They Told Me Not to Take that Job: Tumult, Betrayal, Heroics, and the Transformation of Lincoln Center (54 page)

8
. Philip Johnson is quoted in Diller Scofidio + Renfro,
Lincoln Center Inside Out
, 9.

9
. Diller Scofidio + Renfro,
Lincoln Center Inside Out
, 25.

10
. To name but a dozen such additional possibilities, none of which existed in 2002, I encourage you to try dining at Betony, Blue Ribbon Sushi, Cesca, Dovetail, Gari, Josies, Marea, Nice Matine, Ocean Grill, Quest, Sarabeth’s, and Shakeshack.

11
. These are the addresses of the apartment houses built by each of these developers: Zeckendorf’s (15 Central Park West); Barnett’s Extell (The Aldyn at 60 Riverside Blvd., The Ariel East at 2628 Broadway, The Ashley at 400 West 63rd St., One Riverside Park, 50 Riverside Blvd., The Rushmore at 80 Riverside Blvd., and The Avery at 100 Riverside Blvd.); Dan Brodsky (The Concerto at 200 West 60th St., 1 Columbus Place, South Park Tower at 129 West 60th St., South Pierre at 160 West 71st St., West End Towers at 55–75 West End Ave., and the West Pierre at 253 West 72nd St.); John Avalon (Avalon Morningside Park at 1 Morningside Dr.); Donald Trump (Trump Place on the Hudson); and Lenny Litwin (The Regent at 45 West 60th St. on Amsterdam Ave. and Hawthorn Park at 160 West 62nd St.).

Chapter 6

1
. For the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, Lincoln Center commissioned the firm of Fisher Dachs Associates to design a stage installation that incorporated some of these very features. It has been in use every summer since 2005. This structural innovation has been uniformly well received by musicians, audiences, and critics.

2
. Our prediction came true less than seventy-two hours later and well before there was any time to organize the dignified joint announcement that Bruce Crawford and I had explicitly requested and to which Paul Guenther had agreed. The news broke through the
New York Times
on Monday, June 2, 2003, in a front-page story, “The Philharmonic Agrees to Move to Carnegie Hall,” cowritten by Ralph Blumenthal and Robin Pogrebin.

3
. Our joint statement, issued immediately after the leaked story in the
New York Times
, is attached in its entirety as
Appendix D
.

4
. The quote appeared in “Philharmonic Deal, Completed Quickly, Left Some in Dark,” cowritten by Ralph Blumenthal and Robin Pogrebin,
New York Times
, June 3, 2003.

5
. As little is more important than the selection of an orchestra’s musical leader, critics and commentators have thoroughly examined the New York Philharmonic’s performance on this score. The consensus is, to put it mildly, nothing to write home about. Just the headlines or summary sentences alone provide a flavor of the consensus judgment.

For Barbara Jepson, “No Maestros in New York Philharmonic’s Top Management,”
Wall Street Journal
, June 22, 2004.

For Anthony Tommasini, “Local Leader Wanted: Please Apply Very Soon,”
New York Times
, December 10, 2006.

Justin Davidson: “The New York Philharmonic is as reliable and consistent as a metronome—and about as dull” (“Orchestrating Change,”
New York Magazine
, October 9, 2007).

Alex Ross: “For two drowsy decades, the New York Philharmonic played it safe: a pair of grand-old-man directors (Kurt Mazur, Lorin Maazel), redundant festivals of canonical composers (Brahms, Tschaikovsky), the usual parade of soloists (when in doubt, Yo-Yo Ma)” (“Waking Up: Alan Gilbert Takes Over at the New York Philharmonic,”
New Yorker
, October 19, 2009).

6
.
New York Times
, Quotation of the Day,
page 2
, from “Carnegie Hall Abandons Merger Talks with the New York Philharmonic,” October 8, 2003.

7
. In a
New York One
interview with Roma Torre, Guenther denied that the announcement of the New York Philharmonic’s move to Carnegie Hall was a bombshell that came abruptly. “Well, first of all, it wasn’t really a bombshell. This is something the board of the New York Philharmonic has been discussing since last year.” Video Monitoring Services of America, July 10, 2003.

8
. Here is Dicterow, violinist and concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic, on National Public Radio on June 3, 2003. “It’s [Avery Fisher Hall] always very bright and shrill and it’s very hard to get a balance of brass and strings and winds. It’s always tough to hear one another because of the vastness of the stage.”

9
. Deborah Solomon, in “Orchestra for Hire: No Strings Attached,”
New York Times
, October 10, 2003, wrote that during an intermission of a New York Philharmonic concert in Central Park on a Monday in July 2003, “I happened to spot Paul Guenther the chairman of the Philharmonic, who was sitting on a folding chair near the stage and appeared to be in high spirits. I asked him, only half-jokingly how he would rate the acoustics in Central Park.

“Not bad [he said without missing a beat].

Better than Avery Fisher Hall.”

Chapter 7

1
. A copy of the full report can be found in
Appendix C
.

2
. The open letter was released to the
New York Times
and reported on by Daniel J. Wakin in his story of July 7, 2011.

3
. Here is Ross holding forth: “Opera is the riskiest of businesses, and City Opera has landed in a precarious position. My sense is that it must finally leave Lincoln Center and escape the monopolizing shadow of the Metropolitan Opera. It should make the most of limited resources and adopt a scrappy, rebellious attitude. Instead of presenting a Broadway millionaire’s adaptation of an old British film about séances, why not get an avid young composer to take on an uncomfortable political subject? I have a fantasy of City Opera setting up shop in Brooklyn and offering a crashingly atonal
opera about the life and times of David Koch” (“Flummoxed: Struggles at City Opera and Across the Country,”
New Yorker
, May 9, 2011).

4
. Julius Rudel, in his memoir coauthored by Rebecca Pillar,
First and Parting Impressions
(Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2013), reflects further on his frustration with the New York City Opera’s decline in these memorable words:

              
Now I understand completely how the actions of ill-informed Board members can destroy an [opera] company. . . . What the Board of the New York City Opera allowed to happen, or more accurately precipitated, is well-nigh criminal. I am at the stage of life where anger is not a frequently felt emotion, but when George Steel, whose knowledge of Opera is limited (to put it kindly) announced that City Opera would leave Lincoln Center, I was outraged. (174)

5
. Quoted in James B. Stewart, “A Ransacked Endowment at New York City Opera,”
New York Times
, October 11, 2013.

Chapter 9

1
. See Allan Kozinn and Michael Cooper, “First Extended Talks at Met End Without a Labor Deal,”
New York Times
, August 2, 2014, in which Tino Gagaliordi of Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians is quoted.

2
. On July 26, 2014, the Metropolitan Opera widely distributed to the press a document entitled “Corrections/Comments on Local 802 Presentation of 7/25/14: Includes Original Union Presentation with Met Comments Interlineated.”

3
. Peter F. Drucker,
Managing The Non-Profit Organization: Principles and Practice
(New York: HarperCollins, 1990), 128.

Chapter 10

1
. There are certain culinary delicacies that Beverly and I both loved. The blintz. The knish (cabbage? cherry cheese? kasha? potato? anyone?). Chocolate babka. The perfect bagel. All are extremely difficult to prepare well. But there is nothing more challenging than making a world-class egg cream.

In Brooklyn, an egg cream is regarded as a form of high culinary art. As a service to all readers, what follows are the instructions to prepare a perfect version:

              
Ingredients and implements:

              
Use Fox’s u-bet chocolate syrup. Nothing else is acceptable.

              
Purchase an old-fashioned high-pressure seltzer bottle (a bottle of club soda or sparkling water will not suffice).

              
For a 12-ounce glass, ladle in several tablespoons of chocolate; about half an inch will do for starters (experiment to taste).

              
Then insert a long spoon into the glass after pouring in about one inch of whole or 2 percent milk. (Skim milk will produce too thin or “watery” a result.)

              
Aim the seltzer bottle directly at the spoon. Mix briskly.

              
The result will be a perfect “white head” atop the glass of about two to four inches.

Some cognoscenti prefer vanilla egg creams. For that recipe you will need to turn to another expert. The preparation of egg creams is a highly specialized art form.

2
. While there was no formal sunset provision in the donation that Herb Allen extended to Jazz at Lincoln Center, resulting in a glorious glass-cantilevered venue overlooking 59th Street and Central Park, Mr. Allen was moved to a new form of generosity. Aware that Jazz at Lincoln Center was about to embark on a capital campaign and of how few attractive naming opportunities were available to it, he voluntarily relinquished his own. Bob Appel, the chairman of the board of Jazz at Lincoln Center, offered a gift of $20 million. Now the Allen Room has been renamed the Appel Room. What Allen had done in discretionary fashion, Koch bound himself to contractually. Either way, a blessing was bestowed on both the New York City Ballet and Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Chapter 11

1
. See Jeffrey Sonnenfeld,
The Hero’s Farewell: What Happens When CEOs Retire
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 38.

2
.
BusinessWeek
, January 7, 2001.

3
. See Albert O. Hirschman,
Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations and States
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970).

4
. An excellent memoir of two Iraq wars written in the first person by an important and involved practitioner, Richard Haass, employs the term “war of choice.” See Richard Haass,
War of Necessity, War of Choice
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009).

Chapter 12

1
. Of course, Beverly Sills also served on Lincoln Center’s board of directors, and as its chair, no less. But by the time of her appointment to the board, she was no longer earning a living as an artist, having retired at the very young age of fifty.

Chapter 13

1
. See Joel L. Fleishman,
The Foundation: A Great American Secret—How Private Wealth Is Changing the World
(New York: PublicAffairs, 2007), 149–155.

2
. See the 1999 report entitled “To Err Is Human,” published by the Institute of Medicine.

Chapter 14

1
. Widely regarded as an outstanding national leader in the law of nonprofit institutions, Lesley wrote what has quickly become a standard monograph on that subject. The reader who spends time with
Good Counsel
(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2012) will be rewarded.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

I
t has always seemed to me that most bibliographies are dutifully compiled. Alphabetize the sources of your endnotes and voilà, another piece of the apparatus at the end of the book has been assembled. In fact, for reasons of cost savings and the avoidance of redundancy, fewer books contain such compilations.

My love of reading and commitment to books as sources of knowledge, inspiration, motivation, and aspiration should be readily apparent by now. What follows is a list of favorites, those I found of greatest value to an often lonely CEO on the lookout for good ideas, role models, companionship, and best practices.

When running a major institution, the pressures of the day to day can leave one without much time for thinking and planning. The books enumerated below were chosen with the reflective practitioner in mind. I am confident that any CEO, staff member, or trustee of a nonprofit or a commercial enterprise would benefit from an intellectual pause that refreshes. Take your pick.

You will find in this selection a number of thrilling first-person accounts about what it’s like to run a theater, guide a dance company, manage an opera, or direct an orchestra. Actors, dancers, singers, writers, and musicians find a prominent place as well in these listings. Nurturing talent and bringing work to the stage is a fascinating act of will, an expression of admirable courage. First-rate memoirs, biographies, and autobiographies can tell such stories with uncanny accuracy and verisimilitude. The reader is taken backstage into the rehearsal hall and the boardroom, places where art meets commerce.

Lincoln Center and the resident artistic organizations that call it home are favorites of the news media. They enjoy extensive print, radio, television, Internet, and social media coverage. Much of what has assumed book form has found its way onto the list below.

The widely applauded and awarded contribution of Lincoln Center to a vibrant cityscape has received ample attention from architectural critics, urban historians, sociologists, and political scientists. The extent to which the redevelopment of Lincoln Center is both consequence and cause of broader national and local trends has been a favorite theme of a number of the authors featured here.