Culture Club – Peninsula Arts and Humanities Alliance

The Peninsula Music Festival (PMF) is similar to many orchestras in the United States. We, like them, do not own the place where we perform. Though the performing arts centers are often referred to as the “homes” of these orchestras, the orchestra is only “at home” when they are either rehearsing or presenting a concert at the performing arts center. Many orchestras rehearse at a different location, other than the place where they will present the concert, due to the high cost of renting their “home.” Some orchestras, such as the Milwaukee Symphony, compete with multiple organizations for dates at their performance hall, often not receiving their preference of dates.

PMF does not own the Door Community Auditorium (DCA). It is often referred to as the “home” of PMF, but our access to the auditorium is for the three weeks of the festival only. PMF is luckier than most orchestras in that the staff of the DCA is cooperative, friendly and helpful. Additionally, our dates are put on the calendar of the DCA and Gibraltar School many years in advance, and we have all found a cooperative way of accommodating the needs of three businesses in the same building during the month of August each year. The challenges come when the PMF has to get into the DCA and then again out of the DCA in record time each August.

Many of you attend our first concert on the first Tuesday in August and you see a full orchestra on stage complete with stands, chairs, percussion equipment, timpani, grand piano, podium, harpsichord, music, flowers, etc. The amazing thing is that there is only a five-hour window of opportunity to move in all of the stuff that is needed to present a full orchestral concert each year.

Now, there is legwork that takes place prior to what we call load in. The principal percussionist of the orchestra has looked over all of the music for the festival in advance and sent the percussion needs to PMF’s operations coordinator. Many phone calls are made to secure the equipment needed, and on the Friday before the festival, the operations coordinator drives to Lawrence University, Southern Door School and Birch Creek to secure the instruments that they make available to PMF. These are loaded into his truck and secured in the operations coordinator’s home in Green Bay over the weekend.

Arrangements are also made in advance for the move of the festival’s nine-foot Steinway from Shepherd of the Bay Lutheran Church in Ellison Bay to DCA. The festival’s piano is housed at the church all fall and winter.

The Monday before the first Tuesday concert, the operations coordinator makes his first stop at the DCA and unloads all of the percussion equipment that he has borrowed from throughout northeast Wisconsin. The next stop is the festival’s office in Ephraim where the two interns for the month of August also meet. These three people load all of the items that are stored all winter in Ephraim and take them to the DCA. This includes the podium, supplies for the ushers and parkers, concession supplies, boxes of supplies to set up an office for the personnel manager and a host of other items that bring the festival to life at the DCA.

These three people arrive at the DCA in time to meet the piano movers, meet the truck that delivers the timpani all the way from Nashville, Tennessee and meet our associate conductor who arrives with his harpsichord. They set up the green room for the soloists, and they set up the stage for the first rehearsal, which begins at 2 pm! The sign out front of the DCA is changed, the lobby is set up for concessions, the program books arrive by truck and water is delivered for the orchestra.

Then the most important item needed to run the festival begins to arrive, the orchestra. One-by-one, fifty-six people plus a conductor and a guest artist arrive at the auditorium. They find places to put their cases; they begin to welcome each other back; they warm up; and then, the baton drops, and the first note of the first rehearsal beings.

As soon as the festival is loaded into the auditorium, the staff is always looking for things that can be returned during the three weeks. When an instrument or item is no longer needed by the orchestra, the interns or operations coordinator try to return it to the festival office or wherever it needs to go. Additionally, there are times when something is needed that is not at the DCA. If it is an instrument of some kind, it is often borrowed from the Gibraltar School music department.

On the final Saturday of the festival, three weeks after load in, comes load out. While the final concert is being presented, trucks are being loaded. After intermission, all the concession items are cleaned and loaded into boxes for removal. After the concert, music is collected, the green room is returned to its original state, the timpani is packed for pick up on Monday, etc. It is a complete rewind of the load in. By midnight, the last truckload of items pulls away. There is no sign left at the auditorium that the Peninsula Music Festival was ever in residence for three weeks except for four big trunks filled with the timpani.

The operations manager drives home on Sunday morning to Green Bay, the interns return to college or other summer jobs and the year around Peninsula Music Festival staff begins the process all over again on Monday morning, preparing for the next year’s Peninsula Music Festival.