Orchestral expressions

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/07/2025 (407 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Back in 2004, the front page of the Free Press Arts & Life section (then called Entertainment) ran a glowing tribute by Morley Walker to one of the most august careers in Manitoba’s arts sector.

Rita Menzies was retiring. Some expected she’d make more time for favourite pursuits — cooking, travel, family, opera, art— especially after such an eventful finale to a long career.

The year before, Menzies — who’d been with the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra for 24 years as its first general manager — had been tapped to take the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s reins in an interim capacity.

On the face of it, the move may have seemed improbable. The WSO was 10 times the size of the MCO and had a $3-million deficit. But Menzies’ reputation — her crack command of budgets and structures, coupled with a soft, deft touch for people and politics — preceded her.

“There were a lot of highfalutin people who came in and absolutely burned out within a month,” recalls violinist and WSO concertmaster Karl Stobbe. “I really have to give (Rita) credit for saving the WSO in a time when people were not sure it could be saved.”

Amazingly, the WSO finished its 2003-4 season with a considerable surplus.

Walker playfully cast aspersions on her resolve to retire after this success: “Oh, did she not tell you? She has accepted an honorarium to run the Agassiz Summer Chamber Music Festival in June … But in July, she plans to take it easy. Honest.”

What’s that saying about best-laid plans? Before long, the retiree was the annual fest’s director, a role she held for a full 11 years. She also returned as the WSO’s interim executive director in 2006 and served as Agassiz’s board president until her death in June at 83, after a short battle with cancer.

“How fitting that Rita worked in the frontline of Winnipeg’s arts community until a few weeks before her passing — she was always keen to contribute and to help others,” says Agassiz artistic director Paul Marleyn. “She developed (Agassiz) and she worked every day — her famous and proudly Mennonite work ethic. Rita had extraordinary values, values about which she never preached.”

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Rita Menzies’ career charts the rise of a certain type of pillar in Manitoba’s arts and cultural life.

The late 1960s and early 1970s were a coming-of-age for Canadian culture, with the government using the Centennial to invest heavily in the sector. However, the path to the MCO’s emergence was often far from smooth.

For seven lively years, the MCO (founded in 1972) was administered as a volunteer-driven passion project, operating out of insurance manager Bill Stewart’s office.

“Maybe I was paying more time to the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra than I was to my business,” says Stewart with a chuckle. “It became apparent … that we would have to get some kind of administrative help.”

MCO’s early history is hard to separate from Westminster United Church — a stronghold of a broadly liberal Protestantism, known for its deep love of classical music. Its congregation criss-crossed with MCO’s audience and with its beautiful acoustics and central location, the church eventually became the organization’s primary venue.

It had a celebrated organist in Don Menzies, who held the post from 1966 until 2022. Just down the road, his wife Rita — born in Kitchener, Ont., in 1942 — taught math and English at Kelvin High School. She was also an accomplished organist and her musical passion was about to make its way to the centre of things.

By the late 1970s the MCO was operating out of another makeshift office. The hum of a typewriter — clattering out accounting reports, marketing plans and musician contracts — filled the basement.

“I have vivid memories of a filing cabinet and card table propped up in the laundry room,” recalls Jeannette Menzies, a Canadian diplomat, former ambassador to Iceland and Rita’s daughter. “We loved having her around when we were young and hearing the sounds of classical music at home.”

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But for Menzies, juggling a young family — which included daughters Tanis and Jennifer as well as Jeannette – was only half of it.

As well having suddenly traded in English lit for budget sheets, Menzies had to learn and quickly master the art of balancing those budgets.

“She told me once that the first thing she did every morning was read the entire business section of the Winnipeg Free Press,” says Stobbe, who got to know Menzies in the 1990s while playing with the MCO.

Potential funders, donors and board members — Menzies was, by all accounts, always on the hunt for allies and resources to better the organizations she led.

With its footing now secure, the MCO could find a proper office and finally start delegating.

By the 1990s, the orchestra had hired Elise Anderson as its office manager, Jon Snidal as its designer and systems manager and violinist Boyd MacKenzie as its concert manager.

“Find(ing) good people. That was a real strength of hers,” says Vicki Young, Menzies’ successor at the MCO. “To bring on people like Elise and Jon and Boyd — I think is pretty incredible.”

All of them are still associated with the MCO in some way, while today a new generation of staff and musicians carries the torch, including Sean McManus, executive director since 2023.

The original team supported the orchestra through a showing at the Winter Olympics in Calgary, tours across the world and countless commissions of new Canadian music.

The MCO was also earning a rep as a solid stop for famous touring soloists, with Joshua Bell, Marc-André Hamelin and Liona Boyd all sharing the stage with the orchestra in those years.

When Young assumed the MCO’s reins in 2003, she had a rarity in her hands: a classical ensemble with loyal employees and musicians, a consistent streak of balanced budgets and a deeply engaged, supportive audience base.

“(Rita) was always thinking ahead and setting a really good foundation for what was to come,” says Young.

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Over the next 20 years, the MCO saw a continued streak of balanced budgets, more growth and further professionalization of its board, touring and movement towards more multicultural priorities.

It benefited not just from Menzies’ foundation but something more ineffable.

Veteran staff will tell you about a cultural throughline at the MCO — a democratic ethos with a strong, trusted leader acting as first among equals — that they trace back to Menzies.

“She was described as kind of having a calming effect on an organization,” says her daughter Jeannette. “I saw her as a trailblazer. But I think my mom would probably be mortified (to hear that) because she really would give equal credit to Jon, Elise and others.”

Though Menzies’ so-called retirement was packed with Agassiz commitments and volunteer work, her tireless sense of industry found rhythm in the pastimes she loved most. She was known as an extraordinary cook and a lifelong learner, picking up watercolour painting in retirement.

As a consummate hostess and longtime member of the Westminster Concert Organ Series Committee (founded by her husband in 1989 and running until the pandemic), she prepared many dinners for guest organists and the receptions following concerts.

The couple sometimes oriented their many trips across the world around performance opportunities for Don and made regular pilgrimages to the Ottawa area to see their granddaughters, Grace and Olivia Kennedy.

“Behind everything was Rita’s love of life, her family, music, the arts, of people and of the Winnipeg community,” says Marleyn.

“She avoided the stage and public attention, yet somehow quietly lead her workplaces with elegance, industry, effectiveness … Rita gave us all such a magnificent example of what the qualities of honesty, kindness, hard work and love can achieve.”

conrad.sweatman@freepress.mb.ca