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Anne Parsons, who revived the Detroit Symphony Orchestra as president and CEO after a bitter strike and used education and technology to attract new audiences, died in Detroit on March 28. She was 64 years old.
Her husband, Donald Dietz, said the cause was complications from lung cancer.
Ms. Parsons, who conducted the Detroit Symphony from 2004 to December 2021, guided the orchestra through one of its most difficult periods, a six-month strike that began in 2010. He worked to ensure that the orchestra’s many emerged from a near-death moment, reassuring donors and civic leaders as tensions grew between musicians and management.
Determined to avoid another business dispute and eager to make the orchestra a pillar of Detroit’s civic revival, he spent the next decade rebuilding the ensemble. investment in live streaming technology, expanding community programming, and attracting extraordinary stars like Kid Rock to perform. At a time when many American orchestras are struggling with declining ticket sales, the digitally connected and agile Detroit Symphony has become a model modern ensemble.
“They hit a financial wall and went through a very brutal strike,” said Mark Volpe, president and CEO of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for 23 years. “In that context, instead of giving up and leaving like the others did, he had the stomach, the perseverance, the perseverance and, frankly, the vision to do something very special.”
Anne Hyatt Parsons was born on November 4, 1957 in Schenectady, New York, to Gerald Parsons, a finance worker, and Jane (Walter) Parsons, a teacher.
At first to please his father, he pursued a career in finance, working as a bank teller during his summers at Smith College.
However, Miss Parsons, who started learning the flute as a child, soon immersed herself in the arts. He became director of the student orchestra at Smith and helped hold the orchestra together during a time of conflict over his role on campus.
He graduated from Smith in 1980 with a degree in English. He promised his father that he would return to banking if his artistic career did not go his way within a year. But he was soon starting to rise in the art industry.
He was among the first-year members selected by the League of American Symphony Orchestras (now known as the League of American Orchestras). As a junior employee with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, he assisted cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, who was then its musical director.
orchestra director of the Boston Symphony from 1983 to 1991; Managing Director of the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles from 1991 to 1998; and general manager of the New York City Ballet from 1998 to 2004.
When he arrived in Detroit in the summer of 2004, he faced immediate challenges, including a sharp drop in ticket sales and waning support from companies. He worked to overhaul the orchestra’s proposals, and in a coup d’état in 2008 convinced Leonard Slatkin, then music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, to take the podium in Detroit.
Tensions in the orchestra escalated as Detroit’s economy worsened during the Great Recession and the orchestra’s financial situation worsened. In October 2010, a strike broke out after the orchestra proposed large cuts in wages and benefits, citing the difficult economic environment. The musicians said the cuts would destroy the band’s high caliber and that they had waged an enthusiastic campaign to oppose them.
Ms. Parsons took a stern stance throughout the ordeal. “Management was telling him, ‘You’re going to be the bad guy’,” Mr. Slatkin said in an interview. “But that’s the role, that’s the job. And there were days when I didn’t know how he achieved it. It was very, very cruel. But he put that aside and always had a positive attitude.”
After six months of heated negotiations, deal reached. Eventually, players agreed to massive pay cuts, but kept their health insurance and pensions.
After the strike, Ms. Parsons began finding ways to raise the profile of the orchestra and generate more revenue. He started a streaming service, one of the first orchestras to do so, and toured abroad, including in China and Japan. She promised to make the Detroit Symphony “the most accessible orchestra on the planet.” oversight efforts Expanding musical education in the city, bringing orchestral players to public schools that serve many poor families. It also increased the orchestra’s presence in the suburbs where most of its patrons live, where it performs in churches, high schools, and community centers.
Donations increased and ticket sales began to return. After years of deficit, the orchestra reported operating surplus from 2013 to 2021.
Ms. Parsons said: “What I really felt was this incredible responsibility to find a way forward no matter what challenge we were facing.” said Detroit News last year. “The alternative to an institution like DSO was unacceptable to me.”
Even some musicians who clashed with Ms. Parsons during the strike said it was vital to the orchestra’s return.
‘We will never do this again,’ he said after the strike. “We have to preserve the artistic quality of the organization,” said Haden McKay, a former cellist of the orchestra and who served on the negotiating committee during the strike. “It was a pile in the ground. He put the institution on a good footing, both financially and psychologically.”
Ms. Parsons described her move to Detroit with her family as “the best decision we’ve ever made.” In 2021, the city named a street just south of Orchestra Hall in his honor.
In addition to her husband, who is a photographer, Mrs. Parsons is survived by a brother, Lance Parsons, and a daughter, Cara Dietz.
Ms. Parsons learned she had lung cancer in 2018, but despite her illness, she continued to have a busy schedule. She resigned two months after she returned from an extended medical leave.
“He wanted to be able to say that he had given all he could,” said Mr. Dietz. “And that’s what he told me after he couldn’t do it anymore. “I have nothing else to give,” he said.
Ms. Parsons said last year that her illness brought “the fragility of our world” into focus.
“We accept that we will be healthy and one day we will not be,” he said. an interview last year With Crain’s Detroit Business. “We recognize that someone will be a strong leader. When that doesn’t happen, it causes you to wake up every day and be thankful for the positive things.”
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