A life behind the curtain: Evy Warshawski’s legacy in the arts
While many people in the field of presenting have science or journalism majors, Evy Warshawski was an art history major who found a career in this world.
A long-time Napa resident, Warshawski has been in the nonprofit presenting field for more than 40 years, bringing thousands of performing artists to stages that range from 100 to 4,000-seat halls.
It all began when Warshawski was mesmerized at a show by mandolinist and singer-songwriter Bill Monroe. Noticing the similar reaction of the audience, she was inspired by the idea of bringing the arts to communities.
She found a job helping run a performing arts non-profit for musicians in Portland, where she began learning the ropes and meeting other presenters.
“I just got sucked in happily and kept going,” said Warshawski. “I didn’t know what I was going to do in life, but I found this so rewarding. It gets in your blood.”
She dove into higher positions in places that had presenting programs including San Francisco and St. Louis, before ending up at the Ann Arbor Summer Festival in Michigan.
She left Ann Arbor after five years partly because of the cold weather. Her cat once jumped into the snow there, she said, and it was a long time before she could find him.
Then a job offer as artistic director and managing director of the historic Napa Valley Opera House which had reopened in 2002 after extensive renovations, led her back to the more temperate climate of the west coast. The Opera House which opened in Napa in 1880 had been dark since 1914, and due to community efforts had narrowly escaped the wrecking ball..
“At every place, I learned so much,” Warshawski said, who thrives on presenting artists that communities may never have heard of or had a chance to see in person.
“That’s the challenge for me but it’s also the reward for me,” Warshawski said.
She knew she was successful if she went to a coffee shop and heard someone talking to another person about a great concert from the prior night that she had put on.
Warshawski was successful with landing huge names in smaller spaces. In Napa, these included Judy Collins, Willie Nelson, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Steve Martin, Joan Baez, Wynton Marsalis and Woody Allen.
One of her favorites was the actor Robin Williams, a booking that happened out of the blue, when Williams agreed to do three shows in Napa.
“He was amazing to work with,” said Warshawski.
She said experiences like this are part of what makes the job so enjoyable, but she also booked a variety of shows by lesser known performers to present 100 shows a year at the Opera House.
The presenting world, however, is not without its challenges.
“You have to be very careful because there’s so many dollars at stake. You have to see the work, you have to love the work, you have to take some risks, and you have to find funding to make it happen.”
“In the world of presenting and non-profits, it really is all about the bottom line,” Warshawski added.
One of the shows of which she was most proud was a home-grown creation, Idol NV, based on the popular television show, “American Idol.” Wanting to inspire young people to come inside the Opera House, she invited young singers from throughout Napa County to compete on stage for prizes and glory. It was a resounding success. The first IDOL winner is now a performer on Broadway.
E&M Presents
Warshawski left the Opera House after six and a half years, and in 2015, she and her husband, Morrie, co-founded the all-volunteer nonprofit organization, E & M Presents, to bring live and touring performances for kids and families to Napa.
While she had seen the arts scene growing in Napa, she had noticed a need for shows for kids. They decided to focus on bringing three or four first-rate family shows a year to Napa.
“I like to bring people in,” Warshawski said. “That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate or often hire local groups, but nobody was [bringing people in].”
For E&M, she said, “I knew when we bit this off that it was going to be a small program and it was going to be more calculated. If you’re only doing three or four shows, you want those three or four to be really good.”
For the first time, Napa children had a chance to see performers like the Amazing Bubble Man, The Okie Dokie Brothers, Dr. Kaboom and the Wheel of Science, the Popovich Comedy Pet Theater and the Zoppe Italian Family Circus.
Even though E & M wasn’t exactly Morrie Warshawski’s thing, he still joined his wife’s effort.
“He’s always been supportive,” Warshawski said of Morrie “He’s an arts person. In fact, he’s introduced me to a lot of the arts that I probably wouldn’t have done on my own.” She credits him with taking care of their two children while she would go to the theater.
Evy and Morrie, who will celebrate their 57th wedding anniversary on May 31, met in high school, although they went to different high schools. She’s from Missouri, and he’s from Kansas.
A poet, visual artist and painter, Morrie Warshawski worked as an arts consultant and also attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
“He’s good with numbers,” Warshawski continued. “He’s been around the grant world so much that he can key into things that help the people reading those grants figure out what they’re doing or trying to do… he fills in my weaknesses.”
There is a lot of work prep involved in presenting shows, Warshawski said, and she couldn’t do it alone.
One challenge is finding venues, E & M most often presents shows at the Yountville Community Center and Napa Valley College, and another is filling them.
“That expression of ‘build it and they will come’ doesn’t always work,” Warshawski said.
“The hardest part is getting people to come because a lot of people don’t want to come to something they don’t know.”
On the plus side she said, “It’s so great to be able to expose audiences to something new.”
With E&M Presents, she was also able to bring back IDOL NV. “I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to kind of go back to IDOL, but shape it a little better?’” said Warshawski.
In 2024 and 2025, she reintroduced the competition for singers. This year she tried something different and opened it to instrumental musicians. This idea found her traveling the valley to find contestants — she made one trip to Calistoga to encourage a talented teen-age tuba player to try out, but, she said, he opted to wait until he felt he was ready to perform solo.
Next year, she is thinking about focusing on dance.
Warshawski is most proud of the fact that E & M Presents is still here 12 years later.
Beyond presenting
Another part of Warshawski’s life is writing. Her writing has appeared in publications including the Napa Valley Register, Marketplace Magazine, and Napa Valley Life Magazine. She has also written previews and reviews of music, film, and dance for different regional and national publications.
“It’s not motivated by my need to write,” Warshawski said. “In fact, writing is really hard for me. It’s crediting the artists. It’s getting deeper into who they are and why you should come and see their new work.
“I’m always for the artist,” said Warshawski. “If I bring them here, I’m going to take care of them. I’m going to nurture. I’m going to make sure I dotted I’s and crossed T’s because it’s about the artist and always has been.”
She has also served on panels supporting the arts across the U.S., including the Mid-America Arts Alliance and Arts Midwest. She’s been a panelist and site visitor for the California Arts Council and National Endowment for the Arts. She served as co-chair for the regional Midwest Arts Conference in Milwaukee and the national Arts Presenters Conference in New York. In Napa, she has served on grants evaluation committees.
“That world was so much fun,” Warshawski said. “[It was] a lot of work but [also an] eye opener. Every time you get out of your comfort zone and start networking and doing all that, you just accumulate people, ideas, [and] thoughts.”
While Warshawski’s concern has always been supporting artists, she has gathered her own share of fans.
Barbara Niemann joined the board of the Napa Valley Opera House after she moved to Napa in 2000.
Warshawski, she said, was “instrumental in bringing in talent both for both the league and the fundraisers for the board. She was instrumental in bringing talent and creativity without being a hero in the effort.
“She had an eye for spotting talent before the general public recognized them. She was that good.”
Pam Bernstein, a retired RN for Kaiser, said that when she and her husband moved from Los Angeles to Napa, their children were 2 and 3, and she was surprised by the fact that there wasn’t much activity for kids.
She and her husband began looking for musical opportunities for their kids once they were in elementary school. The Opera House became their families’ go-to place for entertainment. Their kids were often the youngest people in the whole audience.
“[The Opera House] was the venue to give them the cultural enrichment we were kind of missing when we first moved here,” Bernstein said.
Years later, Bernstein’s son participated in IDOL NV. “[Warshawski] just had such a great camaraderie of this younger audience; giving them the feeling of what it’s like to be on a pretty impressive stage in a friendly competition,” Bernstein said. “That’s who Evy is.
“I just think she’s a really great humanitarian. She really looks at how she can create an environment to make things better for people. Evy deserves all the accolades she can get because she really does think of other peoples’ kids in the community. That’s really important in a small-town society.”
In spite of the challenges with the economy and changing tastes in entertainment, Warshawski would still encourage young people to go into the presenting field. One way to get a taste of the world, she said, is through internships with organizations like Festival Napa Valley or Music in the Vineyards.
What do you need to succeed? “You have to have a lot of resilience and a big mouth,” Warshawski said. “Those are my two key things.
“I think you can get things done when you have like-minded people sitting around a table,” said Warshawski.
She considers Napa one of the best communities she’s ever been a part of. It has enough going on to keep people busy if they wish to be kept busy, she said, and is a community where it’s easy to get to know people.
“If there’s an interest, I’ll go to it and see if I can be helpful,” Warshawski said. “If I’m going to live here, I want to help make it better.”
