Maybe you think about things like this; maybe you don’t. From the time you first heard about tonight’s performance to this moment, as you sit in your seat waiting for the curtain to rise, someone has been responsible for managing every aspect of your experience. Every detail has been considered and pre-planned in the attempt to assure your gratification. For more than 20 years, a few key people have been working to enhance your enjoyment of events here in Louisville. One of these, Kim Baker (nee Thomas), began her career in the programming department of The Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts and, over the past two decades, has worked at Louisville Gardens and managed the Iroquois Amphitheater and the W. L. Lyons Brown Theatre (nee Macauley). Now Senior Vice President of External Affairs at The Kentucky Center, Ms. Baker is charged with helping the Center achieve its broader goals within the community. Along with the Center’s president, Stephen Klein, and its board and staff, she spends her days making sure your individual experience at each venue managed by the Center is the best it can be.
SD: How long did you work at The Kentucky Center before you moved to Louisville Gardens?
KB: I worked here for a couple of years. It was great because I got a broad exposure to all the things The Kentucky Center presents. At that time, the Lonesome Pine Specials were still around. We also did classical music through the Bingham Endowed Series. It was the best first job anybody could have.
SD: That was a great time.
KB: It was incredible, coming out of the arts administration degree program at University of Kentucky, to be able to land in that job, in that department, here at the Center. As you said, I did eventually move to Louisville Gardens, which at the time was managed by The Kentucky Center.
SD: There weren’t nearly as many available venues in the early nineties as there are now.
KB: No. Louisville Palace wasn’t open, so any show under 5,000 people that didn’t go to Whitney Hall came to that facility. We had everything from rock concerts to ice shows.
SD: The Louisville Orchestra was doing their SuperPops series at Louisville Gardens at the time too.
KB: Yes – we saw Bernadette Peters, Rosemary Clooney, Michael Feinstein, Barry Manilow…great Pops concerts.
SD: When did you decide that arts administration appealed to you as a career path?
KB: I started as a classical musician, studying flute. It’s a good thing I went into management. My father was very happy.
SD: Yes, parents get a little nervous when you tell them you’re planning a career in the arts.
KB: But it was great. I worked at the Singletary Center in Lexington with their program series, so I started pretty early.
SD: Zan Sawyer-Daily (Actors Theatre) and I talked about this last month. She studied in the seventies, but there still weren’t very many arts administration degrees available twenty years later.
KB: No, and undergrad programs were scarcer still. UK was one of a handful of schools to offer it to undergraduates. The program has really grown, and their plans include offering a master’s degree soon.
SD: That’s really changing the way arts management is done. In the past, most of us started as performers and acquired the skills we needed on the job. Today, young people are taking a much more scientific approach.
KB: That’s true. There are specialties now in the degree programs. My specialty back then was marketing. Today’s graduates are not generalists.
SD: Some of that is probably motivated by the changes in how the arts are funded today. It has become a much more democratic model that relies somewhat less on a few very wealthy individuals to support it for the rest of us. I am sure that affects programming as well.
KB: One of the reasons I really love working for The Kentucky Center is the wide range of programming. Some of it is very commercial. But we are always looking for what the community needs to have a well-rounded arts scene. We consider what is not ibeing offered anywhere else. The programming here is very diverse because of those considerations.
SD: Diversity is its own issue. After all, you want people from the entire community to come.
KB: That’s right, and what’s wonderful about the Kentucky Center Presents series is that we do work with presenters throughout the community. We work with people like Billy Hardison at Production Simple to bring in groups like The National. We have formed a successful partnership with the IdeaFestival.
SD: For how long has The Kentucky Center been partnering with the IdeaFestival?
KB: A few years ago our director of programming, Dan Forte, found a lot of opportunities to work with the founder of the IdeaFestival, Kris Kimmel. Dan looked for those artists who were really on the cutting edge and doing innovative things. Over the past couple of years, that partnership has grown and The Kentucky Center is now the official home of the IdeaFestival.
SD: Was last year the first time the Center hosted the festival?
KB: We had events scheduled here before that, but last year was the first time they took over the entire building. And this year we did even more cross-promotion and a greater number of presentations selected with the goals of IdeaFestival in mind.
SD: Such as?
KB: We brought in the Diavolo Dance Company, a group that explores human interaction with space and environment.
SD: What are some of the things coming up in the next couple of months that you find exciting?
KB: How much time do you have? One of the things I’m excited about is that the Center is back in the business of presenting large classical orchestras. Our president, Stephen Klein, has spent many years working for the National Symphony Orchestra and he has brought his influence to bear. So for the first time in over a decade, The Kentucky Center will present a major orchestra when the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra makes its debut. Pavel Kogan, the music director and chief conductor, is coming with them, so it’s really going to be a great performance.
SD: Louisville Orchestra is one of your resident arts groups. How does Rob Birman feel about you presenting another orchestra?
KB: He understands that if you bring in great orchestras from around the world, you’re sparking interest in classical music, and that certainly is something the Louisville Orchestra wants. We engage in a number of collaborations with the Orchestra throughout the season.
SD: Does it ever become a challenge to present what you feel the community needs while still protecting the interests of those resident companies?
KB: That hasn’t really been much of an issue. One of the things that has happened recently that we’re thrilled about is that Billboard magazine ranked the Center No. 9 in the world for venues seating 5,000 and fewer.
SD: What is that ranking based on?
KB: It’s based on gross earnings. We received that recognition because we are so busy. Our stages are constantly filled and this community comes to see it all; they like to participate. We have very strong relationships with the arts groups in this community and we work things out. Communication is very open. For instance, on a Ballet program, you won’t see any of the repertoire presented by a company we bring in.
SD: I can also see where it would develop additional interest in a given art form that would help the producing companies overall.
KB: That’s right, and one of our niches is looking for what’s not happening in Louisville and bringing it to an exceptional venue.
SD: With all that is going on here, that’s not as easy a job as it would be in another city. I am proud to say again that Louisville is unique in the scope of our arts community when compared to U.S. cities of similar size.
KB: We see that in the national and international news. It goes beyond the performing arts to the visual arts. This is an exciting community to be in.
SD: Summers used to be kind of quiet here. Is that still the case?
KB: Not at all. Right now the Center is going through a lot of renovation, so the stages were a little quieter last summer. But it’s not quieter in terms of the work being done that is keeping the Center at the top of its game.
SD: Whitney Hall has been in that process for a good while now.
KB: We’re still about a year out to com-
pletion. There are many things – like refurbishing seats that are twenty-five years old – as well as a great deal of work that the public won’t see. One of our prime motivators is the sophistication of the Broadway touring companies. We have to have a facility that offers these shows what they need so we can get the biggest, first-run shows here. So we’re doing a lot of work with the steel in the ceiling, lighting and those kinds of things.
SD: What other upcoming shows can you tell us about?
KB: The Center will also present Get the Led Out, a Led Zeppelin show that had one of the strongest on-sales I’ve seen. I’m really excited about Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, which hasn’t been in the community for a very long time. It’s an all-male dance company that is classically trained, so they’re all en pointe and it’s really funny. People who see the Trocks, as they’re called, tell us it’s some of the most accessible dance out there. Everyone – kids, families – loves it. I’m really looking forward to “The Dying Swan” they do from Swan Lake. It’s hysterical! That will be at the Brown Theatre in February.
SD: Let’s talk about the Brown Theatre for a moment. The Kentucky Center manages this venue and it has been getting quite a bit more use in the past couple of years.
KB: When the Macauley was renovated and became the Brown, I managed the new space for the Center, so I have seen it in several iterations. It stays very busy these days and we do all kinds of things in it. A lot of Louisville Orchestra concerts take place there and Kentucky Opera uses it now for all their productions.
SD: How many seats?
KB: Fourteen hundred. It falls right between Whitney Hall and the Bomhard. It’s a great place to see performances.
SD: It is certainly a beautiful space.
KB: It’s gorgeous. The pit was recently enlarged and improved.
SD: You have also done a lot to improve the space for patrons. The Fifth Third Conference Center is there for pre-concert conversations, and the walkways from the Brown Garage are a big improvement.
KB: That’s one of the great things about this community. We listen to the patrons and respond. I think the walkway came about because the need was expressed. The rest room accessibility has been dramatically improved. There’s now an elevator to the balcony.
SD: You mentioned the diversity of programming at the Brown?
KB: Yes, we do a lot of indie rock concerts there. It’s a perfect size for that as well as for contemporary dance.
SD: You are one of the most confident people I know. What does it take to make you nervous?
KB: Not a lot around here. Truly, the staff here is so exceptional that I never get to that point. What gets to me are the things that are out of our control.
SD: Such as?
KB: Such as an artist who wants to take his or her time getting to the stage. Those kinds of artists usually have sold-out houses, and that exacerbates my anxiety. I enjoy watching an audience just love a performance. So if things start to go wrong and they seem unhappy or uncomfortable, that makes me really nervous.
SD: Some things you just have to deal with. You can do everything right and then along comes a blizzard.
KB: Well, there is that! We had the house sold out for Wicked and here comes the snow. The last time we had a big storm, we had a lot of no-shows the first night; the second night nobody had electricity so they all wanted to come! That was a great example of people using the arts to come together and escape for a little while.
SD: Your resident companies all sell tickets. Because of the diversity of programming at The Kentucky Center, do you package your shows the same way?
KB: Actually, we are one of the first performing arts centers in the country to do away with season tickets for our Kentucky Center Presents series.
SD: Why did you do that?
KB: We saw that buying habits were changing, and we recognized that diversity from season to season made it difficult to establish the sort of continuity that promotes season-ticket buying. Instead, we decided to focus on our membership program.
SD: What are the benefits of membership?
KB: You get the best seats for Kentucky Center Presents, a variety of discounts and beat-the-box-office ticket-buying opportunities, to name a few.
SD: I do want to point out that all of this is just spare change because the state pays for everything, right?
KB: There are a lot of misconceptions about The Kentucky Center, and that is one of the biggest! The state owns the facility and they give us a little money for programs we do, like the Governor’s School. They also offset some of the utilities. Everything else the Center has to raise.
SD: So The Kentucky Center is a nonprofit organization?
KB: Yes, and we have a dedicated Development Department always working to raise the money we need for our statewide mission.
SD: In addition to ticket sales?
KB: Yes, but ticket sales are just a portion of what we need.
SD: That’s another common misconception about all arts groups – ticket sales alone could never support the arts.
KB: That’s right. When you bring in a production like the Moscow State Orchestra, there is tremendous overhead involved. We would have to charge hundreds of dollars per seat to recover those costs. With Kentucky Center Presents, we always try to make our tickets really reasonable. People can come here for – on average – $35 to $40 per ticket.
SD: Have you seen a big fall-off because of the economy?
KB: You know, people need the arts now more than ever and we are seeing it. But people are still coming to shows and supporting us. I am thrilled that we are weathering the challenges – and there are challenges. But this community knows what it values, and they are really showing us that they value their Kentucky Center.
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For more information on all upcoming Kentucky Center Presents events, gift certificates, membership to The Kentucky Center or their access services for hearing, mobility and vision impaired patrons, go to their web site, www.kentuckycenter.org or call them at 502.562.0100.