An Evening in the Palace of Reason

Considering all that Lowell Noteboom did for Leonard, Street and Deinard through the years, including spending 12 as its president, the firm wanted a big gesture of appreciation on his impending retirement. So they cooked up something special: knowing Noteboom as a keen appreciator of classical music, they hired a composer, Libby Larsen, to write an original piece of music, and commissioned its performance by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra on February 22. The piece’s title: “Evening in the Palace of Reason.”

Leonard Street’s musical odyssey began in the summer of 2005 when Noteboom began to wind down his presidency role. Noteboom’s colleagues knew how much music means to him: he had served for many years on boards for the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the League of American Orchestras, the MacPhail Center for Music and others. He’s also an avid amateur cellist who rehearses regularly with a string quartet. So why not go where no law firm (to their knowledge) has gone before? They consulted with Bruce Coppock, president and managing director of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and began interviewing composers.

Larsen found inspiration after turning the tables and asking the partners to name qualities they admired in Noteboom. “They talked about Lowell’s ability to reason and to strategize in a large structural way,” she says. Larsen, who knew Noteboom from his musical life and is married to a trial lawyer herself, started to find the piece. “The really successful attorneys that I have watched and heard are great architects of ideas,” she says. She started thinking about Bach, the greatest of musical architects, and told them so. She was hired.

Her composition—a 20-minute suite for string quartet and string orchestra—draws from the structures and themes of 18th-century Bach and combines them with sounds—sonorous, percussive and jazzy—of the 21st century.

The verdict? “Witty, discursive, full of unexpected juxtapositions,” cheered the Star Tribune. “Momentous and engaging,” said the Pioneer Press.

Noteboom himself was struck by how the music “moved from the tension of the first two movements … to that soaring violin at the end.” And he was delighted with the “sweet cello part” in the fourth movement.

So what now? Second performances of commissions don’t happen very often. In this case, however, says Larsen, “There’s already a great deal of interest.” Word is getting around the musical community that this piece—meant to honor one person—is worthy of being heard by thousands more.