From Immigrant to Maestro: Sergey Bogza's Musical Journey

[00:00:00] Sergey Bogza: In Russia, before you went to first grade, it was the parent's responsibility, at least that's what my mom said, for her to teach us how to read and write and know multiplication tables up to 12.

So, a first grader starting school knows how to read, write, and knows multiplication up to 12. And so, the entire summer preparing for school exams was my mom drilling me on how to write cursive, how to read, and drilling on multiplication tables. And then there was a time where you have to go and pass the exam and they identified your placement.

And I remember it was a hundred percent or one mistake that I made and the sense of accomplishment. After four months of just mom working with you every day, just passing with flying colors. I remember that being such a validation of the efforts that you've put in.

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[00:02:51] Tommy Thomas: Our guest today is Sergey Bogza, Conductor and Music Director of the Panama City Symphony. When you talk with Sergey, the conversation could go a lot of ways. We could talk about how he excels as an endurance athlete, regularly competing in ultra marathons and long-distance bike rides.

We could talk about his proficiency in the kitchen, as it relates to Slavic cuisine. Or we can talk about his two dogs, Sampson and Stella, and how they help him train for his endurance feats. We'll have to leave those topics for another day, because today I want to talk with him about his love for music and his journey from immigrating to the United States in 1995 to becoming the Conductor and Music Director of the Panama City Symphony.

[00:03:40] Tommy Thomas: Welcome to Next Gen Nonprofit Leadership.

[00:03:42] Sergey Bogza:: Thank you for having me.

[00:03:45] Tommy Thomas:  One of the benefits that I've derived from being a Rotarian is the good speakers we have. And I remember you speaking to our club in Panama City, probably a year and a half or so ago back when we met at the Yacht Club.

A lot of times my listeners want to know how I get these guests. And that's how I got Sergey.  Before we dig too much into your professional career I'd like to go back to your childhood. I know you're an immigrant. Can you tell us a little bit about that story?

[00:04:14] Sergey Bogza: Sure. We moved to the United States in 1995. This was just a few years after the fall of the Soviet Union. My dad had a big family, and he wasn't sure of what the future might be, and he didn't see a lot of opportunities. Mid 90s in Russia was a tough time and when the borders opened and we had a chance to immigrate to the land of milk and honey and opportunity, even though we've never been, my dad took a risk and moved us to the United States. And it's one of the things that we're always grateful to him, to our mom for taking that chance and giving us the opportunity of making a life here in America.

[00:05:04] Tommy Thomas: When I talk to someone who immigrated, I have a hard enough time with English as a native speaker.  Did you speak English fluently when you came?

[00:05:13] Sergey Bogza: Oh, no. Zero.

[00:05:16] Tommy Thomas:  What grade would you have been? Were you a bit in school by then or just starting?

[00:05:21] Sergey Bogza: I was nine when I moved to the United States. And I was completing second grade in Russia. And when we immigrated to the United States, they ran all the tests.

And zero English, but, geography, math, arithmetic. It was pretty advanced in the way I was doing it. So, they put me in fourth grade.  I was supposed to finish second grade in Russia. We moved to the United States and I ended up finishing fourth grade, so I got a clear leap.

[00:05:55] Tommy Thomas:  What's your happiest memory of childhood?

[00:06:01] Sergey Bogza: Happy childhood in Russia, let me think.

[00:06:04] Tommy Thomas: Or you could do it post nine-year-old.

[00:06:07] Sergey Bogza: I think probably two happiest memories that I can think of is in Russia, before you went to first grade, it was the parent's responsibility, at least that's what my mom said, for her to teach us how to read and write and know multiplication tables up to 12.

So, a first grader starting school knows how to read, write, and knows multiplication up to 12. And so, the entire summer preparing for school exams was my mom drilling me on how to write cursive, how to read, and drilling on multiplication tables. And then there was a time where you had to go and pass the exam and they identified your placement.

[00:07:01] Sergey Bogza: And I remember it was a hundred percent or one mistake that I made and the sense of accomplishment. After four months of just mom working with you every day, just getting passing with flying colors. I remember that being such a validation of the efforts that you've put in.

And probably another memorable experience was that in Russia, I don't know why, but it was important that you learn and memorize poetry of great literary figures. And somehow there was always time we had to learn these long poems, memorize them, but in addition to that, when our parents had guests come over, we would be put on a chair and had to recite those poems from memory with intention and delivery.

[00:07:59] Sergey Bogza: And there was one time I remember reciting a poem, I forget what it was, but I started it, and it made an impression, but as I kept going, I noticed people started losing interest, and I remember adjusting my delivery to, as a kid, this was happening on such a subconscious level, and having the audience turned around going from uninterested to, oh, he has something to say.

I just remember that being a powerful experience as a child, how you deliver things, how you say things makes an impression. So yeah, it's stored somewhere way out there in the back of your brain. But those two things I remember vividly from my childhood, making kind of an obsession making an impression on me.

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[00:08:49] Tommy Thomas: Now, was music a part of your upbringing in Russia, or did that happen once y'all got to the States?

[00:08:56] Sergey Bogza: That happened when we got to the States, but when my parents got together with friends, the guitar and community singing was always part of it. It's almost like a Slavic culture that when people got together, the guitar or piano was present.

People sang folk songs or religious songs, whatever it might be. So, music was always around, but it only started as a formal training once we got to the United States.

[00:09:26] Tommy Thomas: Can you describe your high school experience in three words?

[00:09:32] Sergey Bogza: High school experience in three words: musical, tedious and focused.

Tommy Thomas: And was that because of the home emphasis or by that time, had you gotten into the classroom and that had become a part of your career path, so to speak?

[00:09:53] Sergey Bogza: By the time I got to high school, I knew what I wanted to do with my life. So, I was in two different bands. I was also in singing and choir. So, it was a musical experience in high school, tedious, because I have to go to these classes that I had no interest in, but still get good grades. So, I can get a scholarship and focus is the word I use because I knew what I wanted to do in high school, or I wanted to know what I was going to do with my life post high school. So, it was a matter of just, I need to finish these four years, I need to graduate, and I need to stay focused, get good grades, and get my musical training, continue with my piano lessons, sing in choirs, and play trumpet in a band.

But at the same time, I had to go to these classes that I just had little interest in. So that monotony and tedious was, it's the reason I use that word to describe the high school experience.

[00:10:55] Tommy Thomas: What is something that people are always surprised to find out about you?

[00:11:04] Sergey Bogza: There are things besides music that I love and enjoy.

[00:11:09] Tommy Thomas: Thus, our segue from our intro and I wish we had time to get into some of that, but we'll hold back a little bit. Obviously, you got comfortable in your leadership skin early in life. I liked that story about telling the poem.

I think that even in elementary school it said something about your stage presence and how you were comfortable in that format. Successful people are always asked what makes you so successful. I like to frame the question this way.

What's a factor that's helped you succeed that most people on the outside wouldn't realize or recognize?

[00:11:49] Sergey Bogza: Wow. That's a great question. And the world of art is a unique world. And sometimes when people look at artists or musicians, they usually catch them when they're doing their art on stage. They catch them when they're doing the 2%, the final product, the performance, when there's this flair, flow, artistry, dashing gestures.

And things are just happening. You're in a state of ecstasy. When people see musicians, they catch them at that moment. But what people don't often see is the 98%. The sort of the monotonous work, the planning, the staging, the details. And if I were just to answer that question as to what people don't realize, or what makes it successful is the attention to detail that makes those 2 percent feel like magic.

[00:13:01] Sergey Bogza: That's the tricky part of being an artist. What you showcase to people and what you share with people is just a fraction of all the work, the monotony, the tedious, the details, the reworking things, the 50 different drafts that you come up with that nobody will ever see. And all of that is at the service of making that 1%, the 2 percent of the time that you share with the audience to feel like magic, freedom, exploration of the divine, to make your art have a feeling of divineness to it. That's the tricky part. That's what I think most people don't realize. And people will always say obviously that is talent.

That's a born talent that you were given by God. And no way. If you knew what this so-called talent has gone through, you would call it maybe craftsmanship, you would call it just stubbornness. There's so many other words to call what people describe as talent, but that's what I would say is the, in other words, you have a view of the forest.

[00:14:25] Sergey Bogza: But you know the little details and you don't get the little details yet. Forest, but you have us, but you also know the details that contribute to the feeling of the forest and that I'm probably not summarizing this very well, but that's the general feel of the process there.

[00:14:44] Tommy Thomas: I guess you would say that some people come to you in the orchestra or the symphony with more talent than others. I realize it's a high bar to get there in the beginning. In the NBA, even the substitutes are pretty good.

Yeah, I'm trying to get my head around the natural talent or the person that just seems to have been born with it. And you say most of it is hard work.

[00:15:12] Sergey Bogza Natural. Yeah, natural talent is not enough. It is not enough. And what often happens when people just ride on natural talent eventually comes to an end.

There is a cap to natural talent, regardless of how talented one is, difficult times will come. And in the world of art, you are working with masterworks masterpieces. Works of Mozart’s of this world. These were geniuses that have given us.

[00:15:46] Sergey Bogza: And when you work with that type of level of artistry, no natural talent will suffice.

Yes, it's great when you have that natural intuition for certain elements, but the building of the technique, the building of the process, putting concerts together, finding a way to communicate your art to the general audience, to the general public.

That is work, and that is craftsmanship. Probably one of my favorite quotes of Johann Sebastian Bach, a man with a talent and a genius, but he described himself as a craftsman, someone who has learned the art of crafting counterpoint of writing 30 minutes of music a week to present at the church services where he worked.

So, a combination of talent and craftsmanship is what makes one successful.

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[00:16:53] Tommy Thomas: Aside from your mom, have you had mentors in your life?

[00:16:58] Sergey Bogza: I don't have that one mentor that stayed in my life throughout many years. My life mentors came and went depending on the season of my career or of my musical training or my musical evolution. So, I've had mentors that came for a period, and they guided me through that process. Then there was another stage that came where somebody else would come up. Mentors would emerge from time to guide me in whatever stage of a musical development I was in.

[00:17:33] Tommy Thomas: Now did they see you and come along besides you, or did you recognize that you probably needed some tutelage in that area?

[00:17:44] Sergey Bogza: They emerged. There's that quote that says, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. And so, for me, it was that a new phase of my career had entered and somehow God sent a mentor to appear, whether it was by way of a friendship or a meeting.

I've always been blessed with people coming into my life at the right moment. And I don't know why it's happening like this or why it has happened or turned out that way. But I'm forever grateful for the variety of mentors that have been present in my life.

[00:18:27] Tommy Thomas: So, I'm going to maybe use the metaphor that an orchestra or symphony is a team at some level.

I'd like to go into an ambitious project. What's the most ambitious thing you and your symphony or orchestra have ever undertaken? And how did you get the team to come around you?

[00:18:49] Sergey Bogza: I think probably the most ambitious project that I've ever done was my doctoral dissertation at the University of Minnesota.

I don't know of anyone who's ever done a project like this. The majority of times when you're getting your Doctor of Musical Arts, you'll write a paper and then you would conduct a concert, a shorter concert. What I've decided to do is to do a transcription of Richard Strauss tone poem, Don Quixote, which was originally written for about a hundred musicians.

And I wanted to distill it to about 16 to 17 musicians. So rewrite the entire piece that was written for a large orchestra, one of the great tone poems, distill it for 17 musicians, perform it in three different venues so I can get the acoustics feel for three different performances work with 17 talented musicians, hire a videographer, hire a photographer to capture this, and then based on all of that, rewrite the piece one more time.

[00:20:00] Sergey Bogza: So that way I would have something that I could sell, present, or rent for other orchestras to use. So that way other organizations that don't have a hundred-piece orchestra could use a chamber version of it. And so, when you're young and you've never done anything like this before, it can be really tricky and it was a difficult project and maybe to answer the question of how did we get the orchestra or in this case, chamber orchestra to pull this project off.

And the answer to that is, in this case, the leader, me, in this case, had to be 100 percent sold on the project and to provide leadership in all the areas of that project, whether it was musical, logistical, advertising leadership, novelty leadership. This was a novel project that we've done and probably in a span of three months of putting it all together.

[00:21:14] Sergey Bogza: The amount of life lessons I've learned on how to be a leader in difficult situations. There were times where I wanted to call the university and say, I'm done with this project. I don't want to do this anymore. This is too difficult.

But we followed through. We did the difficult stuff. There were opportunities to give up at every corner. But when it was all said and done, and then the dust settled, I really felt like I had a kind of a breaking moment, like I've entered a new level in my leadership skills and I was able to see, as I've described earlier, having a big picture.

[00:22:06] Sergey Bogza: But then also knowing all the small nuances and details and how they play into the big picture presentation and that ability going between big picture, small details, big picture, small details, and having that fluidity. And never losing the big picture for whatever little, small problems that come across was what made that project so successful, not only to that, but then to also commit clear communication to everyone involved of how those details are contributing to our eventual success in this project.

[00:22:49] Tommy Thomas: So, when you recruited your chamber members, were you recruiting peers in your mind? Were you recruiting maestros who might've been beyond you perhaps in their level?

[00:23:03] Sergey Bogza: No, I was recruiting peers. It was a peer orchestra. I was working with people who are my age. Students at the University of Minnesota. So, this was working with the professional musicians who just had years and years of experience. We were all doing it for the first time. Like we were developing a prototype, so to speak, a company prototype. And so, we were all new to this.

And even though we were all new, I was the leader. I have to guide people who are new to this. But also, I was new to this. So, it's okay, how do you navigate this? How do you keep the band together, so to speak, and not lose anyone, even though you are walking with a group in uncharted territory?

How do you find a way to inspire them and to not lose focus to the very end of the finish line?

[00:24:08] Tommy Thomas: But go to your having done this in a much different way, but having put together a doctoral dissertation and having to sell it to the committee. Did you have to sell this to the committee as something new or were they excited that you were going to break some new ground?

[00:24:26] Sergey Bogza: Oh yeah, there was, I knew that this was something different. I did have to convince a lot of people of the validity or why this project is important. Because frankly what I didn't want to do as a musician or as a conductor is to spend hundreds and hundreds of hours in front of a computer screen typing up a dissertation or doing a research project.

I wanted it to be a hands-on experience of working with musicians, writing this new arrangement, reserving a variety of venues, and advertising to get the public to come to these performances. It was a new project. And thankfully when it was all said and done, I had a product, I had a musical project that I was able to advertise and give it to other people.

And a variety of orchestras have hired that arrangement. And so, I just feel so thankful for having gone through that because whereas had I gone the traditional route, my dissertation would be collecting dust at some libraries, bookshelves, forever forgotten, but I have a project, a dissertation that is in circulation that are people finding useful, that there's a market for it.

[00:25:46] Sergey Bogza: And obviously it has worked out now. I didn't know it was going to work out. I thought it might be successful. It might completely fall through. And the committee would come back and say, redo the whole thing. We want to see a 30-page paper, but now to be a success. And it was a gamble. It was a risk-taking adventure and I'm glad it all worked out.

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[00:26:08] Tommy Thomas: Next week, we continue the conversation with Sergey Bogza, where Sergey delves into the intricacies of assembling and leading an orchestra. He also shares his approach to understanding each member's skill set, making strategic decisions, and balancing the structured rigor of rehearsals with the freedom of a live performance. Anyone who might've thought, what can we learn about nonprofit leadership from a symphony director will not want to miss this episode.

Links and Resources

JobfitMatters Website

Next Gen Nonprofit Leadership with Tommy Thomas

The Perfect Search – What every board needs to know about hiring their next CEO

Panama City Symphony Website

Sergey Bogza’s Personal Website

 

Connect

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