“Mary Ann Feldman once said that talking about music was ‘the happiest thing’ she did,” writes Michael Anthony in last Monday’s (2/19) MinnPost (Minneapolis). “Mary Ann died Monday morning of complications from Alzheimer’s disease…. She was 85…. She wrote erudite and witty program notes for the Minnesota Orchestra for 33 years [1966-99] while serving as the orchestra’s principal speaker, which meant giving 60 speeches a year … most of them in the form of pre-concert talks at Orchestra Hall, a format she pioneered…. She earned a Ph.D. in music history from the University of Minnesota… As an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota … she wrote reviews for the Minnesota Daily using the name V.I. Olin…. In 1972, while attending a symposium on music criticism in Washington, D.C., she [entered] the all-male … Cosmos Club … via the back door in order to drink a martini with the composer and critic Virgil Thomson, who was a club member…. In 1999 Mary Ann retired from her several jobs at Orchestra Hall in order to devote herself to chronicling the orchestra’s history, putting its archive in order and conducting nearly 100 interviews on videotape of key people, all in preparation for the organization’s centennial in 2003.”
Posted February 26, 2019
