GRSMA was pleased to speak with the newest member of the GRS leadership team, Sam Strater. He’s no stranger to the GRS, with his roots extending not only  to having a summer internship with us but being an excited young audience member at a GRS Fifth Grade concert. We hope that you will enjoy our interview with Sam, and we wish him well in his new role as Senior Vice President/General Manager of the Grand Rapids Symphony.

 

GRSMA: Tell us about your musical career and the path that brought you to your current role as Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Grand Rapids Symphony (GRS).

 

Sam Strater: I was involved in every musical ensemble offered in my high school except women’s choir. I earned a BA in music at GVSU and then a MM in clarinet performance at University of Colorado. My orchestra management career started in college when I took an operations department internship with the Grand Rapids Symphony. I spent two school years and two summers working on GRS’s Access to Music and the Picnic Pops concerts. After graduate school, I moved back to Michigan to work as the director of operations for the Battle Creek Symphony for two seasons. In 2006 I became production manager for the Cincinnati Symphony, working with the CSO, the Cincinnati May Festival, and the Cincinnati Pops. After a few years in production, I gradually moved over to artistic planning and eventually became the director of artistic planning for the Cincinnati Pops. In 2019 my wife, Kate (who is a Grand Rapids native), was offered a faculty position at Calvin University, so we moved from the Cincinnati area back to West Michigan. I continued my role with the Cincinnati Pops as a consultant, but I also started doing consulting work in pops programming for a variety of orchestras around the country. From 2019 to 2026, in addition to the Cincinnati Pops, I planned 2 pops seasons for the Milwaukee Symphony, 3 for the Baltimore Symphony, 1 for the National Symphony, and 1 for the Seattle Symphony. I also began consulting with the GRS in December 2025 to help put together the 2026-27 Pops series.  

 

GRSMA: Where did you grow up, and what are your first memories of classical music?

 

SS: I was born in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula outside of Sault Ste. Marie. My dad was a land surveyor and my parents had a farm. There were virtually no live classical music opportunities there, but I vividly remember listening to recordings of “The Nutcracker” and “Tubby the Tuba” as a very young child. We moved to lower Michigan soon after I turned 8 years old, and my formal musical training began in 5th grade in Lakewood Public Schools in Lake Odessa. That was the year we took our aptitude tests and chose our band instruments for the following school year. It was also the year we read about “Billy The Kid” in class, drew pictures of a scene from the story, and submitted them to be shown in DeVos Hall during a Grand Rapids Symphony performance of Copland’s “Billy the Kid,” conducted by John Varineau.  That concert was foundational to my love of orchestral music, and I truly believe if I had not attended that concert, I would not do what I do. 

 

GRSMA: When you were a GVSU music major, you seemed to be on the fast track for a job performing or teaching the clarinet. What led you to shift your career path to arts management?

 

SS: While I loved rehearsing and performing, I wasn’t a fan of practicing. My operations internship with the GRS gave me exposure to a side of the music-making process I had never considered, and I am confident I am a better administrator than I could have ever been as a performer. In this way, I get to help make music at a higher level. I love the architecture of season planning, building and facilitating strategic and artistic vision, and supporting artists in their work.

 

GRSMA: We seem to have several connections with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, with many GRSMA musicians having studied at CCM and the former GRS Assistant Conductor Duo Shen holding a position with the CSO. Are there any experiences from your time with the CSO that you will be bringing to the Grand Rapids Symphony?

 

SS: Grand Rapids and Cincinnati are similar communities in many ways. Both are Midwestern towns with many European roots that have a legacy for support of arts. Both are family-friendly cities. And both kind of fly under the radar to people in other parts of the country. So, I suspect there are probably some programs we did in Cincinnati that could be successful in Grand Rapids. However, one thing I’ve learned in my consulting work over the last several years, is that no two orchestras are exactly alike. Each orchestra (as an ensemble and as an organization) has a personality and a culture. So in that sense, I don’t necessarily expect to copy/paste anything from Cincinnati into Grand Rapids. My plan is to spend some time with everyone and learn more about the organization, the musicians, and the audience before seeing what might translate from some of my previous experiences. That being said, some of my favorite experiences in Cincinnati had three things in common: they propelled the orchestra forward creatively and musically, they brought the organization a shared sense of direction and motivation, and they responded to the needs and interests of the community. I look forward to collaborating with Marcelo, Bob, Pearl, the musicians of the orchestra, and the organization as a whole to identify and execute those type of experiences.

 

GRSMA: Having lived in West Michigan now for many years, what changes have you observed in the past and wish for the future?

 

SS: Sometimes it seems like the only thing that changes quickly in West Michigan is the weather. That doesn’t necessarily bother me, and the deliberate pace of change can be comforting and feel sensible when so much of our society feels senseless. On the other hand, I appreciate the interesting developments in the works in West Michigan, such as the restoration of the rapids on the Grand River, the continued growth and evolution of my alma mater GVSU, and the new Acrisure Amphitheater, which I think truly has the potential to be a catalyst for major transformation downtown.

 

GRSMA: Do you have any hobbies or interests? Do you ever play the clarinet?

 

SS: I enjoy going out to tasty restaurants. I love fishing and hunting and being outdoors, and I especially love a good campfire. My family watches a lot of sports and we try to attend games when we can (my son played basketball for Grand Rapids Christian High School, but now he’s graduating, so I’ll be in withdrawal for a while). Every few years I take my clarinet out of the case and play it for a few minutes just to make sure I haven’t forgotten how, but I honestly don’t feel pulled back to it, so I put it away again.