It’s a quiet Sunday morning in Boonville, Missouri. Neither Maggie’s Bar and Grill nor the Main Street Diner are open yet. The shoe store is closed for the day, and the Hotel Frederick is seeing several musicians checking out.
Boonville is a quiet little town located about halfway between St. Louis and Kansas City; about 8,000 people live and work here. The community hosts events that celebrate its history—an early Civil War skirmish took place here in 1861—as well as a Heritage Festival that occurs every August.
When you ask, you get divided opinion as to whether the town was aligned with the North or the South. In fact, most people in the state don’t know where Missourians stood at the time.
The Thespian Hall was opened in 1857 and claims to be the oldest continuously running theater west of the Alleghany Mountains. Over the years, it has also served as an opera house and a hospital.
Why was I here? David Halen, the concertmaster of the St. Louis Symphony, is the artistic director of the Missouri River Festival of the Arts and each year puts together an orchestra comprising the best musicians throughout the area. For this 50th anniversary season, he asked me to participate, and I was more than happy to do so.
Cindy and I drove over to attend the Friday night chamber concert featuring the brass and string players. The hall was full, and the concertgoers were enthusiastic. The audience came from both ends of the state and included a great turnout among the locals.
It is never easy putting together an orchestra of musicians who do not know each other, but on Saturday afternoon, we had two rehearsals for a program of Mozart and Beethoven. It did not take long to realize that we would coalesce well by the evening performance. The Marriage of Figaro Overture, followed by the 39thand seventh symphonies by the two above-named composers, were very well-played by all. The slightly dry acoustics allowed us to hear each other easily and, after very intense practice, we knew what we needed to know. The rest was left up to the inspiration of the moment.
When I began as assistant conductor of the St. Louis Symphony, we used to visit communities like this all the time. These concerts were mostly funded by the state. Those days are long gone, sadly. Responsibility for the preservation and performance of art falls mostly to individuals and corporations. But the good citizens of Boonville rise to the challenge year after year. We gave the audience a memorable 50th anniversary concert and, in turn, experienced something that we will not forget either.
You never know how you can touch people’s lives. This wonderful story was sent to me by Ted Brauker of the Missouri Military Academy. With his permission, I am passing it on to all of you:
I attended the recent performance in Boonville, Missouri, on Saturday. My colleague and I had the opportunity to bring four of our music cadets to attend. None of them had ever heard an orchestra, let alone one conducted by a prominent conductor. I personally was blown away by the sensitivity of the strings (particularly the violins). The Beethoven means so much to me and transported me to my childhood when I made my parents buy me a CD set of all the Beethoven symphonies. I would conduct 7 and 9 with my little sister being my pretend orchestra and chorus.
One of my cadets, whom we are preparing for auditions for music school, said to me after the concert, “I found out who I was.” It was a magical moment to be able to share music with my students that was so profoundly influential on me as a young man and seeing their budding love of classical music. Thank you so much for the experience and your musicality.
That was it for August’s musical activities. So, instead of just babbling on, I wanted to share with you an article I penned. Most of you will understand why I chose to write about this. I suspect this will be the first of several essays that deal with what is happening to the arts today.
When you read this, I will be 81 years old. What is the worst that can happen—I might get fired? Too late! Supporting our museums, arts organizations, performance venues, and other institutions where creativity lives is vital to a national culture. Maybe there is more that I can do besides write, but for now, this is a start.
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No, Your Honor
A Kennedy Center Honor is considered by many to be the highest American award given to a performing artist—a salute to those who have contributed significantly to the American cultural landscape over the course of their careers.
Every year since 1978, the Kennedy Center has selected five individuals to receive the award. With only a handful chosen each year, there are bound to be discussions and even arguments about who should receive the honor. Those debates reared their head in August as the latest group of inductees was announced, leading to broader conversations about what constitutes the arts.
The first annual class of honorees—Marian Anderson, Fred Astaire, George Balanchine, Richard Rodgers, and Arthur Rubenstein—represented opera, classical music, Broadway, ballet, and film. Because only five artists are recognized, the 1978 ceremony did not acknowledge a jazz musician, playwright, or artist from current pop culture, but these would gradually be added in the ensuing years.
It all changed in 2024. For the first time, figures from classical art forms were missing. The medals were awarded to Bonnie Raitt, the Grateful Dead, Arturo Sandoval, Francis Ford Coppola, and The Apollo in Harlem. Not that anything was wrong with the selections, but it was becoming clear that certain elements of our culture were seemingly less relevant for today’s audience.
This year, the ceremony will honor an English theater actor and singer known primarily for one role, an artist known for just one recording, a rock group known more for its behavior than its music, a film actor who is a pop-culture icon, and a country singer who has made an indelible contribution within his genre. One can have reservations about any of these picks, but there is no denying that, in their own ways, they have made an impact.
But why, for two years in a row, have performers from the classical arts world been shunned? Are we running out of them? Are they now irrelevant to the artistic direction of the country?
There are no easy answers to those questions, but perhaps we should remind ourselves of the original intent of these awards. According to the Kennedy Center website, “The Honors have been compared to a knighthood in Britain, or the French Legion of Honor—the quintessential reward for a lifetime’s endeavor.” Do all the recipients meet that qualification?
As the press release states, “The Honoree selection process includes solicitation of recommendations from former Honorees, the artistic community, the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees, and the general public. This year’s selected Honorees were chosen based on the recommendation of the Center’s Special Honors Advisory Committee.”
Television has also traditionally played an important role in the Kennedy Honors. Every year since its inception, the honors have been broadcast by CBS. The network was a driving force in acknowledging the importance of presenting outstanding artists often unrecognized by many Americans. Just go back and look at who received the Kennedy Honors in 1978, and you will understand.
As Vice President of Specials at CBS Bernie Sofronski told the Washington Post in 1978, “We see this as a national honoring of people who have contributed to society, not someone who happens to have a pop record hit at the moment. … Our intention is not to do just another award show. We’re going to make an effort in terms of a real special.”
Given the above, one important new factor contributed to the decision-making this time around. The president of the United States, the essentially self-appointed chairman of the Kennedy Center, said that he was “about 98 percent involved” in the selection process. This automatically injects politics into the proceedings.
It is possible that the December broadcast on CBS will have the highest ratings in recent years for that show. The president’s base will tune in, a substantial number of people. The audience in attendance at the actual event will be mostly Trump supporters.
Previous presenters have included Leonard Bernstein, Walter Cronkite, Beverly Sills, and Caroline Kennedy. Recently, the backgrounds of the hosts changed, with Glenn Close, Stephen Colbert, Gloria Estefan, and David Letterman serving in that role. There was never a politician among them.
Guess who is going to be the master of ceremonies for the weekend’s events?
I’ve been asked to host. I said, I’m the president of the United States. Are you fools asking me to do that? Sir, you’ll get much higher ratings. I said I don’t care. I’m president of the United States, I won’t do it. They said, please … so I have agreed to host.
Perhaps this is how it will be for the next three KC Honors. The very nature of the Kennedy Center seems to be changing, as does the definition of great art within the national consciousness. Consumer culture appears to be dictating much of what is in the discourse of our time.
Politics should have no place in determining what we see or hear at the Kennedy Center. It should be the beacon for the arts that its founders intended, and those arts must be allowed to grow, in keeping with freedom of expression.
As George Bernard Shaw said, “You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not’?”
August 18, 2025
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See you next month,
Leonard