By Dana DuGan
Coming in fresh to an established organization can initiate a few different responses. Fear might be one of those feelings or, conversely, a sense that you are in the right place at the right time. The latter is, fortunately, the response of Jenny Krueger, who took over the reins of the county’s largest free summer symphony program in June, and is resolved to keep the stakes high for the coming season. The Sun Valley Summer Symphony ran from July 24 to Aug. 18 at the Holding Pavilion in Sun Valley.
“When you put on a season like we just did, there’s tremendous pressure for next year,” Krueger said in her Ketchum office last week. The nonprofit organization is in final negotiations regarding contracts.
The 2016 season was filled with highlights. It was the final year in the three-year residency of the classically trained string trio, Time for Three. It marked a performance of the co-commissioned “Firebird,” with puppetry and dance by Handspring Puppetry Company, of Cape Town, South Africa. It had Joyce Yang as a guest star performing Prokofiev, and Mahler’s gigantic Symphony No. 3 finished out the season.
“I learned – my first bird’s-eye view – we have an amazing music director in Alasdair Neale,” Krueger said. “He’s a brilliant person and he’s a master at scheduling the programs. It was a ride he conducted all the way to the end. His pace was perfection.”
Krueger spent time in the orchestra seating, and on the lawn, during this past season to get a feel for the experience from every angle. In fact, Krueger headed out to the “cheap seats” on the lawn during Joyce Yang’s Prokofiev performance.
“It’s not a well-known piece,” she said. “I worried how it was going to be received. With her last note, the lawn audience just stood up as one in applause. This audience is not typical; it’s a special audience. I was out there, too, for ‘Firebird’ – you could hear a pin drop.”
The symphony’s biggest audience night was, as usual, Pops. This year, at 9,000, it was the largest audience the Sun Valley Summer Symphony has ever attracted.
“The impact is that this audience shows up and, over the years, they’ve developed an ear and acquired tastes,” said Krueger. “It speaks a lot to our mission” – to bring music of this quality for free to everyone – “and we’re cultivating the next generation.”
Another aspect that has amazed Krueger is how the entire community seems to get behind the work of the Summer Symphony.
“I loved the friends I made,” she said. “The audience, patrons, housing hosts, musicians, volunteers – just seeing people so regularly is extra special.”
Many of the musicians use the term “camp” for their time in Sun Valley. It’s condensed quality time spent producing something remarkable.
“We do in three-and-a-half weeks what part-time orchestras do in a year, which is part of the thrill,” Krueger said. “It’s so high caliber. It blows my mind.”
Neale has an excellent term for what the symphony creates, both as an artistic organization and as a part of the community: “gross domestic happiness.”
Krueger agrees with this concept. “It’s not just coming together and listening, or what the musicians and Alasdair is putting out. It’s positive and exhilarating and it comes back around. This is the responsibility we have. We owe it to our supporters. It’s reciprocal and we thrive on that. It’s very rewarding.”
Immediately after the season was over, in August, the entire organization took a few days to recover and then, in the hopes of capturing that energy, began debriefing.
“How do we make sure the formula for next year has the special ingredients that this one had,” said Krueger. “For one thing, our summer workshops will expand. We have a new initiative that’s very exciting. And we’ll end as big or bigger than last year. It will be a different ride, but end with a big finale.”
“I don’t know,” I said, since I’d been hugely impressed with the Mahler finale. “How you can top it?”
“Oh, but we will,” Krueger said with the assurance of one who has a delicious secret up her sleeve.
Krueger will meet in San Francisco this week with Neale, and the entire personnel and production team, to begin plotting out the next season from a production standpoint.
“They are a dream team, as well,” Krueger said. “We want to make sure they have all the resources they need.”
One last thought from Kruger on her first season with the Sun Valley Summer Symphony.
Her musical highlight was August 11, when the orchestra performed Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6.
“He’s one of my favorite composers, and I’ve played it a dozen or so times,” Krueger said. “But it was this interpretation, and the caliber of the musicians that were playing.
“It’s an extraordinary blessing to be here right now, with all these people, doing what I’m doing.”