A visionary returns to Canada to shape future artists
After a distinguished career leading the San Francisco Symphony’s groundbreaking media ventures and shaping young musicians at the New World Symphony, John Kieser has returned to Canada with a mission. As the new President of Honens International Piano Competition in Calgary, he brings decades of experience in orchestral management, media innovation and education to the role. Florian Riem reflects on his career and explains why his return to Canada marks a new chapter in supporting the next generation of pianists
Tell us a little about your family and your background. You were born in London…
Well, I was born in London, Canada, which is close to Toronto.
No British accent there. But a very musical family?
My mother and father were both musical, as were my two brothers and two sisters, and we all played the piano. I started out with violin and piano at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, switching from violin to double bass, which became my principal instrument.
The arts played a major role in our family life, not just music, but also visual arts and architecture. I don’t think my parents ever thought that any of us would pursue a career in the arts. However, one of my sisters, who became the Head of Radio Music at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), and I both did.
Did you have musical idols in Canada back then?
As a teenager, I was a member of the National Youth Orchestra of Canada, and two of its conductors made a huge impression on me: Seiji Ozawa, Principal Conductor of the Toronto Symphony, who conducted us, and Aaron Copland, who conducted Billy the Kid with us.
My bass teacher was Principal Bass at the Toronto Symphony, and there was a very close relationship between the orchestra and the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music. Two other influential conductors were Karel Ancerl and Sir Andrew Davis, both Music Directors of the Toronto Symphony.
When did you decide that audio work was something you perhaps wanted to pursue?
During my time at university, I was trying to do as many different things as possible so I could see all the different aspects of arts management and production. My interest in audio media came from my sister, who was working for the CBC, and I was an audio nut from an early age, making recordings on reel-to-reel and doing my own editing (with a razor)!
I was also interested in administration, and I started volunteering to be an administrator for the National Youth Orchestra when I was 15 years old. Later I became a house manager and sound engineer, starting my own company with a partner, and I also learned about lighting and stage design. In my last year at university, I became the manager of the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra, continuing this on a part-time basis after graduating. I also worked operations, tours, and grants at the National Youth Orchestra.
At that point, I realised that I wouldn’t become a musician, much to the despair of my double bass teacher. But the head of the music faculty came to my rescue, saying, I quote:
“The world has a lot of good bass players, but not a lot of good administrators!”
You wasted no time.
I did my first real job interview to practise interviewing – I did not expect to get that job, but the National Arts Centre (NAC) offered me a contract, and I became their Orchestra Manager for four-and-a-half years. After that, it became clear that I would stay in the world of orchestra management.
In Canada, a lot of young people look south of the border for work, and I was no exception. The San Francisco Symphony (SFS) hired me as Director of Operations, to replace Deborah O’ Grady, who was married to composer John Adams. They brought me there because of my touring experience with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Canada, which as a national institution had a mandate to tour all of Canada. I had set up a system for the orchestra where, during a period of three years, we would cover the entire country. Canada’s a big country, and there was a lot of travel involved! In the end, I worked with SFS for more than 30 years, holding several positions, the last being General Manager.
San Francisco was not touring at the time?
They were busy, doing four repeats of their subscription concerts per week, but they really wanted to start touring again, so I was brought on board to develop their touring programme.
At the same time, I was put in charge of coordinating the project to rebuild Davies Symphony Hall. Since its opening in 1980, it had come under criticism for its bad acoustics, and so I brought on a board of architects and acousticians, and we devised a system to equally prioritise acoustics and architecture. It took six years and $12 million to rebuild the hall, which was a bit ironic, because it cost only $25 million to build. But we had a lot of support from the board and my two bosses, Deborah Borda and Peter Pastreich. In the end, we came up with a hall that was much improved, not only in terms of acoustics, but also in the way the hall related to the audience. And this became another great interest of mine: audience experience.
How would you define audience experience?
In our business, music is the bedrock; it is the continuity. Programmes can change, but how can one expand audiences and introduce new people to this music? Who is going to talk to the audience? How are they going to be prepared for what they hear? What kind of interaction can one design with them?
I was fortunate that the San Francisco Symphony was a very adventurous organisation, especially under the innovative artistic leadership of Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT), because the next step for the orchestra was a plan about how to make media a core activity. MTT, the team and I built this over a period of time together. In the end, it culminated in the creation of a media company within the San Francisco Symphony, called SFS Media.
Your goal was for the orchestra to own all their recording rights?
In those days, it was typical for the recording companies to own all the rights to a recording, and the only way for the orchestra to own their rights was for us to self-produce and bring in partners. That’s exactly what we did. It started with a Mahler project – all the symphonies, with Michael Tilson Thomas conducting. This was then expanded to include all the Mahler works for voice and orchestra. The project won seven Grammys, three additional nominations, and surprised everyone in the industry. We distributed worldwide, and our distribution partners were terrific. One key lesson I learned is that having people on the distribution side who are as passionately committed as those who made the recordings is crucial to a project’s success.
It didn’t end with the audio recordings; the success with Mahler led to the creation of a video series built around MTT’s vision. We looked at our position and tried to determine who we were reaching, and who we were not reaching. Thanks to an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, we had an excellent business plan which identified our strengths, weaknesses and opportunities, and so MTT and I developed a video series called Keeping Score, which was focused on a specific target age group: people who were starting their professional lives, those who didn’t have a lot of free time, people starting families, people who had moved to the suburbs to find good schools for their children. We wanted these people to eventually come to our concerts. In the meantime, they had Keeping Score to create a connection to the music. There were other video projects as well, two of which won Emmys.
Does Keeping Score still exist?
Yes, you can still find it on YouTube. Our initial pilot project won an ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers) award and led to a total of eight episodes which were distributed around the world. The last one was a two-hour documentary on Mahler, which coincided with the 100th anniversary of his death and the 150th anniversary of his birthday. This was also screened as part of the SFS residency to celebrate Mahler at the Wiener Konzerthaus in 2011.
We always saw media as a kind of partner to the live concert experience and our tours. After a live concert, you have memories, but memories fade over time. That’s why something physical to remind you of that performance is extremely important. Even a fridge magnet is a little reminder of that memory. And this is why retail should be a part of every performing arts organisation!
San Francisco Symphony has been in the media a lot recently. When you hear the news about the orchestra and their current dispute, do you feel more for the musicians or for the management team?
I feel for both. One of my responsibilities at San Francisco was negotiation of collective agreements. The musicians, the chorus, the stagehands, the wardrobe, the box office, the ushers – they were all unionised. I feel for them both because both sides are in this together. For an arts company to really work well, there needs to be a relationship of trust and understanding. I’m not involved with this orchestra anymore, but it feels that this is at the crux of what’s going on there now. How can they bridge that gap? Until they reshape their relationship, it will be very difficult to have a meaningful negotiation that will be a benefit to both sides.
I was fortunate in that after a bad strike in San Francisco, which lasted 13 weeks, both sides received a grant from the Hewlett Foundation to bring in Robert Mnookin, a Harvard law professor who is an expert in conflict resolution. Later he wrote a book that has a chapter about these negotiations. The training we received from him changed the way we perceived negotiations from being complex and adversarial to a means to strengthen the relationship between two parties.
When did you leave San Francisco?
I left the San Francisco Symphony in January 2015 and worked as a consultant for a while, but then started looking for something new. My whole family had been involved in education for generations, so I looked for an opportunity to be in that world. When Michael Tilson Thomas approached me, saying that the New World Symphony (NWS) in Miami, a postgraduate academy for instrumentalists, was looking for someone, I jumped at the opportunity. The NWS is a laboratory for how music is expressed, experienced and taught. For the young instrumentalists, it´s research in one part and fellowship in another, which appealed because they also focused on the importance of media. I had two roles: Provost of the school, where I refashioned the curriculum, and Executive Vice President, responsible for expanding the media.
And then, after a few years, Covid-19 arrived. I was fortunate when the pandemic hit because we had plenty of video material ready, and we quickly moved all of our educational activities online. We had partnerships with several institutions: the Cleveland Institute of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, the Royal Danish Academy, the Royal College of Music in London, the Sibelius Academy and the Shanghai Conservatory. This was music to my ears, because, as our musicians become more international, it is important for them to understand the different cultures and styles in various countries around the world.
At NWS, our curriculum offered a series of seminars on subjects including negotiating, financial planning, designing programmes and concert series, media training, interview technique, personal media and community engagement. The curriculum was developed with the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and continues
today. This experience greatly influenced my current position at Honens.
But first, you went to Europe?
During the pandemic, I decided to step back and move to Europe. I had met my spouse [Jennifer Dautermann] at a conference in Macau, and we decided to live together in Berlin, where she was running Classical:Next, which she had founded. Essentially, we were great colleagues because Classical:Next was exactly the aesthetic I was interested in. What’s next? How might we grow the world of classical music? How might we ensure that it is there for future generations? How might we make it a living thing?
So, in 2021 I moved to Berlin, stepped back from NWS, and began to work for IDAGIO as their Director of Partnerships. Media, electronic media, and working in a for-profit company was of great interest to me, and I was impressed how passionate everyone at the company was – it was a terrific place to be.
Pandemic or not, going to Berlin must have been a huge move after 40 years working in the US.
True, but in a way, the pandemic helped, as everything was shut down. We were essentially confined to our apartment in Neukölln, giving me the chance to learn German and better understand the country’s culture and sensibilities. It was different from working in America or in Canada.
How did you like living in Berlin?
I really enjoyed my time in Berlin, and I still like to go there for inspiration – the arts are on fire in that city! But then, out of nowhere, came a call from Calgary. I knew about Honens [the international piano competition], because they were a client of IDAGIO, and I admired them because of the way they were different from other competitions. They had this concept of the “complete artists”, which goes beyond some of the more traditional competitions, and I thought they might be interested in an adventure to further develop the “complete artist” concept. When the call came, I thought, this was an interesting opportunity!
When did you last live in Canada?
I left in 1984, and Calgary is quite different from Toronto. What I love about Western Canada is the “let’s roll up our sleeves and work together to get this done” spirit.
We just had four days of Honens’ festival, which included eight separate events: recitals, free concerts to the public, special concerts for young people and those who are neurodiverse or have disabilities. We try to keep a good presence here and give back to the community as well. This is what attracted me to Honens, the element that we can bring back our laureates to perform.
After the competition, we support our winners for three years, offering mentorship, seminars and covering every aspect of their artistic development. We determine their needs and pair them with the right people and allow them to experiment. Calgary is highly international, with 75% of those who have moved here in the past decade identify as non-white, and 65 different languages spoken. This offers a unique opportunity for the laureates to engage with diverse communities and culture. One of the goals we have for our artists is to understand how powerful music and the arts can be!
As you mentioned, it is important to give your laureates support in all areas. However, while the process of finding a “complete artist” involves many qualities beyond piano playing, do you think this approach detracts from identifying the most outstanding pianist, traditionally seen as the main goal of a piano competition?
We don’t expect these young artists to be fully “complete” when they compete, but we want to encourage them to explore various aspects of their artistry. I don’t think we are sacrificing anything in artistic quality, but we are adding dimensions to somebody who is a truly gifted artist. The concept was the result of several brainstorming sessions with the staff and the board of trustees, where we articulated and prioritised our next steps. Before it was adopted, we talked to a lot of presenters, artist managers and other people in the business to further refine it. We worked hard to ensure this idea would resonate with donors, people in Calgary, and presenters and artist managers worldwide.
I believe that we need to prepare young artists for a world that is different from the one before the pandemic, and certainly different from 10 years ago. While classroom learning is important, true learning happens when you put it into practice, and this is what we aim to provide in Calgary.
To discover more about Honens International Piano Competition, visit honens.com