Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music Read online

  Praise for Mozart in the Jungle:

  “Blair Tindall crams two books into one, mixing a tell-all narrative about the classical music world’s seamier side with a history of the economics of postwar American arts. Classical-music admirers might think that its performers are sensitive, refined intellectuals, but Tindall sets out to puncture this precious assumption with gusto.... The sections that trace classical music’s history and point to where it should go reveal that Tindall has a true passion for her subject.”

  —Brian Wise, Time Out New York

  “A raucous, ribald and often raunchy romp ... She spares no one and nothing.... The cymbal-crashing of these two disciplines [music and journalism] is the exact double whammy needed to bring this story to life.... She tells a tale that is at once frightening and redeeming.... Any artist who’s ever tried to make it as a purist in a world where the rent’s forever past due will undoubtedly find solace and familiarity in Tindall’s scathing, intimate look at the classical musician’s world. All others will enjoy Mozart in the Jungle because it’s an exhilarating, albeit often excruciating, ride. B+.”

  —Cathie Beck, Rocky Mountain News

  “Wonderfully poignant and powerful... Blair Tindall writes so well. I think the average classical music listener will find much of her story compelling and come away with a good understanding of not only the life we lead, but also the difficulties we face in finding a career in music that is creatively satisfying and yet provides us a living.... Tindall has a real and human story to tell.”

  —Alan Black, The Charlotte Observer

  “Exploding the stereotype of classical musicians as overcultivated fops in formal wear, Tindall chronicles her sex life with candor and lusty flair.... Laced with sordid stories that debunk the prim and proper image of classical musicians ... her memoir of the freelancer’s harried, marginal existence is a valuable reality check to the glamorous myth of classical music.”

  —John Fleming, St. Petersburg Times

  “Tindall’s central complaint, ‘that the classical-music world has created a crisis by training too many musicians and supporting a culture of exorbitant pay for a few fortunate stars,’ is difficult to refute.”

  —The New Yorker

  “[This] tattling memoir is full of scandal, indulgence and the musical life.... An accessible primer... With sharp powers of observation, she captures revealing details of her times and surroundings.... Tindall’s writing is excellent and clear; she maintains the reader’s interest with clever twists of phrase and plot.... [Her] insightful analysis of this insular world’s overindulgence and misdirection should be heeded by all in positions of influence.”

  —Mick Scott, Winston-Salem Journal

  “It’s a hoity-toity version of VH1’s Behind the Music.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “Her description of life in the famous Allendale building... is delightful, as are her portraits of fellow musicians and her stories of life in the pit.”

  —Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

  “Tindall succeeds at a more ambitious goal: presenting a surprisingly thorough analysis and scathing critique of the classical music business.... This is a fascinating examination of a peculiar culture that provides so much joy while breaking so many hearts.”

  —Anya Grundmann, Newsday

  “Chronicles her life ... with a candor meant to set tongues clucking.”

  —Charles Ward, Houston Chronicle

  “Blair Tindall gives us what we’re looking for.”

  —Valerie Scher, The San Diego Union-Tribune

  “Yes, there’s plenty of titillating smut here.... This is also a jeremiad on the dangers of fantasy lives.... She suggests that the American classical-music establishment is overdue for some reality checks. She’s right.”

  —Scott Cantrell, The Dallas Morning News

  “This ‘Behind the Classical Music’ memoir lays bare the unexpectedly steamy and sordid world of professional symphonies. Who knew?”

  —Jennifer Ceaser, Hamptons

  “Fascinating... Begins as a lilting fairy tale, segues into opera, and evolves into a dissonant, postmodern work—unflinching autobiography, bitter cautionary tale and riveting exposé of the classical-music business.”

  —Helen Sheehy, Opera News

  “The strongest moments are found in passages where Tindall is so overcome with emotional memory.... Her writing feels unforced and alive. No matter how much you do or don’t know about classical music, in these moments you care about Blair Tindall.... Her perspective as a rank-and-file freelancer is an all-too-rarely-heard voice in the larger cultural debate surrounding the future of classical music in America.... There is much to absorb vicariously through this walk in Blair Tindall’s shoes, especially for those who have never experienced the thrill of reacting to a conductor’s downbeat or sat in a cramped orchestra pit playing the same show for the fortieth time.”

  —Molly Sheridan, Symphony

  “Written with pop culture-savvy flair... Mozart is a delightfully unlikely pageturner.... It’s sure to instill... an unprecedented admiration of this deviant art.”

  —Alii Marshall, Mountain Xpress

  “No other writer has better described the realities of the music business.”

  —Ken Keuffel, Winston-Salem Journal

  “Fascinating on many levels, and after reading it, you will never look at those prim, black-clad musicians playing Mozart the same way again.”

  —Dottie Ashley, The Post and Courier (Charleston)

  “A provocative blend of no-holds-barred memoir and tough-minded reporting about the state of classical music ... A real eye-opener.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “A fresh, highly readable, and caustic perspective on an overglamorized world.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A book that raises hard questions about the place of classical music in North American culture ... a remarkable book that ensures you will never see a symphony concert in the same light again.

  —The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

  “Scathing... Its scandalous peek behind the decorous façade of classical music is bound to cause shock waves.”

  —Michael Shelden, Daily Telegraph

  “Tindall almost always comes down on the side of honesty. She is clear-eyed, cool-hearted, and unafraid to bite the hand that has fed her.”

  —Edward Smith, Telegraph (UK)

  “This is the most candid and unsparing account of orchestral life ever to see print. It details both the petty corruptions of power—the cliques that control who plays in orchestras and who doesn’t—and the more sordid corruptions of flesh and cash. Blair Tindall tells it how it is—the sex, the drugs, the influence racketeers. The abuses she exposes begin at high school and persist at the deathbed. But she also illuminates, vividly and unflinchingly, how classically trained musicians have lost their grip on reality and, with it, their place in society. This is a valuable book, a must-read for anyone who cares for the preservation of live performance.”

  —Norman Lebrecht, author of The Maestro Myth and The Song of Names

  “Parents of young classical musicians beware. After reading Mozart in the Jungle you may want to redirect your children towards more wholesome pursuits, such as playing drums in a speed-metal band.”

  —Jacob Slichter, author of So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star and drummer for Semisonic (Closing Time)

  “Blair Tindall blows the lid off the world of classical music in this book that transcends the genre of memoir. While an intensely personal and revealing story, Mozart in the Jungle is also fine investigative journalis
m, with an abiding sense of history. It’s a remarkable multilayered work of nonfiction. Blair entered the sacred temple of classical music—for so long shrouded in mystery, off-limits to critical examination—and emerged with this tale of a nonprofit ‘industry’ bent on self-destruction, conductors feeding at the trough of excess, both monetary and sexual. This book is a must-read for anyone concerned about the arts in America.”

  —Dale Maharidge, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning And Their Children After Them

  “Candid and intriguing.”

  —Observer Music Monthly (UK)

  “Busloads of kids arrive in Manhattan daily, driven to make it there.’ But for many, the climb to the top is more often like a trek through a jungle. Blair Tindall brilliantly captures the energy, excitement, and existential angst of it all, including the Allendale Apartments, the place where the lives of so many of us—musicians, artists, and writers—intersected. It took a ‘double threat’ like Blair Tindall—a world-class oboist whose musical talents are matched by her journalistic skills—to tell the story. It makes me long for those days, leaky ceilings and all.”

  —Bill Lichtenstein, senior executive producer of public radio’s The Infinite Mind and president of Lichtenstein Creative Media

  “In her wonderfully eloquent memoir Blair Tindall takes us into the rehearsal rooms and the orchestra pits, the dressing rooms and the bedrooms of the classical musicians who make such beautiful music in some of America’s best-known orchestras. Mozart in the Jungle is a remarkably candid and courageous book.”

  —Margot Livesey

  Mozart in the Jungle

  Mozart in the Jungle

  Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music

  Blair Tindall

  Copyright © 2005 by Blair Tindall

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

  All events in Mozart in the Jungle are true, and all characters are real. However, the following names have been changed: Sydney, Jayson, Percy, Betty, Mr. Geizhals, Maria, Jean, Frank, Donald, José, Peter Huffine, Jimmy, and “Basically Baroque.”

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Printed in the United States of America

  FIRST GROVE PRESS EDITION

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Tindall, Blair.

  Mozart in the jungle : sex, drugs, and classical music / Blair Tindall.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-10: 0-8021-4253-2

  ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-4253-5

  1. Tindall, Blair. 2. Oboe players—United States—Biography.

  I. Title.

  ML419.T48A3 2005

  781.6′8′0973090511—dc22 2005041105

  Grove Press

  an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  841 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  www.groveatlantic.com

  06 07 08 09 10 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For my parents,

  Carliss Blossom McGarrity Tindall and George Brown Tindall

  You ask my opinion about taking the young Salzburg musician into your service. I do not know where you can place him, since I feel that you do not require a composer or other useless people.... It gives one’s service a bad name when such types run around like beggars; besides, he has a large family.

  —Letter from Archduke Ferdinand’s mother, upon learning of his interest in Mozart, 1771

  CONTENTS

  Prelude

  First Movement: Appassionata Sonata

  One

  The Magic Flute

  Two

  Cunning Little Vixen

  Three

  The Prodigy

  Four

  New World Symphony

  Five

  Apollo’s Flophouse

  Six

  Elixir of Love

  Seven

  The Rite of Spring

  Eight

  A Midsummer Night’s Dream

  Nine

  The Damnation of Faust

  Second Movement: Rhapsody in Blue

  Ten

  West Side Story

  Eleven

  Mozart in the Jungle

  Twelve

  Twilight of the Gods

  Thirteen

  Danse Macabre

  Fourteen

  Unfinished Symphony

  Fifteen

  The Pits

  Sixteen

  Beggar’s Opera

  Seventeen

  The Age of Anxiety

  Third Movement: Symphonic Metamorphoses

  Eighteen

  Airlift from Saigon

  Nineteen

  Smoke and Mirrors

  Twenty

  Les Miserables

  Twenty-one

  The Medieval Baebe

  Twenty-two

  Music of the Heart

  Encore: The Lark Ascending

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Prelude

  JANET DIRECTED THE taxi driver to stop just past the Manhattan School of Music on 122nd Street, where I heard students practicing violin scales, trumpet études, and clarinet melodies in the inexpensive apartments nearby. The cab stopped halfway down Claremont Avenue, on a somewhat seedy block bordering Harlem, and I followed Janet inside the foyer of a narrow tenement. The front door buzzed open; we passed into a hall’s murky light, then out a fire escape exit to a barren airshaft. A bulb lit up an old paint-blistered door. Music was throbbing from behind it.

  “It’s just me, Donald!” Janet shouted, punching the mechanical doorbell. One, two, three deadbolts unlocked. The door creaked open and music blasted out.

  A window shot open up above. “Jesus fucking Christ, will you shut the fuck up?” A Gristede’s bag sailed out the window over our heads, just missing me but spraying coffee grounds everywhere else.

  A scruffy man in a stained yellow T-shirt pulled us inside, barricading the door with a five-foot pole lock anchored to the floor. Two Virgin Mary candles from a local bodega flickered in the darkness to the beat of music pulsing from huge old Klipsch speakers. I could smell, faintly, gas leaking from somewhere and mildew creeping across the gray walls. Through the metal accordion grate on the windows, mountains of garbage accumulated in the shaft. My heart started beating faster.

  How did classical music ever bring me to this place?

  Three men I knew howled with laughter on the frayed brown sofa. “Dude, I’ll never get over him fucking his sister.” Stan choked on his words. “It’s so out.”

  Donald just shrugged and pulled on the fat joint that was making its rounds.

  “Yeah, I know. Now their kid’s fucking his aunt,” Milton chimed in, pushing his stringy blond bangs aside to see the knobs on a large vacuum tube amplifier. “Listen to this riff. Man, you’re not gonna believe.” The record blared, and they were silent for a moment.

  Stan sighed during a lull in the music. “Those cats could really play.”

  I watched Janet bend over the desk to snort cocaine through a straw. I’d never done coke, but I was feeling pressured to try Donald’s stash too. Donald drummed his fingers on the table, regarding me suspiciously. Suddenly, his attention shifted to Milton, who sprang back to the couch to roll a crisp $100 bill into a tube.

  “Miltie’s chasing the dragon, man,” Billy, the third one, sputtered. “He’s totally chasing that shit.” He doubled over with laughter, gasping for breath. Confused, Janet looked at Milton and cocked her h
ead, the straw dangling between her fingers.

  “You know how it is, man: trying to stay up, get the buzz back, you gotta do more blow. Gotta chase the dragon,” said Milton almost defensively, cutting two lines of coke on the coffee table. He leaned over with his $100 tube, and the lines disappeared.

  “No, man, I meant the real dragon.” Billy chortled, knocking a tin of Szechuan noodles onto the rug. “The one in the opera. It’s Siegfried, man. The giant turns into a dragon. Guards the trolls’ gold. Shit. People think Star Wars invented this fucking stuff.” An operatic bass wailed through the record’s pops and scratches.

  “Goddam, sounds like he’s coming,” said Milton, sneezing violently. “Wagner’s so out. What’s with those Valkyries?” The words tumbled out, and he choked on his own laughter. “Pointy, dude. Torpedo tits.”

  Billy got up and switched records, carefully slipping the first one into its faded jacket. He dropped the needle, and brass instruments played a religious tune. “Valhalla, man.” He sighed, folding his hands reverentially. “Castle of the gods. Power. Power and glory, man.” The windows vibrated as the music rose and fell.

  Milton took a long swig of Beck’s. “What kind of Wagner tubas they playing, Paxman? Alexander? It’s Vienna Phil: Solti, right? Damn, they’re nailing it.” He was shouting over the din. He wiped his nose and then smeared back a cowlick in a seamless motion.

  These guys had fire in their bellies, I thought. I watched Janet hand Donald $250 and tuck a Baggie of coke into her purse. Young and inexperienced, I wanted this in-crowd of classical musicians to accept me so I would be asked to play with them in the city’s hottest orchestras and chamber music groups. I’d already started playing oboe as a substitute in the New York Philharmonic, even though I was still in school. At twenty-two I was too scared to do coke, though, so I tried to appear nonchalant by propping my black alligator sandals on the coffee table.