Back when I was writing for a local newspaper, and back in the bad old days when it looked like the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra was going to become as extinct as the Yangtze river dolphin, I used to ponder who Randy Adams most looked like: James Brolin (as when he appeared against type in the great indie flick Gas, Food, Lodging) or James Garner (I was thinking of Garner in the Murphy’s Romance era).
Randy is the outgoing President and Executive Director of the SLSO, who came on at a time when the sanity of the person who took the job had to be seriously in question. Randy told the staff, in a general staff meeting yesterday, that when he first presented his plan to save the SLSO from bankruptcy to the board of trustees, E. Desmond Lee – whose philanthropic ventures in this city are well known – asked him, in Lee’s blunt Missouri way, “What have you been smokin’?”
Whatever it was -- crazily, miraculously, doggedly – it had its effect. As Randy will be the first to remind anyone, “We’re not out of the woods yet,” but at least the organization isn’t lost in those woods, as it once appeared to be. Randy regained the confidence of donors and raised money in ways the SLSO, and hardly anybody else, had ever seen. He knew nothing about the artistic side of things, and was always the first to admit it, and yet, the 128th season of the SLSO will soon begin with a bright, ecstatic work by Christopher Rouse, Vadim Repin playing the Sibelius Violin Concerto, and Stravinsky’s Petrushka, with David Robertson conducting. You can say Randy has nothing to do with that. You can say Randy has everything to do with that.
Randy was feted with a surprise lunch with the staff in the Powell Hall foyer, with some pretty good barbecue at that. He came around and thanked us all for lunch. And I thought, Brolin, definitely.
