, ‘What would you be doing if you weren’t doing this?’ And I couldn’t sleep that night because, I realized, there’s nothing else I want to do. I couldn’t do anything else.”
​
​​
THE GREAT FALLS SYMPHONY’S EARLY DAYS
Walk us through the time you were music director of what was a small community orchestra to the transition to becoming a professional symphony.
​
“When I first arrived here in Great Falls, the orchestra was quite a bit smaller. There was little money to bring in musicians from outside our area. We relied on our local musicians, many of whom were very capable, talented players. These musicians were joined by players who came from the neighboring communities–Belt, Choteau, and Geyser. I liked that since it made the organization more regional.
The orchestra rehearsed on Monday nights, and after four or five weeks, we would perform a concert on a Tuesday evening. There was no budget for guest artists. That pattern of rehearsing only on Monday was not a strategy towards building a stronger artistic product. I wanted to consolidate the rehearsal schedule so we’d have at least three rehearsals in sequence for a concert. The only way I could make that happen was by compensating the musicians. Most of the orchestras in Montana were not paid in those days, so it was sort of a visionary proposal. Also, there was a desire to move from Tuesday evening performances to Saturday night.
The Symphony ran a one-year study to design a system towards implementation for the following season. Some of the musicians were standoffish—they preferred the schedule the way it was. The compensation was so little it didn’t even pay for babysitters. So money wasn’t really a factor. But we moved ahead knowing that five years later it was going to render professional-level results artistically. And it did.”
FUNDING CHALLENGES
Will you talk about the necessity for funding to allow an orchestra to grow and thrive.
“Orchestras around the world have to fight for funding. You read about orchestras in Berlin, Hamburg, Salzburg—going to the government pleading for support. Most European orchestras are funded by their municipalities. When things get tough, the arts are first on the chopping block. So orchestra administrators and staff who have a higher profile, including star conductors, find themselves in front of their governments to fight for support.
In the United States, most orchestras like the Great Falls Symphony receive less than 1% of our funding from government support. “Our orchestras receive monies from grants, foundations, corporate sponsorships, and donors. That reality makes community support essential. As an organization—and I think I speak for all American orchestras—we need to impress upon our communities the value that we provide to our society. There’s a misconception that we are only about music, and only classical music. That couldn’t be further from the truth.”​​
THE SEARCH FOR NEW ARTISTIC LEADERSHIP
Is there anything else that you would want people to know about where we’re going in the future?
​
“I think, people should know that just maintaining what we currently have takes an enormous amount of energy. We cannot rest on our laurels. We’ve come a long way. We’ve built a great number of important and wonderful projects. I don’t believe anyone in our community would deny that we’re a valuable civic asset. I’m proud of that going into the future, and I want to make sure that the new music director has the tools to realize their vision. We have six talented music director candidates who are joining us this season. They are arriving with stimulating ideas which I hope will bring us to the next level.”
THE MISSION
As we look toward the future, what would you like our patrons to know about where the Symphony is heading and what it takes to get there?
​
​“First of all, I don’t think it’s well known that we have developed a strong strategic plan. This is something that’s very important to me as a music director. It’s absolutely crucial if we’re going to experience any growth or development into the future.
The Great Falls Symphony’s current three-year strategic plan outlines both operational goals and artistic priorities. These include the return of The Nutcracker with a live orchestra in the pit, the revival of the Summer Symphony—a free outdoor community concert—and the launch of the Symphony Ambassador Program, a new mentorship initiative where professional musicians support students at the request of teachers, offered at no cost to public schools.”
Johnson reflects on the role that long-term planning has always played in the Symphony’s progress. “I would have never gotten the orchestra compensated if it hadn’t been part of our strategic plan, nor a new set of timpani, the Youth Orchestra program, the Cascade Quartet. I think future planning is a necessary component of our growth. I encourage any donor to view their gift as an investment in our future.”
For Johnson, supporting the Symphony is about more than sustaining performances—it’s about investing in the quality of life in Great Falls. “Donors are underwriting a quality-of-life project— including economic development and the amenities we all desire for our community. It’s our neighbors, teachers, community members who are playing on the stage.”
He emphasizes that the arts are not a luxury, but a vital part of what makes a community strong. “The arts—the Symphony in particular—are essential to having a healthy, vibrant community. Economic development is key to our community. The Symphony is an integral part of that equation.” Johnson also wants donors to recognize that every dollar given makes a tangible difference, circulating back into the local economy. “I encourage donors to realize it is not so much a contribution, but rather, it’s an investment. When donors send support our way—that’s an investment in a way of life. Anything one donates goes back into the community. We buy our groceries, our gasoline, our services here. That money stays in the Great Falls.”
And, he added, support doesn’t have to come in large sums to matter. “I really encourage people to give what they can. I’d love to see each citizen become part of the Great Falls Symphony family and take pride in their ownership of this great organization.”
Thank you!
Your gifts to the Symphony are an investment in the future of our community. Your support will continue to enrich the lives of our youth and ensure the vibrancy of the Great Falls cultural landscape.
Join us in this harmonious journey, and let’s shape a brighter future through music.
