[audio:http://www.wdde.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/TheGreen-10102014-ArtsPlaylist-Amado.mp3|titles= Delaware Public Media contributor Pam George interviews Delaware Symphony Orchestra music director David Amado.]
David Amado is marking his 12th season as the music director of the Delaware Symphony Orchestra, and oh, the changes he’s seen. At its peak, the DSO’s operating budget was about $2.7 million. Today, it’s $1.4 million. Nevertheless, the orchestra ended its last season with a $100,000 surplus, a coup considering the organization at one point scrapped its 2012-2013 for fiscal reasons.
It took the generosity of longtime contributors to get the orchestra back on its feet by January 2013 for an abbreviated season, and most insiders would agree that it also took Amado’s patient, unwavering support.
On Oct. 6, Amado was honored with a 2014 Governor’s Award for the Arts at a ceremony at the Grand Opera House in Wilmington. “It was wonderful to be in an environment that was there to fete the arts,” Amado said. “It was just a great, happy environment.”
Other honorees include filmmaker Sharon Baker, co-founder of Teleduction; violinist Xiang Gao, founding artistic director of the University of Delaware Master Players Concert Series; advocate Eunice LaFate, founder and owner of LaFate Gallery; and author Billie Travalini, co-founder of the Lewes Creative Writers Conference.
Evelyn Swensson – conductor/composer for Aldersgate United Methodist Church, the Ardensingers, Brandywiners Ltd. and OperaDelaware – received the Peggy Amsterdam Outstanding Achievement Award. The Joshua M. Freeman Foundation, which operates the Freeman Stage at Bayside, and VSA Delaware were recognized in the organization category.
Amado was nominated by Bruce Kallos, who became DSO board chairman in April and passed away in July. Kallos helped oversee the orchestra during its most challenging period – one that has helped change the way the DSO operates. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
On the Wednesday morning after receiving his award, Amado reflected on the tough but enlightening time that the DSO has experienced and the orchestra’s mission going forward. While he greets his guests, he fields questions from his three children, who are home-schooled. His wife, Meredith, a violinist, whom he met when both were students at the Juilliard School, is about to whisk the children off to Staples for school supplies. But when Amado sits at the grand piano to perform a piece – after repeated pleas from the guests – the children pause to quietly listen.
Amado insists that he is a music director/conductor not a pianist. Judging by the way his fingers deftly fly over the keys, his audience on that day would disagree.
The Merion, Pennsylvania, native began playing piano at age 4. His interest in music wasn’t a surprise. Amado’s grandmother was violist Lillian Fuchs, who taught Isaac Stern. His mother was celebrated violinist Carol Stein Amado. Amado in high school attended pre-college classes at Julliard on Saturdays. He transferred to the prestigious music school from the University of Pennsylvania his freshman year.
At Juilliard, he realized that although he loved to play the piano he wasn’t passionate about performing. After some soul searching, he earned a master’s in instrumental coaching from Indiana University and returned to Juilliard for post-graduate work. After jobs in Portland, Oregon, and the St. Louis Symphony in Missouri, he came to Wilmington in 2002.
The past five to six years have been a difficult time for the arts. “We came perilously close to just vanishing,” he said of the DSO. “Because of some very hard work by some very committed people, we were able to pull ourselves back out of that abyss and retool our business model that ended up with a surplus last season – a modest one but a surplus nonetheless.”
To make ends meet, the DSO reduced the number of performances and rehearsals by about 50 percent from what it offered 10 years ago. The reduction in rehearsals is “no fun for any of us,” he said. “But we understand it’s a necessity for the time being.”
Because there were just two rehearsals per performance for the 2012-2013 abbreviated season, the repertoire included standard pieces that were familiar to the musicians. The orchestra has since added rehearsals, but Amado would like to see more.
The challenge in a crisis is to spot opportunities, and Amado has found them. When the DSO came back in January 2013, the Grand Opera House had filled the orchestra’s vacant slots. The orchestra turned to the Laird Performing Arts Center at The Tatnall School. “It’s turned out to be a great supplement to our presence at the Grand – which we love and we value,” he said.
Another upside: the DSO features members as soloists. “The ability to show our audience the level of talent that we have sitting on that stage on a regular basis...is really just wonderful,” he said. The audience seems more interested in these soloists than international performers. “There’s something particularly special about ‘one of yours.’ It’s a huge benefit for all of us that we have this at our disposal.”
While the DSO has a regional reach, its primary supporters are in Wilmington. “As we put the pieces back together, I think it’s a priority for us to make sure that we really maximize our reach in a responsible way. We’re the Delaware Symphony. We’re not the New Castle County Symphony. We’re not the Wilmington Symphony.”
But they are a symphony, which Amado still finds incredibly satisfying. “It’s this whole palette of [instruments] – colors and variety of sound. I find that very appealing.”
The DSO’s next performance is Friday Oct. 17 and Sunday Oct. 19 at The Tatnall School. Selections will include Koussevitzky’s Bass Concerto, featuring principal bassist Daniel McDougall, the William Tell Overture by Rossini and Schubert’s Symphony No. 9. “It’s a glorious piece,” Amado said of the Schubert symphony. “He managed to take the grand scale of a Beethoven symphony and infuse with his own language.”
Amado clearly loves to talk about the story behind a piece or a compose, and he’s good at it. Education, he said, is a “primary motivator” as the DSO rebuilds. He said h looks forward to reaching the entire state in a “fiscally responsible and artistically innovative – and rewarding – way.”
Now in his 40s, Amado doesn’t think about retirement. “Musicians go on forever, don’t they?” he said. “People who do what they love don’t have the urge to stop what they’re doing. It’s part of their being.”
And there’s no doubt that he is doing what he loves.
For more information on the Delaware Symphony Orchestra and its season, visit www.delawaresymphony.org.
This piece is made possible, in part, by a grant from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.