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

  Last night in Rio I’d mailed Sam a postcard and then put my travelers’ checks in a lockbox at the Othon Palace Hotel. Inside, I’d glimpsed the hotel’s former safe, exploded steel fringing the six-inch hole blown in its side. Just a month before, twenty-six bandits brandishing submachine guns had commandeered the security room, tied up guards, and looted $56,000 from the safe as hostages cowered in $165 rooms upstairs. They must not have known that one month later, the same rooms would be home to millions in precious musical instruments.

  The driver turned left, away from shore and toward Rio’s vast green Flamengo Reclaim and the glass skyscrapers beyond it. A violinist sitting beside me on the bus massaged his hand, which had been the casualty of an Ipanema pickpocket the previous night. Two more violinists chatted about the best places to buy leather jackets in Rio. At last we crossed Avenida Rio Branco, pulling up to the Teatro Municipal’s stage door.

  Symphonies don’t pack light. The New York Philharmonic’s 113 aluminum traveling cases were strewn around backstage. In addition to these huge wardrobe valises were shipping trunks for the large instruments—basses, cellos, timpani, and extensive percussion—as well as four 200-pound trunks filled with music. The Philharmonic even brought cases for small instruments like mine, moving 23,000 pounds of cargo six times in three weeks. That didn’t include the luggage of 110 musicians, thirty-seven relatives, three board members, a doctor, two travel agents, four stagehands, two librarians, and eight Philharmonic staffers. At least the contrabassoonist doubled as group photographer.

  Built in 1909 as a replica of the Paris Opéra, Rio’s Teatro Municipal was decorated in onyx, French stained glass, and fifteen hundred pounds of green Carrara marble. Painted pastel nymphs frolicked on the ceiling around a chandelier made with one thousand pounds of crystal.

  Tonight we’d play the Eighth Symphony of Anton Bruckner, one of Hitler’s favorite Austrian composers. The orchestra may have chosen the Austrian composer’s work because so many European immigrants live in South America. Most of them were postwar immigrants, although a few exiled Nazis still lived in Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay, protected by those countries’ fascist dictators.

  This was my second visit to Brazil. My first was with Orpheus in 1985. During that Orpheus tour, we’d played Montevideo’s rickety Teatro Solís, where the theater’s ancient harpsichord tilted precariously on the steeply raked stage. After performing, we left the stage door expecting a quiet walk back to the hotel. Instead, our audience flooded out onto the theater’s marble plaza, surrounding us with bows, cheers, and wild applause worthy of a rock ’n’ roll band.

  While the twenty-six Orpheus musicians had juggled instruments, luggage, and snafus on a shoestring budget, the Philharmonic went first-class, its international touring costs topping $1 million per week. Stage-hands worked around the clock, shipping instruments to the next venue, as hotel staff whisked away suitcases that magically reappeared at our next destination.

  In Rio my stomach turned bad, as it did on every international trip. I wasn’t nearly cautious enough about my diet, insisting on trying native dishes wherever we went. When we had played in Argentina the previous week, waiters brought trays of raw meat for our inspection. I had chosen the mixed grill, which included testicles and a slice of cow udder. Then, in Sâo Paolo, I had tried feijoada, a fatty Brazilian bean and pork dish that the hotel there served in a traditional Sunday buffet, offering vats of pig snouts, ears, and curly tails, all washed down with caipirinha, a drink made from cachaça—a liquor distilled from sugar cane—lime, and sugar.

  Back at the Othon, my stomach in turmoil, I had headed for my room. Just as the elevator doors closed, conductor Zubin Mehta had slipped inside with me. I’d wished I felt good enough to think of something intelligent to say. I’d waited for this chance to connect with him personally before my upcoming second oboe audition. Our elevator ascended slowly, and we stood in silence. Ten, eleven, twelve....

  “How was the volleyball game?” Zubin asked. Looking out from his room, he must have seen us playing on the beach that morning. I concentrated hard on not throwing up, determined not to spray him in a scene worthy of The Exorcist. Before I could speak, the doors opened onto my floor. Covering my mouth, I ran, puking in the hall ashtray just around the corner. As I recovered, I heard a violent punching of elevator buttons and then the door slamming shut.

  Flush with 1980s cash, Citibank was sponsoring the tour, in a routine started by AT&T in 1979 with its Orchestras on Tour program. The idea caught on; Isuzu sponsored the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Beatrice Foods underwrote Chicago Lyric Opera, and Merrill Lynch bankrolled recital series nationwide. To support the phenomenon of corporate arts sponsorship, another arts service organization was born, the Business Council for the Arts, Inc.2

  By linking the Citibank name with a traveling arts group of the Philharmonic’s stature, the corporation scored in two ways: the company associated itself with a luxury product like a major symphony, theoretically enjoyed by its wealthiest clients, and the advertising that accompanied our concerts provided Citibank with extensive public relations coverage across a wide geographic area. Parties, receptions, and exclusive events revolved around the concerts, with top clients awarded choice seats.

  After Rio, we flew across Brazil’s interior pink mesa to the Jetson-like capital city of Brasilia, which looked like an architectural mirage plopped in the center of a red soil desert. As we finished the airline lunch, a woodwind musician took an opportunity to poke fun at my oboe teacher Joe Robinson’s stomach problems, which had on occasion caused him to leave the stage during concerts while the orchestra waited silently for his return. The woodwind musician threaded dried prunes and apricots on his swizzle stick and passed it down the aisle to Joe.

  “Pass this to Ollie,” the musician said (he had nicknamed Joe Oliver North for his clean-cut appearance). “I want to earn overtime tomorrow night.” (Depending on the orchestra, overtime pay for concerts begins after two and a half or three hours.)

  After we arrived in Brasilia, Citibank took the orchestra on a bus tour of the buildings Oscar Niemeyer had designed in the fifties, when the city was built. Next we were driven to the Academia de Tenis, where wine flowed freely and fresh seafood platters (in the country’s landlocked center) appeared every few minutes. The opulent food and drink fueled exuberance in the musicians, many of whom were starting to tire after two weeks of touring. A percussionist started to dance. Before long, brass players joined in, then the violinists, and finally, the entire New York Philharmonic wiggled around the pool in a samba line.

  On the bus back to the hotel, I noticed satellite cities—favelas, or shantytowns—off the highway. An underclass had started to surround this new utopian city, and no one had planned for them. By the time we finished Tchaikovsky’s Fifth the following night, I realized that poor working people and relatively wealthy diplomats lived entirely separate lives here. No one who looked like our dark-skinned waiters and samba musicians from the dinner party were in our audience. I started piecing together how vast the expense of bringing us to Brasilia must have been, just to entertain government officials in this remote city.

  The Philharmonic tour continued, with musicians snapping up shopping bargains in every city. They’d just finalized a new contract for 1987, earning a $980 weekly base salary. In Buenos Aires, they had bought nutria-lined gloves and antelope jackets, in Sâo Paolo, aquamarines; and in Belo Horizonte, loose stones from the nearby mines. Even though I was only earning a Philharmonic-sized salary for a few weeks, I too bought my share of souvenirs, including an aquamarine ring and a custom-made leather jacket.

  As the tour ended, most of the orchestra flew home to New York from Sâo Paolo. I was one of fifteen musicians—staying behind for a chamber music tour of Panama, Ecuador, and remote venues in Brazil and Argentina—who hopped a puddle jumper with Zubin and five staffers. Zubin sat directly in front of me on the plane, and I listened as he planned programs three years ahead with his adviser, Fr
ank Milburn. I’d imagined these decisions were a more bureaucratic affair, done with board meetings, arguments, and heated debates, but it turned out to be a simple conversation. The two men worked out which pieces worked well together, what tenor still got along with Kathleen Battle, what child prodigies might be ready by 1990. As the plane took off, one musician beside me listened to his Walkman, while another scribbled in his journal. No one noticed the bass and cello trunks disappearing to the size of silver specks behind us on the tarmac.

  While we were in the air, Citicorp chair John S. Reed and six hundred guests—clients and executives—began arriving on the remote Iguassú Falls airstrip where Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil meet. Tonight’s concert, featuring Schubert, Villa-Lobos, and Mozart, would be an extravagant climax to the tour they’d sponsored.

  We landed on a narrow runway in the middle of the jungle. Descending the plane stairs to the tarmac, I could see that the airport was surrounded by vegetation in all directions. A thick plume of vapor spiraled from the rain-forest canopy, probably in the spot I’d read about where the Iguassú’s 270 waterfalls, over 200 feet high and two miles wide, plunge to the Devil’s Throat, dwarfing both Niagara and Victoria Falls. I’d wanted to see this place during the Orpheus tour in 1985, but it was too remote to fit into the schedule. Since then, the spot became well-known from the 1986 film The Mission, which opened with Jeremy Irons’s 1770s missionary character playing oboe in the nearby jungle.

  The musicians identified their luggage, which porters hauled away. We waited. There was no sign of the trunks. Without cello and bass, the Schubert Octet couldn’t go on. Concert clothes and another work’s bassoon part were inside the trunks too. Looking worried, general manager Nick Webster shooed us into a large van for a tour of the area, staying behind to sort it out.

  Our guide, Walter, ordered gourds of yerba maté tea for us at a Brazilian café perched over the Iguassú River. A dark-skinned Argentine expatriate living in Australia, Walter had returned to look for his father, one of the thousands who’d disappeared into General Alfredo Stroessner’s Paraguay. Walter had a masculine take-charge energy that contrasted with the quiet demeanor of the musicians he was hosting.

  After tea, Walter drove us to the waterfalls. On a wooden walkway, he led us over a broad mesa churning with the Iguassú River, where a half-million gallons of red water thundered to boulders below every second. The missing trunks were soon forgotten as Walter piled the five bravest musicians aboard his helicopter. We swooped through the mist, dipping below cliffs draped by dense lianas. Gargantuan coconut palms were dwarfed by two miles of roaring cataracts.

  I was still officially dating Sam, but I was wildly attracted to Walter. He was probably around thirty and stirred an animal heat in me I’d never felt before. I sensed his breath on my neck as we walked down Puerto Iguassú’s dirt road, his black eyes flirting with me. I could have offered to meet Walter after the concert tonight, or even just gone to lunch, but my obsession with impressing Zubin on this tour was even greater than my sexual urge. After all, the oboe section had a vacancy soon, and by having me substitute in the Philharmonic, my teacher had given me every advantage to win the job. I asked Walter to take me back to the hotel to work on reeds.

  By this time, the hotel lobby was in chaos. Citibank had rented three jets back in Sâo Paolo, and dismantled one to try and wedge the immense instrument trunks inside. No luck. The head of one of the world’s largest global banks, South American aristocracy, and the continent’s biggest presenter all could not bring the bass from Sâo Paolo.

  Wearing a motley combination of sequins and jeans, we could still play the Villa-Lobos Duo and Mozart’s Serenade for eight winds, although the second bassoon part was in the missing cello trunk. Schubert’s lush Octet score called for both cello and bass. Instead, clarinetist Stanley Drucker volunteered solo clarinet pieces by Stravinsky, a smaller but rare treat.

  I spent the afternoon scraping reeds in my hotel room and watching a toucan perched on a tree outside. The other musicians were still sightseeing, but I needed to make sure I sounded great. We had recently played in Bogotá, Colombia, where my reeds didn’t work at all. I had never realized how much high altitudes affect these quirky bits of cane. My old reeds hadn’t been the same since we came back down to sea level, either. By 6 P.M. I had finally fashioned one reed that at least got the low notes out, although the tone quality was a little bright.

  In the hotel’s ballroom, the guests took their seats after enjoying a lavish buffet. Something about the ordeal of our day provided just enough adrenaline that all eight musicians playing the Mozart were at the top of their game, trading phrases playfully and putting extra emotion into the lyrical passages. We finished and the audience leaped to a standing ovation, lubricated by caipirinhas and Veuve Cliquot. Behind an enormous ice sculpture, Walter leaned against the wall. I would leave in the morning and never see him again.

  As I packed up my oboe, I began feeling regretful to have missed out on a real adventure with Walter. I hadn’t realized how starved I had been for a genuine sexual attraction to someone my own age. The concert, however, had been chillingly beautiful. If only every concert were like this, I would trade almost anything to play the oboe. I couldn’t end up in the freelance ranks, where my career would mean schlepping between unsatisfying musical events, with no job security and little recognition. I had to win that Philharmonic job.

  CHAPTER

  12

  Twilight of the Gods

  THE ARTS INDUSTRY in America had blossomed since the 1960s, as classical music, theater, fine art, and dance enjoyed more sources of support than ever before. New arts groups were forming every year, and they were producing an explosion in the number of concerts and other performing arts events. The fact that audience growth did not keep pace with this frenzied expansion had little impact on the growth in this nonprofit sector. Most performing arts groups were subsidized by unearned donated income, as well as tax incentives, and therefore did not always have to link revenue to the quantity, quality, or type of product they offered.

  The Ford Foundation was largely responsible for the rapid growth in cultural philanthropy, providing $400 million between 1956 and 1976. Ford’s strategy was rooted in granting seed money, not long-term support. Their awards required arts groups to raise up to four times the grant amount, ideally broadening the base of funding—and audiences—indefinitely. This base, wrote San Francisco Foundation director John Kreidler in an In Motion magazine article, resembled a pyramid scheme, in which a business venture crumbles when the pool of new investors whose cash had supported the company disappears.

  Any student of biological, physical or economic systems would immediately recognize the flaw in the logic of funding leverage, as it has been practiced not only in the arts but also throughout the nonprofit sector. One of the fundamental tenets of systems studies is the “free lunch” principle: no system can depend on the unlimited growth of resources. The leveraged funding strategy of the Ford era can be likened to a chain letter, a Ponzi scheme, or any other pyramidal growth system. The initiators of chain letters and Ponzi schemes often claim that, for a small effort or investment, a virtually limitless return will be realized, and though initially this prophecy may appear to be feasible, inevitably all such arrangements must fail because resources are finite. In other words, there is no perpetual free lunch. Ultimately, funding leverage will become unsustainable.1

  These pyramid schemes paralleled arts rhetoric from the sixties, an idealism that promised to lift spirits, create new opportunity, and teach a better way to live and prosper. The plan relied on two factors: an expanding population of philanthropists and a stable stock market to provide predictable interest income from endowment investments.

  Even before the Ford grants were first awarded, some arts groups tended to spend more than they took in and to perform more concerts than the public wanted to hear. In 1956, New York Times critic Howard Taubman questioned the glut of performances in his article
“The Philharmonic—What’s Wrong with It and Why.”

  It is beyond dispute that the Philharmonic’s subscriptions have been diminishing ... the staggering final deficit of $245,463 tells its own story.... As far as this observer could make out this season, the only Thursday night concerts that looked absolutely sold out were those at which Heifetz and Oistrakh were the soloists.... On most other occasions, there were stretches of gaping, empty seats.

  Needless to say, there are external factors beyond the quality of programs and performances to explain the Philharmonic’s attendance record. The ubiquitous television set has made deep inroads on attendance at all public entertainments. The spread of the high-fidelity vogue and the vast expansion of the repertory on records have had their impact. The inflationary pinch has caused some concertgoers to think twice about paying out high prices for concert tickets. The competition in opera house and concert hall for the music lover’s dollar is intense in New York.

  Furthermore, the Philharmonic assumes an ambitious schedule. It plays for twenty-eight weeks during the regular season.... Is it possible that there is no market in New York for so many concerts? That may well be.2

  Foundation, corporate, and federal support were expected to fill the financial void, and a Ford Foundation program began training the first generation of arts administrators in 1962 to handle the increasingly complex budgets. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund recommended that the Philharmonic and other orchestras, struggling to fill their part-time schedules, extend those seasons to satisfy the surge of interest in culture that was expected to sweep America in the 1960s.

  Orchestras acted on the recommendation to lengthen their schedules, and the number of orchestra concerts in the United States increased 80 percent between 1966 and 1974.3 New orchestras were formed as well, growing from 58 in 1965 to 225 in 1988.4 Yet while musical events were becoming more numerous, ticket buyers were not. A 1968 New York Times article stated that impresarios estimated that concert attendance had decreased between 7 and 40 percent from the year before, with even Leonard Bernstein and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau failing to sell out Carnegie Hall.5