Kirstin “Fluffy” Blake was the production manager for the Minnesota Beethoven Festival from it’s founding in 2007 until her passing from cancer shortly after the 2017 Festival. She had a broad career that took her from lighting design, to working opera productions at Brevard, to running spotlights for Oprah back in the 1990s. She brought her depth of experience to MBF and was responsible for designing all of our production procedures. We present eleven concerts in six different venues in just twenty-two days, and from a production standpoint, that is absolutely crazy! Setups and teardowns are constantly overlapping from venue to venue over the three weeks and vary widely.

I met Fluffy for the first time during the year of the founding of MBF. And, I remember later reporting to my wife that I had met this woman who wanted me to call her “Fluffy,” which seemed more than silly to me (just how strange is this person? Fluffy? Really?). Even Yo-Yo Ma once asked her why she had such a silly name to which she quipped, “Do you really want to go there…Yo-Yo?” I was standing nearby when this exchange took place and after the briefest of pauses, he burst out laughing and it took quite some time for him to recover! But, it turned out that over the years, Fluffy and I became best friends, and it was my pleasure and honor to work with her and to learn from her.

Fluffy always carried with her a large binder, which she called her “Brain.” This binder contained every single production item needed to run a season of MBF. And the ‘Brain’ was not actually for her. No…she always said, that if she ever got hit by a bus, all we needed to do was open “Fluffy’s Brain” and follow the plan. Her “Brain” was extraordinarily detailed, comprehensive, yet organized in an efficient minimalist way. After her passing in 2017 we did indeed rely heavily on “Fluffy’s Brain” as we planned our first season without her. And, while she may no longer be with us, Fluffy will always be part of the Festival.

– Ned Kirk, Artistic & Managing Director