This week in “Minnesotans with cool jobs”: Avital Rabinowitz was recently named the new director of Rochester Civic Music, which, yes, is a job that exists! In her new role, she supervises the City of Rochester’s many municipal musical endeavors, most of which are free outdoor concerts (Down by the Riverside, Global Music Series, etc.). She succeeds Steven Schmidt, who held the position for 32 years (and talked music with Simone Cazares for The Current in 2017).

Before Rabinowitz moved down to Rochester, she produced audio and managed projects for YourClassical, which shares a parent company and a floor of an office with The Current. I’ve admired her work for years, which just made me more excited for her and the City of Rochester when I heard the news. Here are some highlights from our conversation about her new job.

Hello! So, how did you gain the credentials to be a director of Civic Music?

Well, my undergraduate degree is in music. I went to Barnard College [of] Columbia University in New York, which is a small, all-women's liberal arts college. I specialized in historical musicology — music history —and specifically 19th-century Italian opera. When I was in college, I interned at the Metropolitan Opera in their media department, working on their radio broadcasts.

I ended up leaving New York and moving back to Minneapolis, where my family is from, and I went to the University of Minnesota and got a master's degree in arts and cultural leadership.

And from there, I started working in MPR. I started at Performance Today as an intern. And over the course of about a decade, I ended up being a producer for SymphonyCast, national classical programming, doing all that great stuff. Recently, I got an MBA from Capella University during the pandemic while pregnant.

Why an MBA?

I love learning new things and keeping busy intellectually, so I thought during the pandemic, when all we were doing was staying home and working — not that that isn't a lot to do — but I wanted a new challenge. So I decided to to do the MBA, thinking at that point in my life, it was do it now or forever hold your peace.

Wow. Day to day, what do you do as the director of Civic Music? 

One of the things I love most about my job is I'm not quite sure what I'm going to be doing from day to day. I am responsible for the overall functioning of the department: everything from overseeing finances to working with our city partners and our external partners. But especially when we have concerts happening, I'm doing things like talking with my colleague Paul [Atkins] and learning about meteorology, and how the National Weather [Service] works. “Do we anticipate that that storm is going to come through?”

I also emcee all of our live events. I'll get up, and I'll welcome folks to the concert. And sometimes we do fundraising — we have a bucket brigade for freewill offerings at some of our concerts. Music Board members and I will don these teal aprons and our ice cream buckets, then we go out into the crowd, and we chat with folks and solicit their donations, anything from handful a change to a $20 bill. And that's money we use to support the programming throughout the year.

What programming do you and your team offer?

We have some core programming, which is really, really excellent. There's the forWARD Neighborhood Park Concert series, which is our newest music series. Rochester is divided into six wards — different neighborhoods around the city — and each ward has a council member who serves on city council, plus [there's] an at-large president. For the forWARD series, each ward has one concert in a local park. The respective council member for that ward comes on stage with me and introduces themselves to the crowd, just to familiarize folks with the ward system and also the park system and also Civic Music. People bring their lawn chairs and coolers and just kind of sit and enjoy the show. They're smaller, more intimate concerts — a more indie sound, typically — but a variety of performers, a diversity of performers, all headlined by local artists from the southeastern Minnesota region, the 11-county SEMAC region.

Also, the Down by the Riverside program. That's one of the oldest, most established and beloved programs we have. That's our big free series that takes place at Mayo Park, sponsored by Think Bank.

For the Global Music Series, we bring in artists from around the nation and the world to do performances, both for adults and for children, in various venues. We just recently had Doctor Nativo from Guatemala. People were dancing. We had a great turnout.

And how could I forget: 4th Fest, which we just had! That was a day-long slate of concerts, leading up to fireworks at 10 o'clock.

[Writer’s note: Upcoming Civic Music shows include Mavis Staples on July 24, En Vogue on Aug. 7, Jason Bonham’s Led Zeppelin Evening on Aug. 14, Good Morning Bedlam on Aug. 17, PaviElle on Aug. 24, and Kokou Kah on Aug. 31.]

How many people are working on putting all this on?

We're a team of four. We're a very small, very nimble team. Everyone wears multiple hats. Sometimes we're having two or three concerts a week.

And that includes booking, marketing, figuring out who's going to put up the stage and take it down? All of it?

Yes. Everything. We do work with a number of outside vendors, for sound and for the stage. But there's still all the coordination — Paul, our Production and [Community] Outreach Coordinator extraordinaire, handles all of those logistics. But yeah, the team does everything from booking acts, advancing the show, doing the contracts, selling merchandise, coordinating food vendors, and everything on the day of the show. I mean, it's a really huge, huge production for four people, and they do it all exceptionally well and with a lot of grace.

I know that this department has been around for a long time now, but do you have a sense of why the City of Rochester believes this is important to fund and to support?

Yeah, I think the legacy goes back to the Mayo brothers and the idea that the arts are important to well-being. It was a civic priority. And Civic Music has gone through a number of evolutions — there used to be a concert band. There used to be different relationships with the [Rochester] Symphony and some other organizations, but it has evolved into what it is today over many, many decades.

But yeah, it is my job and the job of this department to create events that build community. How fantastic is that?

You mentioned the Mayo brothers, who co-founded the world-renowned Mayo Clinic. Is it possible to overstate how important the Mayo is for Rochester?

No. Mayo is the largest employer in the state of Minnesota, in terms of employing Minnesotans. Not just Rochester, but the state. It’s a huge, huge, huge part of the city, culturally and in every other way. And I will say Mayo Clinic sponsors our forWARD Neighborhood Park concert series, which is fantastic. But yeah, Mayo is is a huge influence on the city here. I have to say, as a mom, it's reassuring. Should anything really terrible happen, you've got the world's best hospital system right here.

When did you move from Minneapolis to Rochester?

I moved down to Rochester in April. My very first day of work was February 28. And on February 28, after my first day of work, I met with the home inspector to do the inspection on the house that we had put an offer in on.

Wow. How was the housing search?

We were searching during an off period — in February — and we were extremely fortunate in that we found a house that we loved, we put in an offer, and it was accepted. We were fortunate that I could get down here as quickly as possible, because I wanted to be settled before our summer season started. And because in working with such a small team, it was really important to me to be down here and to be physically present when I started, and not telecommuting.

How would you describe the culture musically of Rochester?

With the caveat that I am still very new to Rochester: I have been told — and I can see based upon Civic Music's programming, historically and currently — Rochester is a really diverse market, musically. That is why as Civic Music, we present a wide variety of different genre and styles of music, because there isn't any one "Rochester sound."

In your opinion, what are some of the challenges that Rochester is facing, both as a city and with regard to music and cultural programming?

I think one of the challenges, of course, is Rochester is growing as a city. And that means a lot of change, intentional or unintentional. Choosing how to shape that change is an exciting opportunity, but it's also a challenge, in a lot of ways.

For music and cultural programming, there are a lot of arts and cultural organizations here doing incredible work, but getting the word out to the public is always the biggest challenge. So my hope is that Civic Music can be of assistance to amplify both our offerings and the other offerings of other arts organizations locally.