{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/p26pz52b93/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Spoleto: Oral history with Michael Grofsorean"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/212/original/LOHI_aviarybanner2.jpg?1741032082","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["6/5/2009"]}},{"label":{"en":["Interviewee"]},"value":{"en":["Grofsorean, Michael"]}},{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["Longtime jazz director for Spoleto Festival U.S.A., Michael Grofsorean talks about his history at the festival since 1980.  He relates anecdotes about past performers, including Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck, Sarah Vaughan and Ray Charles and describes the process that goes into selecting the artists for each festival.  He discusses festival founder Gian Carlo Menotti's distaste for jazz, the rocky years of festival finances, the NAACP boycott of South Carolina that nearly derailed the 2000 jazz program and describes why the city of Charleston is the perfect venue for the festival.  Audio with transcript."]}},{"label":{"en":["Contributing Institution"]},"value":{"en":["College of Charleston Libraries"]}},{"label":{"en":["Media Type"]},"value":{"en":["Oral Histories"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject - Topical"]},"value":{"en":["Festivals--South Carolina--Charleston","Festivals--Planning","Festivals--Management"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject - Geographic"]},"value":{"en":["Charleston--Social life and customs"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject - Geographic County"]},"value":{"en":["Charleston County (S.C.)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date Digital"]},"value":{"en":["11/25/2009"]}},{"label":{"en":["Digitization Specifications"]},"value":{"en":["Mp3 derivative audio created with Audacity software.  Archival masters are wav files."]}},{"label":{"en":["Type IMT"]},"value":{"en":["application/pdf;audio/mpeg"]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["Digital resource copyright 2009, The College of Charleston. All rights reserved. For more information contact The College of Charleston Library, Charleston, SC 29424."]}},{"label":{"en":["PID"]},"value":{"en":["lcdl:27150"]}},{"label":{"en":["Collection Identifier"]},"value":{"en":["COH"]}}],"summary":{"en":["Longtime jazz director for Spoleto Festival U.S.A., Michael Grofsorean talks about his history at the festival since 1980.  He relates anecdotes about past performers, including Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck, Sarah Vaughan and Ray Charles and describes the process that goes into selecting the artists for each festival.  He discusses festival founder Gian Carlo Menotti's distaste for jazz, the rocky years of festival finances, the NAACP boycott of South Carolina that nearly derailed the 2000 jazz program and describes why the city of Charleston is the perfect venue for the festival.  Audio with transcript."]},"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["Digital resource copyright 2009, The College of Charleston. All rights reserved. For more information contact The College of Charleston Library, Charleston, SC 29424."]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Lowcountry Digital Library"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Lowcountry Digital Library"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/212/original/LOHI_aviarybanner2.jpg?1741032082","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/125/186/small/data?1655837946","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1695/collection_resources/53011/file/125186","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - open-uri20211027-32251-1i9hlut.mpga"]},"duration":4996.8,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/125/186/small/data?1655837946","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1695/collection_resources/53011/file/125186/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1695/collection_resources/53011/file/125186/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-cofc.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/125/186/original/open-uri20211027-32251-1i9hlut.mpga?1635342731","type":"Audio","format":"audio/mpeg","duration":4996.8,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1695/collection_resources/53011/file/125186","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1695/collection_resources/53011/file/125186/transcript/39546","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Michael Grofsorean Interview [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1695/collection_resources/53011/file/125186/transcript/39546/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"SPOLETO FESTIVAL USA COLLECTION COLLEGE OF CHARLESTON \n\n\n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nThis is Jessica Lancia; I am interviewing Michael Grofsorean for Spoleto Festival USA.  It is June 9th, 2009, and we are in the Gaillard Auditorium in Charleston, South Carolina.  So the first thing I wanted to ask you, Mr. Grofsorean, is when did you start with Spoleto, what was your first involvement with it? \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nI was hired to produce jazz concerts for the 1980 festival. \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nOkay. [laughing] \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nI’m too short for you.   \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nHired by whom? \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nOkay.  How did that happen?  You’ll find out I can talk a lot, so I’m trying to stay on task with you. \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nGo ahead.  I’ll rein you in. \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nThe festival began, as you know, in 1977.  And there was a fellow I had never met and I had only heard bad things about who preceded me, a fellow named Bill Moore, and at the time I \n\nwas a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Program.  As you may know, the applications are reviewed by peers from the field, and I was invited to be on panels for a few years with the NEA program, and I was also asked to be an on-site evaluator for a few programs.  \n\nSo I developed a relationship; this all came out of my work at the University of Michigan, which \n\nI think you read about, and the fellow there at the jazz program at the time was named Rob Gordon, and he was fond of me.  He’s a great guy; I don’t know what he’s doing now.  But by complete coincidence one day Charles MacKay, who at the time was the finance director for Spoleto USA, was in Rob’s office, and they were looking for a new jazz producer.  And I happened to call Rob, and he just handed the phone to Charles.  Now, what the two of them said to each other, I don’t know, but Charles got on the phone and said, “We’d really like to talk to you,” and suddenly they flew me into Charleston and looked me over, and decided to work with me.  So I imagine there was a little more to the story than that, but I never asked.  So I came into a very difficult situation.  I was actually telling Nigel this story this morning.  I meet with him once during each festival.  It’s kind of a formal process in a way, but I always seek out a conversation with him, because I don’t talk to him during the year much.  He’s so busy with the Lincoln Center festival and I love the man dearly, but I also understand he’s got his plate very full.  I mean, he always responds to my calls, he always responds to my e-mail, but I think it’s the kind of thing where you have to use his time judiciously.  Anyway, so we had our talk today, and what had happened - I know these things only second-hand, I don’t know them at all from any direct source, so I’m even reluctant to tell you this, but I will.  So apparently, if you look at the history of programming, which I did bring along with me—I had to go through this for other reasons this week.  Apparently Gian Carlo and - Menotti, I say it the right way because I’m married to an Italian woman, Menotti, not Menotti, but I’ll call him Gian Carlo.  Gian Carlo and this fellow Bill Moore engaged in a very public struggle, and I don’t know really why it started.  I think probably both men probably had colossal egos.  Gian Carlo had a predilection to want to say outrageous things so he could get himself in the paper saying outrageous things, and there was a journalist in the town at the time by the name of Frank Jarrell who took delight in publishing one volley against the other between these two men.  I tell people that from what I know indirectly about Moore is that if you went into Frankenstein’s laboratory and put Menotti in there and hit the opposite switch, out would walk Bill Moore.  These guys were not meant for each other.  So it got to the point where Moore got up on a stage at Seabrook Island and said on microphone, to an audience of a thousand or more people, “Everybody who thinks that Menotti’s an asshole, get up and scream.”  I mean, it degenerated into this kind of stuff.  There were some other things even more serious than that that went on behind the scenes with him, and so he was let go.  The point of saying all of this is when I came there had been this big struggle.  I walked into the aftermath of a great struggle, and Gian Carlo had been goaded to some extent, but through his own behavior, and through the press, and this other guy, into this position on jazz that I’m not even sure he really believed.  I was told privately by Kearney that he liked jazz, by Jim Kearney.  But here was this big public mess and now I’m walking in at the ripe age of - how old was I, I was born in ’54 - 26, or whatever I was, into this crazy thing.  I brought to it what I think you read in the letter I wrote to Jack, what I cared about, which was these great artists and their work.  Jim Kearney was the general manager at the time, a very, very bright guy, and he knew a lot about music, among other things.  So he told me straight out, “Book Sarah Vaughan.”  It was a fantastic choice.  So anyway, I guess the opportunity for me emerged out of this dysfunctional thing that happened, and I suppose what I would tell my kids is that probably most opportunities in life of any significance come out of some mess.  People don’t ask you to come take care of a thing that’s going smoothly, they ask you to come work on something that’s horrible, and this certainly fit that description. \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nNow, when was the first time that you met Gian Carlo Menotti, and did he play any part in hiring you?  Did you talk to him before that? \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nNo, he had no part in hiring me, as far as I know.  It was just Charles MacKay.  In the first two years of the festival, I can’t recall the general manager’s name, I wasn’t here, and this is more stuff I heard about.  But apparently by the end of the ’78 festival, the festival was in financial trouble.  I remember people saying that this manager was a nice lady, but she wasn’t up to the task, and they brought in Kearney.  Kearney and MacKay, Charles MacKay, were at the Santa Fe Opera and those two guys were hired in.  I think Ted Stern was the chairman of the board.  And Jim and Chuck, as Jim liked to call him, somehow knew about Carmen Kovens at Wolf Trap and brought her in.  And the three of them pulled the ’79 festival out of the fire.  I think they were hired in the month of something like January or February of ’79 and they scrambled.  But you will not meet three more talented people in this business than those three.  And they pulled it off, and the ’79 festival went on, and they managed the finances so that the business stayed in business.  And then somewhere, I don’t know if it was the fall of ’79, it must have been, that’s when I talked to Charles on the phone there in Rob Gordon’s office, and I was brought in.  So your question was about meeting Gian Carlo.  I only met him twice.  The way that Jim kept convincing Gian Carlo to keep the jazz program alive is that it would “make money for the festival.”  It was seen as a source of profit to subsidize the things that Gian Carlo cared about in general.  So I remember him saying to me, “Well, it makes money.” \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nSo he never told you that he had an affinity towards jazz. \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nNo.  The only other occasion that I met him is Dave Brubeck—I think it was in 1983, I’d have to check here, the year Brubeck played.  Brubeck asked for a meeting with Gian Carlo, and so again, being the young babe to the slaughter that I was, I went through the process.  Yeah, it was 1983.  I’ll have to actually find Brubeck sometime, see if he remembers me, so he can tell me what happened.  But I made the appointment, and I brought Dave over, and introduced him, and the two of them talked.  I left.  Apparently, according to Carmen or Jim, I can’t remember who told me, but after the meeting Gian Carlo was quite upset.  And I think Brubeck probably proposed to him some programming involving the orchestra, and I can imagine that Gian Carlo might have said some things that were not so swift, and Brubeck was not the kind of guy to take crap from him, or anybody else.  I mean, Brubeck’s a very nice man, he’s a self-taught musician, but he is born with some musical genius, and by this time in his career, it’s 1983, and Dave Brubeck had been around the world countless times. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nDidn’t have to answer to anybody. \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nExactly, and so if Gian Carlo’s saying essentially stupid things to him about jazz, this was not the guy to be saying it to.  Because Brubeck knew better; Brubeck knew a lot of people beyond the world of jazz.  I can’t enunciate, or say who they are, but it’s pretty much a safe bet that he knew a lot of people all over the world of music, including classical music.  And he might have exposed in that conversation Gian Carlo’s lack of knowledge for what was happening, and \n\nit might have turned into who knows what.  But that was the only other occasion, me bringing Dave Brubeck to his house.  Otherwise, he had nothing to do with me. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nAnd now, I was talking to Nigel, and we actually went through some old programs and found that jazz listings were after the Spoleto finale, until a certain point.  So they weren’t even included as the regular offerings of Spoleto, they were sort of at the tail end. \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nThis is all part of this thing I inherited from Bill Moore.  Oh, the other thing that happened is—I told Nigel this story today, too—it might have gone better, but there was another setback in 1981.  Jim asked me to book—I mean, and this is, I don’t think it’s going to help the book but I’ll just tell you what happens [laughing]. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nIt’s just whatever you wanted for the public. \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nIt’s kind of silly stuff, but—so the ’80 festival went fine, and Sarah Vaughan gave an absolutely brilliant performance.  There was an artist I cared a lot about by the name of Mary Lou Williams, a pianist, and I had been really anxious to present her.  I was unable to present her at the University of Michigan when I was there, but here came Sarah Vaughan and this festival.  \n\nAnd back then it was the days of double bills, which you don’t see much of anymore.  \n\nPerformances tend to be just one artist now, but it was commonplace to do it then.  So I had Mary Lou Williams at the Cistern by herself one night, and then the next day I had her open the concert.  Sarah Vaughan would only do one set, which seemed like a radical idea at the time.  Now it’s standard procedure.  So I needed somebody to open the concert, so the solution was to bring Mary Lou in, and then give her her own spot in the Cistern and then have her go to Gaillard and open for Sarah Vaughan.  So I did it.  Sarah Vaughan had a terrible reputation for being a difficult person, and so forth, and I had never had trouble with any artist.  I find them to be nice people, and to me, as I said in that thing, [Aginga] said to me, “The man is the music.”  And if it’s honest music, you usually find an honest person behind it, I think.  And a humble person, because this is what Tardelli said, Marcus Tardelli, “You’re never better than the music, and the minute you think you are, then it’s a mess.”  So these musicians made that experience at that point and made truly great work.  And so you have to have those qualities, I think, in order to make that work, especially in the world of jazz, where it’s a great deal of composition and creation.  You’re not just interpreting somebody, which is of course a great task itself, but you have to come up with a lot of yourself.  It’s a very transparent music, I think, in that way.  \n\nAnyway, so Sarah Vaughan—we have a sound check and generally speaking, what you always do when you have more than one artist on a bill, is you sound check them in reverse order, so that the last person can leave their stuff where it is and then you play the show.  So we had scheduled it, and Sarah Vaughan is late, and Mary Lou Williams is waiting.  And then Mary just said, “Let’s go.  I’m not waiting anymore.”  And being a guy who came not from theatre, but rather from a limited time in presenting music, I didn’t know all the theatre stuff I know now, from working with this festival.  I didn’t know it was no big deal, that these guys put the white tape on the floor in the order everything goes, and that’s what they do.  And so we went ahead and sound-checked.  We started sound-checking Mary, and about I don’t know how many minutes into it, in walks Sarah Vaughan.  She didn’t say a word to anyone.  I’ll never forget, she walked into about the tenth row of Gaillard and sat there like this, hands clasped under her chin, listening to Mary Lou Williams, like she’s in church.  And I found out after the concert, and only after the concert, that Mary Lou Williams had an apartment in New York in Harlem in the ‘40s, I think it was the ‘40s.  So when the new era of jazz was being born in the ‘40s in New York by Gillespie, Monk, Bud Powell, all these guys, and Sarah Vaughan, and many, many others, they would play their gigs in the clubs, and then after the club gigs finished, they would go to Mary Lou Williams’s apartment in Harlem.  So she was this mentor, this matriarch—well, I don’t know, mentor, to all these— \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nThey knew each other. \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nShe was of an older generation, she was in the swing era, she was the pianist and arranger for Andy Kirk.  I forget the name of his band, I think The Clouds of Joy—no that’s a gospel group—Andy Kirk, the big band, it had a name.  [Editor’s note:  It was The Twelve Clouds of Joy.]  And she was one of these out-of-her-mind, smart people.  She’d be playing, they’d say, concerts, and she’d be writing a new arrangement while they’re playing a concert, just this kind of talent.  So it made sense.  And then the two of them backstage, they’re mugging together for pictures together, and so I had no idea.  And the concert that Sarah Vaughan gave probably was one of the best in her career, because Mary was in the house.  So anyway, the point of this is, we got off to a pretty good start, and I remember the audience just leaping out of their seats when Sarah Vaughan finished.  And Sarah came back in 1985 and it wasn’t quite as good as this.  I mean the people just jumped when she finished her signature tune that you finish concerts, which was “Send in the Clowns.”  Then I had Dexter Gordon and Lightnin’ Hopkins play at the Cistern, and they gave great concerts, so it was all going quite well.  And then the next year, \n\n1981, Jim, knowledgeable guy, said, “I want Ray Charles.”  I said, “Okay boss, I’ll go get Ray Charles.”  We put Ray Charles into Gaillard, and it sold out in a jiffy.  And then Jim said, “Let’s do a second show at midnight.”  And I thought, okay, I’m going to pay a big ticket for this, I’m going to have to pay the same fee twice.  And again, the context I came in under, and where I left from at the University of Michigan, is we’ve got no budget for stuff.  We had to pay our way.  So I came from a mentality of zero fundraising, and like a music business mentality but with an arts—I’m kind of like a classical music-thinking guy, in terms of my artistic values, but I came from the popular music business environment.  So I’ve always felt the pressure of get good fees, and negotiate hard, and blah blah blah.  So I paid whatever I did, I booked the midnight show.  We sold it out.  At that time in Charleston liquor laws—well, let me get to the liquor laws in a second.  So Gian Carlo decides to go to the concert.  He had reserved four seats for him, the best seats in the house, for every performance in the festival, standard procedure.  He goes, and sitting next to him are Charles MacKay, Jim Kearney, and Carmen Kovens.  At the time, the biggest TV station in terms of viewership, and now this was before Internet, so if you’re on TV here, it’s making a huge difference.  And the festival was a big enough deal that we got on TV.  And TV 5 got the next best seats in the house, and they were right behind Gian Carlo.  Well they gave their tickets away, the TV 5 people, to some friends, and their friends came to the concert inebriated.  And part of this dynamic is that the bars closed at midnight in those days in Charleston, because of an old law.  There were lots of private clubs for people to go to, there was a whole industry of them, after midnight.  But here’s a midnight Ray Charles concert, and these people had free tickets, and they obviously went out and drank too much, and one of these people sitting directly behind Charles MacKay, who is gay, starts speaking out loud about Charles’s sexuality.  This infuriates Gian Carlo, and he walks out, and he says, “I don’t want these people at my festival.”  “These people” he’s referring to, the connection he makes is that Ray Charles brings out “these people,” and “I don’t want them in my festival.”  I neglected to tell Nigel this part this morning when I told my story.  So I didn’t know any of this was going on.  I got two sold out houses, Ray Charles is playing the best I’d ever saw him play.  There’s something about playing here and that time just, it was fantastic.  And I saw Jim after the concert, and he was unhappy as I’d ever seen Jim.  And he says, “A complete disaster—it was a complete disaster,” and he just ran out.  I didn’t know what he was talking about.  And that’s what he was talking about.  I found out later.  So Gian Carlo then ordered that jazz be eliminated from the festival.  And Jim Kearney convinced him—as far as I know, I think it was ordered out of the festival. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nAnd this was 1981? \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nThis is after the ’81 festival, going into ’82.  I think what Jim did is convinced Gian Carlo that we could have it, but it has to be away from the rest of the festival.  So I was banished to Seabrook Island. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\n[laughs] \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nBut I didn’t get to have concerts on the golf course the way my predecessor Bill Moore did, I was on a cow pasture, or a horse pasture.  It was a horse pasture.  Miserable field in the middle of the hot sun on Seabrook Island in 1982. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nSo there was a comment about the program.  Nigel was saying that there was a comment that one of the artists made about jazz being quote-unquote “in the back of the bus.” \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nThat was Dizzee Gillespie. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nDizzee Gillespie made that comment? \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nYes. \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nWould you mind sharing that anecdote? \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nNo, no, not at all.  I looked through the years here.  We had Dizzee in 19—that was ’82 then I was banished to the horse pasture.  I mean, we had Carmen McRae out there.  Do you know Carmen McRae?  Take some time to listen to Carmen McRae recordings.  She’s right in there with Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald, I mean that caliber of artists, and Hugh Masekela.  And Carmen, God bless her, she had a nasty reputation, but she rose to the occasion.  We were on an outdoor stage, it’s like your typical outdoor stage with a tent over it, you know, out on the horse field.  So in 1983 we got out of the horse field in Seabrook and they sent me to Magnolia Gardens.  And we got back into town and I had two concerts at the Garden Theatre, one of which was Stéphane Grappelli, which was magical, and McCoy Tyner, which was too loud.  And at Magnolia Gardens I had a triple bill of this group from New Orleans, the Dejan’s Olympia Brass Band, Mongo Santamaria—no this is, I’m sorry, I’ve got the wrong year.  That was at Magnolia, we had Dave Brubeck out there; it was ’84 that I had Dizzee.  I corrected the names.  This is the thing the PR department has; I went through this the other day and fixed it so, I don’t know, if you want to take copies of this or whatever. \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nSure, yes, please.  So, 1984 Dizzee comes to Magnolia again at the Garden Theatre? \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nComes to Magnolia for the first time.  Dizzee comes to the festival and I organized two things.  This is before we have Quentin Marsalis doing all the stuff he does now, which is digging out now Dellington’s works and digging out great works that are not being performed very much and performing them.  I had this idea back then; Gillespie wrote big band music that was not your typical music for jazz orchestra.  It was modern jazz, and not swing band music.  There’s nothing wrong with swing band music, because all these guys came from swing music.  And there were pieces like “Montega” and “Things to Come.”  So I had this idea that we organize a group of student musicians from around South Carolina—sort of like the festival orchestra but not on a national scale, on a South Carolina scale—organize the best young players we could get together in South Carolina into a band to play with Dizzee, play this music, and have John Faddis, the trumpeter, lead the trumpet section, so that we wouldn’t put too much pressure on the kids.  \n\nAnd so we did it, and I got the help of a guy from one of the schools, I’d have to dig out his name, to organize the group, and through his network of teachers and auditions—he had the kids send out audition tapes.  They did an incredible job of sifting through the interested jazz students in the state and put together this band.  So they opened the concert— no, they were second on the concert I think, and then I had a guy from New Orleans, Danny Barker, and then I had Dizzee play with John Faddis and, as Dizzee called them, “The Cats.”  Jimmy Heath, saxophonist, Kenny Burell, guitarist, Tommy Flanagan, piano, George Duvivier, bass, and J.C. Heard, drums, and I had used John Hendricks as an MC, and he sang with the group as well.  So Dizzee was in town for a few days, and I remember there was a photographer.  The festival used to have two photographers in the early days before we got into round one of major, maybe it was round two, of major financial trouble.  It was Bill Struhs, who as you may know still photographs the festival, a native Charlestonian.  Then a fellow from—I don’t know where in Virginia he was living at the time—Patrick Hinely, W. Patrick Hinely, who is a fantastic photographer and has published especially as photographing jazz musicians.  So I had as fine a photographer in the world, who specialized in jazz musicians, shooting pictures here at the festival.  So he was just all over these guys.  He had a Volkswagon van and he offered to drive us out to Magnolia the day of the show.  We were on our way out there; I don’t know if it was the sound check or just the show, I think it was for the show.  So we’re driving down the road I hadn’t been with Dizzee that long, he had just gotten into town.  I’ll just tell you this little story about Dizzee Gillespie and then I’ll get to the thing about the back of the bus.  We’re not driving very long and then Dizzee starts yelling “Message from home!  Message from home!  Pull over here!  Message from home!”  And it was a fruit stand, a fruit and vegetable stand.  So Patrick wheels in—we had a car behind us—we wheel in, and we go shopping.  And Dizzee walks out with shopping bags full of watermelon and just local fruit and produce.  Peanuts.  He put all this stuff in the van and we continued driving to the show.  And he’s from Cheraw, South Carolina, so this is stomping grounds for him, this area.  \n\nThen, as we’re riding, I’m introducing these guys to where they are.  The nature of what I do is people shoot in and shoot out, because we don’t want to spend the money, and they don’t want to spend their money on coming to a place and hanging out for three or four days.  It would be lovely, but the economics of being a professional musician don’t justify that, and for the festival as well, it’s just money that doesn’t produce results.  When the dance companies come in, or theatre companies, they’re here many days because they have to be, because they have multiple performances or whatever their preparations require, but for musicians it’s in and out.  So that creates a different production scenario.  We don’t see each other that long.  So I’m explaining to them what the festival is.  I give Dizzee a copy of the program book, and we’re riding in Patrick Hinely’s van, on the way to Magnolia Gardens, and he’s paging through it, and he says, “Back of the bus.”  He was no fool.  And I said somewhere in one of these things—I can’t remember which one you read—it’s Gillespie that said that jazz is the classical music of the future.  And it hurt to hear him say “back of the bus,” I knew it, but there was nothing I could say.  I knew that I was doing my part to honor what they did.  You know, without what I did, they wouldn’t be there at all. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nHow did it you develop the jazz program, how did it evolve to where it is now, one of the stars, or the highlights, of Spoleto? \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nWell, I think that this gap, this lack of knowledge among the baby boom generation of this great piece of our artistic heritage very much drove my thinking for a long time.  It’s what Gillespie said, it’s the classical music of the future.  In 1980 lots and lots of people didn’t know—I mean, they knew about the legendary names.  People had heard about Gillespie and Ella Fitzgerald, but there were a whole, whole, whole lot of other people that were just utterly unknown even though they had had major artistic careers.  I’m thinking about Hank Jones, Tommy Flanagan, just to name piano players.  Barry Harris, Roland Hanna, just master musicians.  And the guys that, as I mentioned, I didn’t get to, Phineas Newborn, Jr.  John Lewis was with Modern Jazz Quartet but as an individual artist—see, I could take the time and make you lists of dozens.  Just dozens of people the likes of which we just don’t even find in this country anymore.  Let me see if there’s anybody I care about here [phone vibrating]…Bill Struhs is calling.  Hey Bill, I’m doing an interview, can I call you?  All right, bye bye.  Thanks, I don’t have voice mail on that phone hooked up, I just— \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nNot a problem.  So we were talking about the evolution of the program. \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nYeah, so I took it as a mission, as early as when I was at the University of Michigan, to bridge this gap of ignorance between a public that I felt should appreciate the likes of Charles Mingus; bridge the gap between the audience and the artist.  And I brought that viewpoint here.  And we balanced, I balanced—again in that hostile environment I was in, in being viewed by Gian Carlo as just a source of profit, the responsibility to turn a profit was underlined very loudly for me.  I just couldn’t go out and book a bunch of stuff that I thought that was great and underappreciated because then I ran the risk of being in the red, and then that would be the end of the story.  So I had to chart a very careful path to meet the financial expectations that people had of me with a tiptoeing ever-so-carefully out towards what I was aiming for in the long run, which is to present unknown work that was great, and within that unknown work, to give priority to artists at the zenith of their powers who were late in their career and underappreciated in relation to the greatness of their work.  So that was my viewpoint coming in.  On the one hand, playing defense, playing the financial part of it.  And there were available at the time great artists you could do that with.  You could hire Sara Vaughan, you could hire Ahmad Jamal, or George Shearing, Oscar Peterson… \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nDid you have a budget that they gave you that you had to—I mean I’m assuming that there were significant expenses involved with asking certain people, so what were your negotiations, your thoughts, on that?  Bringing in Ray Charles, doing it twice; how much flexibility did you have on that? \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nYou know, I don’t remember exactly how the budget process worked back then.  I think they spent not much on it, frankly.  And I think it performed so well that it’s how I kept it alive.  These guys spent oodles and oodles of money on other kinds of productions, and to some extent, that’s true today, as well.  Not to the degree that it was back then, but I remember them telling me, “Well for your stuff we’re a presenter not a producer.”  As in, we have to spend buttloads more money on these operas and so forth.  And I understand that, but I think it has a limitation to its value.  The production, when it comes to music, is the artist’s life.  And they have to come up with new material to renew themselves in the same way that a producer of opera or theatre has to create new material.  And we should support that, in my view, just because we’re not in the shoes of the producer.  A musician is a producer, of him or herself… \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nNow, when Charlie MacKay left, and then Nigel took over…?  What was that relationship in those early years like?  Because you had a very good relationship with Charlie MacKay. \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nYes.  And with Jim Kearney. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nYes. \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nKearney left.  I think he just got frustrated.  He stayed in Charleston and he started this thing called “Events, Incorporated,” and it didn’t go very well, and then he got sick, and I think died of Hepatitis.  And I can’t remember if Carmen stayed and Charles left to go to the Santa Fe Opera, which is where he still is, and then they found Nigel.  And the first thing that Nigel did was let me go.  I had a year off in 1987.  And I remember meeting him and his wife, and I remember getting a phone call from him saying that, as he put it, that I would take a sabbatical. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nWhy? \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nHe never told me.  You’d have to ask him.  I suspect that he felt that he had the background to do it himself and that he didn’t need the expense.  At the time, I had a parallel life in marketing and public relations, marketing and advertising, so I was busy making films in Detroit for industrials, so I was in over my head in filmmaking boot camp, and I was assistant producer to a guy that had been in the business for many years, and difficult environment, so I was having a tough time keeping up with everything anyway.  But it was such a hostile environment I was working in in Detroit that by that time—I started there in ’84 at this company—I had learned that it doesn’t do you any good to yell at people or get upset, so when Nigel called me with that I just said, “Well, if you change your mind, I’d like to carry on.”  And I \n\nremember him saying, “Well, you’re being very good about this,” and then thought to myself, “Well, you know, that’s the way you need to be.” \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nAnd so he invited you back in ’88? \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nIn ’87.  No, I did the ’86 festival, he was hired in ’86.  It was the ’87 festival I didn’t do.  He was at the ’86 festival.  I met him during the ’86 festival, and I remember some block party or something.  So he booked the ’87 festival, and then he called me, and I forget exactly when it was, and he invited me back for the ’88 festival.  I think—again, you have to ask him—I think the reason I got the job to begin with, back in ’80, is that historically, and it’s still true to a large extent today, the performing arts business is a business of people, and there’s a different collection of people that handle popular music, including jazz.  They’re literally a different group of people.  And so it’s like two worlds.  And I think that Kearney knew and MacKay knew that they didn’t know those worlds.  The pittance they paid me to have a guy who knew that world, could take care of this thing for them, takes a potential headache off the plate.  We have never had, in the time, in the years that I’ve done this, big fat messes with jazz artists.  So from the viewpoint of a general manager, I would assume there’s all the legendary problems with jazz musicians, things being flaky and all of that.  If you’re the boss and you can have a guy who among the things he brings to the party is zero trouble, with a genre that has a reputation of creating a lot of trouble, might sound pretty good.  In addition you get some artistic advice, and this, that, and the other thing.  \n\n\nSo I think my longevity here in part has to do with the underlying need and the underlying reality that it’s just a different world.  Those worlds are getting closer together, but they’re still not altogether the same.  Which is a problem because people view pop—I look for three things in music.  I look for lyricism; I feel that music needs to sing to people some kind of way, I don’t care how, but it’s got to sing, some way.  Second thing I look for is depth.  You have to say, speak to people, have something to say, something of importance.  And then, if we get lucky, the third thing is some moments of transcendence.  I submit to you, if you sat down with any classical musician, they’d say the same thing, in so many ways.  So I come at this as I feel like I’m bringing universal, sort of classical values, or aesthetic, to the whole world of music, not just classical music.  But that’s not a common viewpoint.  \n\nSo you have folks that see themselves conversant and interested in classical music and this other stuff is just foreign territory.  And that has a lot of consequences, most of which are not very good, I think.  Some of them are okay, it’s like, people think they need, and do need, somebody who is comfortable in their whole world and can make it go artistically and from a production viewpoint.  But, so coming back to your question, trying not to stray off too far here—so I don’t know.  I don’t know what was going through his mind.  I know there was this terrible thing that happened.   B.B. King was supposed to play at Magnolia, and he was five or six hours late.  I don’t know if that mess, you know, made him feel like, “I don’t want to have to deal with this again.”  I don’t know.  He’s just an extraordinarily capable guy.  And then, all this stuff he’s got to cover in this festival, take care of, makes sense to me that he doesn’t need to be booking jazz on top of it. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nSure.  So he got you back, and then you’ve been here ever since. \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nYes, I have. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nNow, if you don’t mind talking a little bit about the venues themselves.  You said you’ve been going all over the place.  You’ve been having concerts at the Cistern, at the Gaillard, at the recital hall at the Simons Center for the Arts.  You were in Magnolia, you were in a cow field.  What is going on with all of these venues and can you talk about them? \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nI would talk about the city first.  This word “festival” is thrown around very loosely.  My definition of a festival is when someone says to you, “What are you doing during ___,” fill in the blank.  If people are not saying that, it’s not a festival.  Now, I come from Ann Arbor, Michigan.  The only festival we have there, real festival, doesn’t have the word “festival” in the title.  It’s the Ann Arbor Art Fair.  And people say, “What are you doing during Art Fair?”  It is a reflection of a town being engaged on a scale that people are accosted to speak to each other in that way.  One of the things I learned from observation of Menotti in this respect, and again, putting together pieces of information, things people say to me and things I see.  I am told that when he came to the states he decided to do the American festival.  He went to the National Endowment for the Arts and said, “Vhere should I take my festival?” as code for, “Where will you give me money if I go?”  Smart thing to do.  Here he is, Pulitzer Prize-winning guy, he has a festival in Italy that’s very successful, anybody who was paying attention saw the opportunity just as he did.  Story has it that he was pointed towards the southeast, where there was not much going on.  You would not recognize Charleston today versus what it was back then.  Story has it that he walked—and a number of cities were actively pursuing him for this event—story goes, he walks into Charleston and within a very short time said, “This is it.”  He knew.  And from that I drew the conclusion that the stage of a festival is not in the venues.  The stage of a festival is the city.  We don’t have the venues here that they have in Ann Arbor, the volume of choices, but we don’t have Charleston.  So the number one venue is the city. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nWhat is it about the city? \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN:  \n\nThe streets, the buildings, the fact that you can walk around at midnight and not worry about it.  I mean, what does it mean to “do” the festival?  Does it mean you go to a concert?  No.  It means to be in this place that’s totally engaged, it’s beautiful to walk around, it’s brimming with local character.  You feel like you’re someplace completely different that’s absolutely engaged and turned on with fantastic content, from, “How do the stones look in the sidewalk,” to what Sarah Vaughan does on the stage.  It’s the whole run of it, the local cuisine.  And it’s—you know, its historic dimension contributes to that in a huge way.  Its environment, physical environment, these live oak trees.  They’re as good as the Rocky Mountains for me, as a natural feature of the environment.  The ocean is nearby.  All of this, to me, is part of the place, the setting.  So you come here and you’ve been somewhere that has a very distinct, memorable character, and whatever all those interactions are between all the elements and the people that attend, the local people, the artists—all of that synergizes, I think, and it finds its way onto the stage.  There’s inspiration to really go the extra mile.  \n\nWe have without a doubt the most dedicated production team there is.  I mean, there may be others there as dedicated.  I cannot imagine more people dedicated than the ones we have here, and this is my 29th festival.  I still see stuff that’s just—as recently as opening weekend, and how we swung that concert out of the Cistern and to Gaillard.  And so where does the energy come from to do that?  It comes from more than personal dedication, although a lot of it comes from that, to be sure.  But it’s the place, the place fuels it.  And so that’s the first part of the answer, that it’s the city, the fact that the city hung on to its physical structure.  I think you may have seen it written.  There was an article, Robert Behre wrote it in the paper a few days ago—in fact I cut it out if you want it—where people talk about one of the ironies of Charleston is that it was because of a purity of poverty that the city retained its old character.  And now that old character has been converted into a contemporary asset.  I think there’s truth in that, although Robert’s article talks about that it wasn’t as simple as that; there were people after the Civil War who made a big effort in preservation and so forth.  They were very farsighted to have done that, because they have now made a festival stage.  One last thought about this.  I think the size of the city is critical.  If you’re in New York and try to mount this, it’s meaningless.  If you’re in a town a fifth the size, the resources are not adequate to mount it.  There’s a certain optimal size to do what we do here and Charleston, in addition to its qualitative traits, has the quantitative size to make it work.  Then when you get to the venues themselves, obviously the Cistern is the one that stands out the most, because it has in one place many of these elements.  The live oak trees are there, and fortunately they’re positioned in such a way to the periphery of a place where you can stick a big audience.  I mean, I don’t know what we would do if there was this big ‘ole tree sitting in the middle of a place.  I never thought about that until just now.   \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\n[laughs] \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nBut, I mean, what would you do?  You know, it may not be a venue.  And these trees are hundreds of years old.  So how is it that these trees got put in the right spot?  Well, maybe somebody hundreds of years ago was using their brain about how to do this yard, this courtyard.  Probably they were, people were thinking.  Randolph Hall, the entrance to the yard, there’s a name for that building.  I forget it every year and have to relearn it every year.  What a grand entrance to the grounds.  You’re walking under this little miniature Arc de Triomphe kind of thing.  And I think all of that lifts people’s spirits; it’s why I love going to great art museums, just because I like the physical space.  I feel better there. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nIs that your favorite jazz venue? \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nI’m sorry? \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nIs that your favorite venue, the Cistern? \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\n[long pause]  I don’t—with good weather? [laughing]  Let me think.  Yeah, I think it is.  The other one that I like for different reasons is the recital hall, just because of what we’re able to do there.  There’s an attitude in our business that I don’t entirely agree with that restricts the use of venues.  People think if you have a thousand seats you have to have 750 people show up or it’s a mess.  I’m not so sure that’s true.  I’d be willing to use Gaillard and forget the balcony, just use the ground floor.  I did that at the University of Michigan; we had a 4,000-seat hall there, and we put in a group expecting to sell no more than 800 tickets and it was fine.  You just turn the lights down and who cares?  You just use the part of the theatre you need to use.  Professional basketball teams do that, they use a corner of some big stadium and— \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nRope it off. \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nYeah, but that’s not the way most people look at it, so I need the smaller venues for some of the work I like a lot, and the recital hall is one of those places.  It’s a plain Jane, goodsounding, but as plain as you can get, place.  So it has no character in the sense of what the Cistern has, but it is a place whose opportunities it provides for performances are very significant to me.  But yes, I would have to say the Cistern is far in a way the place that I like the best.  We have conquered the sound problem there pretty well.  We have a speaker system now that’s a new development in the last ten years that allows us to project sound more evenly from the front to the back, so you’re not blowing people away in the front, and so the people in the back of the place can hear it.  The sound bounces around sometimes, but it works.  We can take this marvelous place and turn it into a really great-sounding venue.  I’m a nut when it comes to sound. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA:  \n\nWhat is your most challenging venue, or what has been? \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nGaillard.  Both because it’s too big, and the sound in there is really difficult for us.  I may have a long day tomorrow with Renee and Marie. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nDid you ever play at the Dock Street? \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nNever been given the opportunity.  I’d like to, but I’ve never been given the opportunity. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nHow do you feel about the proposed restoration of the Gaillard? \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nSounds good to me.  Anything to make the thing more manageable.  I was hoping that they’d just blow the whole thing up and build two smaller theatres.  It was a real surprise to me to hear that Gaillard was going to be renovated.  Nigel told me it was going to happen, I’d be a happier guy.  I don’t know how many seats he’s expected in there, but 2,700 is too much for what we’re doing. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nSo you work in Michigan and you just come down every year for Charleston, for the Spoleto Festival? \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nYeah, there’s really two parts to the job.  One is a curating and then the marketing that falls right on the heels of that, and then there’s a production side, which is travel, which I do for Michigan, and then hands-on production here.  So I come the Wednesday before the festival opens and I’m here for three weeks. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nNow, you said in an earlier interview that you select about half of your acts by talking to performers from that year’s festival, or just getting a sense of who they think is up-and-coming.  How do you stock the other half?  And are there some acts that you’ve selected based on that, that you wouldn’t have, and you were impressed by? \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nBased on which? \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nBased on just talking to other performers. \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nThe way that works is everyone has an aesthetic, and it’s only a matter of how conscious you are of it.  I think I’m somewhat conscious of my aesthetic.  I try to be, but who knows.  I think that, particularly since the year 2000, but before as well, the artists I bring here are people who share that aesthetic with me.  So I am using them as a way to find other artists who share the same aesthetic.  It’s a very general one, this business of lyricism and depth and transcendence, but I like that it’s general because it means that there’s many, many, many ways that it can be realized.  And so the reality of it is I think musicians, they spend a lot of time learning their technical craft.  They spend a lot of time learning the literature of what others have done, and then they need to put that all aside, and they have to then take this inward trip to find out what speaks to them most deeply.  And that’s what people want to hear.  Toots Tillman once told me this story, the harmonica player, do you know Toots?  You heard him on Midnight Cowboy and the Sesame Street theme.  He was here, he was in his 80s, and kind of reflected one year, and he’s got his little white mustache, and he makes a fist with his right hand, like this, and he says, “Everybody says push forward, push forward,” he says, “Me, I still need to feel the goose bumps.”  And I thought, that was it.  So you can be as progressive and modern as you want, in fact, power to you, but I still gotta feel the goose bumps.  And I told this story to Lynne Arielle the next year, the pianist who came here, across the dinner table, and she peered across the table at me and she said, “Push inward.”  And so I think that’s what the artists I like do, and I think that if you don’t push inward like that with the prerequisite skills to express what you discover in that inward journey—so you have to have that, but you push inward, and that’s where you get fine things that will give people the goose bumps, and that’s what keeps people coming back to these concerts. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nAnd they trust you. \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nRight.  I’m an unhappy guy in August.  Every August I am an unhappy guy because I’m sweating bullets over this.  And I have colleagues that don’t look at it quite this way, so I’m having to negotiate their viewpoint versus mine.  I mean, we had Heloísa Fernandes come from Brazil last year, play solo piano for three nights, two shows a night, she had never been outside of Brazil and we had a thousand people come to the concerts and love her. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nAnd you had Jake, the ukulele player. \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nRight.  But the idea of trust, you put your finger on it.  Yeah, so that’s my view of the business.  Others, including Nigel, might have—I think he’ll give you a different explanation. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nSo you’ve accomplished your goals with Spoleto in a way. \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nI think so. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nAnd what from now?  Where do you go?  You’ve accomplished your goals, you just keep plugging, the equation works? \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nYou’re only as good as your last performance.  I mean, I’m like any performer in a way.  Or make the analogy to baseball:  Every time you go up to the plate, it’s a new at-bat.  So you can’t sit back on anything that’s happened.  So to me, it’s just you keep working.  I’m managing a dozen artists now, all of whom I met here first.  I’m managing five of the Brazilians I had here.  But I see the work is if you’re a presenter or you’re an artist’s manager, to me it’s all the same.  It’s about putting great work with audiences, and it doesn’t matter to me what chair I sit in to do it.  The work itself, the details of it are different when you’re managing somebody and representing them versus as a presenter, as a curator or producer.  But the goal, the overall mission, is the same for me.  And I think it’s—I’ve said in other places—I think it’s an extraordinarily exciting time for music worldwide.  There’s just incredible stuff being made.  Not a lot of it here in the U.S.  And I’m hopeful for the U.S. that this will change, I’m hoping that there’s a generation of people that are going to come along, maybe in about 15 years, people that are like ten years old right now, fifteen years old, and when they get their chops together, and we get through all this sort of confusion we’re in right now in the U.S., that they really start whipping out some great stuff. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nYou’ve been through some tough times with Spoleto and most would argue, probably, that if it weren’t for you, jazz at Spoleto may not exist and would certainly not have the flavor that it does.  It’s been a hard road it seems, and in some cases, you had that rocky beginning, and then there was an incident in 2000, right, which you were— \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nOh yeah. \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nI mean, I don’t know how much of that you’d be willing to state for the public record, and I’m sure a lot of that is very public anyway with the newspapers back and forth, but is there anything about that that you can divulge? \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nWell, I think in that thing I wrote, I pretty much put it all out there.  As far as what we’re doing with this interview and the book…I mean, the Confederate Flag struggle, how do I say this… \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nWell this all was going on because in 2000 the NAACP was boycotting the state of South Carolina for flying the Confederate flag over the State House, and it was then moved to the grounds, and that was still kept going.  And the boycott continues to this day.  And what was going on?  The jazz artists… \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN:  \n\nWell, I was in a record shop in Ann Arbor in January of 2000.  Was it January 2000?  And this guy I know, black guy, was working the store and he said, “What are you going to do about this boycott?”  I didn’t know what he was talking about.  I called Nigel up, and then the next thing I know  my phone rings, and it’s Dianne Reeves’s booking agent (she’s an AfricanAmerican singer) saying, “Michael, Dianne’s manager got a call from the New Jersey StarLedger and also from the L.A. Times,”—one or both of those papers—“and they want to know if she’s going to cross the line.  What should we tell them?”  I looked at the phone and said, “Can I call you back?” [laughs]  That’s how I found out. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\n[laughing] So you had no idea. \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nNo, Nigel didn’t tell me.  I’m up there in Michigan, you know, pecking away at my stuff, so I called him up and he said, “Oh well, don’t worry, it’s going to be done by the time of the festival,” and he was all over it.  And so the national press was predating on my artists, they called them all, and I had to make the choice.  First in my own mind, was it proper to ask these guys to come play?  I had a moral question of my own. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nAll of them, or just the black ones? \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nAll of them. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nBlack, white, didn’t matter? \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nI mean, if you’re a white guy like Chick Corea playing jazz and the number one advocacy organization for the ethnic group that contains the people that invented the art form that you practice…I mean, if you’re Chick Corea, you have to think about, “Am I going to disrespect the \n\nNAACP?” \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nWere they doing this with every other one or just the jazz artists? \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nJust the jazz artists, as far as I know.  Well, you’d have to check with Nigel on that.  I don’t know.  You ask him about Bill T. Jones, too.  I’m not real thrilled about what Bill T. Jones did, because he jumped on it.  My personal viewpoint is he was looking for publicity. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nSo anyway, back to the thing, you were trying to make your own decision about this. \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nYeah, so I had to make a choice about what to do, and when my friend in the record shop first told me about it, I said, look, you could make the argument that I’ve done personally more for black artists than as about as much as—I mean, per capita, or something, than anybody in the history of South Carolina.  I’m at this festival, I’m paying these guys good fees, I’m giving them the best audiences they can get.  What have I got to do with this whole mess?  It was just crazy.  But it didn’t matter that there was this larger thing going on, and we were not going to be given an exception.  So I had to decide what was proper.  So I decided that, first of all, the struggle was not about the flag.  Because what I said to everyone was if race relations were what they should be in this country, there would be no controversy.  This was about race relations and racism.  And it is a racist society, still is, so who are we kidding?  So this is not new news.  I learned that the way this thing came to a head is that the black legislators had a caucus in the two chambers of the state legislature and had for nearly ten years been putting out legislation to get the flag taken down.  I also learned that the reason the flag was up there is when Brown vs. Topeka was decided by the Supreme Court, the state legislatures put those flags up as a protest.  So this Southern heritage thing is nonsense.  In 1941, those flags weren’t there.  So we have Brown vs. Topeka and then there’s the flags up there.  So I thought the question is, well, from what position do you want to address the question of race relations?  Is it better for you not to come or is it better for you to come down here and get on the stage and deal with the media and address the real question? \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nYou, or is that what you posed to the artists? \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nThe artists.  That’s what I sort of— \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nYou gave them the option, in your head? \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nYeah.  Nigel said, “We’re not going to force anyone to come.”  We had signed contracts with everybody, including Dianne Reeves.  We booked the festival in the Fall of 1999.  Now, the NAACP was having its meetings at the time, and by the time we got to January of 2000, all our contracts were done, we were published in the brochure.  And then the way the NAACP’s timetable is, they passed these resolutions in the fall and they took effect January 1; it was just the way their schedule works.  So the key thought for me was, it wasn’t about the flag.  It was about racism and race relations, and this is not new. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nRight. \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nSo let’s get at it.  Let’s deal with it head-on, let’s be honest about it.  And I said, “Come to Charleston, you have the stage, you have the platform, say what you have to say about it.”  I think us not coming to Charleston to be essentially muzzled doesn’t serve the purpose. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nSo you invited them to use the Spoleto stage as an advocacy place? \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nI said just come and do what you want.  Tell the truth.  And the responses were quite interesting.  Gary Burtin, who’s gay, said if he didn’t come out of his house every time somebody disrespected a gay person he’d never come outside.  His attitude was he’s living under fire all the time anyway, so black people living under fire, he understands that.  He’s living under fire as a gay man.  Chick Corea had had— \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA:  \n\nSo he decided he would come? \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nYes.  Only Dianne Reeves cancelled.  And it took her a long time to decide that.  Bill Frisell decided to come.  Kurt Elling decided to come on the condition that I hire a black percussionist from Chicago to join his group.  Kurt Elling, well I mean look at the list, Bill Frisell.  I became an expert on this whole thing, because I had to.  Fred Hersch, another gay guy, a pianist, said, “No, I’m not going to hurt you people over this.” \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nHe was white? \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nYes.  He is a white guy.  Oh, this is interesting.  We’re missing Marcus Roberts from this list.  And it turns out that Marcus Roberts was already performing in the state, and he took her spot.  Pianist Marcus Roberts.  And I felt like I did three festivals in one year.  I spent so much time on this, it was incredible.  So I was talking to Nigel and it was about March.  So my job at that point was to keep the lid on, or try to just keep everybody in play.  And he’s basically giving me just enough information about what he knows and he’s dealing with all the political part of it as he should.  You know, what’s going to happen.  They’re going to make a deal, they’re going to make a deal, they’re going to make a deal.  We get to March, it doesn’t look like they’re going to make a deal.  And I’m getting pretty nervous over here, because I’m the guy with his fingers in the dike keeping this thing, or my part of it, intact.  So I said, “You know, this festival puts things on its stages to address this kind of stuff, and we need to do something.  I think we just can’t stand by.  We gotta respond artistically to this thing, the festival does.”  He says, “You got a point there.  What do you recommend?”  I didn’t expect him to say that.  I thought he’d just tell me, “No, you’re being naïve, and you’re too much of an idealist,” and all.  So I said, “Let me call you back.”  So I thought about it, and I got a hold of a guy at the University of Michigan who was a black dramatist.  I repeated my thing on the flag, it’s not about the flag, it’s about race relations—what could we put on our stage that would address this in a good way, in a good artistic way, and in a meaningful way?  And what he said to me was, and I talked to a few other people, and they agreed, is there just wasn’t time.  You just can’t pull a theatre production out of your hat, and make it go. \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nRight. \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nSo I was talking to Bill Struhs, he’s a local, lifetime Charlestonian.  He says, “Why don’t you call Josephine Humphreys?”  You know Josephine?  Are you from Charleston? \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nNo, but I’ve lived here for some years. \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nOh, you have.  Okay.   \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nShe’s quite the institution. \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nOh, she is?  So I call her up, I don’t know who she is, you know, I don’t have time—I need to have clones, and one of my clones reads books from dawn to midnight. \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\n[laughs] Yes, she’s quite the author. \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nAnd I explain the whole thing to her, so the idea we came up with—I think I came up with it, but I don’t know.  The idea was that we get twelve Southern writers, black and white, particularly as many as possible who are of interest from South Carolina, and we give them five minutes each to talk about my thesis, that it’s not about the flag, it’s about something else.  What’s it about? \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nYou wanted to do this on the stage where you were having the performances? \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nNo, we created a separate event.  And it was called “Beyond the Flag.”  I wanted to call it “Beneath the Flag:  Southern Writers Speak,” and Nigel said, “No, we’ll call it ‘Beyond the Flag:  Southern Writers Speak.’”  I wanted “beneath” because of my thesis that I gave to these people, which is that if race relations were what they should be in this country, we wouldn’t be fussing about the flag, it would be over.  C-SPAN came out and taped it, and ran it nationally, and it was an amazing hour. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nNow, this was not affiliated with the jazz program? \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nNo, I was like the temporary human rights coordinator. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA:  \n\n[laughs] \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nNormally they teased me about it, say, “You’re our human rights coordinator.”  Well, I knew it.  So— \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nYou put on the jazz and then you put on “Beyond the Flag.” \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nRight, and I put on two other things.  One of the guys we had in that twelve was this guy from North Carolina by the name of Allan Gurganus, and he did a one-man talk, or a monologue, it’s here, “P.T. Barnum and My Great-Great-Granddad’s Slaves:  An Evening with Allan Gurganus.”  And then we did a thing called “Concert for the Community” and we had a black gospel group, a white gospel group, and the Spoleto orchestra, and I got a singer from Ann Arbor who—I think she was in town to do Heiner Goebbles’s piece—Kristin Williams, and they did “Come Sunday,” which Duke Ellington arranged with Mahalia Jackson. And we did that at the Cistern. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nThis is cool.  Ed Ball, Slaves in the Family. \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nI’m sorry? \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nYou have a variety of writers there that are really neat. \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nOh okay, there they all are.  Yeah, and one of these women is actually the granddaughter or great-granddaughter of a black woman and a Confederate general.  Very interesting woman, which one is she? \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nBlanche McCrary, is that her? \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nUh…Gurganus, Kendra, Josephine, Joyner, I think you’re right.  Carrie Allen was a younger woman, Carrie Allen McCray.  No, that’s Sandra King Ray.  It’s either Carrie Allen McCray or Blanche McCrary. \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nEither way, I’m sure we’ll find out soon. \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nYeah, anyway, it was an extraordinary hour and ten minutes or something, because what it showed me, and that’s what I said when I closed it off, it showed that this is not an easy question, it’s not in so many words, black and white.  There’s layers and layers of complexity that need to be appreciated. [door opens] Hey there. \n\n \n\nUNKNOWN: \n\nHey, sorry to interrupt, but we do have just a few minutes before the next one, just to let you know. \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN:  \n\nSorry. \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nThank you. \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nThere were just layers and layers of complexity, which is, as I’ve learned as a mature adult, true of just about everything.  There’s very little in life that’s just so cut and dry, easy one way or the other.  And something as complex as this was no surprise.  So I was really very happy that we did it, and I was very proud of the way these people handled themselves. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nAs you said, music is a great way to deal with— \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nAnd there’s Kurt Elling’s statement.  That was Kurt Elling in that thing you read. \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nYes, I’m going to be keeping what you gave us with the files, because these are some brilliant ways that—I mean, you pretty  much just state that the music, or he states that the music is what is really the transcending thing that helps us come to terms with difficult times in our past and stuff. \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nAnd I would like to do a festival somewhere—for Nigel the problem is how much do you delve into this stuff and how directly, and how uncomfortable does it make people who contribute money to the festival? \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nDo you still think it’s about what Gian Carlo Menotti was saying, that you were there, that jazz was there, because it made money?  Is the jazz still there because it makes money? \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nNot entirely.  No, I think that’s changed.  I think Nigel changed that.  I think that there’s a subsidy of the operas but it creates the festival context, which makes what I do possible.  So I only hope that they compensate me better some day in the future.  I only hope that they are generous in their souls towards all the arts.  I’ll never know for sure because I never get to see the whole budget.  I’m probably better off not seeing the whole thing, because then there’d be some negotiation, maybe.  But no, I don’t think it’s viewed in the way it was.  And I think even Jim Kearney for sure didn’t look at it that way.  It was Menotti.  But there is this undercurrent of will people subsidize this art the way that they’ll subsidize other arts?  And it goes back to this very old notion.  Do people have the attitude towards this stuff that they have towards chamber music?  I’m not sure they do. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nIt’s a changing generation though, too. \n\n \n\nMICHAEL GROFSOREAN: \n\nThat’s right. \n\n \n\nJESSICA LANCIA: \n\nAll right, I think we are out of time.  If you don’t mind, I’m going to stop the recording.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://lcdl.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1695/collection_resources/53011/file/125186#t=0.0,4996.8"}]}]}]}