Working from the Heartland

Jack Zimmerman
Public Relations, The Ravinia Festival
Highland Park, Illinois

The big concerts take place in the 3,300-seat Pavilion and the surrounding lawns. But Jack Zimmerman likes to stand just inside the entry gate on the steps of the lovely old Martin Theatre to watch the crowd come bursting in, racing for each one's favorite spot on the grass. Coolers, blankets, picnic baskets, all are handily hoisted in the last competitive sprint before a restful evening of listening to a concert in the soft summer night air. Jack watches every night as Ravinia fans stake out the one spot with just the right view and just the right acoustics. The competition is so fierce, he says, that one family actually hired the local high school track stars to race to their favorite position. That way the picnic paraphernalia can lumber along later.

While he certainly doesn't claim personal credit for the popularity of the Ravinia Festival -- after all, it's been a beloved summer music center since 1904 -- he certainly gets a lot of personal pleasure being affiliated with this park. The very park that informed his own musical life in his youth. After thrashing around, trying to find a place for himself in the world of music, Jack's at home. Pretty much right where he started.

"My life has been one of loving music," he says. "I grew up in a Lithuanian neighborhood where every kid wanted to be a jazz musician. Instead of playing baseball, we each had an instrument and would get together after school to try to copy the music we heard off records."

But even as a teenager, his tastes for jazz eventually parted company with his friends'. They were still enamored with Dixieland, but he had discovered Miles Davis and Thelonius Monk. A whole new world. So he would make his way alone all the way from Chicago 's south side to this beautiful park on the North Shore. A place called Ravinia. It held concerts of the jazz greats throughout the summer. And that teenager wouldn't miss it for the world. But in college the dream of being a jazz trombone player quickly gave way to a love of classical music -- the result of his first introduction to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Even though Ravinia was already well-established as a center for classical music, he hadn't run into it there. Yet. He had never heard a full orchestra until one evening in a high school auditorium in Quincy, Illinois. And his life was changed again.

"I heard the Chicago Symphony play the Sibelius Second and was totally knocked out," he says. "I decided right then that this is what I wanted to do. I had to do this. So I quit college, moved back to Chicago 's South Side and got a job loading trucks all night long. And on Friday afternoons, I studied with a guy who played trombone for the Chicago Symphony. I was never happier."

Every Friday afternoon for two years he attended a concert by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. And completed his degree at the Chicago Conservatory. He wanted to go on for his master's degree, but his mother, who respected music but didn't quite get it, thought it was time for him to start earning a living.

"The summer I graduated from college, my teacher gave me two tickets to a concert in Ravinia's Pavilion. So I took my mother. She was completely astounded at how beautiful the park looked, all the trees flowering and the lawn so green. Then we went into the Pavilion itself where they played the Brahms Second Symphony. Even if you don't know anything about music, if you sit down and watch 80 to 90 people play a Brahms symphony, you're impressed by it. These are people who have dedicated their lives to working together to bring you this one piece.

"We walked out of the Pavilion and my mother said simply, "Go, get that master's degree. I'll pay for it."

But that wasn't to be. The Viet Nam War and getting drafted in the Navy stood in the way. But still he played the trombone. The problem was, playing the trombone was hard work, the kind of hard work that comes from lacking the real gift, he says. After getting out of the Navy, he went to auditions upon auditions. And it became increasingly difficult to even come close to landing a job with an orchestra. Age takes its toll on a trombone player's potential.

"It took a terrific effort to play at even a mediocre level," he says. "One day the New York Philharmonic had an opening for a bass trombone. So I flew to New York and checked into the hotel across the street from Lincoln Center. The hotel clerk said, 'Hey! A trombone player! I used to be a trombone player!' And I said, 'I have a feeling that I'm going to be saying that myself pretty soon, too.'

"Then he asked me who my favorite player is. Jack Teagarden, I answered. His too. 'I'll tell you what, I'll give you a room for $14.' Can you imagine that? A New York hotel room for $14?" But the audition was a disaster, and the next day he ignored the New York wisdom against leaving one's instrument in the hotel room. It didn't really matter to him one way or the other if the trombone was stolen.

Disastrous auditions and the fired Bozo Band combined to disenchant Jack with his heart's desire of building a life as a professional trombone player. Like a chain smoker who's had enough, he decided one day, at age 30, to just...quit.

"A couple of months later, I decided to set a date and quit," he says. "When you play an instrument like I did, you're a slave to that instrument. For me playing was never easy. It was hard all the time. It was always studied, never natural. And there were too many books I hadn't read, too many things I hadn't done. I had played for 15 years. I was done. It was time to move on and do other things."

But the next 15 years would be a frustrating life of finding the next thing -- never quite the right thing. He enjoyed most of the 11 years he spent tuning and restoring pianos. Until he learned to hate them, spending the last year depressed, staring out the window of his shop, and writing a novel that stays in a drawer even today.

But during that time, he began writing a column for a local newspaper, a column he continues to write today (and one that resulted in the book 10,000 Years in the Suburbs ). And the writing experience put him in line to edit a music magazine for three years, another job he learned to hate. And so began 11 months of unemployment, with the mornings beginning with his wife (who plays principal clarinet for the Lyric Opera) gently asking: "So what's the plan?"

The plan, he decided with resignation, was to get another marketable skill. And become a paralegal. Four months later, he finished his last class and had 700 resumes ready to be mailed out. That was Friday.

  But Sunday night he got a call from Jean Oelrich. She was head of public relations at Ravinia Festival and was just about to be promoted. So she needed someone to replace her in that position. Someone who knows and loves music. Someone who likes people. Someone who knows how to write. Only one person: Jack Zimmerman.

"I was elated beyond belief," he says. "And I didn't want to get too excited. When you're unemployed, you get down. A lot of things you try just don't work out, so I didn't want to get my hopes up only to be crushed again."

He walked into that meeting and the first words out of his mouth were: "I want this job." He got that job.

"When I was editing that magazine, I struck up a friendship with a PR man in South Carolina who represented the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He always told me I should be in public relations," he says. "So I called him soon after starting and I'll never forget what he told me: 'Boy you're in the tall cotton now.' I'm in the tall cotton every day."

So Jack is back in Ravinia, the summer home of the nation's best concert events; the place he had trekked as a solitary teenager; the place that opened his mother's eyes to the soul-stirring, life-changing effects of music; the place that still transforms picnickers into competitive sprinters. Looking back, Jack sees that all the jobs, the seeming false starts, were stepping stones to this job that was beyond the bounds of even his best dreams.

"When I was tuning pianos, I discovered I'm a very social person," he says. "I went nuts working alone all the time. So I learned something very important about myself. I had the magazine job that made me unhappy. But if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have the experience and contacts that brought me this job.

"And the trombone, it was the most important part of what brings me here," he says. "I have some idea of what it takes to be a musician. I appreciate the amount of work and commitment required to be a professional musician. These are people who think enough about music to do their best at all times. It's so inspiring to be around these people!"

In retrospect, he had no way of knowing he was building a life's work that would be so immensely rewarding as representing his beloved Ravinia Festival to the public and to the media. Step by step the choices he made led him away from the career that he thought was his dream to the job that would actually be his dream come true.

"I believe in changes in life," he says. "You see so many people do things just because they've always done them. They go through the motions. Once that happens, it's time to go. You really should move on.

"I know it's hard to move on, but it's harder to stay. Why would you stay and do the same thing over and over again when there's no magic in it?"

Copyright 2005 by Martha Finney. All rights reserved.