Legal News

Minnesota Firm to Honor Former Prez With Concerto

By Dan Slater

When the Law Blog caught up with Lowell Noteboom, the former president of Minnesota law firm Leonard Street & Deinard, he was in New York to do two things: take depositions for his construction law practice, and attend a board meeting for the American League of Orchestras.

“I still practice law in order to feed my orchestra habit,” said the aptly-named Noteboom, 65.

Now law is returning the favor. Tomorrow night, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra will perform a concerto commissioned by Noteboom’s firm in honor of his 12 years of service as firm president. That’s right; someone has written a concerto to honor a lawyer.

Noteboom, a Law Blog Bow Tie Club member, got the music bug at age 40 alongside his kids, who were at the time taking music lessons. His wife surprised him with a cello and music lessons of his own. (Noteboom’s oldest son, also a Leonard Street lawyer and also a member of the LB Bow Tie Club, plays the cello. His second son plays the piano; his daughter is a professional violinist.) Eventually Noteboom became active in the orchestra world, serving as chairman of the SPCO for the last 7 years.

According to this StarTribune article, composer Libby Larsen was asked to go before the firm’s search committee to interview for the gig. “It was quite strange,” said Libby, who’s married to a lawyer. “Luckily, I have some experience with depositions. . . . I took delight in hearing his partners describe him as a man of reason, of order, of infinite wit. Bach epitomizes those same qualities, and I said so.”

So after hitting the books and learning everything she could about Bach, Larsen came upon a book that discusses a famous encounter between Bach and Frederick the Great, the Prussian monarch. The Law Blog didn’t know this but out of that meeting grew Bach’s “The Musical Offering,” which partly-inspired the piece that Larsen wound up writing in Noteboom’s honor.

What does Noteboom think about all the fuss that’s been made over him? “It’s thoughtful, personal and a pretty big deal,” he told the Law Blog. “Libby recognized both my involvement in a string quartet and a chamber orchestra by writing a piece for both. That’s as much as I know and I’ll find out more on Saturday night. It’s a unique story, and a delightful one for me.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 22, 2008 (boomark / email).