Before Charlotte Symphony music conductor Kwamé Ryan could make history at the Grammys in Los Angeles last Sunday, he had to somehow escape the clutches of a historic snowstorm in Charlotte.

Ryan won the Grammy for Best Opera Recording for conducting the Houston Grand Opera production of composer Jake Heggie’s “Intelligence”.

In doing so, he became the first Charlotte Symphony music director to be nominated for, and to win, a Grammy. And at the 68th Grammys, he became the first Black conductor to win in that category.

In an interview Wednesday with The Charlotte Observer, Ryan detailed what unfolded to get him to that point. (This story takes place on two coasts, but for clarity, all time references are Eastern Standard.)

The original plan to get to the Grammys

Initially, Ryan was set to lead the orchestra last Friday and Saturday night, Jan. 30 and 31, for Prokofiev and Schumann concerts in uptown Charlotte. Resident conductor Christopher James Lees would take over for the Sunday matinée, so Ryan could attend the Grammys.

The plan was for Ryan to fly out of Charlotte Douglas International Airport at 5:30 a.m. Sunday, Feb. 1, and arrive in Los Angeles in plenty of time before the non-televised portion of the Grammys began at 3:30 p.m.

As the weekend approached, Ryan and the orchestra leadership kept a wary eye on the increasingly dire forecast. They’d decide by Saturday at 9 a.m. whether to call off the remaining concerts.

“I just can’t explain how you feel when you think this is the one weekend I don’t need a historical storm in North Carolina,” Ryan said. “Why is this happening?”

Snow began to blanket the Charlotte region early Saturday. Ryan headed to the airport, having booked a 10:30 a.m. flight on the likelihood the concerts would be scrapped. It was about 8 a.m.

One delay after another after another at snowy CLT

A little over an hour later, Ryan got the call: the concerts were off. Good thing he already was at the airport. Ryan thought, “This was gonna be easy.”

Not really. A one-hour delay turned into two hours turned into four hours. Finally, they boarded.

“I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m still going to make it,’“ Ryan said.

The plane began to taxi. It was next in line for deicing. Ryan saw the aircraft ahead of them fly off. That’s when the pilot came on the intercom.

“Folks, I’ve got some bad news. We’ve been called back to the terminal. The airport is closed.”

‘Let’s get you on that flight’

It was now about 7 p.m. Ryan was on Hour 11 at the airport. Don’t panic, he told himself. Leaving on Sunday was the original plan anyway.

He patiently waited in line at the American Airlines counter until it was his turn to rebook. “I told her I was going to the Grammys, and she said, ‘All right. Let’s get you on that flight.’”

Outside, the snow kept falling, eventually reaching as much as 12 inches around Charlotte, and up to 17 inches in the northern suburbs, for one of the biggest storms in the region’s history. Ryan’s flight was one of nearly 1,100 that were canceled on Saturday at CLT.

He felt good, though, having rebooked on a 10:30 a.m. Sunday flight to Los Angeles. Ryan started walking to the airport exit when his phone buzzed. American texted him. That flight he just booked was canceled, along with every other flight out of Charlotte until Sunday afternoon.

Ryan’s heart sank. He realized there was no way he’d be able to fly out of Charlotte in time.

‘You’re never going to get out of here’

Charlotte Symphony President and CEO David Fisk offered to pick up Ryan and take him home, doubting he’d be able to get a cab in this snow.

During the day, Fisk also had suggested other ideas for Ryan to make it to the West Coast, including throwing money at a rideshare to take him to the Atlanta airport, a 4 1/2-hour drive. Made sense, Ryan thought. He booked a flight out of Atlanta for Sunday morning.

But when Ryan got in the car, Fisk told him, “Kwamé, what I just drove through in terms of snow. Just forget it. You’re never going to get out of here tomorrow.”

So Ryan cancelled the Atlanta flight and sunk into his couch, crestfallen. At this point, around 8:10 p.m., he resigned himself to catching the ceremony on the Grammy YouTube channel, which shows the early portion ahead of the prime-time event on CBS.

Gambling on a rideshare

But before he went to sleep, Ryan checked out a live webcam of the Atlanta airport. No snow.

OK, Ryan thought. If he could get to Atlanta, this could work. It’s 10 p.m., and he programmed a reservation request to get picked up by a rideshare service at 2:30 a.m.

He hoped someone would pick him up for “a crazy drive in the snow.” His phone pinged with drivers saying yes, then dropping him once they saw the distance. Ryan opted to sleep for a few hours, then see if anyone said yes.

At a quarter to 2 on Sunday, Ryan woke up and looked at his phone. A driver said yes.

Then the phone rang.

Sunrise in Atlanta

It was the rideshare driver, haggling over the price. Ryan told him to name his price. He did, Ryan agreed and the driver showed up in a big four-wheel drive SUV. They were Atlanta-bound.

They only stopped once, so the driver could clean the windshield and Ryan could grab some fast food. For two days, he didn’t think he ate anything that didn’t come out of a plastic container.

They arrived at the Atlanta airport around 7:30 a.m. just at sunrise. “It was just the most beautiful thing,” Ryan said. “Blue sky, streaked with orange.” He thought to himself with satisfaction, “I’m going to make it.”

Inside, he saw on the flight board a Delta flight leaving for LA at 10 a.m. Ryan had booked a Frontier flight for 10:30 a.m., and figured, no reason to change just for half an hour. Right.

Waiting and waiting for takeoff

The Delta flight left on time. As for Frontier? It announced a delay just as the Delta flight closed its doors.

Ryan knew he’d be late for the ceremony but didn’t know when the opera category would come up. The Recording Academy had to hand out nearly 100 awards starting at 3:30 p.m. and conclude in plenty of time before the 8 p.m. prime-time ceremony.

The Frontier delay lasted an agonizing 90 minutes before it finally took off. Ryan calculated he’d land in LA at around 4:15 p.m., about 45 minutes after the program started.

Running to the arena

You think Charlotte traffic is tough? A straight shot from LAX to the arena for the Grammys would take about an hour. But Ryan had a backpack with him. Nominee or not, there was no way he’d get into the area with that.

So Ryan’s taxi first took him to his hotel, where he dropped off his bag, then got back in and headed to the complex for the Peacock Theatre, where the non-televised awards show was, and neighboring Crypto.com Arena hosting the main telecast. The closest he could get dropped off was several blocks away.

Ryan stepped out into the LA sun, wearing his black suit and tie. It’s 81 degrees and he started to run.

Running the red carpet

When he got to the theater, it was around 5:40 p.m. Ryan realized he had another gauntlet to run — the red carpet.

There was only one way into the auditorium, and it was through a red carpet that Ryan estimated stretched three-quarters of the way around the building. All that room was needed for fans, photographers and media interviews.

Normally, that’s a leisurely stroll where the music industry elites bask in the attention ahead of the awards show. Not Ryan.

“Yeah, I’m running, looking like, ‘What’s up with that crazy guy?’ “ He was a maestro on a mission. While he still had no clue when his category would be called, there was no way he was going to miss his moment because he was walking the red carpet.

“Eventually, I got to the end of this marathon red carpet and got in the auditorium,” Ryan said. His category wasn’t up yet. “I was happy just to have half an hour to stop sweating.”

‘And the Grammy goes to...’

In his seat, he had a little time to gather his thoughts. Bad move. With five nominees in each category, all of them deserving, but only one winning, it felt genuinely nerve-wracking.

Finally, Best Opera Recording. It’s about 6:45 p.m.

“The moment between ‘and the Grammy goes to’ and ‘ ‘Heggie: Intelligence,’ ‘ my heart skipped two beats. I know what people mean now when they say time stops. It does. It’s a weird experience.”

First, there was a blast of adrenaline, followed quickly by disbelief then intense joy.

“Especially with the path I had had to that moment. To have run that kind of obstacle course over the course of two days, to get to that moment and actually be heading up on that stage was genuinely overwhelming.”

The opera, with a libretto by Gene Scheer and directed by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, debuted in Houston in the fall of 2023. It centered around the true story of two Civil War spies: Elizabeth Van Lew, from an elite Richmond family in the heart of the Confederacy, and Mary Jane Bowser, an enslaved member of the household.

Ryan thanked the opera’s creative team and gave a shout-out to his partner and his snowbound colleagues in the Charlotte Symphony. If he seemed in control to people watching the speech online, well that’s because as conductor, “I’ve had a lot of practice looking cool when I’m not.”

The final flight

When the time came for the televised part of the program, Ryan eagerly crossed the street and stuck around.

He got to watch the likes of Lady Gaga, John Baptiste and Justin Beiber perform up close at Crypto.com Arena. Essentially, it was the first pop concert Ryan ever attended, which meshed well with his eclectic taste in music.

The next day, Ryan returned to LAX for his 4:10 p.m. trip back to Charlotte, “the one flight I wasn’t bothered about.”

It was on time.

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