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.”

Himmelstrup might have seemed an unlikely artistic director, having had no administrative experience, but, she says, “I learned by doing.” Initially, she conducted business out of the laundry room (“I wrote a lot of grant proposals on a typewriter in there,” she says). By 1985, the couple’s daughters, now forty-one and thirty-eight, had left for college, and Himmelstrup moved operations into one of the empty bedrooms. Five years ago, she got her first part-time assistant and her first office. Today, the program’s annual budget is more than $150,000.

Shortly after the series launched, Himmelstrup intended to professionalize it. A volunteer-based organization wouldn’t have the longevity she wanted, and in 1987, the series broke from the SAPAF. She built a board of people who loved the neighborhood as much as the music and credits them with much of the series’ success. She acknowledges that many people have helped her, not least of whom is Anders, now retired from his graphic design business. “I couldn’t have done all this if I wasn’t a kept woman,” she says. “I never thought of myself as entrepreneurial, but being married to a businessman helps. Anders is a connector. The way he ran his business, he made it work by working together with people. I feel like I’m a connector too, between the musicians and the audience.”

Toronto, where she was studying piano after graduating from the University of Minnesota. She had a job accompanying famed Danish singer Aksel Schiøtz, and Anders had come to Canada from Denmark to study with him. “I met Anders on the stairs and thought, ‘What a cute guy. Would I like a date with that!’”

Schiøtz set them up, and the relationship continued after she returned to the United States. “We had only ten or fifteen dates total before we married,” says Anders, who’s her most ardent supporter, offering practical as well as emotional support. “What she has done is great, productive, wonderful. It’s about what’s most important in life.”

From the beginning of the series, he’s served as stage manager. “I move chairs,” he says proudly.

Himmelstrup has been passionate about chamber music since childhood. “My earliest memories are of my mother playing violin duets with my older brother’s fourth grade teacher. I couldn’t wait to learn to play the piano. We had little else,” she says of her working-class family. “But I was always so nervous as a soloist. I hated it. I’d be dying up there. To get up with someone else was easier. I loved the camaraderie of that. Chamber music has always been my inspiration.

“My definition of chamber music is inclusive of lots of different forms. I consider jazz to be chamber music too.” This season features The America Piano, in March, with a program influenced by African-American and black Creole roots, and Mark O’Connor’s Appalachia Waltz Trio, in April, blending classical and folk traditions.

She brings in major ensembles too, such as the New Zealand String Quartet this month, but much of her focus is on young talent whose careers are just taking off, including the Cavani String Quartet, which performs in April. “I pick groups that are of significance, not just part of the star system,” she says. “I look for qualities that make them special. The prerequisite is how well they can communicate with the audience.”

“She has a great musician’s ear for spotting talent,” says Carlson, who programs Schubert Club’s seasons. “Her programs are always first-rate. She has maintained the highest of standards.”

Over the years, Himmelstrup has demonstrated savvy in recognizing talented new musicians and important new music. She’s proud of the number of times her judgment has been validated. She recalls one instance, in 1998, when she programmed the Lark Quartet to perform the Minnesota premiere of Aaron Jay Kernis’s String Quartet No. 2. A week before the concert, the work received the Pulitzer Prize.

Himmelstrup is also committed to Minnesota composers. In its third season in 1982, Music in the Park Series commissioned its first world premiere from a then virtually unknown Randall Davidson. He’s now enjoying an international career, having held residencies around the country, made recordings with the Minnesota Orchestra and SPCO, and received a Gold Lion award from the Cannes Film Festival. The series has presented more than sixty world and Minnesota premieres. The New Zealand Quartet’s program this month includes the local premiere of a work by Minnesota composer Janika Vandervelde.

Part of what makes Himmelstrup successful, both artistically and fiscally, is her willingness and ability to collaborate. Early on, she and Carlson, who was eager to nurture the young organization, developed a partnership with the Schubert Club. “In those days, Bruce would pay the artists’ fees, and we would do the rest [marketing, ticket sales, and administration],” she says. Their association has been ongoing since then.

She also works closely with Susan Dubin, executive director of the Chamber Music Society of St. Cloud. “We talk for hours and hours when planning our seasons,” Dubin says. “We’re not trying to be twins, but we block book at least a couple shows a season. There’s little overlap in audience, and there’s a financial advantage to it.” This season, the Miami String Quartet, Les Voix Humaines, and the Vienna Piano Trio, in March, play Saturday evenings in St. Cloud before appearing Sunday afternoons in St. Paul.

“What’s so gratifying is when all the pieces finally fall into place,” Himmelstrup says. “I always feel like this is the best season we’ve ever had, like I’ve put together something of significance. There’s a thrill to that.”

“Julie’s completely authentic,” says Davidson, also fine arts manager of Augsburg College. According to him, she is very individual in her programming choices, and she bucks current industry trends by not fretting about demographics and market surveys, what he calls the “institutionalization of arts administration.” “It’s simply about the music and the musicians,” he says. “Her programs are a 100 percent reflection of what she’s passionate about. Nothing is held in reserve. This is not a job for her. It’s a calling.”

Himmelstrup admits she works far more than the half-time for which she’s paid. “But who cares?” she says. “I live it and breathe it. Musicians are the hardest working people I know. The devotion it takes to make performances happen is amazing! They inspire me.”

These days, though, Himmelstrup is beginning to consider retirement. “I’d love to do this forever,” she says. “But I worry that I’ve only got a few more years when people will take me seriously, before they start thinking of me as a crazy old lady.”

Perhaps the local music scene could use more of her craziness. “I have a great respect for the way she pulled the neighborhood together around classical music. What could be finer?” says Carlson. “Every city should have someone like her.”

William Randall Beard is the opera columnist for Mpls.St.Paul Magazine.