Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: James Gandry runs one of New York's great cultural institutions,
Speaker 1: the Manhattan's School of Music, but he spent years as
Speaker 1: a working musician throughout the eighties. He sang tenor in
Speaker 1: ensembles large and small and solo where he could. You're
Speaker 1: listening to a recital he gave at four, This is
Speaker 1: Franz lists Patch non Trovo. In three he even auditioned
Speaker 1: successfully to be a backup singer in the Pet Shop
Speaker 1: Boys number one hit Go Best These days, it's a
Speaker 1: fitting anthem for the Manhattan School of Music's changing student body.
Speaker 1: We have more applications now than we ever have in
Speaker 1: our entire history. But the change has been that it's
Speaker 1: more and more international students from Asia filling those spaces.
Speaker 1: Why do you think that is, um? I think the
Speaker 1: reason is it's because those cultures have a very strong
Speaker 1: educational program from elementary school on and they have a
Speaker 1: commitment to it. And I think what happened in North
Speaker 1: America is that there's less and less education at a
Speaker 1: lower level, and so you have fewer and fewer people
Speaker 1: who are then going to take it seriously because they
Speaker 1: didn't have the early training and exposed to it. Right,
Speaker 1: you believe that it's the same in Europe as well
Speaker 1: as what's happening here, that they're solely eroding that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when I talk to my colleagues, they're the heads of
Speaker 1: the major independent conservatories in Europe. The same thing is happening.
Speaker 1: It's just it's just delayed, maybe ten years from what
Speaker 1: we were. Do you see a future in which you
Speaker 1: just moved the school to Beijing? Why make all of
Speaker 1: them come all the way over here when most of
Speaker 1: them are there? I don't. Who knows about the future
Speaker 1: is going to hold? But I don't because there's there's
Speaker 1: something else has happened that's countered the lack of education
Speaker 1: in public schools a bit, which is that community music
Speaker 1: schools have gotten better and better, and they have grown
Speaker 1: in size, and they have actually filled a lot of
Speaker 1: the gap and in some ways done it better than
Speaker 1: public schools would have done it because they're they're focused
Speaker 1: solely on music. So you have places like the Merritt
Speaker 1: Music School in Chicago, which produced the McGill brothers, and
Speaker 1: in New York there's the Harlem School for the Arts
Speaker 1: and the settlement school in in the in the village.
Speaker 1: Those places have all branched out and gotten larger and
Speaker 1: done a better job than they had in the past,
Speaker 1: in part to make up for what's happening in the
Speaker 1: public school system. I'm assuming schools not just Manhattan School
Speaker 1: of Music, but other famous schools like Julian and Mannis.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they will have some differentiation in their approaches.
Speaker 1: But but so there's not an academic program while they're there,
Speaker 1: or there is, I would say, you know, at a
Speaker 1: normal university or college, a kid goes to school for
Speaker 1: maybe fifteen hours a week of class, and the rest
Speaker 1: of their time is up to them to study, to
Speaker 1: join clubs, to do volunteer work for themselves. Where I
Speaker 1: think at a conservatory, what you find is that the
Speaker 1: kids are so First of all, they're so driven because
Speaker 1: they're clear what they want at least at this point
Speaker 1: in their lives. And secondarily, the curriculum is probably somewhere
Speaker 1: around twenty five to thirty hours of classic academic right. Um,
Speaker 1: we're credited by Middle States Association, which is the same
Speaker 1: crediting agency that a credits Columbia University, and so we
Speaker 1: have to provide. We we on the undergraduate level, we
Speaker 1: we offer a Bachelor of Music degree and Master of
Speaker 1: Music degree at the graduate level and a Doctor of
Speaker 1: Musical Arts. So in those programs you are probably in
Speaker 1: class twenty to thirty hours a week as opposed to
Speaker 1: a fifteen hour and then you've got all the practice
Speaker 1: and all the rehearsals and everything else. So a for instance,
Speaker 1: a voice major a school like mine would take voice
Speaker 1: lessons obviously, might take choir of things that you would expect,
Speaker 1: and then they would also take French diction, Italian diction,
Speaker 1: German diction, English diction. They'll take music theory for two years,
Speaker 1: they'll take music history. They have to also take a
Speaker 1: humanities core as well. So every semester that science, no
Speaker 1: science and math at my institution of most conservatives don't
Speaker 1: when they come to your school, is there an audition.
Speaker 1: That must be an audition process. So each year, the
Speaker 1: first week of March manis College of Music, ourselves and
Speaker 1: Juilliard hold our auditions the same week, so students that
Speaker 1: are coming wanting to come to your can come and
Speaker 1: do all of us at one time. And so we
Speaker 1: have over two thousand students audition the first week in
Speaker 1: March every year for about four hundred spaces now the
Speaker 1: two between you or at your scho at my school.
Speaker 1: And but before that there's a pre screening audition. So
Speaker 1: we actually do a primary screening which students send in
Speaker 1: recordings and then they are either accepted to go to
Speaker 1: the live audition or not. So there's another eight hundred
Speaker 1: or so before the two thousand that are screened out
Speaker 1: that we just say there's no way that they're going
Speaker 1: to make the audition. Is it safe to assume that
Speaker 1: they're all good if they're applying to you? Um, I
Speaker 1: would say most are good, but there's a few that
Speaker 1: go in there every year I think being naive, uh,
Speaker 1: and not knowing the level at all. To think that
Speaker 1: you didn't really know what you were getting into when
Speaker 1: you sent your tape into Juilliard seems absurd to me. Well,
Speaker 1: I think again, most of the vast majority do. But
Speaker 1: there are always a few that you know, they they
Speaker 1: they've been told all their lives that they're fabulous, and
Speaker 1: you know, they don't know they're from I don't know, Wichita,
Speaker 1: Kansas and they don't. And then when there has told them,
Speaker 1: dear you don't really have it. Yeah, well, their finger
Speaker 1: paintings are Picasso's. Exactly when the student body arrives in
Speaker 1: the incoming class, I would imagine not everybody makes it.
Speaker 1: Is there some attrition after the first year? Yeah, the
Speaker 1: attrition every year. There's a bit of attrition in the
Speaker 1: first years, and maybe seven of the students don't come back,
Speaker 1: and when they don't want They were the best in
Speaker 1: their hometown and now they're with a bunch of other
Speaker 1: people who were the best in their hometown, and suddenly
Speaker 1: they're not sitting in the in the principal seat of
Speaker 1: the orchestra. They're sitting at the back of a section
Speaker 1: or something, and I think they realize, oh, this is
Speaker 1: going to be harder than I thought. Talent alone isn't
Speaker 1: going to do it. I actually have to work really hard.
Speaker 1: But going from college to the NFL, right, I would
Speaker 1: imagine some cultural conditions as well where they come to
Speaker 1: that they're not New Yorkers, they don't want to live
Speaker 1: in New York, and there's sort of that. There's a
Speaker 1: far there's a little bit of that, but I think
Speaker 1: that actually most of the kids who come to New
Speaker 1: York really want to be here. Because New York is
Speaker 1: not a place that you feel lukewarm about. New York
Speaker 1: is a place that you either love or you really
Speaker 1: don't want to want to get out. You want to
Speaker 1: get out, and I think so. I think most of
Speaker 1: the students that's not why they leave. You think about
Speaker 1: young people going to school. I had some pretty intense
Speaker 1: conversations with the staff at one or two schools, and
Speaker 1: they described me privately, Um, you know some of the
Speaker 1: statistics drug over doses and sexual assault, and I would
Speaker 1: always imagine that the discipline that was part of the
Speaker 1: classical repertoire. You have a minimum if if none of
Speaker 1: that correct. Yeah, I think compared to most other institutions,
Speaker 1: we have very little, but we have our own. Every
Speaker 1: every institution, some people come in there and they're young,
Speaker 1: they're very in the years old, and they're in New
Speaker 1: York and they're away from their parents for the first time.
Speaker 1: We certainly have some of that, but it's not nearly
Speaker 1: one of my colleagues that more traditional institutions tell me about.
Speaker 1: Now you're from Sheboygan, I am what did your dad
Speaker 1: do for a living? My father was a pattern maker
Speaker 1: in a furniture company, which was he made the first chair.
Speaker 1: If when a when a chair was designed, he would
Speaker 1: take it from the designer, make the first chair, and
Speaker 1: make the patterns that would then be used on the
Speaker 1: family line to mass produce it. Your mom did she work?
Speaker 1: She worked in the home until she was in her fifties,
Speaker 1: and then she decided she was going to break out
Speaker 1: of my father's a stricture of never working outside the
Speaker 1: house because he was the breadwinner. Um. And she got
Speaker 1: a job at a grocery store as a checkout clerk,
Speaker 1: and she did that until she was never happier. She didn't.
Speaker 1: She stopped working when she was seventy eight years old
Speaker 1: when she said she just couldn't stand that long for
Speaker 1: that many hours any longer. Well, my mother, who had
Speaker 1: six children and was home in a very kind of
Speaker 1: suffocatingly traditional How many kids in your and there were five,
Speaker 1: three biological, two adopted, and then my parents had foster children,
Speaker 1: so we had about ten foster children coming in and
Speaker 1: out of the house when I was growing up. I'm
Speaker 1: number three of the biological. What was music in the
Speaker 1: family when you were a child? None of none of
Speaker 1: my parents are musical. Um. So I got my start
Speaker 1: through public education. So in fourth grade, we got to
Speaker 1: choose an instrument if we wanted to, and I started
Speaker 1: playing the trumpet, and then I switched to french horn.
Speaker 1: Later I wasn't a very good trumpet player at french
Speaker 1: horn player. And then in tenth grade, when I went
Speaker 1: to high school, my best friend said to me, let's
Speaker 1: join the choir. And I said, no, no, no, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to join the choir. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: We're not going to do that. He kept being persistent,
Speaker 1: so we did, and I immediately was placed in the
Speaker 1: at that time, the top choir because it was several
Speaker 1: It was quite a robust music program back then in
Speaker 1: the dark ages. And I was also put in this
Speaker 1: very very small choir that was only sixteen people. So
Speaker 1: immediately I started singing and being very successful at that
Speaker 1: and that's when I decided I was going to go
Speaker 1: into music. Um, I had first wanted to be a minister,
Speaker 1: then I wanted to be a social worker, and then
Speaker 1: I wanted to be a teacher. There's a pattern in there.
Speaker 1: Then I went to college and studied music and decided
Speaker 1: I was going to be a perform and then later
Speaker 1: when I got through uh my bachelor's and master's degree. Uh,
Speaker 1: and moved to New York. I realized that I liked
Speaker 1: education and I wanted education transformed by life because I
Speaker 1: came from a working class family, and I thought there
Speaker 1: would be nothing better than to combine music and my
Speaker 1: love for higher education and help transform other people's lives.
Speaker 1: You went to Lawrence University in Appleton. Mari ton of
Speaker 1: Gucci was your voice coach, and uh, we do a
Speaker 1: little bit certace. What made Mari Tona Gucci so effective
Speaker 1: for you? Well, she was both effective and frightening. Um.
Speaker 1: She was about five feet tall. She was somebody that
Speaker 1: everyone revered and feared. She could reduce you to rubble
Speaker 1: in two seconds. Where she was from. She was born
Speaker 1: in California. Her parents were from Japan. Um. She she
Speaker 1: taught me about excellence, and she taught me she was
Speaker 1: probably one of the best musicians I ever met. She
Speaker 1: wasn't a very good voice teacher, actually, but she was
Speaker 1: a great musician. And she really taught me that every
Speaker 1: single nuance and every millisecond counts and matters, and that
Speaker 1: I think is something that is rare in society now,
Speaker 1: that attention to detail, that attention to being as perfect
Speaker 1: as you can be she wasn't a very good voice teacher,
Speaker 1: which was a great musician. How do you distinguish the two.
Speaker 1: Being a great voice teacher is how they teach you
Speaker 1: at the technique of singing to actually produce a sound
Speaker 1: better and better every time. I got better, but I
Speaker 1: didn't get better I think in the ways that I
Speaker 1: should have. If my next teacher at the San Francisco
Speaker 1: Conservatory music for my master's degree, with someone who instilled
Speaker 1: in me a sense of pride and myself and confidence
Speaker 1: in myself, because because Marina Gucci had sort of reduced
Speaker 1: that a bit, because if she was so demanding and
Speaker 1: kind of a punitive way, my next teacher was just terrific.
Speaker 1: He just built me up. You know. Personally. Was your
Speaker 1: family supportive of you doing this kind of work? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were supportive, I think in part because they didn't
Speaker 1: They didn't really know much of education, so so what
Speaker 1: was great about that was they just said, we want
Speaker 1: you to be happy. And the great thing about my
Speaker 1: parents always was that if I had been a truck
Speaker 1: driver or i'd be a president of a conservatory, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't have mattered to them. As long as I was
Speaker 1: a good person. I worked hard and I did my best.
Speaker 1: It's always interesting when you have parents who say they
Speaker 1: want you to be happy and they mean it. Yes,
Speaker 1: was it at Appleton or San Francisco that William Sloane
Speaker 1: Coffin spoke in the campus? It was first semester of
Speaker 1: my freshman year in Lawrence. Yes, and uh it was
Speaker 1: political activism, something that was royal ing for you when
Speaker 1: you were going to school. It was beginning to boil
Speaker 1: I had. I had been a nuclear power sort of
Speaker 1: activist when I was in high school. They were trying
Speaker 1: to build a nuclear power plant near my home, my
Speaker 1: hometown and no, well they had several already along the
Speaker 1: along Lake Michigan, but they were kind of trying to
Speaker 1: build another one. And I was working and I was
Speaker 1: doing some protests here there to star not anti nuclear weaponry,
Speaker 1: anti utility. Correct, That's what I've worked in for about
Speaker 1: twenty five years. And so when I went to college
Speaker 1: and I saw and I heard williams sound Coffin, he
Speaker 1: was talking about nuclear proliferation as in war. And I
Speaker 1: had never been to a public lecture before, and I
Speaker 1: went because I they said it was good for me,
Speaker 1: and so I went because the authorities at the school
Speaker 1: said it was good for me. So I went and
Speaker 1: I loved it. I couldn't. I thought, this is what
Speaker 1: college is about. I can learn all these things and
Speaker 1: I can get exposed to these incredible, inspiring people. He
Speaker 1: really was important in my education because it was so
Speaker 1: early on. And then later when I lived in New
Speaker 1: York and I saw him walking down the street near
Speaker 1: Riverside Church, which is where he spent many years since
Speaker 1: you know, um, I went up to him and I said,
Speaker 1: I heard you wish and you really thank you so
Speaker 1: much for that great You know, we were your parents
Speaker 1: were either we're both of your parents liberal or vaguely
Speaker 1: liberal people or now no, I would say my parents
Speaker 1: were on the conservative side. Although they were independents. They
Speaker 1: would vote. They would always say they voted for the person. Um.
Speaker 1: My mother, however, in her later years, has become a Democrat,
Speaker 1: and it is very much kind of hard not to
Speaker 1: these days. She was very happy when Governor Walker was defeated.
Speaker 1: She's very unhappy when Hillary didn't win. And I think
Speaker 1: that came out because when I, um, I think when
Speaker 1: I came out of the closet, she started changing her
Speaker 1: views and she realized that her child was not being
Speaker 1: protected by society and right and was treated fairly, and
Speaker 1: she was and that changed a lot of her views.
Speaker 1: And she's just the most incredible person you could ever meet.
Speaker 1: And back, Yeah, when we go back to in my hometown,
Speaker 1: my husband and I, she introduces my husband as her
Speaker 1: son in law and it's very sweet and it's and
Speaker 1: it's important. Actually, was that difficult to come out with
Speaker 1: your roots? Well, it was in the nineteen nine so
Speaker 1: it was. It was not easy at a place like
Speaker 1: Lawrence Appleton is the home of Joe McCarthy. Um. Perfect.
Speaker 1: So but you know, I have to say that that
Speaker 1: I didn't have any overt problems among the faculty or
Speaker 1: the administration. There were some student things that I endured,
Speaker 1: but um. And then when I went to San Francisco,
Speaker 1: I didn't know it. I didn't know what San Francisco
Speaker 1: the honest when I moved there. But I found out
Speaker 1: very quickly. More oxygen there for you, Francisco, A little
Speaker 1: bit for you. What was the joy of singing? Well,
Speaker 1: I love I have to say I love being on stage. Um.
Speaker 1: I remember when I was student training and one of
Speaker 1: the opera directors was saying to the group, now, you've
Speaker 1: got to make sure you get in the light, getting
Speaker 1: the light. Jim never is out of the light. I
Speaker 1: just I naturally went to wherever the spotlight was right.
Speaker 1: So I love that part of it. I also loved
Speaker 1: the magnificent magnificence of the music. Um, you know, to
Speaker 1: be performing with a great orchestra in a great hall
Speaker 1: like I've performed with the New York Philarmonic maybe eight
Speaker 1: hundred times. In the New York choral artists back in
Speaker 1: the nineties and the eighties. Joe what's his name, Joe Flummerfeld,
Speaker 1: I always say his name on the on the other radio. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the New York Choral artist, Joe Flummerfeld director, I'd say, correct.
Speaker 1: But so you perform with them, yes, a lot under
Speaker 1: Mayton Massour mostly, but also with Sir Colin Davis and
Speaker 1: Bernstein and other guest conductors as well. I mean to
Speaker 1: work with Bernstein. Was we did Maller second course. Mahler
Speaker 1: was the thing that he was particularly noted for, um
Speaker 1: and it was a year before he died, and it
Speaker 1: was for performances and he never looked, He never had
Speaker 1: a score in front of him and he's getting up
Speaker 1: there in age, and obviously he was relatively close to death,
Speaker 1: but the amount of energy and inspiration that he gave
Speaker 1: from the podium was I'll never forget it. Then there's
Speaker 1: a physical part of singing. It's just viscerally feels good
Speaker 1: when it's on. You just can't imagine anything feeling better
Speaker 1: than that, especially with a symphony. Granted this was not
Speaker 1: a philharmonic, but I was on the stage with Jim
Speaker 1: and Nanni with a big orchestra, like when adp Sorra
Speaker 1: or ninety and when they fired up Bali high and
Speaker 1: almost classically did a medley, you felt the chill go
Speaker 1: up your spine. Here will those people played that music
Speaker 1: five ft behind you. There's nothing like a live orchestra,
Speaker 1: and there's nothing like an orchestra of a size because
Speaker 1: the Broadway the orchestras get smaller and smaller. They're miked
Speaker 1: and so masks a little bit of how small they are.
Speaker 1: But it's just not the same as an acoustic orchestra
Speaker 1: that's huge. South Pacific kind a very successful run. I
Speaker 1: guess Broadway audiences have become much more generous in terms
Speaker 1: of the lower their expectation about that sound quality because
Speaker 1: the music it did sound a little thin, you know,
Speaker 1: it was only like a I don't know what it
Speaker 1: was like. I don't like it was such a difference
Speaker 1: now to get back to and for our listeners we
Speaker 1: mentioned that ms M. I'm referring to the Manhatan School
Speaker 1: of Music. So when does MSM begin for you? You
Speaker 1: start teaching their when Well, I didn't teach there in
Speaker 1: the beginning. I moved to New York a day after
Speaker 1: Christmas night four solely because I wanted to study with
Speaker 1: a wonderful, wonderful teacher who taught me really how to sing,
Speaker 1: Marlene Amalas. And she is a teacher of people like
Speaker 1: Susan and Graham and Touchy on a try on us,
Speaker 1: and the whole bevy of people who have sung at
Speaker 1: the mat um. She taught at Manhattan School Music at
Speaker 1: the time. She now teaches at Manhattan School Music, Julliard
Speaker 1: and Curtis. So I went there because I wanted to
Speaker 1: study with her, and also because I needed to defer
Speaker 1: my student loans. So I did that, and after a semester,
Speaker 1: I needed to have find a job because I was
Speaker 1: running out of money, and I did pay my rent
Speaker 1: so party town, are you living here? I was living
Speaker 1: in health kitchen and eighth back back when I with
Speaker 1: the place, living at a cheap compartment, right, no longer, right, exactly,
Speaker 1: It's as expensive as everywhere else there. And then um
Speaker 1: so I got a job as an administrative assistant in
Speaker 1: the Summer school office. And then four months later I
Speaker 1: started working the admission office as assistant director. And then
Speaker 1: I became the director of career planning, and then I
Speaker 1: came the director of admission. You're doing that early run
Speaker 1: you're talking about. You got the bug? You liked it?
Speaker 1: I did, And I realized then beyond liking a steady paycheck,
Speaker 1: you liked the realized that not only the institution was great,
Speaker 1: but this is what I really wanted to do. This
Speaker 1: was actually giving me more fuel for my soul over
Speaker 1: a daily in a daily basis than what being a
Speaker 1: singer was. And it was, but I but the great
Speaker 1: thing was I was able to continue to sing, singing
Speaker 1: in two groups for the most part, the New York
Speaker 1: Choral Artists with the New York Philharmonic and a few
Speaker 1: other visiting orchestras, and then another group in the village
Speaker 1: called Voices of ascension. So I had what I thought
Speaker 1: was the perfect combination and of being a professional musician
Speaker 1: and yet doing full time what I wanted to do. Interesting,
Speaker 1: when you find a job and you're a performer, and
Speaker 1: so it's I think it's the same for whole performers,
Speaker 1: regardless of what your singing, classical repertoire, or you're acting
Speaker 1: or playing an instrument or what have you are doing comedy.
Speaker 1: I don't know that when you find that job, it's
Speaker 1: the money gig, that's the paycheck gig. You stumble on
Speaker 1: one that you actually like, and it's the birth of
Speaker 1: a career. I agree, and I can't imagine doing anything
Speaker 1: better with my life. You're listening to Manhattan's School of
Speaker 1: Music president James Gandry from his days as a tenor
Speaker 1: making ends meet from gig to gig. He's here in
Speaker 1: the choir singing Porgy and Bess with the New York
Speaker 1: Philharmonic under the incomparable Zubin Mehta, enough leader of the
Speaker 1: New York classical music scene. His former New York Philharmonic
Speaker 1: director Zarin made a Yes, that's Zubin's brother. It wasn't easy,
Speaker 1: but I got Zaren on the record about his favorite composers.
Speaker 1: I mean it sounds pretty trite with people want to
Speaker 1: hear this Shoe. I love Shoe, but sho was song
Speaker 1: She's Somewhere. You're indifferent too, Yeah, haven't got enough time here.
Speaker 1: Zaren made his other strong opinions in our archive at
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing dot org. This is Alec Baldwin and
Speaker 1: you're listening to Here's the Thing. I'm back with the
Speaker 1: president of the Manhattan School of Music, James Gandry. You're
Speaker 1: listening to his very first recording as a professional singer
Speaker 1: in John Adams Harmonium with the San Francisco Symphony, recorded
Speaker 1: in Gandry has ultimate responsibility for the hiring and firing
Speaker 1: of the school's two hundred and fifty full and part
Speaker 1: time teachers, who spend every day with students in classrooms
Speaker 1: and one on one. It's a relationship that is very intimate,
Speaker 1: and I don't mean that in an inappropriate way, particularly
Speaker 1: in voice, because unlike other instruments where you can a
Speaker 1: teacher can actually show the student, hold your fingers this way,
Speaker 1: hold your arm this way, put the violin and or
Speaker 1: your chin this way. Um, raise your elbows this way.
Speaker 1: For a pianist or something. You can only do that
Speaker 1: really through imagery and through feel with the voice. Because
Speaker 1: you can't see the voice, you can't manipulate the voice. UM.
Speaker 1: So I think that half of the half of the
Speaker 1: success of any voice teacher student relationship is a personal one.
Speaker 1: The other half is a technical one and knowing what
Speaker 1: you're saying and and and being able to translate imagery
Speaker 1: to doing something that actually works for the student and
Speaker 1: and and each student is different because each body is different. Also,
Speaker 1: so residences are slightly different for everybody. So the intuition
Speaker 1: that a great teacher has to know how to change
Speaker 1: the approach that they do to technical the technical work
Speaker 1: that the student the teacher are doing is what I
Speaker 1: think UM delineates between a eight teacher and an okay
Speaker 1: teacher and just a bad teacher it just doesn't really
Speaker 1: know how to teach at all and shouldn't be teaching UM.
Speaker 1: And also, I think to make sure that you know
Speaker 1: how to guide the student to put themselves out there
Speaker 1: again into risk because I think you know, being on
Speaker 1: stage every time you perform, there is a risk. There's
Speaker 1: a risk that you're not going to do well, and
Speaker 1: you're in front of all these people. Know, most people
Speaker 1: don't do their job in front of an audience, and
Speaker 1: often they want to be safe, and when they're safe,
Speaker 1: they actually don't do the right thing. And I would
Speaker 1: teach it, and that's it was like no new drop on.
Speaker 1: I'd sit there and I'd say, you've got to develop
Speaker 1: this very artificial ability. You've got to develop this very
Speaker 1: foreign capacity to not care what people think about you.
Speaker 1: And we care very much about what they think about this.
Speaker 1: But and we do before we go on stage, and
Speaker 1: we do after become on stage. But the trick is
Speaker 1: that while you're on stage doing it, you have to risk.
Speaker 1: You have to jump off the cliff and dry anyway.
Speaker 1: Do you have a teach Do you have a teach voice? There?
Speaker 1: I don't now what I did back in the in
Speaker 1: the day I taught performance classes, not actually individual voice
Speaker 1: who told them all how to find their light. Indeed,
Speaker 1: and continue doing that when I was when I moved
Speaker 1: to Chicago in two thousands. You left ms M, Yes,
Speaker 1: I did. After fifteen years. I left MSN sure too,
Speaker 1: because I thought it was time to move on. I
Speaker 1: needed to grow in different ways than I could. I
Speaker 1: think if I had stayed I love the institution, but
Speaker 1: I wanted to actually lead an institution. So the opportunity
Speaker 1: to be the head materialized where where I was the
Speaker 1: dean of Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University.
Speaker 1: So I did that for seven and a half years,
Speaker 1: and in the last year and a half, I was
Speaker 1: asked by the then provost of the institution to be
Speaker 1: the interim dean of the College of Education as well.
Speaker 1: So I had to deanships at once. Then she laughed,
Speaker 1: the institution the provost and I became the interim interim provost.
Speaker 1: Provost is sort of the dean of the dean's It's
Speaker 1: the chief academic officer and all the deans of the
Speaker 1: colleges report to the provost. So I had the dean
Speaker 1: of pharmacy in the Den of Business and the dean
Speaker 1: of education is um. I wanted it because I thought
Speaker 1: that I could be a president. To me, like, you're
Speaker 1: just power badge. Your power now, transforming people's lives and
Speaker 1: making a difference in them is what I get off on.
Speaker 1: So I realized more and more that unless you're at
Speaker 1: the very top roll, you can't change an institution. You
Speaker 1: can have an effect in a certain number of people's lives.
Speaker 1: But when you're the president, you affect significance. I'm assuming
Speaker 1: that as you climb this ladder administratively at these fine institutions,
Speaker 1: does the performance and the part of you that's a
Speaker 1: singer gets squeezed out more and more when you climb
Speaker 1: the ladder. Almost everyone does. And whether you're a historian
Speaker 1: or you're a physicist or whatever, when you climb that ladder,
Speaker 1: you stop doing your the other work because you just
Speaker 1: can't any longer. It just takes up judge job. So
Speaker 1: you're there for seven and a half years, and what
Speaker 1: entices you to come back? So after my seven half
Speaker 1: years is Dean and then five and a half years
Speaker 1: as provost, I was beginning to think of looking for presidencies,
Speaker 1: And so I was, and so the president of manhatt
Speaker 1: School Music had just resigned, and so someone had said
Speaker 1: to me, you know, can I nominate you? And I
Speaker 1: said sure, But I mean, Manhattan School Music is not
Speaker 1: going to hire me. Why do you say that? Because
Speaker 1: I have an idea, which is that? Is it the
Speaker 1: idea that they knew you when you were like junior,
Speaker 1: You were in the lower ranks and they just didn't
Speaker 1: have the ability to see you. And that's what I thought,
Speaker 1: And I'm sure there was part of that during the
Speaker 1: process of them. I'm sure that was a discussion they had.
Speaker 1: But in the end I was offered the job, and
Speaker 1: I was thrilled to death to be coming back to
Speaker 1: a place where I had started as an administrative assistant
Speaker 1: at one time. UH to become the ninth president of
Speaker 1: the school, following some people who were pretty impressive. Did
Speaker 1: much change and did much change of Manhattan since you
Speaker 1: were gone. One of the things about conservatories is that
Speaker 1: conservative is in their name. Higher education in general, although
Speaker 1: politically fairly liberal, is in their own curriculum and their
Speaker 1: programs fairly conservative. Um, So conservatives have a hard time changing.
Speaker 1: So right now we're in the middle of a planning
Speaker 1: process and one of the things we're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: about is how should we change and how do we
Speaker 1: continue to hold onto the traditions which are important at
Speaker 1: the same time as looking forward to a new world
Speaker 1: that we need to prepare our students for. So um,
Speaker 1: there was a lot that was very similar. I think
Speaker 1: what what the institution had always done a really great
Speaker 1: job at was the actual education of the students. What
Speaker 1: institutions like MIND have neglected are the facilities and the
Speaker 1: promotion of the institution. I'm assuming that thirty years ago,
Speaker 1: schools have Manhattan School of Music didn't have to do
Speaker 1: much promotion. People who were disposed towards that they knew
Speaker 1: who you were, and they were like like Harvard, they
Speaker 1: were headed in your direction. There was a lot of that.
Speaker 1: There was also, um, a sense that doing that kind
Speaker 1: of promotion maybe was yes, and so you just didn't
Speaker 1: do it because those of us do at this level.
Speaker 1: So I think that's long gone, thank goodness. Um. But
Speaker 1: when I arrived, there was very little social media going on,
Speaker 1: almost none. Um. We were not promoting ourselves very much,
Speaker 1: and we were living off our reputation, which was a
Speaker 1: great reputation and thank god, it is so good. So
Speaker 1: the institution kept going. But now I think we have
Speaker 1: a different presence. You do start uh adding to that dent.
Speaker 1: But the good news is, you know, the number of
Speaker 1: followers on Twitter and Facebook, etcetera. Have been exponentially growing
Speaker 1: for us. So that's been terrific. In our numbers are
Speaker 1: this year. Application numbers are up again what percentage to
Speaker 1: the extent you can say, are on some kind of
Speaker 1: financial aid. About two thirds are on institutional financial light,
Speaker 1: meaning in money that we give them. Uh, there's another group,
Speaker 1: another percentage I'm not exactly sure that also received government
Speaker 1: aid and outside aid, but not necessarily for lots. You
Speaker 1: have four hundred incoming per year, correct, because the most
Speaker 1: conservatories have a disproportionate number of graduate students. A lot
Speaker 1: of graduate students go to universities for their undergraduate education
Speaker 1: and then they come to conservatories for their graduate program.
Speaker 1: So you'll find either fifty fifty or sixty forty kinds
Speaker 1: of balances at most conservatories graduate to undergraduate. So that's
Speaker 1: why there's four hundred coming in every year, because we
Speaker 1: were replacing them every two years as opposed to four
Speaker 1: year undergraduate program in entering freshman classes, how many of
Speaker 1: the four which the housing imperative for them in an
Speaker 1: institution in Manhattan, So we have a we have a
Speaker 1: residence hall where my husband and I live. Actually, um,
Speaker 1: we have a slightly better dorm room than they do.
Speaker 1: Where is that. It's at the school, So it's at
Speaker 1: one and Claremont Avenue, which is right across from Riverside Church.
Speaker 1: About half of our student body lives in the residence hall,
Speaker 1: and fresh and sophomores are required to live there. When
Speaker 1: I went to that commencement with Long Long, where was
Speaker 1: it held? The game with the side, Can I tell
Speaker 1: you something? It was? Absolutely it was. I mean I
Speaker 1: had tears streaming down my face. We were up on
Speaker 1: that altar and I'm there with Long Long who I
Speaker 1: worship that commencement? Oh my god, that's the advertisement for
Speaker 1: your school right there. You should take that and put
Speaker 1: it online. We do not live stream it actually doesn't
Speaker 1: have it. Um every year when I have people like
Speaker 1: yourself getting honorary doctorates and I say to them, what
Speaker 1: it's going to be alike, and you know, I explained
Speaker 1: it to them and they they understand it, but when
Speaker 1: they actually experienced it, they just remember bbne Earth when
Speaker 1: we gave her an honorary doctrine and she's now on
Speaker 1: our board of trustees. Also, I told her, I said,
Speaker 1: you're going to be overwhelmed in a way that you've
Speaker 1: never been overwhelmed, no matter all the great things you've
Speaker 1: done in front of the lights and everything. This is
Speaker 1: going to be one of the big moments. And she
Speaker 1: after it was over, she said, Jim, you were absolutely right.
Speaker 1: That was one of the greatest things in my life
Speaker 1: to get that honorary Doctor trit and to be there
Speaker 1: in that grandeur of that whole thing, and to see
Speaker 1: the kids and the who the whole thing is. It's
Speaker 1: it's everyone who knows me well knows. There are two
Speaker 1: days that are my favorite days of the year. Which
Speaker 1: is the day, that moving day, when the kids come
Speaker 1: with their families and they've got their cars and their
Speaker 1: unloading their stuff, and they are full of energy and
Speaker 1: excitement and a little bit of fear about this journey
Speaker 1: they're about to take. And then it's the last day,
Speaker 1: which is commencement, which is the same thing. They're excited
Speaker 1: and they're also fearful the next step they're going to take.
Speaker 1: They don't know what it's going to be on. Do
Speaker 1: you teach conducting as well, Yes, we do, And and
Speaker 1: you know, being a conductor is a very very hard job.
Speaker 1: Why do you tell me what? Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: just technically it's it's difficult because you have to make
Speaker 1: sure that you know how to guide an orchestra so
Speaker 1: that every single person understands the slightest thing that happens
Speaker 1: in the tip of your baton, but also it's leadership
Speaker 1: without bludgeoning. Often. I mean some conductors, certainly old time
Speaker 1: um you know, George Zel, etcetera, were known as to
Speaker 1: be pretty pretty hard task masters. That doesn't really work
Speaker 1: some watch anymore. But to be able to inspire a
Speaker 1: group of people to follow you and also at the
Speaker 1: same time demanding that they do um and having a
Speaker 1: certain rapport with the audience, all of that together. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've watched Leonard Slatkin teach, because he's on our board
Speaker 1: all Sound. He now teaches. He takes two fellows from
Speaker 1: our conducting program and works with them every year, has
Speaker 1: them conduct here, and then he goes until this year
Speaker 1: when he stepped down from Detroit. He would take them
Speaker 1: to the Detroit Symphony and give them a full rehearsal
Speaker 1: with the Detroit Symphony on the same repertoire that they
Speaker 1: conducted with our students. So he takes half the concert,
Speaker 1: they take the other half of the concert, and just
Speaker 1: watching him work with really talented young people, telling them,
Speaker 1: do you see what you didn't do right there? If
Speaker 1: you had just done this slightly different thing with your risk,
Speaker 1: they would have followed. But what you did was unclear
Speaker 1: those new ones, and you can't see anything consistently. I mean,
Speaker 1: books are keys trying to, you know, sweep a smoke
Speaker 1: away from a from a pan that's on fire in
Speaker 1: a kitchen. And remember the two conductors that I would
Speaker 1: I worked with the most, which was Zuba Mata and
Speaker 1: Kurt Massour the New York Philharmonic, And they could not
Speaker 1: have been more different conductors. I mean they are world's apart. Um.
Speaker 1: Zuban's stick technique is as good as any I ever
Speaker 1: worked with him. You could follow that baton without any problem, anytime,
Speaker 1: during any problem of any sort. He was amazing. He
Speaker 1: was also incredibly effusive in a very generous kind of way. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think Missour was chillier he was. He was
Speaker 1: harder his stick. He wasn't very good in part because
Speaker 1: he had a you know a bit of a disability
Speaker 1: with his right arm. But it was always easy to
Speaker 1: follow him because what he did was he learned how
Speaker 1: to convey what he wanted through his face and his body,
Speaker 1: so he made up for what he was lacking with
Speaker 1: his right arm. And what goes into the choice between stick,
Speaker 1: no stick, have no stick? Oh really, I didn't remember
Speaker 1: that but there's very few conductors who don't use a stick.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the conductors will mostly use a stick and then
Speaker 1: put it down for certain passages, usually in very subtle,
Speaker 1: soft passages. I don't find it necessary. It's certainly easier
Speaker 1: with a stick. Um. I think you have to look
Speaker 1: if you're if you're a performer, you have to watch
Speaker 1: far more closely if you don't have a stick. I
Speaker 1: got two more questions for you. Your husband, What kind
Speaker 1: of work does he do? He's a psychotherapist? Oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: former lawyer turns the psychotherapist that comes in handy or
Speaker 1: it's an ongoing pain in the ask to have someone, No,
Speaker 1: it's not at all. Um. People he meets they asked him,
Speaker 1: you know, are you analyzing? And he says, you're not
Speaker 1: paying me, so no, I'm not, you know, and the
Speaker 1: same thing you probably would say for me. But when
Speaker 1: you know, when you're home, you're just you're just a
Speaker 1: couple like anybody else. Was he a classical music of
Speaker 1: a senato when he met you. I mean he grew
Speaker 1: up playing piano, so he knew about classic He wasn't
Speaker 1: going to the symphony or the operator regular basis, although
Speaker 1: he was going, and now we go of course a lot.
Speaker 1: And oh and he's got great ears. He can he can,
Speaker 1: especially with singers. He will start to explain why he
Speaker 1: thinks the singer was good or bad, and then I
Speaker 1: will tell him the technical reasons why what he's saying
Speaker 1: is correct. And the other question I have is people,
Speaker 1: when they finished the program, where do most of them
Speaker 1: end up? The vast majority of our our graduates have
Speaker 1: what would be called portfolio careers UM. And what I
Speaker 1: mean by that is that they might play in a
Speaker 1: regional symphony orchestra, they'll teach privately or at a college UM,
Speaker 1: and they might be an administrator at a nonprofit. And
Speaker 1: so they put together this portfolio care of somewhat freelancing,
Speaker 1: but they're steady, and that has been true forever. I
Speaker 1: remember hearing of the now former president of Juilliard talk
Speaker 1: on thirty years ago, maybe Joe Pleasey, and he said, uh,
Speaker 1: of Juilliard graduates. Of the graduates said they their primary
Speaker 1: source of income was teaching, not performing. And I think
Speaker 1: that's been true forever. And I don't think that's going
Speaker 1: to change. Ensembles, the major ensembles, and not just confining
Speaker 1: ourselves to the Big Five, as they used to say,
Speaker 1: but on not to l A and UH and so
Speaker 1: forth and around the world. Would you say that a
Speaker 1: significant number of chairs have roots in Manus, MSM and Juliet, Oh.
Speaker 1: Absolutely from New York. If you look at the seven
Speaker 1: independent conservatories of music in America San Francisco, Cleveland, New England, Curtis,
Speaker 1: and then the New York Conservatories UM, you will find
Speaker 1: that the majority of people in the top twenty orchestras
Speaker 1: in America are graduates from those institutions. There's something about them,
Speaker 1: the smallness, the intensity, the quality of the faculty that
Speaker 1: I think it's a hothouse for great music making. You know,
Speaker 1: you look at to the New York Pharmonic, for instance,
Speaker 1: ten percent of the members are are graduates of our school.
Speaker 1: About nearly of the met Orchestra is UM. The the
Speaker 1: Detroit Symphony for instance, about more than ten percent. Also,
Speaker 1: so you look at all these orchestras, then you add
Speaker 1: all these other institutions in there, and it's the vast
Speaker 1: majority of those orchestras well. I have never been as
Speaker 1: inspired to want to aid a cause. Then when I
Speaker 1: was invited, it was a lovely day. I thought why
Speaker 1: are you people giving me an award? You know what
Speaker 1: I mean? And I was so humbled and to be
Speaker 1: there with Long Long was one of the greats. I mean,
Speaker 1: what you guys do there, it is a miracle. It's
Speaker 1: so beautiful. And when I see these kids do what
Speaker 1: they do and grow up and change, and then when
Speaker 1: I get to go to the met or to go
Speaker 1: to the New York Pharmonic and see them and they
Speaker 1: were students and now they're on that stage, it's just
Speaker 1: I mean, this year alone, for instance, there are more
Speaker 1: than any of our grads are are at the Metropolitan Opera.
Speaker 1: And I try to go to every performance of of
Speaker 1: of all the all the alumni performances. I mean, my pride,
Speaker 1: it's like this incredible father pride that one has. This
Speaker 1: too is James Gandry. Last year, to celebrate the renovation
Speaker 1: of the school's main concert hall, Jim the working tenor
Speaker 1: re emerged. He cleared his president's schedule to rehearse Beethoven's
Speaker 1: Choral Fantasy. The result is this performance, alongside dozens of
Speaker 1: current and former Manhattan School students and faculty. This is
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing is
Speaker 1: said to say, is as s