“A barely audible ‘Yes!’ went up from a half-dozen women at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s annual meeting at Symphony Center last month when Helen Zell was elected board chair,” writes Shia Kapos in Friday’s (11/20) Crain’s Chicago Business. “She’s the first woman to lead the board of the nearly 125-year-old orchestra…. She hopes to beef up CSO’s endowment, now at $282 million, and find new ways to generate revenue.… Zell’s passion for music began in her hometown of Baton Rouge, La., where her father was board chair of the city’s symphony orchestra…. She stopped studying piano as a teenager … and didn’t pick it up seriously again until about seven years ago, when a friend referred her to the late Deborah Sobol, a piano teacher who helped establish the Chicago Chamber Musicians and the symphony’s Rush Hour Concerts series. ‘She changed my life,’ says Zell, 73…. She also joined the CSO’s board…. Zell looks at her experience with music and worries about families that don’t incorporate it in their lives. If you’ve never played a musical instrument, she says, you might not encourage your child to pick one up. Or you may not understand the need to support orchestras.”
Posted November 23, 2015
