Nicky Carpenter did everything with gusto — so much so that she seemed to have crammed several lifetimes into one.
Carpenter, 82, who died Aug. 14 in Plymouth of an undisclosed illness, served as the Minnesota Orchestra's board chairwoman from 1990 to 1995. In that time, she was instrumental in solving a budget crisis, strengthening the orchestra's endowment and hiring music director Eiji Oue.
Twenty years later, she played an important role in an even more destabilizing crisis at the state's largest arts organization. A member of the negotiating committee during the orchestra's rancorous 15-month labor lockout, Carpenter helped pave the way for a settlement in 2014, advocating a compromise in a Star Tribune commentary and reaching out to musicians in back-channel meetings.
Carpenter, a lifetime board member, was quick to help heal the breach between musicians and management when the orchestra took a historic trip to Cuba the next year.
"She was a fierce negotiator, but at the end, after we played our first concert in Havana, she was the first one in line to hug the musicians as we got off the bus," violist Ken Freed said. "That trip was a turning point between management and the musicians, and those hugs were important."
Minnesota Opera, MacPhail Center for Music, Minnesota Public Radio, Twin Cities Public Television and the League of American Orchestras also benefited from her expertise.
She was a pioneer, said former orchestra chairman Warren Mack. Along with Luella Goldberg, the first female chair, she "represented a tide of women moving from being adjunct members of society to being fully engaged.
Women at the time could chair the Symphony Ball but not the board. But Nicky and Luella broke that barrier, showing that they could be as good as men — and then some.
