They Told Me Not to Take that Job: Tumult, Betrayal, Heroics, and the Transformation of Lincoln Center (38 page)
Authors: Reynold Levy
Each year, Marty presented to two promising artists the distinguished Martin E. Segal Award, which helped launch or sustain their careers. It was another example of his desire not simply to enjoy established artists, but to nurture the new and the promising.
In addition, Segal knew that world-class art attracted commerce; created jobs; lured tourists; swelled the coffers of restaurants, retail establishments, and hotels; and fed the property tax rolls. Lincoln Center as an engine of economic development, as another reason that talented people are attracted to New York City, as a source of civic pride.
Segal, who was the guy behind the very idea of creating the Cultural Affairs Department in the City of New York, was accustomed to explaining why by asking this rhetorical question: “Do you know anyone who comes to Manhattan to ski?”
Segal was an immigrant who never graduated from high school yet was as well-read as any PhD, and he became the chairman of the board of perhaps the most prestigious intellectual retreat in the world, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University.
This self-educated entrepreneur and shrewd businessman could write a letter as charming and as persuasive as any I have ever received. The sheer elegance and expressiveness of these missives rendered them keepsakes. I treasure the several hundred he sent me.
In the very week of his death, Marty was at our Mostly Mozart Festival Gala celebrating the tenth anniversary of Louis Langrée as its music director. That same week, we met in my office. Ostensibly, I was seeking advice. Really, I just wanted an excuse to see him. He arrived at 10:00 a.m., dressed to the nines, a trademark fresh red boutonniere in his lapel, walking with a cane and seeing through only one eye.
Marty sat down and sipped his coffee. He spoke of a trip he planned to take to London and Paris. He remarked on how amazing Alan Cumming’s one-man
Macbeth
had been, how splendid it was for Lincoln Center to present the Paris Opera Ballet, and how much he had enjoyed seeing Christian Marclay’s
The Clock
. He asked me what I was looking forward to most in the fall season to come.
Segal’s secret for life was, in the words of a James Taylor song, “enjoying the passage of time.” He looked ahead with the energy, the optimism, the prodigious work habits of an immigrant who loved America.
This is what Marty believed. That seemingly insoluble problems are really only tantalizing challenges in disguise. That working together, smart people of goodwill can build durable institutions of the highest quality, causes and organizations that matter. That the key to longevity is engaging fully in the life of our great city and country. That private joys and public achievements are meant to be seized.
D
ANNY
M
ENDEZ AND
Chris Ullman mean as much to me as the more celebrated mentors in this chapter. Mendez and Ullman embody the
talent and drive of artists. Someone like them is working just around the block from where you live. Such is the ubiquity of performing art.
As the president of Lincoln Center, I enjoyed the authority to present performing arts ensembles in our halls. During the course of my tenure, I rarely offered concrete suggestions to either Jane Moss or Nigel Redden. To my relief, whenever I did, each readily accepted them. Perhaps my ideas had merit, or perhaps I was being rewarded for self-restraint.
Producing and presenting events on a regular basis was not part of my job description. Moss and Redden are world-class professionals. What these veterans needed from me was support, financial and otherwise. What they didn’t need was second-guessing.
While I was having an MRI scan on August 20, 2007, about six weeks after I had an operation on my right wrist at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City, I found the lab technician in charge knew not only my name, but what I did for a living.
He explained that the MRI would take almost forty-five minutes and handed me a looseleaf notebook in which a single page was devoted to a selection of music in different genres—pop, rock, indie, folk, world music, and the like. He explained that the MRI made something of a racket and that music muted its clatter.
He also suggested that if I didn’t particularly care for any of the choices in front of me, there just happened to be another option.
Danny Mendez, the technician, had formed a rock band in the Throgs Neck section of the Bronx, and it had produced a CD. I could always listen to “Danny Mendez and His Latin Project.”
Why not?
The next thing I knew, a conveyer belt was moving me into the MRI contraption accompanied by the beats of that rock band organized by Mendez. Naturally, he seemed as eager to learn my reaction to the music as he was to determine whether my wrist was healing properly.
When the examination was concluded, he asked what I thought of the CD, and I told him the truth—actually, I rather liked it.
He was ready for me. Another copy had been giftwrapped in anticipation of my positive reaction, together with a handwritten letter addressed to Wynton Marsalis. Danny requested that I be the courier of this important missive and the accompanying package!
Any doubt that artists are natural entrepreneurs was dispelled during a meeting I had with the Carlyle Group, one of the largest and most influential private equity organizations in the world.
As I was being introduced to executives, one of them in charge of public relations mentioned in passing that he was also a musician.
“What do you play?”
“I whistle.”
“What do you whistle, and where?”
“Almost anything. Almost anywhere.”
“Would you whistle something for me now?”
“Of course. What would you like to hear?”
“How about Duke Ellington’s ‘Take the A Train’?”
To my astonishment, Chris Ullman whistled a perfectly modulated and spirited version of Ellington’s classic piece. The sounds wafted through the corridors of offices in which, no doubt, at that very moment mega-deals were being discussed and plans to raise the next new fund were being concocted.
I then learned that Chris had performed with the National Symphony at the Kennedy Center and at the National Mall during a July 4 celebration, and I was handed his own vintage CD,
The Symphonic Whistler
.
It was made clear to me that should Lincoln Center ever have an opening in its concert schedule, I could always reach a talented whistler in Washington, D.C., who would be pleased to drop everything and in a New York minute, take himself to one of Lincoln Center’s famous venues.
Each of the characters profiled here, though situated in different settings and confronting starkly different challenges, showed me how to change the world for the better, in large chunks and small.
All of them taught me lessons about applied energy, selflessness, and ambition. All helped to repair a world in need of mending. None indulged in acquisitive behavior, whether in search of power or material goods.
To remind myself that such role models are all around us, all I have to do is whistle.
Civic Leaders Come and Go: In Search of Accountability
Many forms of conduct permissible in a workaday world for those acting at arm’s length, are forbidden by those bound by fiduciary ties. A Trustee is held to something stricter than the morals of the marketplace. Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive, is then the standard of behavior. As to this, there has developed a tradition that is unbending and inveterate.
—BENJAMIN CARDOZO
I
t is fascinating to observe how corporate, institutional, and political leaders decide when to stay and when to go.
Supreme Court Justice David Souter and Pope Benedict, though enjoying lifetime appointments, resigned from their posts: the first because he wished to return to a scholarly, monastic life in a Vermont cabin, the second because of illness and an inability to perform acceptably while in office.
At IBM, the CEO is out at sixty years of age, no questions asked, no protest to be lodged. Lou Gerstner and Sam Palmisano, arguably in their prime, stepped down in deference to that rule. It is designed to encourage internal aspirants to the top spot to stay and not leave IBM
for other available senior executive positions. Whether and which internal contenders for CEO are successful is determined well in advance of the time needed to look for outside candidates. A fixed, relatively early retirement age is viewed at IBM as a key to senior executive retention.
When Hosni Mubarak was finally toppled as the president of Egypt after a twenty-nine-year dictatorship, albeit one that featured regularly staged rigged elections, a joke circulated throughout the country explaining that his departure was no loss.
It is said that on the day he first took office, Mubarak’s limousine driver was taking him through downtown Cairo when they reached an intersection requiring one to turn either left or right.
“Mr. President, which direction would you prefer that I turn?”
“Well, what would Nasser have done?”
“Oh, sir, he would have taken a sharp right.”
“And what direction would Sadat have taken?”
“He definitely would have had me turn left.”
“I see. Well, then, why don’t we just stay put.”
Staying put is the best that can be claimed for Egypt’s society, economy, and polity during all of the Mubarak years.
That prolonged stall also characterized the New York Philharmonic during Paul Guenther’s thirteen-year tenure as its board chair (1996–2009). He stayed on too long.
He failed to lead, and he failed to leave.
In the immediate wake of the excruciatingly embarrassing round-trip of the New York Philharmonic to and from Carnegie Hall, it was widely thought that Paul Guenther and Zarin Mehta would surely find a speedy and dignified way to resign, or failing that, the trustees would insist on both taking their leave. Neither happened. At galas, Paul would introduce himself this way: “I am Paul Guenther, and yes, I am
still
the chairman of the New York Philharmonic.”
Resigning from office is straightforward. Announce a date. Appoint a search committee of the board to look for your successor or refer the matter to a well-functioning nominating and governance committee, if there is one. In other words, leave a time-certain vacuum and allow your trustee colleagues the freedom to fill it.
Instead, Guenther took it upon himself to find his own successor. Could there be a less persuasive recruiter? At least a few individuals were offered the post. All declined. Months passed. Then years. Finally, in desperation and perhaps for the first and only time at Lincoln Center, a search firm was consulted to help find a board chair, one who did not come from the trustee ranks, numbering some sixty strong. So much for succession planning.
Matters were hardly better at the New York City Opera. Its weakened condition, particularly after Paul Kellogg’s resignation; the on-again, off-again, shaky agreement that Gerard Mortier would serve as Paul’s successor; and the designation of the ill-prepared George Steel all suggested strongly the desirability of Susan Baker resigning as the chair of the board. Her leadership was identified with unconsummated institutional wanderlust, with the severe erosion of the New York City Opera’s endowment, with confused and shrinking audiences, and with persistent operating deficits. One sign that her credibility and judgment were in doubt was the disappointing charitable contributions of most trustees. Another indicator was her unwillingness or inability to expand that group and to raise its performance in giving and garnering donations.
As with the last-gasp selection of Steel, only when it was too late to matter did Baker relinquish her post, to Charles Wall. It fell to Wall to close up shop, once and for all, and he did so with as much class, dignity, and generosity as could possibly be imagined.
The moral of these stories is surely that the choice of when a CEO or a board chair comes and goes should not be left entirely to the incumbent. An orderly and regular review process is required. In government, we call that process free and fair elections. In free enterprise, we refer to it as sound corporate governance. In nonprofits, the terms of the chair and the CEO are the province of the board of directors. Sound succession planning is imperative if highly valued institutions are to remain healthy.