Page 8 - Tribute program full book

She moved from Washington, D.C. to the Berkshires in the fall of 1985 and applied for a
job with the Boston Symphony Orchestra with the hope of working at Tanglewood. In-
stead, she said, the position they offered would have kept her in Boston. “I didn’t want to
live in Boston,” she said.

She wound up Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival instead, where she went to work in January
1986 as a development assistant. She moved up a notch in the department when her boss
quit. “I was perfectly green,” she said with a laugh.

She had been at the Pillow two years when, she said, “Berkshire Museum came knocking at
my door,” offering her a job as development director. In addition to development director,
over the course of her nine-plus years at the museum, she served twice as interim director/
co-director. Then, in 1996, the long-sought opportunity with the Boston Symphony mate-
rialized. Wilson was named director of Tanglewood Annual Funds and Community Rela-
tions, a position she held for seven years when then-Berkshire Music School president Joan
McFalls tapped her for the school’s top job. Words on a yearbook page turned to reality.

“I wanted the school to be a success,” Wilson said. “I wanted to steer the ship and wel-
comed the opportunity to be in charge.”

Wilson’s goals were to make the school financially stable; ramp up faculty recitals; bolster
the school’s annual appeal; and expand programming. Before she could accomplish any of
that, she had to deal with the fact that many people “did not know about the school, even
though we have been around since 1940, nor its location. So, I started to tell people that
the Berkshire Museum (which fronts South Street and backs up to BMS’ Taft Recital Hall)
is behind the music school,” she said in her email.

“Also, so many people thought the school taught only classical music, which it pretty much
did but dance, one level of cabaret, and music theater were offered when I started. So from
the beginning, I knew I needed to be the school’s number one cheerleader, diversify the
offerings, and get the school more involved in the community.”

She’s done that. Operating on an annual budget of $550,000, the school — which is on
temporary hiatus during this coronavirus pandemic — offers its 250 students private and
group lessons in piano, jazz piano, electric keyboard. sight-singing, percussion, voice, vi-
olin, brass, winds, theory, composition; classes and workshops in guitar, music for young-
sters between the ages of 1 and 3 ; onstage performance for teens and pre-teens, and caba-
ret. There also are classes for various instrumental ensembles, all taught after public school
hours by a faculty of 35, two-thirds of whom are Wilson hires. Community outreach has,
in many ways, been Wilson’s most satisfying accomplishment. She estimates the school
has reached anywhere between 2,000 and 3,000 people through an association with Berk-
shire County Arc, which serves children and adults with intellectual and developmental
disabilities, and a variety of what Wilson calls “fabulous events — think Painted Violin
Project; Painted Piano Project; Evening at Elm Court; two events at Blantyre; two concerts
by John Pizzarelli; concerts by Joey Silverstein, and by MiDori; 75th anniversary Gala at
Colonial Theatre; 65th anniversary gala at Model Farm ... “ she said in the email.

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