Voices of Freedom - Interview With Mark Niehaus

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

An Interview with Mark Niehaus, President and Executive Director, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra proves that art isn't just entertainment—it can be a key part of building community. Through concerts that bring diverse audiences together and revitalization efforts that have transformed its downtown home, the MSO stands as one of Milwaukee's most dynamic civic institutions. Our guest on this episode of Voices of Freedom is Mark Niehaus, President and Executive Director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Mark spent 14 years as the MSO's principal trumpet before the board tapped him in 2012 to lead the organization. Under his leadership, the MSO completed an extraordinary restoration of the 1930s Warner Grand Theatre, expanding it into the Bradley Symphony Center. It opened in 2021, sparking renewal along West Wisconsin Avenue. As Wisconsin's largest performing arts institution, the MSO employs 70 full-time professional musicians who perform over 130 concerts annually and generate an estimated $55 million in economic activity. Topics Discussed on this Episode: Mark's atypical career path from musician to organizational leader Why the Bradley Symphony Center restoration was critical for the orchestra's future The MSO's role in revitalizing downtown Milwaukee Growing institutionally at a time in which some orchestras are struggling Cultivating audiences for traditional art forms in a digital world The economic impact of arts organizations beyond cultural experience Hope for the future of orchestras and performing arts in America

Hello and welcome to Voices of Freedom, a Bradley Foundation podcast. I'm Rick Graber, president and CEO of the Bradley Foundation. On the podcast, we'll explore issues that affect our freedoms with a focus on free enterprise, free speech, and educational freedom. So let's get started. The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra is an institution that proves that art isn't just entertainment. It's also a key part of building our community through concerts that bring very different audiences together and revitalization efforts that have transformed its downtown home in a really

amazing way, and we'll talk about that. The MSO stands as one of the city's most dynamic civic institutions. It helps to define Milwaukee as a place where culture and civic pride come together almost every week. Our guest today is Mark Nehouse, president and executive director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Mark spent 14 years as MSO's principal trumpet, before the board tapped him in 2012 to lead the organization. Under his watch, the MSO completed an amazing restoration of the 1930s Warner Grand Theater, expanding it into what is now known as the Bradley Symphony Center. It opened in 2021, sparking a long-needed renewal along West Wisconsin Avenue in downtown Milwaukee.

As Wisconsin's largest performing arts institution, the MSO employs 70 full-time professional musicians who perform over 130 concerts annually and generate an estimated $55 million in economic activity each year. The MSO truly represents both artistic excellence and community investment. Welcome, Mark. It is wonderful to have you with us. You have already made all of my talking points. I think the interview could be over now. Thank you.

Would you like a job working? I've got a lot to talk about. Would you like a job working at the Milwaukee Symphony? I'd be honored. I'd be honored. But let's talk about you a little bit, Mark. Let's start with your career path, which has been, I think, by any measure unique. From what I understand in conversations we've had in the past, you were very content in your role as a musician.

You weren't necessarily looking for a job in management. No. When it seemed all of the sudden. you were tapped to lead MSO in 2012. Why on earth did you agree to take on this role? And how is your background as a musician impacted your approach? And I'm sure it has to leading this organization. It's funny.

It's a question I got asked a lot in the beginning. It's a question that I haven't been asked as often recently because I'm now almost 15 years into it. But I'm thinking about, I think there was a perception that if I didn't mess this up, there would be this sort of waterfall effect of all these musicians would start becoming executive directors and managing their organizations. And I think it's safe to say almost everyone who is an executive director of a major symphony orchestra in America was probably

trained as a musician, meaning they probably majored in music in college. Now, but they also probably did not become a full-time performer. So I remain unique. in a way as someone who was a full-time principal player in their symphony orchestra, especially an orchestra as large as Milwaukee. We're in the top 20 orchestras in the country when it comes to budget size, to then the next day step off the stage into the executive director job remains highly unusual. So the skills that it takes to be a musician are very different than the skills it takes

to run an organization. It's funny because I think. I think I'm going to answer this question a little differently now that I'm much further into the process than in the beginning. The skills as a musician is there is a level of self-absorption that, and I don't mean that in a negative way at all, but in order to be just like any athlete or a surgeon, someone who does one thing very, very, very well, actually better than almost anybody on the planet, has to devote themselves to that and to only that, to the exclusion of other things. And that takes a level of maniacal thinking and sort of narrow-mindedness, not negatively narrow-minded, but just on

target, that's it. Being the executive director of a large nonprofit that does so many different things is almost exactly the opposite. I have to be open to all possibilities. I have to listen to all voices. I'm always wrong and they're always right, if that makes sense. Of course. And I look at it, it's a type of servant leadership in a way. You know, I am, I've been, very fortunate to be entrusted with stewarding this organization that existed for decades before me and will exist for decades and centuries after me. So my job is to take care of it. And an organization, any large performing arts organization or even any large museum is they don't move quickly. It's like driving an aircraft carrier. You know, if you want to turn left, that's going to be like all day.

and by the end of the day, we'll turn left. And so that's being a musician in many ways was my life cycle was weekly. On Tuesday, we start rehearsing a program and we perform it Friday, Saturday, Sunday. The end, that program's over. You won't see any of those pieces again for at least three or four years, if ever again. And now there's a new program the next week. So the cycle was much faster. So what I'm doing as executive director is I'm,

I'm dealing with things that are five and 10 years and 20 years in the making. And, you know, in the Bradley Symphony Center, the building project, you know, from the first time we thought about it until we broke ground was probably six, seven years. All then it was at least a 10 year process. And it's not done, right? I mean, there's still that that campaign continues to position the MSO in a position, and make sure our financial position is really strong in the new building and solve the problems that we intended to solve when we embarked. on that crazy project. So the answer is different nowadays. I am, I miss playing the trumpet.

I miss being in the orchestra. I miss the camaraderie of it. Anyone who runs anything and you'll know this, you know, when you're the, when you're the guy at the top, you don't really have any friends. You know, you have, well, at least you don't have friends at work. Let's put it that way. Like, you know, you have friends from high school and they're always going to be

your friends that way, but it can be a lonely place because you, you're making decisions that are not personal and they're not to advance any one person's agenda. So it's a larger, it's a larger push. So I think, but at the same time, you've sat in those chairs and that, that has to help. You've been there. I think it does. I mean, I think when I, you know, when a musician comes to me with a complaint, not that, you know, that we talk about other things, but I have a, I've probably been there and I probably understand what they're saying about, boy, this rehearsal was not done well. Or gosh, how come we're playing all these hard pieces in a row or, you know, why is it, why are the acoustics on the stage not what I want?

You know, these sort of these things. I can sympathize and empathize with them if that makes sense. Yes. So I think I still have a little bit of street cred in the orchestra. A vast number of people in the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra now have never heard me play. You know, I've been out for almost 15 years now. So there's a whole cohort of musicians there that they just think of me as the guy who, you know, walks around trying to fix the thing. So for them, it's not, I had a couple of musicians come to me at one point because we have a lot of our old recordings

back in the day in a portal the musicians can go and access. And someone came up to me the other day and basically said something like, wow, you could actually play. And I was like, well, what did you think? Like, I was faking it or, you know, like it was a sort of interesting realization that they had

that you can be both things, right? And so, but no, but I enjoy the job now. I enjoy using my entire brain. And I'm not going to say I was bored in the orchestra because I wasn't bored. But after 15, 14, 15 years in the orchestra, you've kind of done it. And then it becomes, well, now can you do it again? And honestly, I stopped playing when I was 42 years old. I don't think trumpet players get much better after age 45.

I think you're just, you wind up sort of just hanging on for dear life. Luckily, I never had to see me and no one else had to see me go through that. So we'll just pretend that I was perfect and we'll leave it at that. Great. You mentioned the Bradley Symphony Center. Let's talk about that a little bit. And at the Bradley Foundation, of course, we're proud that the center bears the Bradley name.

But it was a massive undertaking, a $139 million campaign. It involved moving a 625-ton wall, not easy. Restoring a 19-30s. It was a movie theater that was in disrepair, without question. Yes. walk us through that decision and why was it so critical for the future of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra? Well, you're really taking me back now. All right. So there were three basic pillars as to why the project was successful and why it needed to happen. And they were one and the same. Until it happened, we needed them. And when they happened, these were successful at doing. People want to talk about it being visionary and some sort of amazing thing that we did. I just, I want to caution us. Yes, it was. amazing, but it was kind of like, of course we should have done this. And the thing that I find

amazing about it is the fact that no one did it before we did. The theater sat there for 20 some odd years empty. You know, I don't say abandoned, but it wasn't, it smelled bad, right? I mean, it was an old, it was an old musty theater. And the MSO, the orchestra, was struggling in our former home to just make ends meet because we couldn't get the dates because we're competing with the opera and the ballet and with the whole Broadway series. And it would be. So the number one reason we needed to do it was we had to rationalize the MSO's revenue streams, which really meant if we were ever going to be able to earn the revenue that we could earn, we would never be able to do it where we were located because we couldn't even get into the building

half the time. And so we were basically just handicapped by that. So that was the first reason, is we have to fix the MSO's business model. The second piece was this historic preservation thing. This is a beautiful theater built in 1930 by the architects Rap and Rap, who built many of these grand movie palaces all over the country. Some of them are still with us and many of them are gone. And honestly, if we had not done this project, I believe the theater would have come down. It was at that, it was at an inflection point where without this investment to save the building, the building likely would have been dismantled. So there's this historic preservation piece that was huge. to so many different people. And there are people who participated in the project, not because they

loved the symphony, but because they really wanted to save this beautiful building. And then the third piece was, and you mentioned already, was sort of the economic redevelopment of West Wisconsin Avenue. So our theater is located in what was the downtown main street of Milwaukee back in the day. And there are so many cities in America that have what used to be downtown. And it's this street that's in the middle of the city and there's empty storefronts and there's unused theaters because everybody lives out in the suburbs and and you know so Milwaukee has had this sort of renaissance downtown of people moving back to condos downtown and apartments downtown and they want stuff I mean it's that simple like they want there needs to be grocery stores there needs

to be gas stations there needs to be theaters there all the things that people you know and So our project was a tremendous catalyst for Milwaukee's historic downtown to bring people back. And it has been beyond successful in doing that. If you had walked up and down West Wisconsin Avenue 10 years ago and walked the same stretch today, you wouldn't even think it was the same place. And most everyone credits the Bradley Symphony Center project for giving people the confidence to move their business back town or, open the food hall like exists across the street or the restaurants that are popping up and all the stores that are opening up again. So it's a, it's a, it's, it's been wildly successful on all three of those levers. So, um, we're really proud of that. But that's, those were kind

of the reasons why this needed to happen. There were some risks there, Mark. I mean, you, you, you, you were, you were the first to go. There was certainly no guarantee. You look, you're right. You look at it today and it's just amazing with people living literally across the street and apartment. and just a vibrant part of downtown. And you're right, it was bad for as long as I've lived in Milwaukee, which is over 40 years. And so it's so exciting to see. But you took a risk.

So, but the risk, think about had we not done it, right? We were, it was, I'm not going to say it was an act of desperation because it wasn't, but it was one, absolutely a go big or go home strategy, right? I mean, we were going to. fail in our current situation. Something had to change. It was change was coming whether we liked it or not. The question is, were we going to let the world happen to us or were we going to aspirationally

try to control our own destiny and have better outcomes than, well, I guess the symphony fails and it's we have to shrink and, you know, and sort of, you know, and it's a story you've seen other places. But the issue with most of these organizations, be at a symphony, a ballet or an opera company, It's irrational. It just is. If you're a business, and this happens all the time,

we have business people join the board of the symphony orchestra, and they look at our balance sheet, and they look at our P&L, and they just go, this is insane. Like, you need to stop having an orchestra immediately. So what you think of as risk, that's our life every day.

We are always on the edge when it comes to, you know, cash flow is always an issue. You know, balancing the budget's always an issue. You know, we are dependent on contributed revenue to a point where if a few people decide they don't like us anymore, it could be a huge problem. So the risk continues because that's just the nature of the beast. There's very few orchestras in the United States that just kind of run and everything's fine.

I mean, there's probably 10. And then every other orchestra in the country is scrambling and rumbling and bumbling and trying to figure this thing out every year just to keep going. Interesting. Well, I mean, let's dive a little bit more into the business of running an orchestra. I mean, you pointed out, there are a lot of orchestras that are struggling financially facing questions just about their very relevance in today's world. You nailed it.

Relevance, that is exactly the right word, is you have to stay relevant to your community. Because an orchestra in Boston means something very different to Boston than an orchestra in Milwaukee means to Milwaukee, or L.A. or Dallas. So how do you engage with your community and your entire community? so that they can't imagine a world without the Milwaukee Symphony. I know you're doing a deep dive on this, but share a little bit about what you've learned so far about today's audiences for a very traditional art form.

And how do you go about the process of cultivating people to show up at the Bradley Symphony Center when maybe they've never done that before? Exactly. So I want to dispel a couple of assumptions that the assumptions make sense and I understand why people have them. Our audience is much younger than you think it is.

Our audience is much more diverse than you think it is. Because most people perceive of the Milwaukee Symphony or at any symphony audience as old white people. And our audience is not entirely old white people. And it's important that we meet audiences where they are because they're hubris in,

oh, we're a man. amazing. We're such a great orchestra. You should come hear what we do the way we do it because aren't you lucky to hear us? That's, that's not, and especially if you're doing a community engagement project and you're going to go play music in outside of the hall, in a neighborhood or in somewhere else, to just show up there and think, okay, we're just going to do our thing and you should like it. That's, that's, that's, that's tone deaf. So what, what we have is multiple, multiple program lines, business lines of if you'd, like, you could love the Milwaukee Symphony and never hear classical music. Now, one might argue that a lot of film scores are classical music, but we're not going to make that argument, right?

I mean, John Williams is arguably one of the greatest classical composers ever, right? But so we have a lot. We do our pop series. We have our film series. We do a lot of one-off individual specials with guest artists. and we do a, you know, 35,000 students come to the Milwaukee Symphony every year. That building is ringed with yellow school buses. And so, so really what I have found, so you just mentioned a deep dive.

So with the Bradley Foundation's help, we're going to be doing some, an audience acquisition research project. And I believe now is the time to do that because we are far enough out of COVID, where what people say they do is real because a lot of any sort of surveys or even polling that was done during the pandemic, people would say what they thought they might want to do, but it wasn't based in their current reality. So we're at a point now where we can really find out what people want. And I'm going to guess at what some of the results of that surveying with focus groups and surveying and we're going to be following people through the hall and all sorts of things like

that. What I think the audience of 2025 wants in an arts experience, like for something meaningful, not just to be entertained, not just go see a comedian and laugh or go to a rock band and jump up and down. I mean, that's valuable. And I do that. Like, that's wonderful to just cut loose like that. But when people are looking for something that's a little bit more meaningful, these are the sort of the ingredients I think they want. I think they want to share the experience with people they care about. They want to be there with their friends or their family or their partner and they want to have an experience with one another. They don't want to do it by themselves. They want to park once and they want to have a great meal and they want to go see something that is enjoyable and that moves them

emotionally. Not necessarily makes them happy. There's a lot of music makes you sad. Some of it will make you thoughtful. Some of it will make you remember things from the past, right? But they sort of process emotions in real time with music, right? And then when it's over, they want to talk about it with their friends. So they feel in many ways like they are not going to say a better person. That's too lofty, but they're better for having been there. And if you think about the times in the last year or two, when you've had an experience like that, it might have been at the symphony, might have been a museum, it might have been a wonderful meal curated by a chef that you knew and you felt incredibly connected to it.

And you go home and you say, man, that is exactly how I want to feel. That's what the orchestra can do. And honestly, we do an amazing job of it now in the Bradley Symphony Center because we're able to control the entire experience. Because your experience starts when you think about buying a ticket. That's when the experience starts. And this experience doesn't end until you're home the next day and you're texting your friends, hey, wasn't that great. And so the more we can do to create this holistic experience

is really important. And the absolute given in all of that is the artistic excellence of what happened on the stage. Like, I don't even talk about that because that's like done. It's everything else. How do we curate this whole experience? You know, and you know, you see this when you go to sporting events. You do a really good job of it. Used to be back in the day if you go see the Brewers, you walk in and you get like a little pencil in a scorecard, you drink a water down beer and a boiled hot dog, and you sit on a metal bench and hope it doesn't rain, right? That was the brewers 20 years ago.

Now there's a dessert cart. Everybody gets a gift when they walk in the door, you know, and you can get sushi. And there's a jumbotron screen bigger than your house that has all the information you could ever want. You don't need that little pencil anymore. But the game is great, and the game was great back then. So I protect the orange.

orchestra. I protect the game, but everything around it gets made better and better and better. And you can do so much more in this building. Absolutely. You can provide a really nice dining experience. Exactly. We refine that every year. We're getting better. I mean, it's so funny. We talk about on the staff, we will sometimes joke a little bit about how anxious we are, how much we're hand-winging over a dinner or an event or something like that. But yet, we're putting on an amazing concert of classical music on the stage, we don't even think about it. Because we've done that for almost 60 years. We know how to do that.

We're developing these core competencies of, okay, how do you get 1,600 kids in and out of the building in 15 minutes, and then another 1,600 in 15 minutes later? Right. That's a ballet. And those are the things that we're learning. Because everyone who comes to the symphony is important, and we want them to feel important while they're there.

So we take great care to make sure that the patron experience is as excellent as the art that happens on the stage. COVID was a curveball that was not in the business plan. Tell me about it. Who had that in their business plan? I want to know who had that. But I mean, wow. I mean, do you find now that finally people are past that?

No, not yet. It's not yet. Really? Very interesting. I still think our audience is suppressed 10 to 15 percent. Wow. So in the example I'll use about that is, so we'll talk about church. I'm not particularly religious, so this is not a pitch for anything.

But for many people's entire lives, they were told every Sunday you go to church. So they did. Every Sunday. It's just what you did. And then one Sunday in March of 2020, they said, no, stop, stay home. And everybody stayed home for a year or two. And they learned that, you know, it's nice to sleep in on Sunday morning. You know, it's kind of nice to watch cartoons on TV.

You know, it's nice to go golfing instead of going to church, you know? and they're sort of like, so churches are experiencing the same thing we are, which is the things that people did sort of habitually, it's harder to get them to do them. The idea of staying home on a Saturday night in 2018 was almost like sacrilege. Really?

We don't stay home. We go out. We go to the symphony. We do something. Now, during COVID, everybody got a new living room set. And they all, you know, they redid the kitchen in the bathroom.

And they have everything set up like, well, let's just stay home. So our competition now is not another orchestra in Milwaukee or the theater or comedy or anything. I think our competition is the couch. Interesting. So in this research project we're doing is what are the barriers that keep you from going out to the symphony on the weekend sometime? Because 15% more of you used to do this. And what is it?

is it do you not like the parking? Do you not like the food? Do you not like the programming? Do you not like the musicians? Or do you like all of those things? But yet, you just, it just takes more now. And I think that's, I believe that's what we're going to find out, is we're a much more programmatically driven society that is interested in comfortable things. That's why, because there's the world, if the world isn't more chaotic, which it very well may be, it certainly feels more chaotic because everybody has information.

information being delivered to them on every device all the time. We live in this world where everything's in our face. So what does it take to cut through that and convince someone that leaving their home and going to do something meaningful and thoughtful is worth it? And to me, that's, so that how do you talk to someone who is, because there are many people who will say, oh, I love the symphony. I go to the symphony. They consider themselves a member of the Milwaukee Symphony family, yet they haven't been

three or four years. So they feel connected to us, but they're not there. You've got to get them over the line. But notwithstanding all that, I mean, your economic impact is impressive. Fifty-five million dollars, it's great. And you think about the economic impact of arts groups generally, not just the symphony, although you're a leader, but the arts groups in this community, it's a big deal. And it's more than the cultural experience. It's part of being a community. Exactly. So like I said, but you know, the artistic excellence and what we do in that sense is I just take it as a given and I can talk about that forever in other ways. But an investment in the arts is empirically proven to be a fantastic investment when it comes to economic redevelopment. I mean, just take a look in Milwaukee in the third ward, right? They put the skylight theater on one end of Broadway and the other end they put the public market in. And for a while, that's all that was there. Remember that? Look at it now. There's a Kempton Hotel with a sky roof on it.

They're putting another hotel next to that. There's restaurants, every other opening. And you cannot get a parking spot. I mean, it's one of the places to be. And the first thing that went in there was that theater, activating that theater. So there's almost nothing better you can do to create foot traffic and to demystify an area and make people want to be there for other reasons than to put an anchor like a performing art space. And that's been proven time and time again. You know, and the thing about the symphony that is on the economic redevelopment piece or an economic piece is, you know, you listed earlier, we employ 70 full-time musicians and we have a staff of about 55.

That's a lot of people making really good money, paying taxes, teaching music in the schools, teaching music to the youth orchestra kids, you know, just out and about being wonderful members of our society. When a Broadway show plays at the Marcus Center, that entire apparatus is on tour. They come in, they stay in a hotel, they play, and they leave. So the Market Center makes a little bit of money, but it doesn't really spread out to the rest of the community the way the symphony does. So in that sense, it's a wonderful economic driver as well. Perfect. Last question. Sure.

I think I know what your answer is going to be. But are you generally optimistic about the future of orchestra, the arts in general? in our country? Totally. Absolutely. And I am because what we do is like 2,000 years old or more. People gather around music that matters to them. And that will happen for another 2,000 years. It's not going to stop. Now, the way in which we do it changes gradually over time. If we continue to just play music by dead Western European composers, you will become slightly more irrelevant every year. doesn't mean that music isn't amazing in some of the greatest works of art in the history of humankind. But in order in order for us to remain relevant, we have to make connections to that

art that are obvious and feel authentic to people today. But we also need to play music that was written today about things that are happening today so that we can have so so you have multiple lenses. That's the one thing that music does almost better than anything else is it gives you multiple lenses to look at things. And because there aren't words and there aren't pictures, we're not puppet mastering your brain. You get to go where you want to go and process what you're hearing and thinking

how you want to do that. And it could be a much more personal experience than being told, this is what it looks like, this is what it sounds like, you know? So that's why, and that will always remain important to people. The reason people go back to church after COVID is because they're, something missing. They're looking for more meaning than they get at Culver's. You know? I'm being

silly because my kids would go to Culver's every day if I let them, right? So, so there's like, when people are looking for more meaning, there aren't that many places you can go to get it that way. And that's why I think the symphony and the theater, opera and the ballet, will last forever, well beyond our lifetimes. Our job is to take care of it and set it up. So the next generation has it as well, right? Like I joke all the time of the symphony. I said, boy, I'll tell you what, when I leave, somebody doesn't have a great job at the MSO, you know, but that's my job. My job is to make it better. And as it gets better, it gets better for the community. And I think we've done a wonderful job of that. It shows, I mean, our earned revenue

is double what it was our last year in the Marcus Center before we moved to the Bradley Symphony Center. So that's no small feat. And that has to do with a lot of things. I do with our ability to get dates on our own hall, but also has to do with the programming choices we're making and the audience meeting us, we're meeting them where they are. But remember, our mission is not to fleece Milwaukee for money, right?

That's not our mission. Our mission is to create wonderful experiences that are around based up with music, where people share these experiences and enjoy one another and enjoy the orchestra and just become more glad to be alive. And that's what. what the arts can do for you. And that's what we do.

That's what you're doing very effectively. Mark Nehouse, thank you so much for spending some time with us today. And thanks for what you and your team do on behalf of our community every single day. We truly do appreciate it. I want to thank you and the Bradley Foundation for your support of the Bradley Symphony Center of the Milwaukee Symphony over the years. Your support early on in our project was critical for it to happen. So every time you walk in that building, you should feel like you did this.

Well, it's always great fun to be there, and I'm there as often as I can. Thank you. And as always, thanks to all of you for joining us on this episode of Voices of Freedom. Join us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts for our next conversation on issues impacting our freedom and America's foundational principles. And make sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. I'm Rick Graber, and this is a Bradley Foundation podcast. podcast.