Witness to History: Susan Gould on Her Role as President of the Volunteer Committees and Director of Major Gifts

Above: Wolfgang Sawallisch and Susan Gould

By Judith Kurnick

Susan Gould has had her share of “wow” moments. As a former president of the Philadelphia Orchestra Volunteer Committees (1994–97), and the Orchestra’s director of major gifts from 1997 to 2009, she organized groups of patrons to accompany the Orchestra on tour.

“I remember going to Tokyo, where Maestro Sawallisch was a star. The head of Sony was a close friend of his, and we would go into the hall and everyone would be thrilled. We went to China, the first trip that Lang Lang took back to China [after having moved to Philadelphia to study at the Curtis Institute]. There were 10,000 people in the Great Hall of the People. It was a mob scene, babies in arms and grandparents.”

When the Orchestra performed in Madrid, she brought a patron group to the main home of the Duchess of Alba. “The family were longstanding royals,” Gould explains. “The curator showed us around, and the furnishings were exquisite: porcelains and portraits including Goyas. Then we got down to the main floor, to the library. What we saw was just jaw-dropping. They had Christopher Colombus’s original diary of his trip to the New World. They had the first edition of the first printing of Don Quixote. They had Ferdinand and Isabella’s will. It was mind blowing.”

Experiences like this were only possible because of the Orchestra’s reputation, Gould notes. “Everybody wanted to be a part of it, to do whatever they could to make our stays exciting. I always thought to myself, if only we could bottle the reactions from the audiences around the world, where our Orchestra members were treated like Hollywood stars. It was amazing. If we could bottle that and bring it back to Philadelphia, and say ‘this is the treasure you have, please support it.’”

Gould loved getting to know the performers. In both her volunteer and staff roles, she worked with Sawallisch and remained close with him after his wife died. Maestro Eschenbach was helpful on several visits to donors. “He has a great sense of humor,” Gould notes. At one of cellist Yo-Yo Ma’s performances with the Orchestra, “I noticed that a lot of parents had brought their children. At the end of the concert, we had a reception upstairs in the [Academy of Music] Ballroom. He was amazing with the kids, the parents, and the autographs. He didn’t leave until the last person left the Ballroom. He’s an extraordinary person as well as a beautiful cellist. He really made a mark on me.”

And then there are the musicians of the Orchestra. As a member of the fundraising staff, “One thing that I was intent upon,” she said, “was making sure that more chairs were endowed. So I really worked hard to match up the donor’s gift with the right musician. Without the Orchestra members, what would we be?”

That was once also true of the Volunteers, formerly the Women’s Committees. “The Volunteers,” she notes, “had a history of periodically saving the Orchestra, marching in the streets, with their campaigns to support The Philadelphia Orchestra. The tradition was there. And I was lucky to know a lot of the older members of those committees.”

Yet Gould also faced her share of challenges. Her first brush with the Volunteers took her by surprise. Raised in Dallas, she came from a long family tradition of volunteering. When she moved to Philadelphia’s Chestnut Hill neighborhood with her husband, she picked up the Chestnut Hill Local newspaper. “I saw something about a meeting of the Chestnut Hill Committee for The Philadelphia Orchestra, and I thought, “Aha, that’s what I’d like to do. My mother was a violinist who played with the Dallas Symphony and my father’s nephew was a conductor. Music has always been important to me.”

When Gould called the person listed in the newspaper and said she was new to Philadelphia, “there was dead silence. The woman said to me, ‘It’s by invitation.’ I was really taken aback. I’m from Texas where it’s ‘Y’all come,’ you know? But to her credit, the woman said, ‘Look, we have a luncheon every year in the Academy of Music Ballroom. Why don’t you come and meet some of the people?’ So I did, and the rest was history.”

During Gould’s tenure as president, she had to cope with one of the most painful situations in Orchestra history. “We had heard rumblings that the musicians were considering a work stoppage. We asked that it not be on Opening Night, because the events on that night were one of our biggest fundraisers and we didn’t want our patrons and donors to have to cross a picket line.” Yet she had to plan for the worst. “Where could we move the benefactors’ dinner? We realized that the Franklin Institute was the only place that could accommodate the numbers. At the time, Steve Poses’s Frog Commissary was the exclusive caterer there, but our own caterer would not let us out of our contract. So, I went to visit Steve, and I said, ‘We don’t know if this is going to happen or not. But would you be willing to share your kitchen?’ And to his eternal credit, Steve said, ‘Of course.’ So we planned a ghost party there, just in case.” That was where the dinner was held on the first night of what turned out to be a nine-week strike.

Gould served on a post-strike task force that helped improve musician-management communications, a perfect role for someone who treasures those relationships, even long after her tenure. “I stay in touch as much as I can. I really appreciated my time with the Orchestra. It was a wonderful opportunity, a great moment.”