South Bend Symphony elects first Black board president

SOUTH BEND — Marvin V. Curtis has kept busy since his retirement as dean of Indiana University South Bend’s Raclin School of the Arts.

He currently serves on several organizations’ boards of directors and, in April, he started a new job as the Venues Parks & Arts department’s Arts Equity & Public Art Coordinator at the Morris Performing Arts Center.

Since July 1, his schedule’s gotten a little fuller with the start of his two-year term as president of the South Bend Symphony Orchestra’s board, where he had most recently been vice president.

For the orchestra, it was a historic appointment: The composer, conductor and music educator is the first African American to hold the board president’s position in the SBSO’s 91-year history.

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“I think Marvin makes a ton of sense as a board president, whether he’s Black or not,” SBSO Executive Director Justus Zimmerman said. “That being said, I think it’s symptomatic of broader changes at the symphony. We used to have one board member who was Black, or none. Going into this year, we’re up to 25%.”

Curtis has been instrumental in making those “broader changes” possible as the board’s chair of the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion committee that the SBSO formed after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020.

“Change has to happen at the core,” Zimmerman said about the SBSO’s EDI initiative. “It can’t change that much until an organization’s leadership changes. It’s just a Band-Aid if you start at the lower or hourly levels of an organization.”

But, he said, Curtis’ election — and the appointment of the SBSO’s first Asian American, Cindy Gretschmann, to the board — aren’t “box checking” and instead represent finding the “right people” who happen to “come from diverse backgrounds.”

“I hope it sends a strong signal to the community, not just the Black community but the whole community,” Curtis said, “that we are an inclusive organization.”

‘Dream big’

Curtis has collaborated with the SBSO almost since right after he arrived in South Bend in August 2008 to become dean of IUSB’s Raclin School of the Arts.

His work with the SBSO has included co-founding the orchestra’s Martin Luther King Day Concert with then-SBSO Music Director Tsung Yeh in 2010 and spearheading the establishment of the SBSO’s annual Día de los Muertos concert and festival, as well as serving on the board for several years leading up to now.

Curtis also serves as president of the St. Joseph County Public Library’s board of directors, 100 Black Men of Greater South Bend and Uzima Drum and Dance, as well as being a board member and the EDI liaison at The History Museum, serving on the board for the Rotary Club of South Bend, and conducting the South Bend Symphonic Choir.

“I’m busier than I should be, but I’m having a good time doing it,” Curtis said. “As you know, nothing stops me.”

His relationship with the SBSO, his years as a dean at IUSB, his perspective as a musician and his civic leadership on several other boards in South Bend, Zimmerman said, add up to a “mix that’s complex” and that made Curtis’ unanimous election an obvious choice for the board.

“He’s more steeped in orchestral and choral music than any other board member,” the executive director said about Curtis’ background as a musician.

Curtis has big dreams for what the SBSO can accomplish during his two-year term as president of its board.

“I’d like to see us do a CD,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be cool if we won a Grammy Award? I’m just dreaming, but I dream big.”

That impulse to dream big, Zimmerman said, is one of many qualities he and the board admired about Curtis when they elected him president.

“I think that’s what you want from a board president,” he said. “He’s not taking over a sinking ship. We want to dream big. We want to know what’s possible or almost possible.”

‘We have to make it exciting’

For the foreseeable future, Curtis plans to continue as the SBSO’s EDI committee chair, work that he sees as tied to a broader campaign to expand the SBSO’s audience across all demographics.

“Symphonies are different than they were 15 years ago,” he said. “If they don’t change, they won’t survive. … In a city that’s 25% African American and 15% Hispanic, our repertoire has to represent that.”

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For him, one duty of the board is to get all people to understand what an orchestra does and how it relates to their lives.

“It’s educating people about what’s out there,” Curtis said. “Because of the lack of arts funding in schools, a lot of young people don’t know what a symphony is.”

Beyond making an album, Curtis has other ideas aimed at expanding the orchestra’s audience and reach in the community, including offering the text of the SBSO’s programs in Spanish and embracing other genres of music without forsaking the classical repertoire.

“From hip-hop to jazz to exposing people to composers of different backgrounds,” he said, “it’s about expanding the orchestra’s visibility and repertoire to include all types of music. … Why would 20- and 30-year-olds come to the symphony? We have to make it exciting.”

Email Tribune staff writer Andrew S. Hughes at ahughes@sbtinfo.com.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Black composer becomes South Bend Symphony's board president. A first.