Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 23, 1995 TAG: 9504210066
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
\ IN the beginning, she was the answer to every prayer.
Victoria Bond was inspiration, talent, dazzling figurehead and electric cattle prod all at once - a pint-sized, blond go-getter of a conductor who overnight turned the once-sleepy Roanoke Symphony Orchestra into something the city was proud of.
This was some feat.
Founded in 1953, the Roanoke Symphony was - as a Wall Street Journal article would later describe it in the pre-Bond era - ``an under-rehearsed, suitcase outfit ... a ragged group of students and music professors ... a mess that embarrassed even South Roanoke's Old Guard.''
Or, as Roanoke Times & World-News music critic Wendy Zomparelli would write at the end of Bond's triumphant first season:
``It wasn't so long ago that we considered the evening a success when the orchestra avoided major blunders - or had just a couple.''
Bond quickly changed all that.
In short order, the new conductor - who arrived nine years ago, in the summer of 1986 - not only cleaned up the sound of the symphony, she packed the house.
She also packed the bank account.
In the first, highly publicized years of Bond's tenure, money came to the symphony like fleas to a shaggy dog. Almost unbelievably, the symphony budget more than quadrupled under Bond - from $240,000 her first year to $1.1 million in 1992-93.
No surprise, then, that two years after Bond's arrival here, Roanoke Times & World-News publisher Walter Rugaber told a reporter "We'd all put on black armbands" if she left.
Maybe Bond - who will conduct her final concerts with the Roanoke Symphony Monday and Tuesday nights, at Roanoke's Civic Center and at Virginia Tech's Burruss Hall - sealed her fate at the end by her stunning success in the beginning.
In any event, there is surely irony in the fact that it was Rugaber, by Bond's own account, who suggested she move on.
Bond was asked in January whether - as rumor had it - Rugaber had sat her down and told her she had done a wonderful job, but that she had accomplished all she could and it was time to go.
``Yes,'' Bond said. ``He invited me to lunch. And said those very words."
Asked again last week about the meeting, Bond said Rugaber hadn't ``exactly'' told her it was time to go, and that the meeting was private in any case. ``It's something that I don't want to comment on,'' she said.
Rugaber, who formerly was president of the symphony board and now heads its long-range planning committee, also declined to comment on the subject.
"I don't think I want to touch that one with even a very long pole," he said when first asked if he had encouraged Bond to leave.
Briggs Andrews, president of the symphony board, said when asked about the meeting that Rugaber had not been not speaking for the board.
``What he talked to her about was between them,'' Andrews said.
In any event, Bond said in the January interview that she agreed with Rugaber.
``I think it would be a very good thing for this community to have a new face,'' the conductor said.
\ Once upon a time in Roanoke, nothing was newer than Bond herself.
The first woman to earn a doctorate in conducting from Juilliard, a former conducting assistant to the famed Andre Previn, a one-time student of current National Symphony conductor-designate Leonard Slatkin, Bond brought to Roanoke a mix of glamour and high art.
The city had never possessed anyone quite like her before - and it swooned.
``I think Roanoke really loves personalities,'' said Jere Lee Hodgin, who came to Roanoke at about the same time as Bond, as director of Mill Mountain Theatre. ``I think Victoria came here at the right time, and she has a big personality, and it was exactly what Roanoke needed and what the symphony needed.''
``It was a situation where people were very anxious for this orchestra to be all that it could be,'' Bond recalled. ``That excited me. I had very innovative ideas about what an orchestra should be, and I wanted to put them into action.''
Other things were happening in the Roanoke art world, too. Like the symphony, Mill Mountain Theatre was experiencing rapid growth. So were the science museum, and the art museum, the arts council, and others.
All were part of what Rugaber likes to call the city's ``Little Renaissance.''
``It seemed to me the artistic ambition level went up pretty significantly in all those places,'' he said.
``It was a synergy that was happening,'' said Hodgin, who attributes it partly to the arrival in town of a number of new leaders in the arts, including Bond and himself. ``Something that was attracting people to the city.''
That something, to Rugaber's thinking, was in large part Bond's obvious success.
``I think it convinced a lot of other artists and cultural groups in town that, `Hey, we, too, can do this,''' Rugaber said. ``The art museum went out and hired a director [Ruth Appelhof] who for God's sake looked like Victoria Bond. It's quite amusing in a way.''
Margarite Fourcroy, who came from Tennessee at about that time to become the symphony's executive director, credits its success to ``a real partnership between musicians, music director, staff, trustees, volunteer group and audience.... My real strong feeling is that the synergy of these things coming together is what made it happen.''
Still, Bond was the one in the spotlight. Chosen from among some 250 applicants, she joined a short list of working women conductors in America when she came to Roanoke.
She quickly turned her gender to advantage. The publicity photo that accompanied her press releases in those days was an attention-getting, over-the-shoulder glamour shot that stressed the new conductor's large eyes and pouty lips.
In the days to come, Bond's increasingly familiar features would grace not only local media outlets but the pages of The Atlanta Constitution and the Wall Street Journal. Stories about her - and, incidentally, about Roanoke - also appeared in Newsday, Penthouse, The (Nashville) Tennessean, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Des Moines Register and a slew of other publications, many featuring Bond in the same soft, dewy-eyed pose.
Here at home, Bond shook hands, rode in parades, gave talks. ``The rubber-chicken circuit,'' she calls it now. She even modeled for a local clothing store at one time, one with a name some say summed up the new conductor well: Panache.
In her wake, the money came pouring in.
``Victoria was able to make much of the fact that she's this blond bombshell conductor,'' said the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra's concertmaster, James Glazebrook. ``Her vibrant persona was a rallying point.''
Even some who rolled their eyes at all the attention she got, while their own organizations were scrabbling for publicity, concede the new conductor successfully focused attention on the symphony.
``Her heart was in the symphony,'' Hodgin said. ``I don't think she was self-serving.''
At the same time, Bond was turning what she describes now as ``a social club'' into the orchestra that would record with Ray Charles and play host to Billy Taylor, Marian McPartland and Leontyne Price (the 1992 recording with Charles, of Quincy Jones' "Black Requiem," still has not been released).
In the past, ``It was a fun weekend for them,'' Bond said of orchestra rehearsals and concerts. ``They got through it as best they could without working hard. And I'm afraid I spoiled that for them.''
``It was a wonderful change,'' recalled cellist Jana Ruble. ``We were really forced to work very hard. We were given an opportunity to play some very challenging and interesting music.''
Come concert time, it didn't take a Mozart to tell the difference.
``There was something about Victoria Bond that conveyed itself to people right off the stage,'' recalled Rugaber. ``You didn't have to know her to get the sensation from being in the auditorium with her that something fine or important was supposed to happen there.''
In her last review of Bond's first season, music critic Zomparelli summed it up like this:
``Communities get the orchestras they deserve,'' she wrote. ``We must be living right.''
\ Eight years later, things have changed.
The symphony's budget has dwindled - to $800,000 this year, some $300,000 below its peak of $1.1 million in 1992-93. The 93-94 season ended in the red.
Meanwhile, some concert-goers have been alienated by Bond's insistence on programming modern and contemporary music along with the old classics. The '94-'95 season, for example, has included Bond's own piece, ``Thinking Like a Mountain,'' Richard Fortin's ``Concerto of the Andes,'' and Marian McPartland's ``For Dizzy.''
The previous season had featured works by 20th-century composers Paul Hindemith and Samuel Barber, and jazz composer-in-residence Joe Kennedy Jr.
The conductor believes every concert should offer something old and something new. ``A program of all one or all the other is not a well-balanced program,'' Bond said. Of course, not all listeners want balance.
``We've had subscribers who have said, `We want more of the old music, or we won't be coming next year,''' said Andrews, the board president. ``I don't think you're going to see us stop doing new music. But I think we probably would indicate to a new candidate that we're not looking for a lot more new pieces.''
Rugaber, asked whether Bond had pushed her love for modern music past the limits of her audience's tastes, said ``I think it would be unfair to say she pushed it too far. I think in all these sorts of positions people go through a life cycle. My feeling was, Victoria had done about all she could do in Roanoke.''
Ruble, the cellist, suspects Bond's love for modern music eventually undid her.
``I think she believed in this so much that she put her job on the line,'' Ruble said. "And she lost."
Said Bond: ``People don't like what they're not familiar with. I did what I could. That's all you can do, is spread your seed.''
Bond's dual residency is also a minor irritation to some. She divides her time between her apartment in Quail Valley in Roanoke and the New York home she shares with her husband, lawyer Stephan Peskin.
``I wouldn't say it developed into a big problem,'' said Andrews. ``But she did split her time up between Roanoke and New York.''
Before making its cut to five finalists in the quest for Bond's successor, the orchestra's search committee asked all top applicants to pledge that they would move to Roanoke if hired.
``Our goal is to try to get somebody who is here most of the time,'' Andrews said. ``We'd like them to have outside activities. But we'd like them to come back to Roanoke when they're through.''
There were other friction points. Friends once believed that Bond was bound eventually for the New York Philharmonic, or some other glorious conducting post. Instead, Bond, who has written dozens of musical pieces, large and small - has focused increasingly on her composing.
Her ``Thinking Like a Mountain'' was performed by the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra last fall. Her new opera, ``Travels,'' will make its debut at Roanoke College's Olin Theatre May 18.
At the same time, Bond's interest in fund-raising and public relations activities has visibly diminished.
``I think the non-artistic parts of the job became less exciting to her as the years rolled on,'' Rugaber said.
Bond, who would like to continue conducting elsewhere, says herself she won't accept a position that demands she raise funds at the expense of her writing.
``To be basically a summer composer - there's just too many things I want to do writing,'' Bond said. ``At this point it is absolutely essential that I have composing time.
``I know what I'm about.''
\ Who is this woman?
Both driven (``I didn't know what intensity was until I met Victoria,'' her husband once said) and disarmingly daffy, Bond drives a Honda Accord with the license plate 006 - ``License to maim,'' she explains. She loves shaggy dog stories and the occasional bawdy joke. She has been known to have lengthy mewing conversations with Walter and Sally Rugabers' cats.
At her very first concert, in 1986 - not the one for a general audience on Monday night, but the one for area school kids earlier that day - Bond arranged for her principal cellist to dress like a policeman, roar on stage aboard a motorcycle, siren wailing, and write her a ticket.
``He said, `You're going presto in an allegro zone,''' Bond says, grinning at the memory.
She is sensitive about her height - (she claims to be 5 feet 2 inches, a figure the Wall Street Journal once dismissed as ``obvious swagger''), and her age - 41 when she arrived to Roanoke nine years ago, though out of town publications sometimes gave it as five years younger.
She lists conductor Herbert Von Karajan, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Bugs Bunny as her patron saints. ``He doesn't allow himself to be pushed around,'' Bond explained of the last. ``He's his own rabbit.''
When speaking of Bond, friends and colleagues use words like ``sweetness,'' ``charming'' and ``warm-hearted'' so often there must be something to it.
``We've disagreed on lots of things,'' said the symphony's current executive director, Pat Avise. ``She doesn't hold a grudge. If we've had a disagreement, a day later it's behind us.''
``There's nothing gained from displays of anger,'' believes Bond.
She reportedly loves parties, and health food, and hiking. She believes, with Jane Fonda, that her body is her temple - though she was not too pure to eat an occasional pizza or hot dog with arts patron Marion Via.
Via, who underwrote the conductor's position for ten years, died in 1993.
Via's bequest was not linked specifically to Bond, orchestra officials say. A private fund-raising campaign has ensured that the next conductor will be paid at a level comparable to Bond's.
Still, Via's importance to the symphony was large - as Bond must have realized when she scheduled ``Bolero'' on her very first Monday night concert. It was rumored to be Via's favorite piece.
``She has a very pragmatic turn of mind,'' Rugaber said of Bond.
Warm, generous, forgiving, pragmatic.
So how good was she, really?
``She's been wonderful for the orchestra,'' said Ruble. ``Just perfect. I've really enjoyed working with Victoria.''
``I think this entire area owes her an enormous debt,'' said Judy Clark, former executive director of Opera Roanoke and now a free-lance arts consultant. ``We're very grateful for what she was able to do in raising the sights of the community as far as classical music goes.''
Bond also served as artistic director for the opera for several years.
``She definitely brought our orchestra up at least a notch,'' said Andrews. ``We're on a level considerably above where we were when she came.''
Others say that Bond did less than she might have done to improve the quality of the orchestra - specifically, that Bond might have worked harder to increase musicians' pay, thereby attracting better musicians.
``They talk about being one of the best small city orchestras in the country,'' said Benedict Goodfriend, violinist with the Roanoke College-based Kandinsky Trio and a guest soloist with the symphony last November.
``I feel it's important to tell the truth about where things are. I think to get to the next level, and really be what they like to be pretend to be, they need to get a better class of performers.''
Others say the symphony's growth, though dramatic in Bond's early days, later hit a wall.
When Bond first came, said Seth Williamson, who has reviewed symphony concerts for the Roanoke Times & World-News for much of Bond's Roanoke career, ``I think there was a real steep improvement curve. It's been level for a real long time now.'''
``I think we've reached a kind of plateau,'' said the concertmaster, Glazebrook. ``We're at too much of a developmental stage to want to settle for that.''
Bond said she would love to have seen the musicians get more money. The symphony pays $43.50 for rehearsals and $50 for performances. Section leaders get $5 more.
``We could have the New York Philharmonic in Roanoke if we could pay a better wage,'' Bond said. ``We have incredibly fine musicians, given the circumstances. It [Roanoke] is not a huge metropolis that has the resources that it can afford to pay a living wage.''
Nonetheless, many are hoping the new conductor, whoever he is (and it will be a he; the short list, to be made public Monday, contains no women) will lead the orchestra to new heights.
``The orchestra needs a maestro,'' believes Glazebrook, who is on the search committee. ``Someone who brings great authority to the position.''
All in good time.
For now, all eyes again are on Victoria Bond. Monday's last Roanoke concert - featuring home-grown guest artists Stephanie and Cenovia Cummins - almost certainly will be a sellout.
``We'd have to be crazy not to give her a really rousing send-off,'' Rugaber said.
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