Photo Essay: The Art of Performing at Lincoln Center

When you mention "Lincoln Center" to most people outside of New York City, you have to qualify it with "the place with the fountain in such-and-such movie."

Moonstruck. West Side Story. The Producers. Ghostbusters. That plaza is as iconic as any of Manhattan's skyscrapers and perhaps even more so than Central Park.

And I didn't appreciate it at all—or really know anything about its history—when I used to have to go there for work all the time.



Don't get me wrong: I was desperate to "belong" with all of the colleagues and artists who surrounded me in my four years working in classical music. I took every free ticket I could get to see the New York Philharmonic. I was crushed when my boss wouldn't allow me to attend opening night of the Metropolitan Opera, even though there was a spare ticket that ended up going to waste.



But I always seemed to be there at night, and I was always so focused on doing my job and not embarrassing myself or my boss (who clearly thought I might embarrass him) that I never bothered to stop and really appreciate all of the venues that make up this world-class performing arts center.



So, 16+ years after I got laid off from my job in classical music, 10 years since I last attended a show there (the miserable "standing seat" for The Magic Flute at the Met Opera), and seven years since moving away from New York City, I returned to Lincoln Center to experience it as a tourist.



In the time since I left New York, Avery Fisher Hall—that gorgeous but acoustically imperfect classical venue that debuted at Lincoln Center in 1962 as Philharmonic Hall—had become David Geffen Hall.



I didn't know who Avery Fisher was when I used to go to his hall all the time for work—or even that he was a real person (much less the founder of Fisher Electronics. It turns out he had donated a lot of money in the early 1970s to fix the acoustics in the auditorium—a project that was taken on by Philip Johnson, who, according to The New Yorker, practically demolished and rebuilt the house (but not the facade or any other parts of the superficial structure)—and got his name on the hall as a result in 1973.



I didn't know back then who Philip Johnson was, or that he would become one of my favorite architects (as the creator not only of the New York State Pavilion but also The Glass House and the Crystal Cathedral).



I don't even remember ever having been at Avery Fisher Hall during the day—or having looked out its monumental windows at the plaza down below.



Of course, back in the late 1990s, not only did I not really understand where I was when I had to go to Lincoln Center, but I also didn't understand that Lincoln Center had been built on top of a tenement community called San Juan Hill.



Low income housing had been razed in favor of high-end culture—classical orchestra players in their tuxedos replacing jazz musicians sitting on the stoops.



The residents of San Juan Hill were relocated, at least—just a stone's throw from the new performing arts complex, a bit closer to the Hudson River, and a bit farther away from white civilization.



In the 1960s, that was considered progress—"urban renewal," courtesy of President Dwight D. Eisenhower (who broke ground in 1959), "The Power Broker" and "Master Builder" Robert Moses, and billionaire John D. Rockefeller.



Of course, the construction of Lincoln Center and its plaza helped make the Upper West Side the desirable and affluent community it is today.



It even houses the northernmost "Broadway" theater in Manhattan, even though it's a good 10 or so blocks and nearly a mile uptown from the area of Manhattan technically considered "Broadway."



Among the treasures we discovered on our tour—pieces of Lincoln Center I never knew to explore—included the (barber) chair and desk of famed caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.



We found the historic display inside the New York Library for the Performing Arts, sandwiched in the back of Lincoln Center between the Metropolitan Opera and the Lincoln Center Theater.



Of course, we'd seen plenty of Hirschfeld's caricatures over the years—of classical musicians, actors, Broadway stars, and more—but it was something else to stand somewhere inside his ghostly aura.



As we proceeded farther into the library, we encountered yet another ghost: that of the dearly departed composer, pianist, and conductor Leonard Bernstein.



In celebration of what would have been his 100th birthday (though he died at age 72 in 1990), the NYPL has collected various artifacts from the very beginning of his life—including the hairdressing equipment business he was born into.



But wiring women's hair up to give them permanent waves wasn't Lenny's destiny.



It was music, despite the fact that he didn't get very good grades for it in school.



Fortunately, he had a 1917 Brewster upright piano from his Aunt Clara to practice on from the age of 10.



By the 1970s, he'd upgraded to a Baldwin baby grand...



...which he worked on in his home/studio in Fairfield Connecticut.



But it wasn't just about having the right equipment for his industry of choice (which, in this case, meant having the right instrument)—because he also needed his lucky cufflinks (which he'd kiss before every performance) and the pencils he considered his "soldiers."



And all of that was enough to earn him 16 Grammy awards (plus a Lifetime Achievement award), as well as a Tony Award and multiple Emmy Awards and nominations. Surprisingly, he was only nominated for one Oscar (for the score of On the Waterfront, which won for Best Picture) and didn't win.



As impressive as Bernstein's career was, though, it was interesting to get to know the man behind the baton...



...the humanitarian and human rights activist who (despite being called every name in the book, from liberal Jew to "commie-pinko-queer") celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 by conducting Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in Berlin and nabbing a piece of the wall as a souvenir.

Throughout his career, he repeatedly created beauty in the face of the ugliness of the world—be it violence, hatred, greed, or evil.

The uglier the world, the more beautiful music he tried to compose, conduct, and record.

And much of that he did through his work with and at Lincoln Center—not only as the New York Philharmonic's conductor, but also in some way as the composer of West Side Story (whose lyrics by Stephen Sondheim namecheck "San Juan" and whose movie version featured the plaza fountain during the "Something's Coming" musical number).

Lincoln Center itself is beautiful, it's true. But there's also so much beauty that erupts out of it, out of its every corner—and not just from the fountain when the water decides to do its dance.

In fact, I'm still not done with it. Stay tuned for a behind the scenes tour of the Metropolitan Opera, which has been a long time coming.

Related Posts:
Photo Essay: The Spectacular Radio City Music Hall
Photo Essay: Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall 
Photo Essay: The Temple of Academia at UCLA's Original Quad

Sister Act

When I was entering fourth grade and transitioning from Catholic school to public school, I went through a battery of IQ tests and placement exams to see where exactly I belonged in the educational tracks that they'd established.

I passed everything with flying colors and then some, qualifying for the "Gifted and Talented" program and reading, writing, spelling, and doing math at a seventh-grade level.

I was so far ahead of my fellow classmates, in fact, that my new school was inclined to have me skip a grade—but my parents refused.

Why?

Because that would put me in the same grade as my sister, who was only 15 months older and just one school-year ahead.

Her test results hadn't been spectacular enough to warrant her leapfrogging fifth grade and landing right into sixth grade.

I don't know exactly why my parents didn't want us in the same grade, though I suspect it was more of a social decision than an educational one. They knew I'd get along with the teachers better (even though we wouldn't necessarily have the same teacher). They knew I'd make friends more easily.

So they held me back. And, as a result, I was a freak.

Maybe I would've been freakishly young for fifth grade. Maybe having skipped fourth grade would've also made me an alien, as most of our classmates were more likely to repeat a year.

But I can't help but resent the fact that my parents sacrificed my academic success to save my sister's feelings from being hurt.

I did the best I could to cope with the hit that my own social life had taken. That was way more challenging than the schoolwork.

After all, I didn't have to work very hard on my homework, and I didn't have to study for tests—and by the midpoint of fifth grade, I'd already finished the entirety of junior high for those subjects I'd been allowed to advance in.

By mid-fifth grade, I was ready to study a foreign language—something that students weren't normally allowed to do until seventh grade, even if they were particularly precocious like me.

I literally had nothing to do for the rest of fifth grade and the entirety of sixth grade for half of the subjects. Teachers didn't know what to do with me, so they had me help the other students.

I was so bored, but I was also so grateful not to have to be at home with my mother.

But looking back, it's clear to me that if I wasn't going to skip fourth grade, I should've skipped fifth or sixth grade. To my knowledge, though, the subject was never discussed again.

Whenever given the choice, though, my parents preserved my sister's feelings and protected her, even when I would take a hit as a result (sometimes literally).

At times during our childhood, my sister and I managed to overcome being pitted against each other. There were times that I was my sister's best friend.

When she stayed home during both of her proms, no date and no dress, I turned on the stereo in the basement and danced around and sang to entertain her and take her mind off of what she was missing out on. And when she struggled during her freshman year away at college, I recorded cassettes for her featuring messages from all our dolls and stuffed animals, in each of their individual funny voices. I made her mixtapes. I wrote her letters.

But since I was just a year behind her in school, that was also the time that I had to be figuring out my own college plan and sending in my applications.

I wanted to go to Yale—and I was certain I could get in—but my parents didn't want me in New Haven and refused to bring me there for a visit or help me pay the application fee. I wanted to go to Columbia—again, convinced I was a shoe-in—or NYU, but my parents wouldn't allow me to attend any school in New York City. In fact, I got one out-of-state college visit, which I used on Williams College in the Berkshires—where I got waitlisted.

I applied to a couple "safety schools" where I was sure I could get a lot of financial aid, if not a free ride.

And at the insistence of both my parents and my guidance counselor, I applied to Colgate—a "Little Ivy League" school I'd never heard of until my sister applied there—because she'd gotten a nearly full scholarship and they all thought I had a good chance too.

My parents had already made it very clear to me and my sister that they would be contributing no money to our tuition or any college expenses. If we wanted higher learning, we'd have to figure out how to pay for it ourselves. So, it almost didn't matter where I wanted to go; it was more about where I could afford to go.

And I had to go somewhere. I needed to get away from my parents.

But, much to my dismay, Colgate forked over the most amount of money. And once I'd applied and been accepted, there was no way I could turn that down.

Here's the rub: My sister got there first, and she wanted my arrival to be on her terms. I had to let her sign up for classes, and then I had to make sure I didn't end up in any of them. I couldn't live in the same dorm. She even forbade me from auditioning for theatrical productions that she'd signed up to work backstage on—even though I'd been the one to introduce her to the drama department in high school.

"I don't want to introduce you to my friends," she said. When I asked why, she said, "Because they're going to like you better."

"Well, that's true," I said.

I couldn't even claim any of the glory of receiving such a big honor—the "Alumni Memorial Scholarship"—from such a prestigious university. Next thing I knew, my mother was calling the local newspaper and pitching a story to them about how we both graduated as salutatorians of our respective graduating classes and both wound up getting the same award from the same school.

I was only special because I'd only done the same thing my sister had done the year before. I'd argue at the time and even now that I was only salutatorian and not valedictorian based on a technicality (whereas my sister was actually in second place). But that doesn't make very interesting news.

Still, I'd been a ham for attention ever since I appeared on the front page of the Lifestyle section of the local newspaper that ran on Mother's Day when I was in nursery school. At least I was going to be in the newspaper again.

The article was a big feature with a big stupid back-to-back photo of our "sister act" that ran on the back page of the Saturday paper—a pretty visible press clipping. I felt humiliated and diminished. And then my mother ordered a poster-sized print of the article from the newspaper and gave one to each of us.

I don't know what my sister ever did with hers, but mine has been rolled up in a poster tube with a bunch of other stuff for years, shoved into a dusty corner of my current kitchen, having been moved from dorm room to dorm room and apartment to apartment. I pulled it out and read it recently and had two reactions.

First, the quotations sound like me. And that's a good thing. I'm not sure I've actually changed that much since then, at least in the most fundamental ways.

Secondly, I don't think I was actually speaking the truth. To me, it sounds like I was trying to give them a good article. After all, I worked for that very same local newspaper and had landed a front-page story on it. I knew what worked for them.

I'm kind of inclined to throw that poster out, but it's an artifact of a big time in my life. It's unpleasant, but I think it's important I remember it.



Related Posts:
Open Letter to My Biological Sister
Black Swan, And The View from Behind First Place (Excerpt from Extra Criticum)
Upping the Ante
A Missed Calling

Subterranean Explorations on Second Avenue

When I actually lived on Second Avenue in Manhattan from 2004 to 2010, the year 2015 seemed so far away.

That was the date the Second Avenue Subway construction was supposed to be completed, having started in 2007 and being bumped from the original estimate of 2012 (but only if NYC had been awarded the Olympics).

Because I knew the route incorporated some existing tunnel from the 1970s (and that the project had been proposed first nearly a century ago), I used to think that the vibrating and shaking in my apartment was the ghost subway running under Second Avenue.

I never was convinced it wasn't.

So, fast-forward a few years. The projected completion date came and went, and although the new subway line was making progress, it wasn't done yet—and it wouldn't be until 2016 gave way to 2017.

I'd been in New York City twice since it had opened—last January and last May—but somehow, after all those years of anticipation, I just didn't make it over there to ride it and check out a station. After all, I'd been living in California for seven years. I didn't need to take a subway on the Upper East Side of Manhattan anymore.



But being a fan of public transit in general—and specifically the history of the NYC Subway—I finally found a reason to hop on the Q train, experience the screeching turn uptown from Lexington and 63rd Street, and emerge at 72nd Street.



I must admit, I expected more. I'm glad to see some mosaics inside the station...



...especially socially conscious ones...



...but the whole thing felt pretty plain and antiseptic to me.



But maybe that's just because the new stations—unlike the old ones—are clean. I'm not used to seeing so much white.

But despite the billions of dollars that has been spent on this new spur and these new stations, I would still consider New York City Transit inferior to the DC Metro, BART, and even Metro Los Angeles. And its design and functionality is far less than the London Tube and the Kiev Metro (Ки́ївський метрополіте́н—stay tuned for more on that).

It's a necessary evil in New York, though, unless you've got enough money to take a taxi or car service everywhere. And when the roads are too snowy or slick from some weather event, sometimes you've got to move your commute underground.

Those stations and tunnels protect you from some of the elements, though they subject you to a whole 'nother ecosystem down there, rife with other perils.

The first time I rode an MTA subway train, I thought it was scary. Then, I spent over a dozen years laughing at my former naiveté. And now, whenever I return to New York, its subterranean grid scares me once again.

Related Posts:
Underneath the City (Hall)
Photo Essay: MTA Vintage Subway Train Ride for the Holidays
Nostalgia Train Ride
Underground History
Photo Essay: The Inner Workings of LA's Public Transit
Riding the Red Line to Haunted Hollywood

Photo Essay: Taking a Break at the Ranch of Repose

It began as a "Ranch of Repose"...

circa 2010

...and what was once known as Rancho del Descanso is now 160 acres of gardens...



...where you can get lost among its flowers and trees...

circa 2010

...as well as its water features, arbors, and gazebos.



Because they’re all ripe for exploring.

Of course, most people visit Descanso Gardens in La Cañada Flintridge for the flowers – camellias bloom for eight months out of the year, from October through May – and even in the dead heat of summer, you can catch roses, summer annuals and perennials, crape myrtle, and cassia.

circa 2010

But this public garden that was once a private estate holds plenty of secrets in its far-reaching corners...

circa 2010

...and to discover them, all you’ve got to do is open the right doors...



...cross the right bridges...



....look up into the trees...



... and take the path less traveled by.



Aside from a few Canadian geese rambling across the Main Lawn or through the Oak Woodland, and perhaps an American crow or two taking a drink from the Mission Fountain, the birdlife of Descanso may not be obvious at first.



Heed the calls of mourning doves, Western scrub jays, house finches and goldfinches – all of which are pretty abundant at the gardens. At lakeside, there’s a Bird Observation Station that was originally dedicated in 1961 at the behest of the San Fernando Valley Audubon Society.



There's an ongoing project to revitalize the Bird Observation Station, waterfall, and surrounding area and will reopen in October...



...just in time for the fall migration along the Pacific Flyway.



Or,  follow the sound of a whistle...



...to the Enchanted Railroad...



...a 1/8th-scale model of a diesel train from 1960s/’70s.



The conductor calls “All aboard!”, and then the train chugs along the 7 1/2" gauge rails through the oaks, over a bridge, past the rose garden, and encircling the Promenade and Nature’s Table.

It’s somewhat of a hat tip to what the Rancho del Descanso could have become, since Walt Disney’s representatives had approached Descanso founder Manchester Boddy about developing the real estate while scouting locations for what ultimately became Disneyland.

Related Posts:
Photo Essay: Descanso Gardens & Trail
Photo Essay: The Boddy House of Rancho del Descanso