Steven Monder

Steven Monder found Hawaii a welcoming community, the door flung wide open to welcome his guidance in forming the new Hawaii Symphony Orchestra. But for the moment, at least, the rooms behind that door are very sparsely furnished.

The president of the newly formed symphony board sits behind a desk in a truly small office. He and the operations director are HSO’s only full-time staff, though Monder, who was pulled out of retirement at age 67 to do this job, asserts that there are some undefined time limits here.

"As I told them in the beginning, I’m not temporary, nor am I permanent," said Monder, whose resume includes 37 distinguished years as president of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. "I think of myself as an element that they needed to help put the whole together."

First dibs on available funds has gone to hiring the musicians, and so far the attendance looks promising. About a month ago, the symphony rolled out its Masterworks classical-music series to a lot of pomp and circumstance, complete with a chanted oli, a lei for each musician, tears and repeated standing ovations. The bankruptcy and closure of the long-lived Honolulu Symphony Orchestra had left some heartache, it seemed.

Monder had endured his own emotional transition. After a stellar list of achievements — including establishing the Cincinnati Pops and overseeing recordings, broadcasts, venue construction and other career highlights — he planned for his retirement. Shortly thereafter, however, his wife died. Two grown children and grandkids are on the mainland, but Monder decided the time was right for the move.

The symphony organization has been quietly fundraising but will soon announce a more public campaign. The Pops series is back, too, and Monder hinted that a new collaborative project for the orchestra will be announced soon.

He accepts with equanimity that the Broadway hit "Wicked," to arrive this fall at the Blaisdell, means the concert hall will be unavailable for the orchestra.

"I would love to be able to schedule the hall whenever it was best for the orchestra, and everybody work around us," he said. "It’s not going to happen. And I don’t think any of us want to be the reason this community didn’t get to see ‘Wicked.’

"If it’s good for the community, we’ll try to find a way to make it translate into something that’s good for us, too," he added. "I’m not so generous; it’s just a reality."

QUESTION: You retired after a long career in Cincinnati. What got you here?

ANSWER: In truth, a former colleague of mine was referred musicians from this (Honolulu) orchestra who were looking for some advice, and that colleague referred them to me. So we began a very casual conversation about the status.

Q: So you had no history with Honolulu, whatsoever?

A: No. And I would comment on their questions and thoughts, and a few weeks later they come back with others. And I finally made a suggestion that they pursued, with the help of Vicky Cayetano (now the board’s vice president), and it took off from there.

Q: What was your suggestion?

A: First they talked about ways that might not work so well, but then the idea of putting together a small group of committed, highly respected, experienced civic leaders, business leaders, who could help them divine a plan that not only might be acceptable to the bankruptcy court but that could work.

But in the meantime the old orchestra moved to Chapter 7 bankruptcy, so no reorganization was necessary. By that time we were having dialog, and I became invested in the passion of the musicians and the commitment of this new exploratory committee, which evolved into the beginnings of a board.

Everyone realized that if we didn’t do something different, we’d get the same results. It took a lot of investigation as to what worked, what didn’t work, what the problems might have been…. what we might be able to do differently, and see what came together. It took a long time.

Q: Can you encapsulate what came from all that? What is the new model for an orchestra program that can work here?

A: First of all, it’s small. … We reduced the quantity but not the quality of concerts. In the past they had a 30-week season, which included six opera weeks; now we have a 16-week season, plus the six opera weeks.

By not reducing the number of musicians and the caliber of musicians we maintained the quality; we’re just playing fewer concerts, which of course lowers our expenses.

Q: How many musicians are there?

A: We have 64 core musicians for our 16 weeks. And then we have a pool of additional, we call them per-service players, who are engaged primarily to play the Masterworks series, the large classical repertoire, whereas the Pops concerts and outreach programs and educational programs might likely be played with the smaller orchestra. A lot of the venues aren’t big enough to handle the big orchestra, as well.

This was a necessary issue to confront. If I live in Dayton, Ohio, I can have a small orchestra, then when I do my subscription concerts I can reach into Cincinnati or Indianapolis or Cleveland or Columbus and bring musicians in. You can’t do that on Oahu. There’s an ocean in the way.

Q: Preliminary discussions about the new business plan indicated it would include more community outreach, more connections with the tourism sector. Is that still valid?

A: Virtually every orchestra recognizes it has to reach out to the public, has to get out of its theater, its concert hall. It’s just necessary, for lots of different reasons. The challenges here to do that are even greater. Again, to visit the neighbor islands, which we need to do, is different than getting on a bus and driving over, like you can do in any other state. So we need to find special support to help with the transport of the orchestra.

We may develop, consistent with that, part of that program, a different kind of delivery system to augment that. In other words, we can put ourselves over there electronically, in addition to being over there live. We wouldn’t want to do the electronic without the live experience, but we can enhance that.

Yes, tourism obviously is very important to Hawaii, and how can we make the orchestra more important to tourism? What can we do for the tourism industry here that would enhance their business? What it is they can offer to their customers? Performing on the beach live, electronically; becoming part of hotel or tourism packages to help attract people.

And we also want to develop ways where we can participate in presenting lots of different cultures — not just Western European, which is obviously where the symphony orchestra evolved. But we can be flexible. You’ve heard (conductor) Matt Catingub and the Pops be very flexible.

There are also things that may not lend themselves to a symphony orchestra, and we certainly don’t want to distort intrinsic music, through any community or Pacific Rim or whatever, just to force it in the mold of a symphony orchestra, but that’s not to say we couldn’t, as part of one of our performances, present that genre, performing themselves.

Q: Kind of like a guest artist?

A: Yes, but maybe the orchestra doesn’t accompany all that they do because it’s not appropriate. But that shouldn’t keep us from presenting some artistic element of a culture that doesn’t lend itself to a symphony orchestra. Because we are a symphony orchestra, but we’re about more than that. We’re an orchestra and a cultural institution that should reflect, relate and be meaningful to our community.

And our community should easily recognize that we are reaching out: We want to involve you, we want you to hear us and to learn from you. Without our audience, why are we doing this?

Q: Were there any generic lessons from your Cincinnati years that do apply here?

A: Yes: relationships. We, for whatever reason, had very positive constructive, participatory relationships with all the elements of the orchestra. Not just the musicians and the board and staff, but the community, volunteers and other arts organizations.

I’ve only been here a little while, but it seems to be a very welcoming concept. … Let’s do work with, let’s collaborate with these programs. Maybe there’s a common theme that runs among and in between our seasons.

Some things together we do, some things we do separately. We are looking at ways, and it’s not unique: Are there certain back-room functions we can share that would be efficient and therefore make good use of our community support? … Maybe we can get better quality as a result of that collaboration.

These are all things we’re talking about. Please don’t assume anything is a done deal. We’ve started playing a month ago. (Laughs.) …

I can’t say what the old orchestra did, but I did find people who were — there were not always warm, fuzzy feelings among the constituencies. And I found that nobody wanted to be mad at each other. We just had to talk, and define our goals.

People are wonderful. It’s just … as I say, I wasn’t here. … Since I wasn’t a part of it, maybe it was easier for me to address it, or ask people to address it.

Q: Are there plans for recording the symphony?

A: There are not recordings planned now. It’s not to say that we don’t think about them and like to do them, but right now, that’s a different level. We’re getting our legs.

Q: How has attendance been?

A: The attendance as I understand it, based on history, is quite good. One of the things that happened was, because we made plans so late, a lot of the dates in the hall were already spoken for. So our seasons are not as structured as they might have been in the past, with this series on this night and that series on that night. We had to do a little moving around.

No sense fighting reality; you find a way to adjust. And I have to say, people have been quite cooperative.