CALTECH vs. VINCE LOMBARDI

Last night, 19,763 sports fans paying hundreds to thousands of dollars for tickets jammed Madison Square Garden to welcome all-star Carmelo Anthony as a new member of the New York Knicks basketball team. The Knicks won.

Also last night, a few hundred students (paying nothing) attended the Caltech-Occidental basketball game at Caltech’s Braun Athletic Center. Caltech won.

A conference win! Caltech 46, Occidental 45

Caltech’s victory came despite the fact that President Obama attended Occidental for a couple of years, and he probably picked them to beat Caltech. But he had no more prescience in this game’s outcome than he did in picking the Bears to win the Super Bowl. Caltech still won.

There are some who think that the Knicks game was more worthy of national attention than was the Caltech game. Indeed, judging by the comparative press coverage (about 1,000 to 1 in the Knicks's favor), attendance (about 100 to 1), and ticket prices (infinite ratio), the Knicks seem to hold the zeitgeist edge.

But judging by historical implications, it’s Caltech all the way. For the first time in the last 26 years, Caltech won a conference basketball game. A record 310-game losing streak – longest ever in the United States by any sports team – was broken. Like so many of its achievements in science and technology, Caltech accomplished something that no one else in history has ever been able to do.

Havoc broke out in Pasadena. Nobel laureates raised toasts to the winning athletes. Students interrupted their problem sets to cheer a sports team. Even The New York Times featured Caltech, not in the Science section, but on the second page of the Sports section. This indeed was a Big Event.

Yet somehow, during these 26 years in athletic purgatory, Caltech still seemed to function. Heads didn’t roll. Presidents kept their jobs. Coaches weren’t fired. Scientific breakthroughs kept being made. Nobel prizes continued to be won. Incoming student SATs remained the highest in the nation. And every year it was ranked a top-10 university. Indeed, midway during The Losing Streak, U.S. News in 1999 awarded tiny Caltech academic hegemony over some other pretty highly regarded and far larger schools:

1.  California Institute of Technology 


2.  Harvard University 


3.  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

4.  Princeton University

5.  Yale University


6.  Stanford University 


7.  Duke University

8.  Johns Hopkins University

9.  University of Pennsylvania 


10. Columbia University

This raises a momentous question: Can it be possible that Vince Lombardi was wrong? Vince Lombardi wrong? Remember, he’s the über-successful coach for whom the Super Bowl trophy is named. He’s the coach who’s currently being memorialized by an eponymous Broadway play. And he’s the coach best remembered for popularizing:

“Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.”

(Despite that saying’s enduring fame, it strikes me as a really dumb credo. But I digress.)

So here's my question: Is winning the only thing? If so, Caltech should have been completely embarrassed over the last 26 years. The school should have buried its collective head in shame. Losers, losers, losers.

But Caltech hasn’t been a loser. To the contrary, some consider it an American treasure. A small school (just over 900 undergrads) with an oversize reputation for academic and research achievement. A school where a surprisingly high percentage of the students engage in intercollegiate athletics, and for fun. Where there are no athletic scholarships. Where the institutional culture subscribes not to the Lombardi-esque philosophy, but rather to that hoary value that some of us were taught as youths, “It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.”


So team, enjoy your victory. But remember, keep having fun.

Ben Rosen, Caltech, ’54

CLASSICAL MUSIC ECONOMICS: IS THERE A SOLUTION?

American Orchestras: The Sound of Trouble

The Detroit Symphony, which has just emerged from a 34-day musician’s strike, is in such economic straits that it may have to disband.

Time Magazine, June 13, 1969

Detroit Symphony Cancels Season as Musicians Strike

The management of the debt-burdened Detroit Symphony Orchestra canceled the rest of its season on Saturday, after executives and the players failed to resolve a strike that has lasted four and a half months.

The New York Times, Feb. 19, 2011

Time magazine’s piece over forty years ago described the entire classical music industry as being in mortal peril, and not just in Detroit. Indeed, the death of classical music is a perennial topic, yet somehow orchestras have persevered. Should we be any more worried today than we were in 1969?

Is the Detroit Symphony’s dire situation a one-off phenomenon, or is it part of a larger problem affecting classical music organizations throughout the United States? Clearly, there are extenuating circumstances in Detroit. This once-proud centerpiece for American manufacturing has been in a four-decade economic tailspin. One measure of the decline: its population has fallen from 1.5 million in 1960 (No. 5 in the U.S.) to 900,000 now (No. 11).

Unfortunately, Detroit is not alone as far as its orchestra’s turmoil is concerned.  There are myriad other indications that classical music is in deep trouble financially.  Recent press articles have cited financial issues with a host of other orchestras. Most American orchestras are operating at a deficit – and that’s after philanthropic contributions. Indeed, income earned from ticket sales usually accounts for less than half the operating budget of a musical performing arts organization. Even selling out the house doesn’t solve the problem. Those orchestras lucky enough to have endowments have been eating into them to meet operating expenses. And, unlike European arts organizations, which are heavily subsidized, American groups get essentially zero financial support from federal or local governments.

There are at least two exceptions to this bleak outlook. The Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony have the luxury of owning cash cows that enhance the orchestras’ financial situations. In L.A., it’s the very profitable Hollywood Bowl, and in Boston it’s the highly successful Tanglewood summer festival. But outside of those two orchestras, it’s difficult financial sledding for the other majors, and worse for the smaller organizations.

So how will all this play out?

Well, there is one scenario that could be a harbinger.  It’s not a pretty scenario, but it’s one that has allowed a once-proud but financially strapped orchestra to survive.

In the early 1990s, after six decades of performing, the New Orleans Symphony ran out of money, donors and time. It went bankrupt. In its ashes, the Symphony’s musicians got together and created the Louisiana Philharmonic, the nation’s first musician-owned and –operated orchestra. The musicians run the organization, control the board, hire and fire, raise money, and pay themselves. And therein lies the rub. In order to survive as an orchestra, they pay themselves astonishingly little – an average of $23,000 per year. A little over $10 per hour. Pretty frightening, no?

By contrast, the Detroit Symphony members earned a minimum of $104,000 last year. (That’s a number somewhat below the salaries earned by members of the other major orchestras.) They rejected an offer in the low $80,000s.  Here’s the issue management faced, as reported by the Detroit Free Press this weekend: “The DSO has lost $19 million since 2008, remains in default on the terms of its $54 million in real-estate debt and is rapidly depleting its endowment to cover the red ink.”

There’s no easy answer. The musicians want not just a living wage, but one also reflecting their talent, years of training, and status as being among the elite musicians in the country. Management wants a solution that reflects the exigencies of a virtually bankrupt organization. As the Detroit meltdown illustrates, there’s a wide gulf that separates the two positions.

Now I believe that talented classical musicians are absolutely deserving of  earning far more than most of them are getting around the country, but they’ve run into an economic model that just isn’t able to properly compensate them anymore. And it’s not getting any better. Youth isn’t exactly flocking to classical music as tastes are dumbing down. Schools aren’t helping by cutting arts budgets.  Philanthropy is the only solution, and there are signs it’s stretched pretty far. New young philanthropists have to be developed to replace the ageing ones, but it’s not clear that classical music is attracting new wealth. It’s not a pretty picture.

By the way, we attended a concert Saturday night in New Orleans of the Louisiana Philharmonic, and it was terrific. The orchestra sounded wonderful, conductor  Carlos Miguel Prieto was electric, and the house was packed. There were encores, standing ovations, and even an audience member who mamboed spontaneously (this is New Orleans, after all) as the orchestra played a selection of Leonard Bernstein’s dances. There was a world premiere of Terence Blanchard’s Concerto for Roger Dickerson. And a spectacular performance of Philip Glass’s Violin Concerto No. 2 played by Robert McDuffie, for whom Glass wrote the piece.

The LPO model is one solution. They produce a fine product, one that an audience appreciates and relates to. But it’s a draconian solution that requires that the musicians provide the subsidy. Somehow, that doesn’t seem fair.

Solving the economic problem of classical music is not easy. If it were, someone would have figured it out already. Perhaps fresh thinking is required.

Any thoughts?

FINALLY: THE SECOND AMENDMENT EXPLAINED

Reading about the plight of (former) Rep. Chris Lee yesterday, it was hard to ignore the photo that he posted to his would-be doxie. There was the handsome representative from western New York posing with no shirt on and showing off his reasonably well-defined pecs. Seeing a legislator dressed (or undressed) this way reminded me of the true, yet little-known, story behind the writing of the Second Amendment.

Just to get you interested, the Second Amendment does not mean what you think it does. It has nothing to do with guns. Never has a piece of federal law ever been so misunderstood. For over two centuries, everyone in this country has misinterpreted what the Founding Fathers had in mind. Now, for the first time, in an exclusive of Through Rosen-Colored Glasses, here is what they really meant when they gathered on that steamily hot day in Philadelphia to codify the rights of our newly independent citizens.

When I say it was hot, it was really a scorcher of a day. Nonetheless, our dedicated public servants had finished up on the First Amendment in the morning and were then proceeding on in the afternoon to frame the second. They had just begun the discussion when one member of the committee asked the chairman if, given the crushing heat, he could roll up his sleeves of his outer coat. Remember, this was not only pre-air conditioning, but it was a time when men wore decorative, multilayered and brutally warm costumes – wool, satin, frills, cuffs. Other members then asked the same permission, and it was granted. They all rolled up their outer coat sleeves.

But to little avail. They were still schvitzing. (You probably didn’t know Yiddish was spoken then.) They tried to write the rights, but they were just too uncomfortable. So another member asked the chair, “May we also roll up our inner coat sleeves.” Permission granted. And then later: “Our shirt sleeves?” Permission granted.

Sweet relief! They were all so happy with their new comfort, that they immediately got back to work and decided to share their newly gained right with all Americans for all times. And thus, on December 15, 1791, was adopted the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America:

The right of the people to bare arms shall not be infringed.

(Full disclosure: This idea was blatantly stolen from a New York Times op-ed piece of a couple of decades ago. I’d like to give credit where due, but extensive searches for the original have come up empty.)

A VERY BLACK SWAN

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THE KING'S SPEECH

How rare it is to see a movie that is stimulating, intelligent, and entertaining.  To watch one that pulls off the cinema hat trick of impeccable acting, writing (David Seidler) and directing (Tom Hooper).  That rarity is The King’s Speech.

Many of us of a certain age are familiar with the spine of the story. It’s 1936, the Great Depression is grinding away, and war clouds are forming over Europe. Britain’s King George V (Michael Gambon) dies, his vapid son Edward (Guy Pearce) succeeds him as king. Just eleven months later, Edward abdicates so he can run off and marry the American multiple-divorcée, Wallis Simpson. Younger brother Albert Frederick Arthur George, or “Bertie,” (Colin Firth) ascends to the throne as King George VI. As far as European royal families go, so far, so good

But – there’s always a “but” – Bertie has a problem.  And it’s a problem that I certainly wasn’t aware of before this movie. Bertie has been a life-long stammerer, and he’s deathly afraid of any form of public speaking. Yet he now has a nation to inspire as its titular leader, and he has to do this during a time of rising international turmoil. This requires ceremonial remarks, radio addresses, public appearances – all anathema to this insecure, embarrassed, stammering king.

So stammering and British history intersect. And this leads to the heart of the movie – the relationship between Bertie and his highly unconventional speech therapist (Geoffrey Rush). Watching this rocky relationship develop, as portrayed by two masters of the acting art, Firth and Rush, is a treat to behold. And the lesser roles aren't too shabby -- Helen Bonham Carter as Queen Elizabeth, Derek Jacobi as the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The critical reception has been almost unanimously gushing.  All 17 top critics as compiled by Rotten Tomatoes gave it the highest accolade -- a ripe tomato rating.

To me, one of the most interesting perspectives on the movie was that written by the drama critic of the Los Angeles Times, Charles McNulty. What makes his review a little more special is that McNulty is himself a stammerer. Some quotes from his piece:

Public speaking consistently ranks as one of life's most stressful events, up there with divorce, bereavement and home foreclosure.

As someone who has stuttered since childhood, I recognize [Bertie’s] symptoms only too well — the blood-drained complexion, the collapsing gait, the passive acceptance of death in the eyes.

Probably the darkest period of my life was around the time I was just finishing graduate school and feeling completely overwhelmed with doubts about how I would make my way in the world. How funny that a future king could share my anxiety.

By the way, I recently read Black Swan Green, a terrific 2006 novel by British writer David Mitchell in which the protagonist is a 13-year-old stammerer. His biggest challenges arise from the cruelty that many children impose upon a peer who has a disability. As McNulty pointed out in his movie essay,

The condition has been coded as a joke in popular culture, one of the few disabilities considered fair game for laughs.

We recently watched another highly enjoyable movie about 20th-century British royals, The Lost Prince. Written and directed by Stephen Poliakoff, this BBC film tells the poignant tale of Prince John, the epileptic youngest brother of Bertie and Edward. Available on DVD at Netflix.

PETER GREENAWAY TAKES ON DA VINCI, VERONESE

Last night, we attended the preview of a terrific show: Peter Greenaway’s multimedia interpretation of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper and Paolo Veronese’s The Wedding at Cana. The show, an American premiere, opens Friday at the Park Avenue Armory, and it’s without doubt the best $15 entertainment you’ll find these days in New York.

Peter Greenaway

Greenaway is the Welsh-born multimedia artist and filmmaker perhaps best known for The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, a 1989 movie that the New York Times called “elegant” and “stylized”, and the Washington Post labeled “accomplished” and “astounding.” These descriptions would aptly lend themselves to Greenaway’s show at the Armory. It is some artistic tour de force.

The original da Vinci painting is in the Refectory of the Santa Maria Delle Grazie in Milan. Greenaway has shaped his interpretation of  The Last Supper by using the brilliant technology of Factum Arte, a Madrid-based company that produced a meticulously detailed, high-resolution facsimile of the original painting. Greenaway brings it to life through an ingenious manipulation of light, sound, and theatrical illusion. These, in turn, allow you to see the familiar image in completely new ways. There are projections, moving and still, on the walls and the ceiling.  There are voices. There is music. There are enlargements. Enlargements of the enlargements. Individual figures come to life. Wine and blood that flow over the table’s edge. And on. And on. It’s an immersive, thrilling, unique experience. The video below suggests, but does not capture, the real-life experience.

 

Veronese's The Wedding at Cana

The other highlight of the Armory show is Greenaway’s multimedia treatment of  The Wedding at Cana. This 16th century Veronese work was originally located in the Benedictine monastery of  San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. Then Napoleon came along in 1797, sliced the huge painting (31 x 23 ft., 130 people) into sections, and carted it off to Paris where it ended up – and remains – in the Louvre.

 

The Greenaway/Factum Arte multimedia treatment of The Wedding at Cana is equal to that of The Last Supper. Together, they offer a unique way of looking at two of the great art works in history. Greenaway demonstrates how a contemporary artist can use technology and imagination to stimulate the appreciation the ages-old visual arts. More multimedia explorations are on the way. Of the ten in total that he has planned, Picasso’s Guernica may be next.

Finally, a word in praise of Factum Arte. British artist Adam Howe has created this international company that leads the world in applying technology to art conservation and to the making of exact facsimiles of works of art. Indeed, it has an astonishing capability for creating high-resolution, three-dimensional clones of major works of art.

Scanning The Wedding at Cana at the Louvre

Example: It made a precisely identical, visually indistinguishable, three-dimensional clone of The Wedding at Cana original that hangs in the Louvre. The clone now hangs back at its original home, San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. But as art historian Susan Tallman points out (Art in America, Feb. '09), “The original hangs low on a wall at the Louvre, between two doors, in the same crowded gallery as the Mona Lisa. The copy at San Giorgio Maggiore hangs at the height and in the space for which it was intended, with the lighting anticipated by Veronese. There is no doubt which is the more authentic object. But which version provides the more authentic experience is open to question.”


By the way, a few years ago I posted on this blog a suggestion to democratize art by creating exact reproductions of masterpieces held in museums around the world and then making them available to other museums around the world for art lovers and students to enjoy locally. The aesthetic experience offered by the clone would be identical to that of the original; this was shown to be the case with The Wedding at Cana reproduction in San Giorgio Maggiore. 


Alas, the art establishment -- museums, curators, artists, dealers, collectors -- is not exactly enamored of this idea. But I am. And now the Louvre has broken the ice with its permission for the Veronese clone to be made, and now that we have the technology to do it, who knows? You can read the proposal here.

If you want to see the Greenaway show  – and you should – hurry. It closes January 6th.

INSIDE JOB -- See It

Charles Ferguson’s film, Inside Job, is one terrific polemic. We all know what a polemic is, don’t we? A diatribe, invective, rant, tirade, broadside, attack, harangue, condemnation, criticism, stricture, admonition, rebuke. Derived from Greek polemikos, meaning “warlike, hostile.”  Well, Inside Job is all of those. But an enjoyable polemic, that is, to the extent that a film about an economic crisis can be enjoyable.

There’s probably little you don’t know that the film reveals. It’s appeal to me is just the completeness of it all, the connecting of the dots, the incriminating clips, the implicating documents, the squirming of the culprits, the delicious ambush interviews, the rounding up of all the usual suspects. This is what sustains your interest for almost two hours, and why 26 of the 27 top newspaper and magazine critics in Rotten Tomatoes gave it favorable reviews – an almost unprecedented near-unanimity. (The only critical rotten tomato was hurled by Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, whose reviewer found it “incoherent.”)

Another service is that the film underscores the incompetence of all involved in this tragedy, as well as the venality of so many of the players. As to the ineptitude, it reminds me of my post a couple of years ago as the crisis was rising to its climax:

In 1983, screenwriter William Goldman (Butch Cassidy, Marathon Man, All the President’s Men, Princess Bride, et al.) wrote Adventures in the Screen Trade, a brilliant and entertaining analysis of the movie industry. His unforgettable takeaway line that summarized the entire 436-page book, the phrase that captured the essence of Hollywood, and now the single best explanation of why we’re in such a economic mess: “Nobody knows anything.” 



Who are the nobodies? Well, there are the CEOs, the Treasury, the Fed, the Congress, the Administration, the SEC, the other regulators, the journalists, the investors and the voters. Did I leave anyone out?

Through Rosen-Colored Glasses, Sept. 24, 2008

Actually, I left out academia.  One of the film’s contributions is pointing out how many of  the leading academics were unaware at best and wrong at worst on the impending economic collapse.  And it disclosed how many of them had really shocking (and undisclosed) conflicts of interest. (Conflicts? Do I hear ratings agencies?)

But my favorite incompetent – Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner – declined to be interviewed. (I’ll bet that a bunch of others who went on camera wish they hadn’t.) It would have been interesting to hear him defend the rosy scenario he was making as head of the New York Fed in speeches throughout 2007, just a year before all hell broke loose. Some excerpted phrases about the strength of the economy and the financial system:

…reduced concern about future fundamental risk…

…improved our confidence in the ability of markets to absorb stress…

…the capital positions of banks have improved…

…reinforced expectations of future stability…

…increasing comfort with higher leverage…

…the larger global financial institutions are generally stronger in terms of capital relative to risk..

…financial innovation has improved the capacity to measure and manage risk…

Through Rosen-Colored Glasses, April 29, 2009

By the way, Geithner is still Treasury Secretary.

His last comment, on the so-called benefits of financial innovation, reminds me of one of the perceptive lines in the movie, made, I believe, by the head of the International Monetary Fund, who was pretty critical of everyone:

“Why is it that we pay financial engineers 4 to 100 times as much as we do real engineers? Real engineers make things.”

By the way, it's different in China. Is there a lesson to be learned?

Despite the New York Post review, go see Inside Job.

ENCORES! -- A LOVE LETTER

This is a love letter to  one of  New York City’s great entertainment treats – Encores!

Presented by New York City Center, Encores! is a series that revives three Broadway musicals each November-March season. Some of the musicals are well known, others not. But in our ten years of attending Encores!, every show has been worth seeing, and almost all have offered great musical theater experiences.

Just imagine the excitement of being able to relive the great composers and lyricists in American musical theater history: Porter, Kander, Ebb, Rodgers, Hart, Hammerstein II, Sondheim, Styne, Fields, Harnick, Harburg, Comden, Green, Adler, Ross, Lerner, Lane, Berlin, Loesser, Gershwin, Bock, Strouse, Arlen, Weill, Bernstein, Kern… All these and more have had their shows revived at Encores!

The performances are semi-staged. The full scores are performed by a lush-sounding twenty-odd-piece orchestra that plays in full view on stage.  (Compare this with many Broadway musicals today where the “orchestra” is perhaps a five-piece group, larded with synthesizers, and hidden from view.) The choreography follows as closely as possible that of the original production, as does the book. The sets, however, are minimal -- a fair trade in my view. Another Encores! hallmark --  the performers, who only have eight days of rehearsal, carry their scripts with them (just in case).

But there is nothing else “semi” about the Encores! productions. Under artistic director Jack Viertel, the acting, singing, dancing, and directing are always first rate. Encores! is able to recruit first-class established talent, as well as emerging stars, and for meager recompense -- this is a not-for-profit theater. The attraction for some is the ability to learn and perform in a musical that they never had the chance to participate in. Others do it for fun. Some do it as a showcase. But none does it for the money – there isn’t any. Another measure of the quality and appeal of the Encores! revivals: several have gone on to Broadway runs, including the long-running Chicago, Pajama Game, and Gypsy.

Some of the performers during the last decade who’ve answered the call at Encores! are: Kelli O’Hara, Kristin Chenoweth, Kate Baldwin, Jim Norton, Cheyenne Jackson, George Hearn, Raúl Esparza, Sutton Foster, Donna Murphy, Christine Ebersole, Victoria Clark, Sandy Duncan, Philip Bosco, Christine Baranski, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Marin Mazzie, Victor Garber, Michael Cerveris, Patti LuPone, Eli Wallach, Brian D’Arcy James, Karen Ziemba, Maurice Hines, F. Murray Abraham, James Naughton, Len Cariou, Brent Barrett, Anne Hathaway, Idina Menzel.

Each show runs for only five performances over four days. So you don’t have a lot of opportunity to catch one unless you plan in advance. Indeed, this year’s subscriptions are sold out, though single tickets are available for the two remaining  productions, Lost in the Stars and Where’s Charley.

The initial performances of the 2010-11 season were staged a week ago. Bells are Ringing was first produced on Broadway in 1956, starring Judy Holliday. This wacky but delightful musical includes such hit songs as "The Party’s Over," "Just in Time," and "Long Before I Knew You." While Judy wasn’t available to return for the Encores! production, Kelli O’Hara proved to be a terrific replacement. Kelli (South Pacific, The Pajama Game, The Light in the Piazza) is now at the top of the Broadway firmament, yet she – like so many other stars -- is also part of the Encores! world.

And now for something completely different -- we’re talking night-and-day different from Bells are Ringing -- is the forthcoming production of  Lost in the Stars, which plays February 3-6, 2011. This show was one of the most ambitious projects ever attempted on Broadway. The playwright Maxwell Anderson and composer  Kurt Weill created this 1949 musical based on the Alan Paton  novel about racial unrest in South Africa. (I can assure you that the Bells are Ringing song, "I'm Going Back to the Bonjour Tristesse Brassiere Company" will not be reprised in Lost in the Stars.)

The third and final production this season is a revival of the 1948 hit, Where’s Charley, playing March 17-20, 2011. This Frank Loesser musical was a platform for Ray Bolger, the incomparable comic dancer (better known to some as the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz). But to me, Ray Bolger is “Once in Love with Amy,” the show-stopping song-and-dance number in Where’s Charley. And Frank Loesser, of course,  is at the pinnacle of composer-lyricists  -- Guys and Dolls, The Most Happy Fella, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

What’s amazing to me is how few of our New York friends are regulars at Encores!, or even occasional attendees.  And few of our out-of-town friends have even heard of it. Well, consider yourself apprised. Go to the Encores! website and get with the program.

See you on West 55^th Street.

All Encores! shows since 1994