By A-R Editions

Patrick WallPatrick Wall is the owner and CEO of A-R Editions. As one of the biggest supporters of our passion for bringing historical music to modern performers and audiences, Pat works tirelessly to keep all of A-R’s departments productive and (perhaps most importantly) solvent. He spoke with Esther Criscuola de Laix about what that means to him.

Tell us about your background. What did you do before joining A-R, and how did you end up here?

When I finished undergrad at the University of Wisconsin, I went straight into the MBA program, and studied finance, marketing, and management. When I graduated, I went to work in the family business. My dad, in 1968, came to Madison to run a company called Demco; it was a small library supplies company at the time, but it does a lot more today, and I’m still very involved in that business; I’ve been on the board of directors for about twelve years.

So, I’m working in a business that is selling to librarians: school librarians, public librarians, academic librarians. We’re selling them everything to shelve books and other materials, and to circulate them and protect them. We have a big catalog and a lot of marketing effort in that job, and I was the vice president of marketing for my last five years there after a succession of marketing jobs. But then I was looking to run a business of my own.

So, I went out and did some networking to try to identify a company that was the right size and doing the right things that I might be able to join and eventually buy from the owner. I met with lawyers, accountants, and bankers, and people who have contact with a lot of small-business owners, and I was meeting with Terry von Haden from SVA; I’d never met him before, but he was kind enough to visit with me and learn who I was and what I was looking for. We had a nice discussion, and a couple days later, on a Sunday afternoon, he calls me and says, “Are you available to meet someone this afternoon?” I was actually at my niece’s first Communion—so I said, “yes, but not for another half hour.” So, I go and meet Gary Aamodt [one of the founders of A-R Editions], and two weeks later I was the president of the company. That was in 1996, and five years later, in 2001, I bought the company.

The connection was this: even though I wasn’t in a music business before coming here, I was selling to librarians, so I knew that marketplace even if I didn’t know the specific content of the product that A-R was selling. In those days, we were doing a lot of other kinds of publishing, including journal work and one-off projects; we were a typesetting and composition house more than a music publisher. We shed that business and got back down to the basics of music publishing.

Then, a few years later, we spun off our computer music engraving technology into a start-up called MusicNotes. In 1998 that company was formed out of A-R, and I was very involved in that; I went to New York City to try to raise money. I was in the office of Paul Allen, the cofounder of Microsoft—he wasn’t there, but that was a great experience, and we were able to successfully raise money from private investors to launch MusicNotes. I was the CFO for that company for almost two years and let that go as they got their feet under them.

What I’ve enjoyed about this business are, first off, the people. I love that our people are so deep in their knowledge of the field; it’s just amazing to me. And take great enjoyment from it—I don’t think I’d ever met a medievalist before, or people who are really into very early music. I’ve been involved with the Madison Early Music Festival and sat on their board for years.

But I’ve particularly enjoyed working all these years with librarians, too, because I think it’s a caring profession. They’re out serving the students, the faculty, and the academic community.

That led to our relationship with the Music Library Association (MLA) as their business office, and we’ve been doing that since 2002. Paula Matthews, who was at the time the music librarian at Princeton University and the president of MLA, said, “you have to be our business office,” and I said, “I don’t want to be your business office.” “But you have to,” she said, “we trust you.” So we took that on, and Jim [Zychowicz] has really been a leader in that ever since. I’ve been involved with the MLA board, and I get to meet new librarians all the time as they come up through the ranks of MLA officers and volunteers. That’s been a big part of my enjoyment of working at A-R.

As for the product that we work on every day, the critical editions, I love the mission. I love bringing that historical music back into the modern repertory and doing it with the kind of care that very few others in the world seem to value. The intent hasn’t changed; it’s going to be the last word, hopefully, in musical research. Of course, new research can uncover differences in sources or other things about a particular work or composer—but the odds are slim to none that anyone else is going to put the kind of attention into that work ever again, after we’ve produced an edition. Our work must stand the test of time, and it has.

And I like that the company is a place where people with ability and education in music can work here. Not everybody is finding a job in the academy.

That is so important nowadays, and people are starting to come to terms with the idea that people with an advanced degree don’t always have to go into academia; there are other very fulfilling, interesting, and worthwhile options out there. The fact that A-R is part of that makes me very proud indeed.

I think music publishing is not a second choice, even though we often think of it that way: “I couldn’t get an academic job; what other things can I do? How else can I be involved in what I love, in music?” I think people are attracted here because they want to work with the music and the outside scholars and stay connected with the musicological world—and actually get a chance to do more of that work than people who are teaching music history. [Teaching] doesn’t leave you with a lot of time for your own research.

I thought we’d run out of historical music a long time ago! (laughs)

We have just scraped the top of the iceberg! There’s still plenty; I think we will have music to work with for a long time to come.

I love the fact that we have very long, enduring relationships with our customers, with the music libraries in the academic world. And a little bit around the world—almost 30% of our sales are foreign.

That is pretty impressive and says a lot about how people are noticing the quality of what we do.

My hope is that A-R, which has been around since 1962, will continue to be around for a long time, because, as you say, there’s music yet to be published. And the scholars need us to publish it; nobody else is out there doing what we’re doing. Many of the presses that used to specialize in critical editing aren’t interested anymore. But we have been staying the course.

And I like coming into the office and seeing people every day, and we’ve had people stay for decades and enjoy the work climate. That’s part of my job, to make sure that there are resources available and that you’ve got a place to work, the equipment you need, the time and resources; we’re not daily trying to drive down the number of minutes an editor spends per page. The idea is to do it once and do it your best. It’s going to live in print, and now digitally, hopefully forever.

What is a typical workday like for you?

My workday has changed over the years. Pamela [Whitcomb, Director of Music Publications] is shouldering most of the day-to-day workload here; I don’t mess with what the editorial or production departments do because they know what they are doing. I depend on that and appreciate it. The main tasks for me are things like banking, insurance, and planning; my role as the owner and president is to look out for the future. That’s been a challenge: how do we grow this business? How do we seek out more customers for the products that we have? How do we make it more affordable for institutions with tight budgets? Responding to those areas, working with the managers, working on challenges that come up during the production of the editions—[that's what I do].

What are some challenges you and the company have had to surmount in your time here?

Finding growth has always been a challenge. You can see that in our history of music publishing we have stronger years and weaker years, and that’s dependent on our publication schedule: how many books are coming through the production pipeline. I think the move to online subscriptions with RRIMO (Recent Researches in Music Online) is a wonderful thing for us—it’s smoothed out the ups and downs of cash flow and really makes it more a secure environment. The customer benefits immensely from the easy access it gives to faculty and students.

Do you have any A-R stories or anecdotes from your time here that you would like to share?

I’ve enjoyed the celebration of anniversaries and birthdays, the human things, the lunches together. We used to win Paul Revere Awards from the Music Publishers’ Association; we’d win one every year for music engraving, and then they changed their dues structure, [otherwise] we’d still be winning. And things like working with the University of Chicago Press on The Works of Giuseppe Verdi, Series I: Operas—those were monumental projects, and I really enjoyed being part of that. For a long time, we were helping publishers with K-12 music ed publications, too.

The other thing I’ve enjoyed—and this sounds kind of odd, but—[it happens] when people leave for new opportunities. We’re a smaller company, and we can’t provide career growth the way a large company can, and so when people spend a couple years with us and then move on to a bigger and better job, you know, I like that, and I’m proud of them for doing that. They learned something here and are taking it with them. Maybe it’s just learning how to work together that helps them in the next job. Ultimately, we want to come in and work with each other in a way that everyone can smile about, even though we have a lot to get done.

To wrap up, I’d love to hear about what you like doing outside of work, what hobbies you have.

That’s changed over the years, too! Now, at this stage, I’m enjoying being a grandfather, and I very much enjoy motorcycle riding, particularly [during the fall], when you’re out in the country watching the colors change. But it’s equally fun in the spring: you know, you can get from [A-R’s office] to farmland in five minutes. Watching the seasons change in the countryside is just delightful, from the planting going on in the spring to everything blossoming, and into the fall with the colors changing, when the cornfields that are all green all summer long are now a beautiful gold. It’s just so pretty out in the country. I enjoy that.

I don’t ski anymore; my knees aren’t what they used to be. I don’t run anymore; those are things I enjoyed when I was younger. I’m very involved in the family business, Wall Family Enterprise, which is a holding company. We have four companies; the largest is Demco, and we’ve got Gaylord in Syracuse, New York, which is in the archival products business, and one in Winston-Salem that sells software for the early-childhood learning market, and businesses in the UK in school and library supplies. There are about 400 employees altogether in those businesses. I spend a lot of time with family, a lot of time organizing family as it relates to being good owners and stewards of a family-owned business. Dad passed away in 2018, and my brothers and sisters and I own the family business now.

The other thing I’m still involved with is Boy Scouts. When our son was in scouting, it gave me an opportunity to get back in as an adult leader, and that was back in 2006. I’ve enjoyed staying on, as scoutmaster for four years and now as assistant scoutmaster; I just went camping with the boys. I enjoy the teaching part of that: teaching boys outdoor skills, and leadership skills. They grow so explosively from fifth grade into high school; you turn around, and they come back after the summer…

…and there’s several inches of ankle showing!

(laughs) Exactly! I’ve really enjoyed that; everybody needs adults in their lives who are looking out for them, and scouting is a very structured way that that happens.

Thank you so much, Pat, for taking the time for this conversation!