CSHPE alum and UMS president emeritus Ken Fischer authors memoir on community impact of performing arts
 

Fischer, with Robin Lea Pyle, reflects on his three-decade tenure leading UMS, one of the country’s oldest arts presenters, and some of the most memorable events, people, and performances that together contributed to the organization being awarded the National Medal of Arts, the nation’s highest public artistic honor, in 2014. During his time at UMS, Fischer oversaw an ambitious campaign to expand and diversify programing, an initiative inspired by his philosophy toward promoting the arts, "Everybody In, Nobody Out." The approach not only deepened UMS’s engagement with the University of Michigan and Southeast Michigan communities, it led to exemplary partnerships with distinguished artists across the world. 

In a foreword to the book, internationally acclaimed trumpeter Wynton Marsalis writes about one of his own performances at UMS: "After Ken delivers some gracious, inspiring, and welcoming words, the audience is warmed up; you are up over wires onto a battleground to play away the blues of everyday life for a group of strangers, who are soon to become ‘one’ in pursuit of an elusive, but palpable mutual happiness. It is the ritual recreation of an event as ancient as storytelling. That concert remembers and foretells for artist and audience alike, what has meaning to us and what it means to be us. How that audience looks and feels, how it listens and responds, and how it discerns and assesses, is the heart of the matter. And, that tells you all you really need to know about the substance of your presenter’s aspirations." 

Under Fischer’s leadership, UMS hosted numerous breakthrough performances, including the Vienna Philharmonic’s final tour with Leonard Bernstein, appearances by then relatively unknown opera singer Cecilia Bartoli, a multiyear partnership with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and artists as diverse as Yo-Yo Ma, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Elizabeth Streb, and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Though peppered with colorful backstage stories of how these successes came to be, Everybody In, Nobody Out is neither a history of UMS nor just a memoir of Fischer’s significant accomplishments with the organization. Rather, it is a reflection on the power of the performing arts to engage and enrich communities—not by handing down cultural enrichment from on high, but by meeting communities where they live and helping them preserve cultural heritage, incubate talent, and find ways to make community voices heard.