Madam Music

Before each Music in the Park Series concert, Julie Himmelstrup, founder and artistic director of the chamber music series, ascends into the pulpit in St. Anthony Park United Church of Christ to welcome her audience. In her fervor, she is a cross between a revival preacher inspiring the faithful and a society hostess welcoming guests to her soiree. She is the epitome of a hands-on administrator, greeting guests in the lobby, checking the lights, chatting with the musicians, and showing concertgoers to the good seats. Her enthusiasm might make her seem extravagant or even eccentric, but her goal is always to bring her audience into the heart of the music.

Music in the Park Series opened its twenty-seventh season last month, presenting the nationally renowned Miami String Quartet with Twin Cities–based pianist Lydia Artymiw, and offering a diverse roster for the rest of the season, including the up-and-coming early music duo Les Voix Humaines in January. Since its inception in 1979, the series has presented more than 200 concerts to perennially sold-out houses in the 350-seat church. To say that Himmelstrup and the series have developed a large and loyal following is an understatement.

“Twenty-seven seasons! I never thought I’d live this long!” says Himmelstrup, sixty-nine. Beneath all her energy and exuberance, she is an average upper-middle-class matron, wearing what she calls her “typical summer costume”—an ankle-length black skirt, a pink floral print shirt hanging loosely over a black blouse, and a strand of pearls.

Himmelstrup had a significant reputation as a musician before she founded Music in the Park Series. “I’ve been with the Schubert Club for thirty-seven years,” says Schubert Club executive director Bruce Carlson, “and I met her that first year. She served on the Schubert Club advisory board. But I knew her first as a pianist. She was first-rate.”

It was Himmelstrup’s love of the area as much as her love of music that inspired Music in the Park Series. She is grounded in the St. Anthony Park neighborhood, where she and Anders, her husband of forty-five years, have lived for forty-two years. “This is one of the few neighborhoods where this program could happen,” Himmelstrup says, crediting the neighborhood’s stability, long tradition of education and attachment to the University of Minnesota, and care for community and culture.

The house the couple lives in was designed for them by neighborhood resident and Frank Lloyd Wright disciple Joe Michels. It’s across the street from St. Anthony Park United Church of Christ. Even though the series outgrew the church long ago, Himmelstrup won’t switch venues. “Its size lends itself to intimacy. Its beauty and character create the sense of a living room atmosphere,” she says. “There are good acoustics as well.”

Music in the Park Series grew out of an artist-in-residence grant Himmelstrup received from COMPAS in 1979. “Those were the glory days of community arts and arts funding,” she says. It was a three-year grant, administered by the St. Anthony Park Arts Forum, with the goal of creating a lasting neighborhood program.

When Himmelstrup proposed a chamber music series to the SAPAF, “there was dead silence,” she says. “The real bomb was my suggesting we bring in the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra as the inaugural event.” She prevailed over the initial opposition, and that fall, the SPCO played to a full house. The concert cost $3,500—the series’ entire budget for that year was $5,000—but, she says, “it got us noticed.”

Himmelstrup demonstrated creativity in economically scheduling the rest of that season. At an SPCO silent auction, she bid on the services of flutist Julia Bogorad-Kogan, and they performed a program together. She and Anders, an amateur cellist, played a quartet concert with SPCO principal oboe Richard Kilmer and his wife, Sydney, a violist. She also featured guitarist Sharon Isbin, then at the beginning of her career.

“In those days, there were no dos and don’ts,” says Anders. “You did what you had to. At one point, we even brought our own piano over to the church. We did everything but stand on our heads to make it work.”