How Does One Get From Denmark to Abiquiú?

Interview with Birgitte Ginge
By Jessica Rath

It doesn’t stop to amaze me that a tiny village in New Mexico, one of the least populated states in America, attracts so many people not only from all over the U.S. but from across the globe. One of them is Birgitte Ginge who used to be a Danish citizen but now lives in Abiquiú, for over twenty years (and has dual citizenship). I was curious: what brought her here? She kindly agreed to an interview.

View of Abiquiú House. Image credit: Jessica Rath

Birgitte was born in Odense, one of the oldest cities in Denmark. She told me that it is named after the Nordic god Odin, and that it celebrated its thousandth anniversary in 1988, although some settlements in the area date back more than 4,000 years, to the Stone Age!  With a population of about 185,000 people, it is Denmark’s third-largest city.
 
She grew up in a beautiful part of town; there was a river close-by, and living as she does now right by the Chama River, often reminds Birgitte of her happy childhood. There were walking trails everywhere; one could walk into the downtown area along ponds, lakes, and meadows. If you’ve ever visited a medieval-looking European town, you might wax nostalgic remembering streets with cobblestones, picturesque half-timbered houses, and steep-overhanging roofs.

View of the Chama River from one of the decks. Image credit: Jessica Rath

Odense is well known for being the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen, world-famous  author of fairy tales such as The Little Mermaid and The Ugly Duckling. Younger generations may know his stories only from Disney movies where they were sanitized and sweetened – I highly recommend going to the library and getting a volume of Andersen’s fairy tales. They’re touching and full of wisdom, and some of them are sad – but in a good way.
 
Birgitte went to Odense University  where she received her Ph.D. in archeology.  After she had finished her doctorate, she spent some time in Rome doing research, publications, and studies,  and from there she  went to Cambridge University on a post-doctoral fellowship.  Next, she  came to the United States – “It was supposed to be a one-year fellowship at Princeton University, and that's almost 40 years ago,” she told me.
I asked about the principal object of her work as an archeologist.

“I did some excavation, but most of my research was centered on already excavated material and  was taking place in museums. My focus was on the Etruscans.  I've worked in almost every major museum in Europe. The British Museum, the Louvre,  Berlin Charlottenburg, the Vatican, wherever there was something that fell within my field of interest or expertise, I traveled to those places.  Same in this country, I have worked in a lot of different museums in connection with  Etruscan pottery”, Birgitte explained.

“After I was done with my Princeton fellowship, I taught at Rutgers University, did research at the  University of Pennsylvania, and then I was teaching at Dickinson College, Gettysburg College, and Franklin & Marshall College, all in Pennsylvania. I did that for about 10 years, and then I  wrapped up my academic career by being the Assistant Provost of Gettysburg College.”

After she met her partner, Birgitte moved to Phoenix/Arizona because that’s where Madeline Williamson was a professor and piano teacher at the School of Music at Arizona State University. Birgitte’s archeological career came to an end because there wasn’t any job available in her field.  “But at that point I was almost 50 years old, and it was okay to try something else”, she told me.  “It opened a new chapter in my life, and I took a job with Borders Books, which was a hot thing at that time in the 90s. Borders was the place to be. And so I was a bookstore manager for some years, until we moved to Abiquiú. After we moved here, I got a job at the Santa Fe Opera from which I retired after almost twenty years.”
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Of course I wanted to know: what made them decide to move to New Mexico, and especially to Abiquiú?
 
“Well, it was probably by chance,”  Birgitte answered. “We were traveling home from vacationing with friends in Colorado, and we decided to take a different route from Gunnison in Colorado to Phoenix, Arizona, by way of New Mexico. We headed for Santa Fe after we had spent time in Chama where  we visited the Narrow Gauge Railroad. Driving from Chama to Santa Fe we came through Abiquiú, and we stopped to check it out. We had a meal at the Abiquiú Inn, and the Abiquiú Realty was right next door. We looked at some of the offerings and decided to spend the night at the Abiquiú Inn. We checked out some properties, and before we knew it, we had an appointment with a real estate agent and came out here in November of 2000. We bought the property right away.”

Birgitte continued: “We didn't move here immediately,  but in 2003 Madeline decided that it was time to take early retirement, and so she set that in motion, and we had friends who wanted to buy our house in the historic district in Phoenix. So by Memorial Day of 2004 we arrived in Abiquiú.”

And how did you decide on the architect? Your house is so unusual.

“There's Dwell Magazine, which is fairly well known for contemporary architecture,”  Birgitte explained. “They had just started in 2002 or 03, and we were interested in contemporary architecture and design, so we took a subscription, and there was an invitation to architects around the country to submit designs for prefabricated housing.”

You can read more about the house at the magazine’s website.

Birgitte at a performance in June of 2019. Image credit: Jessica Rath

“There were about ten architects, and we interviewed with a firm in San Francisco who were to become our architects for the project,” Birgitte continued. “ They’re two brothers of Norwegian descent. We had very much the same kind of esthetic, and they quickly understood what we wanted. The house was for two people to live in, with a lot of animals, so they needed to design porches for the cats and kennels for the dogs. And we told them that we wanted music. So from the very beginning, the performance space was part of the design.”

“The architects came out to visit the site before they did the design, and they really understood and appreciated the location: the bend of the river with upstream and downstream views, and the island out there in the middle. It was their idea to build the house up a little higher, because they are environmentally conscious. Prefabricated was part of the design, and  they decided that a small footprint was less invasive for the environment and benefited the location. In September of 2006 the house was ready for us to move in.”
 
Here is the Abiquiú House at the architects’ website.

I always admired the light-filled weightlessness of the house. There are hardly any walls inside, and most of the structural walls have floor-to-ceiling windows. The few doors there belong to bathrooms, for privacy. Inside the house one almost feels as if sitting on a cloud with views of the sky, the river, and an endless parade of wildlife: ducks and geese, eagles, deer and elk, an occasional beaver. And inside one always found a number of cats and dogs, all rescued. The design of the house includes several living areas for these animals: two big fenced-in porches where the dogs had plenty of space to run around but were safe. At night they went into their crates in the “pet apartment”. The cats were indoor cats but they could spend outside-time on one of the big decks which was enclosed with a chain link fence. The idea of designing a house and deliberately including living spaces for lots of rescued animals – I can’t think of anything more praiseworthy.

A few of the rescued pets. Image credit: Jessica Rath

“Once we had seven dogs and seven cats at the height of the population at the same time, and they all had their separate living spaces. Some of them got along better than others, so we had to keep them separate. But they all had their safe and secure areas,” Birgitte added. 
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Next, I asked Birgitte  about the Chamber Music Festival which was already part of the design for the house before they even moved here.

“Yes, we didn't know exactly what, but we wanted to offer performances for the local community. By the time we came out here and the house was built, Madeline decided that she wanted to have a New Music festival. So we thought about New Music. Basically, what was envisioned as a New Music festival became a regular chamber music festival where we offered both new music and traditional classical music. I think it really worked well, because people loved coming to hear Mozart and Haydn and Beethoven, but they also were eager to learn something new. And a lot of people in our local and supporting community really thought that probably the new music was the major part, because they learned so much, they took away so much from each concert.”
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I remember that they often had young composers there, and I asked Birgitte about this.

From the left, clockwise: Ruth Lomon, Matthew Aucoin, Jennifer Higdon, Ingrid Stölzel. Image credit: Jessica Rath

“Absolutely,” she replied.  “Young composers and  young performers were there right from the beginning. We didn't know what to expect for the first season, but once we had a foothold and the reputation, we knew people would be coming. Madeline would bring in soloists and major artists from all over the country and from all over the world. Some came over from Italy several times, and we had some Russian and some Chinese artists, and we had some local collaborative musicians.”
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I wanted to know– how did you find the more famous musicians, such as the pianist from Italy, Emanuele Arciuli?

Birgitte explained: “Madeline just went online to look for people who were doing interesting performances and were well-known performers in their field. Emanuele had been coming to the United States and New Mexico for a few years, but he didn't really perform much here. So she just brought him in. The same with Matthew Aucoin, for example, a young composer from New York who won the MacArthur Fellowship (called the genius grant) in 2018. So Matthew was here before he was truly famous. And now he's very famous.”

Madeline and Italian pianist Emanuele Arciuli. Image credit: Jessica Rath

That sounds fantastic. Which brought me to more questions: how did the festival  grow over the years? How many people attended a concert during its  twelve seasons? Did you always have a full house?
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“We could seat 100 people, and there weren't 100 for each concert in the first season, but I would say there were probably between 50 and 70,” Birgitte told me. “We never advertised, it was all word of mouth. We left  postcards at the post office, hung posters in local businesses, but we never paid for advertisements at all. I would say over the years about 7,000 people walked through the front door to hear music.”

“It went on for twelve years. It started in 2008 and then the last season was 2019. Of course, we didn't know that COVID was going to happen, but Madeline got a medical diagnosis in 2019 that made us decide that we couldn't continue with the festival. As it turned out, we would have had to discontinue anyway.”

Birgitte at a concert in June of 2016. Image credit: Jessica Rath

At the same time, Birgitte was also working at the opera. Those summers must have been busy!

“Yes, during the season, it's pretty intense to be an employee at the Santa Fe Opera”, Birgitte confirmed.  “We had six concerts here. Every other Sunday from mid June through mid August we had concerts. So yeah, I didn't really have time off in the summer but I was working every day. Having a concert here basically meant that you got up in the morning and you just started with the setup and the planning and everything getting ready. And of course, there had been rehearsals at the house for a couple of days before, they usually came out on Friday to  rehearse, sometimes also Saturday, and then gave the concert on Sunday.  There was always a reception for the supporters, the donors, and the musicians as well.”

“Plus,  we had to find accommodation for the artists. Luckily, the community was very supportive. A lot of bed &  breakfasts around here donated overnight stays for the artists. That was an extra draw, because they loved to come out here and just stay at a bed & breakfast. And then there was fundraising, and I did that as well. During the off-season, I raised money.”
I remembered that:  there were silent auctions and things like  that.
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“Yes, silent auctions, art shows at Abiquiú Inn,  plus, we had good support from our local communities. And in the end, I also managed to get  some grants. I raised about $50,000 a year to make the concerts happen and to pay the musicians.”

Silent auction, April 2014. Image credit: Jessica Rath

I had to ask: did you ever make a penny from all your endeavors?

Birgitte chuckled. “No, this was for the good of the community. We had a lot of expenses in the beginning because we had nothing, no funds to start with. Everything – buying the umbrellas and the chairs and everything else, it all came out of our own pockets. But eventually we could break even. Once we got started and had some ticket revenue,  once the fundraising was going well, we could raise enough money. The art shows were really important in the beginning, because they provided a lot of money that we wouldn’t have had otherwise.”

This is so impressive – Birgitte and Madeline  produced all of this  out of nothing. There was no precedence, there was nothing to base it on. It just all started and grew into this really fantastic thing.

“Yes, we had only just arrived and the house was barely completed when we started that first summer. You don't know how many people are going to show up. It was very much of an experiment but it really paid off.” Birgitte continued: “People loved it because it was in person. It is such a different experience when you can be with the musicians. And sometimes we had the composers here too. For example,  Jennifer Higdon  had the premiere of her opera Cold Mountain at the Santa Fe Opera, and so we performed her piece, and she came out and enjoyed it, and people got to meet her.”

I remembered another award-winning composer, Ingrid Stölzel. She was from Germany.
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“Yes, Madeline found her online and really liked her music, so we commissioned a piece from Ingrid, and it was performed, and she was here for the world premiere.”

And then there was the classical music composer Ruth Lomon, a friend of Madeline’s I believe. She attended several Abiquiú Chamber Music Festival seasons before she passed away in 2017.​​​​​​​

Carlos Nakai, performing in 2010. Image credit: Jessica Rath

What an impressive legacy. I’m sure that everybody who was able to attend a concert or a whole season has fond and priceless memories. My warm gratitude to Birgitte for opening her house to us, and for letting us look behind the scenes of the Abiquiú Chamber Music Festival. For a taste of the music, please play the YouTube video below.​