http://calperformances.org

Betty Connors led the Committee for Arts and Lectures (renamed Cal Performances in 1980) at the University of California, Berkeley, for 35 year. She was Director of the unit that was responsible for performing arts presentation on the campus from 1945 to 1979. She summed up her many years on campus as more interesting than any other job.

A native of the Midwest, Betty Connors (19172009) attended the University of Iowa before moving to Berkeley in 1940. She married her brothers roommate, Joe Connors, who suggested Betty finish her college education at UC Berkeley. While still a student, Connors played viola in the University Orchestra, directed by Albert Elkus, and organized concerts in local venues like the YWCA and Le Bateau Ivre on Telegraph Avenue. After Connors graduated from UC Berkeleys Department of Music in 1945, Baldwin Woods, chair of University Extension, hired her to fill a new position, Secretary of the Committee for Arts and Lectures (the name change to Cal Performances occurred in 1980). She took over the duties formerly administered by William Popper, a professor of Semitic Languages who served as Chair of the Committee on Music and Drama from 1924 to 1945.

For the first time, the University had a distinct concert presenting unit led by a fulltime administrator (the first salaried position devoted exclusively to the management of concerts on campus) rather than a member of the faculty. Connors was given free reign and, with the committees approval, she arranged 36 music events in her first year. She worked alone with a desk and a telephone; tickets were $1.00 with a 10-cent discount for students.

An astute manager who eagerly sought the advice and recommendations of University faculty, Connors was responsible for unprecedented growth in the quantity and range of events that took place between 1945 and 1980. The committee of faculty and University administrators with whom she worked shared Connors' conviction that every student should have the opportunity of seeing the best that is available [in the performing arts] at some time during his college career. Through the 1950s, they steadily increased the scope of arts presentation. Lectures by poets and writers, including Thomas Mann, Dylan Thomas and W. H. Auden, came to the fore, and the campus saw a broadening of musical tastes as represented by folk, jazz, and early-music events. With the increased use of Harmon Gym, and later the building of both Hertz (1958) and Zellerbach halls (1968), Connors arranged for performances by some of the worlds greatest musicians including pianists Glenn Gould and Rudolf Serkin, harpsichordists Ralph Kirkpatrick and Gustav Leonhardt, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, soprano Birgit Nilsson, mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne, jazz artists Dave Brubeck and Louis Armstrong, and sitarist Ravi Shankar. The campus celebrated a major renovation of the Greek Theatre in 1957 with a production of Puccinis Turandot by the San Francisco Opera. With the success of that event, Connors seized the opportunity to present the San Francisco Opera at the Greek Theatre annually for the next 12 years. With Hertz and Zellerbach halls at her disposal, she was able to expand performing arts presentation in general, bringing to the campus French mime Marcel Marceau, theater artists Jean-Louis Barrault and Madeleine Renaud, Jerzy Grotowskis Polish Theatre Lab and Peter Brook's The Ik; and she pioneered the presentation of dance on campus with Maurice Béjarts Ballet of the 20th Century, the Joffrey Ballet, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and Merce Cunningham Dance Company, among many, many others.

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