Join host Christopher Purdy and his guests for a discussion and preview of arts and cultural events happening in and around the Columbus metropolitan area.
We'll preview violinist Joshua Bell's upcoming performance with the Springfield Symphony on July 30. We'll also discuss the latest at the Columbus Museum of Art and talk with Ohio State emeritus professor Arved Ashby about his new book The 1980s Gayboy Playlist.
Host:
- Christopher Purdy, Classical 101 Morning Host
Guests:
- Peter Stafford Wilson, conductor of the Springfield Symphony and Westerville Symphony
- Brooke A. Minto, executive director of the Columbus Museum of Art
- Arved Ashby, author and professor emeritus of musicology at Ohio State University
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Christopher Purdy: Good morning, I'm Christopher Purdy, delighted to welcome you all to today's edition of All Sides Weekend. This is our arts and culture segment, which I'd like to say is also, what's going on around town? What do you need to know about? And I have three people with lots of great information, three people who are really representing arts and cultural in our community brilliantly. And they are Peter Stafford Wilson, who I'm trying to count now, is the music director and conductor, I'll tell you what I know, of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, the Westerville Symphony Orchestra. In his spare time, he gets on a plane and goes to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he's the music of the Tulsa Ballet. How you conduct ballet, I will never understand, but God bless you. You said there's one more.
Peter Stafford Wilson: Yeah, actually, I've added the title of Principal Guest Conductor for the Kansas City Ballet. So. So you must love the ballet.
Purdy: I love it, I love. We'll talk there. Peter Stafford Wilson is here. He has a very special concert to tell us about that's going to be a week from yesterday. Next Thursday night, we'll talk more. Professor Arved Ashby is here, Arved Ashley is Professor Emeritus of Music at The Ohio State University. He has written a new book, not his first, very far from his first. He is the biographer of Gustav Mahler. He has taught many a course in the School of Music at the Ohio State University, including seminars that included works of Frank Zappa. So he is a guy you really need to know better. Albert Ashby's brand new book is called "My 1980s Gay Boy Playlist." And we'll talk about that as our conversation ensues. And the adult in the room, and we're all going to try to behave and make a good Impression is Brooke Minto. Brooke Mento is the executive director of the Columbus Museum of Art and the last time you were invited you couldn't come because you had a cold.
Brooke A. Minto: There you go.
Purdy: So you're here now and I'm delighted. Oh, thank you so much Chris, it's wonderful to be back. To welcome you, Brooke Minto here. I want you to get a little closer to the microphone. That's good. How's that? Fist ways away, y'all might want to write this down out there in listening land. Tell me, Brooke Minto, this is, I think, your third year as executive director of the museum? Yeah, it was three years in May. Three years in May. So this is that gorgeous building on Broad Street. People drive by it all the time. Let's get them to stop the car. Get out of the car and go into the museum. Absolutely. What's going on at the museum right now? If I stopped my car today and went in the parking lot, what would I be experiencing?
Minto: Well, the museum is feeling more accessible than ever these days, Chris. And I think if you stopped and walked in today, what you would hear is that we are now free for everyone 25 and under. And this is a really spectacular initiative that started this month, July 1st, as the result of a very transformational gift from the Walter Foundation. So for the next five years, 25 and Under, all visitors are free every day that we're open. And for young ones, 16 and Under they are also free with a caregiver. So this is a really wonderful, wonderful change at the museum, one that kicks off a larger initiative called Access 150, where we're really thinking about how we open up our doors to as many locals and visitors alike who are in the Columbus region. The gift you just referenced that made
Purdy: this possible? Is this the kind of a gift that that you in your capacity pursued because you wanted people to be able, young people to, be able to make a home there?
Minto: Yes, absolutely. I mean, we believe strongly that removing financial barriers is the way to get as many people into the museum as possible and as young as we can so that the museum becomes an essential part of their lives very early on. So we're still raising more support for this initiative, but we have a very fantastic lead gift and one that we're incredibly grateful for and that we know will encourage others to contribute to this initiative over the next several years.
Purdy: Columbus Museum of Art. I hope everybody remembers that it's now free to persons under 25 years, under 16, with a caregiver.
Minto: With a caregiver and we remain free on Sundays for a family so everyone on Sundays that's a program that started a number of years ago that really initiated this larger project so on Sundays the whole family is free.
Purdy: When did this begin, the under 25?
Minto: July 1st. So we're three weeks in and we're already seeing tremendous results. What have you noticed? Oh, I mean, younger people throughout the week. So because we've been free on Sundays, families typically arrived on Sundays with little ones, with grandparents. But now we see families, especially because it's summer, coming on weekdays. We've noticed that all of our drop-in programs, our open studios and art-making programs for kids, teens and adults. All of those programs are at full tilt. You know, we're as highly subscribed as we can be.
Purdy: Sixty years ago, when I was in grammar school, which we used to call it, like second or third or fourth grade, we took field trips to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and you stayed in line and you didn't move and you don't touch anything and you had all kinds of older adults glaring at you. Discuss! How is it now?
Minto: Totally different. Our Center for Creativity really encourages engagement, hands-on art making, and so it's really at the crux of all of the programming that we offer there. There's interactive projects for learners of all ages. There's pre-scheduled programming that you register for, but then there's also drop-in programming. And unlike those days, we also have things like CMA Next, our new Teen Arts Council, where a dozen high school students come together and curate their own programming. So over the course of several weeks, they learn about careers in art museums and we teach them about contemporary art and what it's like, you know, having an art practice of your own. And then they curate their own programing for other teens. That's very interesting. Yes, one.
Purdy: Wonderful when you just said you're helping people look at career possibilities in museums, museum management, curators, etc. So we're going to come back and talk more about the Center of Creative Programming because I was around when that opened and that was a big deal and I'm glad that it's still thriving. Brooke Minto is the Executive Director of the Columbus Museum of Art.
You're listening to All Sides Weekend on 89.7 NPR News. I'm Christopher Purdy and Arved Ashby, full disclosure, he and Peter Stafford Wilson are old friends of mine. Arved Ashby's new book, "My 1980s Gay Boy Playlist," I'm going to read a couple of sentences from the press release and then we're going to talk about it. Award-winning music writer, Arved Ashbey, which we knew, muses over pieces that impacted his sexual and musical awakening as a troubled gay adolescent. Pieces by Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Beethoven, Bruckner. Prince Kurt Cobain, Alban Berg, and Tom Petty. That is quite a lineup. You were a very precocious child.
Arved Ashby: Oh, yes, with a large record collection that terrorized my poor parents continually. Yeah, my musical tastes, and this gets to the gist of the matter, have always been strange and kind of everywhere at once. And I've. As long as I can remember loved music that other people couldn't stand and wasn't crazy about music that I was supposed to like and and it was all kind of a very interesting dislocation so this book gets into that it's funny I was just thinking this is not in the book but I was thinking the other day do you know what the very first record I ever bought I was gonna ask you what I remember this are you ready for this it was Alice Cooper's "Welcome to My Nightmare" I bought it. How old were you? Oh, God, I must have been maybe 10 or something. I got it at the local Sears. This is when Sears sold LPs. I remember going in with lots of nickels and dimes and plunking this pile of nickel and dime down and getting Alice Cooper's "Welcome to My Nightmare" in return. So I've not really listened to Alice much lately, but that's kind of the theme and play here. Lots of variety and things hither and yon.
Purdy: Why do you think when you were a young child you were, for lack of a better term, bitten by a musical bug like that?
Ashby: Oh, I think I've always well I think the term I tend to go towards is music dependency. I actually use a term music dependency, which makes it sound a little like drug dependency, I suppose. But but it's true. I thinking back, I think just growing up and and being lonely and and just having so much going on in my head that if it weren't for music of a huge variety of kinds, getting deeply into examples of music over the years that I don't, yeah, I wouldn't be here today. I can just put it in that.
Purdy: You and I have had parallel lives. I'm a little bit older than that, but I'm not writing a book. You are. So it's your story that is germane to this discussion. Arvid Ashby's new book is "My 1980s Gay Boy Playlist" and we're going to talk more as the show goes on with specific examples of music that really moved you as a young kid and how that really threw into your upbringing and your identification as a I'm gay man. Peter Stafford Wilson is also here, I forgot the list, Springfield Symphony, Westerville, Kansas City Ballet and Tulsa Ballet, but you still live here. The Springfield symphony of which you have been music director for a number of years plays in a gorgeous state of the art facility at the Clark State Performing Arts Center in Springfield. I need to talk to you about Springfield, but let's get specific about July 30th. What's happening then?
Wilson: We've got an exciting concert coming up with Joshua Bell, one of the greatest violinists on the planet right now. Thursday night, July 30th, he's playing the Brooks Scottish Fantasy with us on a concert that just kind of morphed out of nothing. I had been looking at Joshua for our subscription series. You know, we had a great success with It's Our Perlman a few years ago, and just a stunning evening. And a sold-out house. And so I called his management, Primo Artists, and the owner, director of the firm is an old, dear friend of mine, Charlotte Lee. And rather than getting a call back from the sales agent telling me that no, Mr. Bell is not available, or Mr. Bill costs x, x, $100,000, Charlotte called me. And she said, you know. Joshua's got a performance of the Scottish fantasy this summer with the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood. And as you know, they're getting a little extra notoriety these days. That's another show. Boy, that's two or three shows. Oh, it is. It is. But at any rate, he wanted a warm up. And she said, I know that this season is already set. I know you've already, you know budgeted everything, but could you put something together. And so I went back to the board and and she added some very glowing things that Mr. Perelman had said about his experience with us so I went to the Board and basically the answer was well we can't not do this which I guess was kind of backhanded but I took it and went out and raised the money and sure enough we put it together for this this summer season which is unique for us so we'll see how it works out They're still inventory, but... It's only a 45 minute drive from the central Ohio area and free parking. Chris, have you ever heard about that?
Purdy: There's a wonderful, I've been there many times and I have to tell you, it's well worth a trip. The trip is not a big deal if you live in a campus or downtown Columbus area, it is really not a deal at all, and it's still daylight, so you're not driving in the dark if you don't know where it is.
Wilson: And it's a shorter program so you'll be out by 8 30 9 o'clock you know and you'll be amazed at the quality you know we live in a very fertile area where music talent is concerned because there's so many great music schools it's it's as you say well worth the trip.
Purdy: Symphony, how many years now have you been music director there?
Wilson: I'm gonna celebrate my 25th season after next, yeah.
Purdy: But the Yorkers has been around for many years in Springfield, but that surprised some people, but it's... Yeah, it's.
Wilson: Been there a long time. It's pushing on 70. Really? You know I love to tell the story of the fact that the Springfield Symphony was born in 1943. Think about what was going on in our country. And the astonishing thing, when I look at the program from that open, I mean there was Haydn, there was Schubert, there were German composers. Yeah. And yet You know, we needed something to come together as community, which you and I have talked about, Chris, many, many times. Think about 9-11 when, you know, the sports ceased, but the concerts went on. Yeah.
Purdy: Peter Stafford Wilson conducts the Springfield Symphony all season long, which we'll talk about, but specifically next Thursday night, July 30th, at the Clark State Performing Arts Center with violinist Joshua Bell playing Max Brooks' Scottish Fantasy. Tickets how?
Wilson: Through the Clark State box office. And I'm sorry, I don't have their number.
Purdy: That's just, just Google it. Yeah. Yeah.
Wilson: It's all there. Or go on our website, SpringfieldSim.org. It'll link you right to the box office. And there is significant inventory. Good seeds are still available. Well, let's move on.
Purdy: Make sure like in 40 minutes they're not. Anyway, we are going to take a quick break and come back with more All Sides Weekend. Don't go away.
Purdy: We are back. This is All Sides Weekend. I'm Christopher Purdy. My guests are Dr. Arved Ashby, professor emeritus of music at The Ohio State University. His new book is "My 1980s Gay Boy Playlist." Peter Stafford Wilson is the music director for this conversation of the Springfield Symphony. You might want to write them down. There's more coming. And Brooke Minto is the executive director of the Columbus Museum of Art. What is the Center for Creative? A Center for Creativity. Creativity. Talk to me about that at the museum.
Minto: It's really the hub of learning and engagement at the museum. So when you come into the museum, it's on the ground floor, and for the last, I'd say 12, if not 15 years, the 18,000 square foot space has had various kinds of activations and galleries for interactive learning.
Purdy: So hands on, you can touch stick.
Minto: Yeah, yeah, we have an open studio that every Saturday, young ones of all ages can come in and do art making every first Saturday of the month that is reserved for members of the museum, but it's every Saturday. There's also teen studios that have engaging art making activities for older learners. But really, it's one of the most energetic areas of the Museum. The heart of it is the Wonder Room. Which is a really kind of hands-on interactive play space. We have baby and me tours in that space and all kinds of other family adventures. So it really is like this little engine that hums about in the middle of the museum.
Purdy: Tell me about the, do you have a big exhibition of Asian art, can you talk about that for us? Yeah.
Minto: Yeah, it opened in April, so if you haven't seen it yet, you've got to get there. It's on its final weeks right now. It's called East of the Pacific. And the exhibition came to us from Partners on the West Coast at the Kanner Art Center. It's the campus art museum at Stanford University. And most of the exhibition is drawn from their collection, but it's also complemented by about a dozen works from our permanent collection of the museum, some more historical, and then the majority of which are contemporary arts that were recently gifted from the Gantland family.
Purdy: Now you're in your third year as the executive director of the museum. I'm curious to know about where you came from and what brought you to Columbus.
Minto: Good questions. Yeah, third year. I moved from New York to Columbus, and I guess I think we've talked about that. I'm originally from there and grew up there, but I've lived in different places for museums. I was in South Florida at a museum in Miami for seven years. Then I lived in the Gulf Coast in Louisiana for a number of years and was at a Museum there. But most recently was back in New York, and that's where I moved to Columbus from.
Purdy: To is the executive director. What does the executive director do? Do you walk the galleries? Do do you have time to walk the gallery?
Minto: I do. And when we have visitors more often, I also get the privilege of going after hours when we're closed. So that's like a lot of fun to be in the museum after hours. But, you know, my first couple of years, I spent a lot time recruiting. So, you know, we've really grown our team at the museum. As of I would say, six months ago, we have a full curatorial compliment again, curators of American art, photography, contemporary art, European art. So it took some time to do that recruiting into bring some new talent to town, all of whom are getting settled and nested in Columbus, which is really exciting. And they're thinking about the artistic program of the museum for years to come. What are the collection goals and strategies and what are we gonna show everybody? What do you, what part of the permanent collection?
Purdy: Do you personally love? That's a hard question.
Minto: So I'll say my area of expertise is really postwar and contemporary art so art from I'd say 1945 to the present and I'm really excited about the ways in which the collection has been growing in that area So in terms of acquisitions, that's what I enjoy But I think the real gift of CMA is that we can think about all of those acquisitions and contemporary exhibitions in the context of a very very strong historical permanent collection So they're just really great historical works like our Artemisia Gentileschi painting That was a feature of a recent exhibition in partnership with the Getty. We also just have wonderful works of American art, of photography, along with European painting, like the French paintings from the Syrac collection that's much beloved. So there's a whole range of things. Well, and again, I want to make the point, repeat about the under 25s. So as of July 1, and for the next five years, at minimum, we hope for it to go on longer, 25 and unders are free admission anytime we're open. And for 16 and under, they're free with one caregiver. And families remain free on Sundays. So we're hoping that this will really increase our attendance and accessibility at the museum. Go. Just go. Just go, there's really no reason to.
Purdy: But they're really making it easy for you if they really are and they have a commodious parking as well So that's that's a more and more and and all kinds of offerings on the street as well Arvid Ashby your book has in it my 1980s. That was a heck of a decade That was when AIDS was In full rage that was there were there were all kinds back lash. It was not easy to Be a young gay person in the 1980s and here you are writing a book about that culture I think you told me and I did read that. This is not really an autobiography. It's not an autobiographies So what is it and and what it wasn't about the 1980's you can't help when you were born Or when you know when you're growing up, but how did that decade inform your listening and your writing?
Ashby: Well, it was the decade of my adolescence into my 20s. And I mean, that's really, I think the more I think about it, a decisive maybe the decisive part of a person's life, as far as their musical, artistic, amorous interests, as far as their hobbies, as far as their spiritual mental makeup, I tend to think a lot of these things are are carved out for a person at that point in their life. You're right, the 1980s was a crazy time. I mean, the moral majority, people screaming on TV about people going to hell, trickle down economics, tortured hair. I mean just people frizzing their hair out like mad. That Farrah Fawcett poster was everywhere, God help us. Heavy metal was everywhere a part of One basic theme of my book "My 1980s Gay Boy Playlist" is how I was really not a fan of heavy metal I might have been the only human being In in a 50-yard radius who just couldn't stand the stuff I mean Van Halen was everywhere and anywhere when I was in high school And and so the pieces I was involved with the songs the pieces were kind of an act of resistance against this heavy metal kind of culture of the time. Where did you grow up? Where was this happening? Well, you mentioned that the fact that this is not an autobiography. This is not even really a memoir. It's divided into chapters, each one of each chapter focusing on a particular piece. So in way is it's most basically a music book. So I don't really talk much about the where and the what of my life as such at that point. I mean, I came from, I was born and grew up in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. It's about an hour north of Milwaukee. Way out actually in the sticks. I mean we were surrounded, our house is surrounded by farmer's fields, county trunk Y was this arrow straight county trunk road that. Was the nearest thoroughfare near our house. So it was really out in the boonies. But again, these details don't really come into the story. It's really about my relationship with these musical examples. And I struggled for the longest time to try and figure out what word to use for these musical example. And as someone who's taught music history for 30 years, you know, we deal with monuments of music. We deal with masterpieces. We deal all of these big terms. And I finally settled on the term old musical flames that basically, in this book, I talk about eight old musical flame from the 1980s that I was heavily involved in. And I just love that term because flames I mean, after 40 years, I'm sure we all here have flames we could talk about from our past and, you know, some some some abusive relationships in there, maybe some, some difficult relationships, some intense relationships. But, you know, there's even a beautiful Billy holiday song, right? My old flame, I can't even think of his name. So, having these things that are psychic presences even after all these decades still kind of haunting us in good ways and maybe in bad as well.
Purdy: You're somebody who is known professionally for an interest correct me is that wrong don't correct me it's my show for the second Viennese school of music people like David and Alban Berg Alban Berg is an important composer for he was a Viennes composer who died in 1935 was a relatively young man he wrote music that a lot of people would consider atonal and that's That's a subjective measure. But but he is not he is not a household word like Mozart or Beethoven. So how did you find were you very young when you found Alban Berg and is he was he the catalyst for a lot of other interests?
Ashby: Yeah, I mean, I think I stumbled across Elbon Berg. Again, this is all records. Rose Records in Chicago was the main, Wabash, right? On Wabish, oh my God, you wrote out the album catalog numbers on paper and you included your check and you put a blasted stamp on the envelope and you mailed it off and then like two weeks later, you'd hear the sound of the UPS truck. Pulling up the driveway. Just it's so funny nowadays. So you had to plan these these acquaintances and these acquisitions out carefully and order them and sometimes things went out of print. But yeah, Berg Records, I don't know how I stumbled on on Berg albums in the 1970s. So you're quite young. Yeah, I was probably about 13, something like that. And as I detail in chapter five of this book, Alban Berg's lyrics suite, actually the second movement from that, the Andante Amoroso. I still remember, I actually, it was the Herbert von Karajan record with the very geometric album cover, very abstract. And just the sound of the Berlin Philharmonic strings, this wall to wall. Karajan himself once said that the sound of the Berlins string section, he said something like it was an English garden that you water and maintain for 400 years and it just has this impenetrable lushness that is just indescribable. So I'll never forget putting the needle down. Hearing this music from Berlin and just whole, you know, planets moved and things changed and...
Purdy: Doors opened up. I do know what you mean. I know exactly what you mean. Mine wasn't Baird, but I know what exactly what you mean at similar ages. When is the book available? I know it was a labor for you, and I know you worked on it for a long time. It's being published by Punctum Books. When can we get copies?
Ashby: It is an open access download so anyone and any any any man woman child dog cat can download it for free starting August 11th which is a Tuesday it's like what almost two weeks a little more than two weeks. So you just have to go to the punctum books P-U-N-C-T-U M, punctum books. Website look up "My 1980s Gay Boy Playlist" and starting August 11th you can just download it for free there paper copies will become available in early September if you don't want to put more money in Jeff Bezos's pocket and want to get your copy your print copy from somewhere else you can You can go to the Punctum webpage and order from there. Um, so yeah, it's coming out very, very soon. Six years, as I say, of gut wrenching work coming to an end. And I am, I am so, so pleased that it's over. Congratulations. Thank you.
Purdy: Arvid Ashby is the writer and Peter Stafford Wilson is the conductor and he has a concert on July 30th with the Springfield Symphony and violinist Joshua Bell. What other plans do you have coming up in Springfield and in Westerville? Will you also conduct the orchestra?
Wilson: Of course, I have to draw on my memory banks, because now I'm working on 27, 28, and we're always so far in advance in this business. But in Springfield, we've got a wonderful opening program in October with Norman Krieger playing the second Rachmaninoff concerto. That's going to be an all Rachmananoff program, doing the symphonic dances and Also, some of the recipe settings of the Etudes Tableau. Which are very rarely played and I love them, especially Little Red Riding Hood, you know, so scary. What else are we doing in Springfield? Celebration of America 250. We're part of the consortium that has supported Jeffrey Beagle and Peter Boyer in the creation of Rhapsody in Red, White, and Blue. So that's gonna be fun. Westerville, we've got our annual Messiah Sing-Along coming up, and we're also doing kind of a... Slightly, I won't say controversial, but a very important piece, Craig Holla-Johnson's setting of remembering Matthew, considering Matthew.
Purdy: Considering really doing that. That's a heart-wrenching
Wilson: Yeah, a work that remembers Matthew Shepard, but also is a real defiance of hate, which is so, I think, important to today's society. I mean, I served the orchestra in Springfield, Ohio, and we don't have to mention the political ramifications. Talk a little-
Purdy: We'll talk a little bit about it, but how is the situation in Springfield where you have a large Haitian community and they are living under all kinds of threat and all kinds of difficulty, shall we say, rightly or wrongly? And how was.
Wilson: That impacting your work? Any community of 40 to 50,000 people that all the sudden has 10,000 who kind of arrive, there are very positive things because they're mechanics, they're healthcare workers, they are engineers, they're people who are working in the industry. Restaurants are wonderful restaurants. Yes, yes. So there's a lot of positive impact on presence on the tax roll and support of the economy. And Springfield is enjoying a resurgence, I think, in part thanks to that. But there also are people who have lived there for many years going, wait a minute, what about us? How can we benefit as you catch up with the demands on the infrastructure? There's been a lot of rabble rousing from outside. Not from the committee. The TV cameras are there thinking that these are the people who live there and that may not be true. That is not always the case. I, in fact, sat in the hotel and watched a U-Haul truck pull up, a panel or a box truck and out of the back piled, you know, 12 neo-Nazis ready to march and demonstrate and so forth. So it's been very difficult. The impact on the arts simply is our care for security and making sure that our patrons and our artists are all safe. But we do keep an eye on the situation and our finger on the pulse.
Purdy: Bill would not come to Springfield if he didn't feel he could.
Wilson: Performance he wants to perform.
Purdy: And here he is, and here he
Wilson: And here he is. And he's actually being very generous. He wants two rehearsals, and you know, unlike Mr. Perelman, who came in, played through the beta, and said, yep, I recognized it, and then left, you know.
Purdy: They did love him. This is All Sides Weekend. I'm Christopher Purdy We're going to take one more break and come back with more. Don't go away We are back. This is All Sides Weekend. I'm Christopher Purdy talking with Arvid Ashby, who is professor emeritus of music at The Ohio State University. His new book is "My 1980s Gayboy Playlist." Peter Stafford Wilson, among others, is the music director of the Springfield Symphony. July 30th, next Thursday night in Springfield, what time? 7.30. 7. 30. The Springfield symphony performs with violinist Joshua Bell. And Brooke Minto is the CEO of the Columbus Museum of Art which now by the way has by the way I mean in case you didn't
Minto: two campuses. Yes, we do, and it's really exciting. We relaunched CMA at the Pazootie last summer, and actually as you were speaking just now I was thinking about this wonderful exhibition that sort of ties the two campuses together.
Purdy: It's in the short north, right?
Minto: Yeah, it's in the short north on Park, right across from Goodale, and we have this wonderful show, Tavarastrom, The Day Tomorrow Began, that's featured at CM8, the Pazootie. But one of the major works from that show, called In Praise of Midnight, Christophe and Napoleon, is this massive, nearly 20 foot tall, monumental sculpture that is an atrium on Broad Street. So, even though the majority of the show is at CM 8, the pazooty, there's this wonderful. Sculpture of the Haitian revolutionary Henri Christophe that's at Broad Street and we're hoping that'll encourage everyone to go to our second campus and see the fullness of the show.
Purdy: The second campus was the Pizzuti collection, I believe, which he turned over to the Columbus Museum of Art. How is that?
Minto: Campus location different from Broad Street? It's very different. So as you know, Ron Pezzetti was at one time the president of the art museum's board. He's a longtime collector and he ran it as a collection space up to 2018 and then gifted it to the museum. So it's been ours for some years now and when I arrived in 23, we spent some time really rethinking what the best use of this space could be and how it could really extend the museum's program. We obviously have this wonderful addition to the Museum that's now 10 years old, So we have quite a lot of gallery space. So we knew that this additional building in the short north had to do something extra for us. And what we do there is longer term exhibition installations. They're very immersive. So we invite in living artists to kind of take over the space and plan for this kind of all over exhibitions that really change the way you experience art. You come into this exhibition, the day tomorrow began, and you're experiencing art with all of your senses. You're seeing these wonderful installations that are sculpture, painting, but there's also multi-sensory experience. There's music, there's scent, and then there's a culinary component to it.
Purdy: That's the Pizzuti collection that's on park in the short north.
Minto: Yeah, we now call it CMA at the Pizzuti.
Purdy: He may have to basootie and the hours by the does the under 25 go for that as well.
Minto: It doesn't yet, but we do have a lot of free programming. So after hours really come alive in the summer and year round. So we do a program called Night Shift at the Pazootie and admission is free during night shift, Fridays, Friday evenings. And that's due to a grant from the Franklin County Community Grant that underwrites that programming. So there's definitely opportunities for free admission, but admission there is pretty accessible at $10 and always free for members.
Purdy: Yeah. I will say again, the museum has always had the reputation of making it as easy as possible for people to get into the building and including parking, at least on Broad Street, where it's had a premium. You have all kinds of great parking. Lovely restaurant, too, by the way.
Minto: Yeah Shaco Cafe. Yeah, we're very fortunate. We have a wonderful chef and it is it's got its regulars. It's a nice place to meet
Purdy: Well, that's what the Columbus Museum of Art, Brooke Minto is the CEO, and I am delighted that you're here. As we're starting to wind up the conversation, but I want to make sure everybody gets last words in. Arvin Ashby, I want to ask you about the title of your book. It's the 19, "My 1980s Gay Boy Playlist." Talk about the titled a little bit.
Ashby: The title is purposefully, how to put it, maybe a little bit in your face. I know, well, I mentioned it in an email when I was still teaching at OSU, I mentioned in an e-mail the title of the book to a colleague in the School of Music and they thought I was joking and replied with a tears of laughter emoji. So, it's. But that's all to a point, because when I was writing this Mahler book, I confronted this, for me, very big question about how to talk about music and history and culture for a general readership, not for other academics, not for musicologists.
Purdy: Wanna ask you about that. Go ahead.
Ashby: It's interesting that one major point of inspiration here was going to the museum and seeing these, what are they called, decals? The descriptions of the art. Oh, wow.
Minto: Oh, wall labels.
Ashby: Wall labels and just seeing the just the sheer mastery of the people who write these plain spoken penetrating cogent discussions, introductions to these to these works on the wall. I mean, I learned so much just by reading these labels at the museum. So I said, how can I do this kind of label writing with music? So it was a huge thing. And I wrote the book with this kind of label approach, no jargon. No dry, no big words, strunk and white. Use small words, use few words. And it was really transformative to the point where now, honestly, academic writing just, it actually makes me physically ill, practically, when I try to read it and I don't try to write it. So, wanting to be incredibly honest, wanting to come down from this kind of idea of academic authority and. Puffing, the author puffing themselves up, and sort of being objective and being an authority on the subject. I wanted to do the exact opposite. I wanted to be incredibly honest and intimate with the reader. And I think intimacy, certainly after the pandemic, I have just this uh, personally, this crazy need for intimacy. Conversations, sitting down for coffee or drinks, with people connecting in a way that I think people have kind of lost over the pandemic, and it's really kind of a painful situation. So writing books that are intimate, that are honest, very forthright, for a general readership, certain degrees of creativity to be interesting. And provocative and detailed, that's really, I think, where this book and the title are coming from.
Purdy: You allowed me to read the book about a year or so ago when it was still formative, I think before you came up with your final version. And what I told you was the mark of a successful book like this for me was that it brought me to the music, particularly some of the music you referenced that I didn't know well Was not part of my rig and I'm I'm I'm on the air, if y'all don't know, on 89.7, I'm the morning host on Classical 101, so I'm there. That's my day job, as it were. So I'm supposed to know, but there are a lot of people, like the Barrett Lyric Suite, I haven't sat with that for a long time. Kurt Cobain is not well-known to me, as one of the few people I know.
Ashby: I was going to say how in the world, how is your Kurt Cobain album not great?
Purdy: Not great, not great, it needs to be better, but you got me started. But it did bring me to the music which a dry academic book would not, it would have me running for the aspirin. This book did not do that, it had me going for recordings of music. And, and I.
Ashby: Really wanted it to read like, well, for one of a better word, literature. I took a New Yorker New York magazine style prose as my model. I wanted to write, well a page turner of sorts. I wanted someone to start reading it and just say, Oh, this is crazy. This is interesting. This where is this going and just and keep turning pages, which to put it mildly is not something that usually happens with academic books. So we're not going to call this an academic book because it's not. No, it is
Purdy: rejection of academics. Well, why did your colleagues send you that weepy emoji when you gave them the title?
Ashby: Well, I think it was the word gay boy. I mean, it's what it's pejorative, it flinchy. It's just not something that that one, certainly an academic professor of music doesn't sort of apply to themselves. Right? Instead, we're supposed to, I don't know, be fond of our titles and our, our degrees and all of this kind of authority stuff. But again, I wanted to put myself in a certain place, just right before you even open the book up. I wanted to not equalize, but show the degree of honesty. You wanted to make friends. That's what you wanted, yeah. I wanted say, this is who I am. We live in a time just lies the lies, the meanness, the lies nowadays. Some days I just feel like I'm neck deep in lies and meanness. Around in the world, and this was an attempt to come up for air.
Purdy: Well you did it and I congratulate you again on your book. New from Puncton Press, "My 1980s Gay Boy Playlist." We'll be hearing more about this book. I think you have some events in work. You're working on some events locally to promote the book. We will talk about that as dates are firmed up. But Peter Wilson I want to before we go I want to sell some more tickets here. Let's go. July 30th, next Thursday night in Springfield with violinist Joshua Bell. If people aren't sure, just give me a real rundown on Joe.
Wilson: Who is Joshua Bell? Well, Joshua Bell is sort of the, it's our peril of the next generation. And he's got a lot of popular culture notoriety. He was the soloist in the Red Violin, the 1998 Samuel L. Jackson film. He also was made famous as being the busker in the subway playing unaccompanied Bach with his case open. And the sad commentary was all the people that walked right past him.
Purdy: Which he he did that after his fame. He was experimenting with him. Would anybody notice him? Right? Yeah, exactly
Wilson: So
Purdy: These are some of the people who spent 50 bucks to see him perform, but walked by him on the subway when he was doing... Right. When he was...
Wilson: Right, when he was doing it for free, yeah, yeah. So an incredible talent. I'm a little bit nervous, because he's notorious for being rough on conductors, but you know. Put up your dukes, dude. Friday morning always did get him. You got him.
Purdy: You get him and and he's got he's playing up. How long will he be with you? Just a day a couple days
Wilson: He's coming in Wednesday night I think to rehearse because he is sort of warming up for the BSO and I get it so But we're the beneficiary because we really get to drill down in the piece Which is not always the option
Purdy: And it is not an arduous commute between Columbus and Springfield. It's 40, 45 minutes. It's a gorgeous hall. It's in a very fine orchestra. If you don't know, let's not keep it a secret. They're out there. They've been in business for 70 years, which means they're doing something right. Because when performing arts entities are closing down and going, you know, and there you are, you're just, there's 25 years you're going, 25 years as music director. Yeah. And still going. You are also music director of the Westerville Symphony. You play at Audubon, is that correct? Right.
Wilson: Right, that's correct. Long relationship with Audubon University.
Purdy: That they always have you have good crowds for it. Oh, yeah
Wilson: A very supportive audience in that area.
Purdy: OK, you also run two ballet companies. Well, I don't run them. Well, you're the music conductor in Tulsa and in Kansas City. How do you conduct for ballet? I I don't know why it strikes me as really hard.
Wilson: Well, you intrigued me with that question, you know. People ask me the difference between symphonic and ballet, and I say, well, symphonics conducting, I'm in charge, and ballet conducting, everybody else is in charge. My real master is the tempo. What tempo can I lay down to make the dancer look good? And that we discover through rehearsal. But it is very much a collaborative thing. So you have to work.
Purdy: Really closely with a choreographer. Exactly. Like an opera, the director and the conductor usually hate each other and they don't have anything to do with each other.
Wilson: We don't have that live, that option. That luxury of doing that. And one thing that your listeners will be interested in, my book of business this year is incredibly robust. I'm doing Swan Lake in Tulsa and then the two Prokofiev major ballets, Cinderella and Romeo and Juliet, the setting by Eddie Liang, who used to lead Ballet Met here in Columbus. So I can't wait to see Eddie.
Purdy: Edward has had a he's had a time of it because he was in residence at the Kennedy Center for a while. Yeah. That's been a tough time for him. That's become a nomadic existence for him as well. Why has the Springfield Symphony lasted for 70 years?
Wilson: Well, I think partially it's because of deep roots in that community. People love the orchestra. For the longest time, Wittenberg University had a very strong music department, and we grew from that where our personnel were concerned. And also, a large cache of very forward-thinking business people back in the 60s who said, you know, tough times are coming for the arts. Let's get together and raise the money to endow this orchestra. And the endowment for the orchestra, you have to jump two levels in our peer groups to see an orchestra that is as endowed as we are. So it's a combination of a lot of things.
Purdy: Well, congratulations to Springfield that needs good news and has it. Thank you very much for that. And, Brook Minto, again, if you're under 25, you get in free to the Columbus Museum of Art. If you're under 16 with your caregiver, your parent, or somebody, one parent or one, you'll get in free as well. You have two campuses, the beautiful building on Broad Street and the beautiful building in the Short North, which was the Pizzuti Collection. And closing thoughts, anything just except come.
Minto: Well come and also save the date for our fall exhibitions. We have new shows opening in September and October that we're really excited about. A wonderful show at Broad Street called Claire Rojas Returning that features a wonderful painter, sculptor, musician who's originally from Columbus who's made the majority of her career in the San Francisco Bay area but returned to Columbus and it will be her first solo show here in her hometown. And then another wonderful show celebrating an incredible philanthropic gift. A show called Queer Constellations, and it's photographs from the Aronowitz Family Collection, many of which will become part of the permanent collection this year. So celebrating that gift.
Purdy: Bottom line, go to the museum. Get your bottom into the museum and go to Museum of Art. Get yourself to Springfield July 30th and throughout the season for Peter Stafford Wilson and the Springfield Symphony and get yourself a copy of "My 1980s Gay Boy Playlist" written by Arved Ashby. And that is this edition of All Sides Weekend on 89.7 NPR News. My thanks to Chris Johnston who makes radio out there and does all the work. Thank you, Chris. Thank you all for listening. I'm Christopher Purdy. This is All Sides Weekend on 89.7 NPR News.