Windsor Symphony Orchestra Maestro Robert Franz discusses music, milestones, and beating cancer
Robert Franz remembers the day that changed his life. Eight years old, sitting in the music room of his public school, a teacher placed a cello in his hands. That day, Franz was taught to make sound—and it spoke to him. He went home with that cello, and when there, he sat on the end of his bed, and delved deeply into that storied instrument.
Headstock resting by his ear, his fingers wandered the neck of the cello, experiencing the friction of the stings and their tautness. He placed the bow upon the strings, between the cello’s F-holes, and drew to the side. What started as a whisper, soon became a roar. He had discovered what would become the language of his life.
After four hours, he walked downstairs and told his parents of his new love and the path that he was going to follow.
Robert Franz is celebrating his 10th anniversary as the music director of the Windsor Symphony Orchestra, a position in which 153 people from eight countries applied for after the retirement of John Morris Russell. Franz is the sixth music director of the WSO since its founding in 1941.
“I sent my materials in and, lo and behold, they interviewed me and then invited me to guest conduct,” recalls Franz. “I got a call that February and they offered me the job and that’s how it all started.”
He says that 2013 was a different time in the City of Windsor, and the WSO was suffering some financial challenges and was in need of better engagement with the community.
“It became evident to me that not only performing great concerts at the Capitol Theatre was important but that we had to take the orchestra out of the Capitol and send it out into the community whenever and wherever we could,” explains Franz. As the orchestra further engaged the community, its footprint increased, and its performances evolved to grow more potent and powerful.
The orchestra started offering their performances to local schools, exponentially increasing the number of local students with exposure to classical music—something that Franz says benefits their active learning skills of students and impresses upon them a love for classical music.
“We have built really strong relationships with both the public school board and the parochial school board,” says Franz, who also serves as the music director for the Boise Baroque Orchestra and the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. “We now go into every elementary school in Windsor-Essex once every three years on a rotation.”
The COVID-19 pandemic was a transcendent period for most people. At the WSO, it proved a game-changer for the orchestra and a time of change, challenge, and growth for its maestro. As the shepherds of the Capitol Theatre, the WSO created a production studio so that renters of the theatre would have more options. However, as the pandemic wore on, the production studio allowed the WSO to create two complete series of digital concerts for public consumption.
The WSO, using the working model they learned through the pandemic, branched out to create more content to benefit the community, including a digital version of their Gr. 4-6 program, which is seen by roughly 60,000 students both in Windsor-Essex and out of the region.
In addition, Franz and the WSO were able to develop new concert series ideas, such as On Stage, flipping the switch on the traditional theatre dynamic by putting the WSO up on stage and surrounding it with spectators, parked at tables, with access to food and drinks in the theatre wings, and including interactive components with the crowd. A Friday morning version of this has also been created, complete with coffee bar, called the Cafe Series.
However, during COVID, with the world in turmoil and the WSO evolving in front of him, Franz’s personal life took a turn—he was diagnosed with cancer.
“I was fortunate in many ways, not the least of which was that the Windsor Cancer Centre here is just top-notch,” praises Franz. “They literally saved my life. I was diagnosed with Stage 4 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in the fall of ’21. By the March of ’22, they, through six rounds of chemo and immunotherapy drugs, got it out of my system.”
Franz has been in remission for two years and says that cancer has been transformative for him as both an artist and a person. “I don’t take for granted getting up in the morning, and getting myself ready, and rehearsing, or performing a concert—as anything short of a miracle at this point,” he explains. “That to me is spectacular. From an artist’s standpoint, not only is there a sense of gratitude, but I have a sense of really wanting to make the most out of every second I can of making music.”
“There’s no way that kind of event in your life cannot change you, how you view the world, and I find that I’m much more empathetic towards people and try to understand where they are coming from, but I also find that I’m less willing to expend energy in areas that I think won’t bring back energy to me. I don’t waste as much time as I used to. People are important to me, my family’s incredibly important to me, and my friends, and I love pouring my energy and my soul into that.”
Franz says that he doesn’t see himself stepping away from the conductor’s podium any time soon—in fact, after 10 years with WSO, he hopes to express himself through music until he physically can’t anymore.
He is invigorated by the community’s reaction to the WSO and its hard work in the community. “We’re a small tight-knit community that bases itself on trust and trusting each other,” he says. “Now that I feel that I’ve gained the trust of the community, I feel like the really sweet opportunities are right around the corner.”
“My vision of success is, ‘Let’s be the kind of organization and people that others want to be around and let’s do our homework, let’s prepare, and when the door comes open, let’s just lunge through it and take that step together.”
