The Joy of Commissioning

by Linda L Hoeschler, 2022

Jack Hoeschler was always interested in the new and different. Any premiere. Any artform. Any event.

When we began dating in DC in 1962, and after attending a few Juilliard String Quartet concerts at the Library of Congress, he remarked: “You just don’t want to listen to that old stuff.” Thereupon, we attended every possible premiere of works by Xenakis, Stockhausen, Cage etc. If a premiere happened in DC and, later, in NYC, we were probably there.

Jack tuned my ears. I thought I was the NY sophisticate, but somehow, this small-city boy from La Crosse, Wisconsin opened my eyes and ears to a world of the experimental, the untried, the daring…and sometimes, the terrible! This education by Jack, with Jack, served me well when I began working for the Twin Cities papers as a freelance music, dance and art critic. Other critics preferred reviewing things they had already heard before, so I got tossed the premieres. To prepare, I gave myself a pretty good education, finding the scores in music journals or listening to a boot-legged recording. My freelance writing parlayed into a job at Dayton Hudson Foundation as its Arts Grants coordinator. One of my earlier grants was to the Minnesota (now American) Composers Forum, founded by Stephen Paulus and Libby Larsen.

Through our singing with the Bach Society from 1969 to 1975, Jack and I met most of our closest, lifelong Twin Cities friends. Among them were Gloria and Fred Sewell, who commissioned Stephen Paulus to write a delightful work for their daughter, Laura, to mark her 21st birthday. This creative endeavor inspired us to ask Stephen Paulus to write a piece for our 15th wedding anniversary (Courtship Songs, 1981). We slowly started a pattern, commissioning Paulus to mark our subsequent landmark anniversary with Partita, (1986); as our confidence and pocketbook grew, we sought out a talented cluster of composers to write new works every year, then several times a year. Eventually we commissioned four-score plus pieces, including works we co-commissioned with Minnesota Commissioning Club that Jack founded in 1990.

The Club, about which you can read in another section, was initiated by Jack on the model of an investment club. For a number of years people would ask how they might commission, and we’d lay out the process, but with no results. So Jack decided we’d form a group that would commission new works, one couple at a time taking the lead. This club has been a modest model of artists’ support throughout the country, and while we residual members proclaim it’s time to quit, we somehow keep on going…

By the way, my most recent commission, which thrilled Jack, is “Pavane” by Janika Vandervelde, for cello and piano. It premieres at Jack’s funeral on August 22, 2022, one of my final gifts to my beloved husband.