October 17, 2017

Meet Thomas Ludwig of Ludwig Symphony Orchestra and Beethoven Chamber Orchestra

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Thomas Ludwig.

Thomas, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I began violin studies at the age of four and attended the Juilliard School Of Music in New York City. I was the youngest musical director of the New York City Symphony and conducted at 24 for Mikhail Baryshnikov in Swan Lake at the Metropolitan Opera House, American Ballet Theatre and recorded my first symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios in London. I was also an adjunct professor of music at American University in Washington, D.C.

For twenty years, I conducted internationally and had my symphony for strings premiered in Florence, Italy. My most recent guest conducting was with the Cairo Symphony in the Cairo Opera House in Egypt on an island in the middle of the Nile River. I began my life in Atlanta as music director of the Atlanta Ballet Orchestra and as my family grew to three young children, I decided to start my own orchestra for them to play in and as a training orchestra for other young students. The Ludwig Symphony Orchestra grew in twenty years to be an eighty-piece orchestra that featured international prize-winning soloists as well as local talent. We kept a training orchestra that has grown into a very high standard Beethoven Chamber Orchestra.

Has it been a smooth road?
I don’t mean to sound overly dramatic, but building an orchestra is a 24/7 job. Every musician’s loyalty is won over one person at a time. Building a non-profit board of directors with bench strength is a challenge in itself. I have worn many hats-from chairman of the board, music director and conductor, volunteer coordinator, librarian, PR manager, janitor, union contractor, financial reports, strategic planner, to whatever it takes to keep the orchestra going. There are no excuses when you are in charge. One concert at the Roswell Cultural Arts Center had me personally sell four hundred tickets through the phone. Gradually, we have built up first-rate board members who actually want to work and do what their responsibilities are. (Many non-profits have people on the board that fall into the category of resume enhancers, drama queens, and do nothing.) Our volunteers are very reliable and hardworking people. And most importantly, all the musicians are in it to enjoy and play great music and they work in a harmonious way sometimes even sacrificing the time and money to help us to success.

One of the biggest struggles has been to find a home. The mid-size concert halls such as Gwinnett Center and Roswell Cultural Arts Center are solidly booked and to find even a single day on a good concert Saturday night is challenging. One time, I hurt my foot when a platform fell on it just before the concert. It was excruciatingly painful. I smiled and walked out and conducted for the next two and a half hours. I took my shoe off only when I arrived home. It took ten months to heal. Of course, the point is that if you believe in something, you must be able to endure even physical pain. Even more painful, was having a wonderful concert prepared for Gwinnett Center and with a budget of $25,000.00 for the single evening-walking out and seeing only one hundred people in the audience. It made me think and aggressively change our marketing strategy and then we had our first completely sold out concert with two hundred standbys in the parking lot unable to get in!

We’d love to hear more about your business.
The Ludwig Symphony Orchestra is an eighty-piece orchestra that features international prize-winning soloists that have come from Israel, Cairo, Tokyo, Germany, China, Italy and all over the world. For example-we have featured Bin Huang-first prize winner of the Paganini International Violin Competition and Victor Goldberg- prize-winning pianist in Tel Aviv. I am most proud of the local talent that never gets a chance in this town that we have given a chance such as Ryan Smith-tenor, Leah McRath-soprano, Sophia Ho-violinist, and Gary Motley-jazz pianist. Our programs are high energy with multiple soloists and always unexpected surprises. Amanda Davis from Fox5 Tv guest conducted a Strauss Polka in a mermaid dress. Jerry Glanville, coach of the Atlanta Falcons, once guest conducted demonstrating his ballet moves. We once had a mariachi band from Mexico come on stage with a horse singing LaBomba. And yet-David Elliott of Harvard University Radio Station WHRB in Boston described the ensemble as “an orchestra that performs to an astonishingly high standard”. The Beethoven Chamber Orchestra, primarily forty strings, performs in many different local venues and has featured over three hundred student soloists over the past twenty years. Our YouTube video of Moussorgsky-Night on Bald Mountain outranks the New York Philharmonic with over 210,000 views internationally.

Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Atlanta is a perfect city because it is wide open and ripe for development in the arts. There is only one problem. The major patrons of the arts and corporate sponsors only take the Woodruff Arts Center and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra seriously. Smaller local groups are given token financial support. I try to persuade Atlantans to take a page from the great city of London, England which has five major orchestras all competing successfully-the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, the Philharmonia, and the London Philharmonic. This provides a far greater range of concerts and variety as well-they are much more responsive to local musicians. You can actually walk in off the street in London and hire any one of these fabulous orchestras to do a concert.

Over the past twenty years, we have raised over one million dollars for the operations of the Ludwig Symphony Orchestra. The most substantial gifts of twenty and thirty thousand dollars have come from private-generous individuals. In contrast, the Southern Company gave us $500. one year. To me, this is simply not serious philanthropy. The other area that needs improvement is in the rental policies of the Arts Halls themselves. To build an orchestra you need to be able to plan at least five years ahead. Yet, many of these Arts Centers will not roll over the dates that you successfully use in one season to the next season. The great Schwartz Center of Emory University has no rental policy and many of the other venues operate in the dark with politics always ruling the final decisions as to dates given to outside groups.

To sum up, the two main areas that Atlanta can improve in are first, to develop clear rental policy guidelines for the arts centers and second, for patrons and corporate sponsors to think outside the box and join in the vision of worthy local arts groups.

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