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

  Between 1920 and 1960, New York lost a quarter of its population as new suburbs, and the bridges and tunnels that made them accessible, lured city dwellers away.2 Retail sales and jobs followed them, eroding the neighborhood’s elegance. By the mid-1970s, robberies and muggings infested Upper Broadway, an area rich in burly transvestites, drug dens, and welfare hotels housing psychiatric patients dumped during the state asylums’ purge between 1965 and 1979.

  A new landlord divided each of the Allendale floor’s three stately apartments into twelve tenements leasing for $150 a month in 1961. This man, Mr. Geizhals, installed brown Cookmaster gas stoves and Hotpoint refrigerators with flimsy aluminum freezer compartments. Obsolete gas drying racks crowded the basement’s laundry room, hosting rats and the stray cats hunting them. Tenants who threw out battered wood and vinyl furniture later found it in the lobby, where iridescent black wallpaper accented puce carpeting and a lone plastic plant gathered dust.

  Geizhals died, but his style lived on. Surveying the kingdom from their balcony office, his daughters refined their father’s negligence to high art. Boss lady Brunhilde, a brassy lawyer nicknamed for Wagner’s screaming Valkyrie, bellowed at suspected subletters and Puerto Rican doormen. Recently, she’d diversified by hiring Jules, a scrawny East Indian doubling as the Geizhals spy.

  “Get-ting chilly,” Jules droned, as Brunhilde’s sister, whom we nicknamed Yoda for reasons of appearance, not wisdom, heaved through the lobby, bangle bracelets clanking like the radiators upstairs. Jules’s eyes shifted to the elevator, noting where two strangers got off. Yoda stopped a sweet girl from the eighth floor, bleating about prostitution.

  “No, that’s not me,” the girl replied, indignant. “She’s on Eleven.”

  Angelo, a superintendent with no discernable skills apart from reproduction, lived in a sprawling basement hellhole. I often found one of his thirteen children from three different mothers smoking dope in the cellar’s maze. Angelo’s teenage kids produced grandchildren with impressive frequency. When temperatures plunged in winter, Brunhilde sent him for sweaters and blankets at Goodwill. He layered them around the roof’s labyrinth of pipes but could not stop our hot water from freezing fourteen days straight. Nearly half the tenants withheld rent and filed suit against the Geizhals.

  His helper, Hippolito, haunted the stairwell after dark, peering through the keyholes of old service doors long sealed shut and jerking off into a filthy rag. He favored the third floor’s revolving cast of beautiful South Korean girls, earning Juilliard degrees prized as dowry back home before passing their apartment leases on to cousins and friends. Harpist and writer Judith Kogan noted the phenomenon in her exposé of Juilliard culture:

  Juilliard was a finishing school for some of [the Korean girls]. They all played piano—and some played incredibly well—but their primary goal was to catch a husband. Their parents thought the Juilliard name would attract a successful Korean man.3

  Brunhilde liked the Koreans too, raising the rent with each new crop. Between peeps, Hippolito slipped rent receipts under our doors. When wind gusts from leaky windows blew them back into the hall for tenants’ perusal, we could see that, though transients like the Koreans got charged $1,200, old-timers paid less than $200.

  Since the lease was mine, I claimed the corner living room, with its river view. Two other oboe students moved into the bedrooms. I didn’t see much of Lionel, who probed the glory days of Crisco Disco, Studio 54, and the Ramrod. Missy took the smaller room. We painted the faux wood kitchen cabinets white and scrubbed our grimy stovetop. Teetering on a folding chair, I reached for a clock over the fridge that had stopped long ago. Cockroaches jamming its warm motor swarmed up my arms. I shrieked. The clock started ticking.

  Some of New York’s hot tickets started in the Allendale. Julian Fifer ran Orpheus, the conductorless chamber orchestra, from his apartment on Twelve, and one of its violists, Sally, lived on Five. Getting the music before performing on A Prairie Home Companion meant an elevator ride to Eleven, where music director Rob Fisher churned out his arrangements. Visitors included James Galway and Mischa Maisky. Some tenants were en route to stardom. Violinist Ida Kavafian, violists Kim Kashkashian and Steve Tenenbaum, Metropolitan Opera French hornist Julie Landsman, and pianists Stephen Hough and Robert MacDonald all stayed in the Allendale before moving on.

  Still, lifers also populated the Allendale. Jorge left the thick Cuban cigar smoke of his poker game only for an occasional gig on his contrabassoon, a woodwind known for its farting timbre in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Dick, an occasional tubist, muttered to himself as he shuffled cassettes at Tower Records to support his “passion,” and a violinist named Peter crammed wife and infant into an alley one-bedroom until the child, ripe with material, escaped to an MFA writing program.

  The place also bred miserable spinsters who’d moved into the Allendale years before as ingenues like me. Joan waddled nightly on the sidewalk outside with two stinking matted dogs, a secretarial job having eclipsed her singing career. Her apartment was exactly the same as mine but on a different floor. It was crammed with bric-a-brac, piles of magazines, and ruffled floral curtains and pillows that smelled moldy.

  Marni walked her psychotic dog when she plodded to Gristede’s in polyester muumuus, the gray roots of her carrot-red hair always showing three inches. Once, I fed her mangy cat, which cringed between towers of unsold LPs from her independent record label (featuring women composers and an all-girl bassoon quartet). I peeked in a jumbo box of children’s books languishing in the corner and read the copy:

  Come with us on our lighthearted romp through history, music and art with Roxanne, Ben, Bach, Beethoven, Vermeer, Brueghel, and of all things, that scamp—Benjamin Franklin! There is no age limit, for our guest of honor, Johann Sebastian Bach, is over 300 years old!!

  I’d seen Marni carrying a violin but never playing it. The source of her income was unclear. A combination of the record label’s tax-exempt status, subsidized by Allendale rent, and arts grants tweaked into salary may have explained it.

  Betty, a frosted fireplug of a bass player, was most ominous of all. Once, she burst from the elevator after thirty minutes between floors, spitting like a demented white tiger. Approaching fifty, Betty’s middling career covered her Allendale rent, a vacation, and not much more. She played bass in the New York City Ballet Orchestra, filling in income gaps by hiring musicians for Basically Baroque’s concerts. Betty was cloyingly friendly or vitriolic, her scent sometimes broadcasting Hong Liquor Store’s special of the week. No one visited her except an aging tenor who lived in the West Seventies with his wife.

  A stunning flutist moved into her own apartment on the opposite side of the building from mine. A dead ringer for supermodel Cheryl Tiegs, Sydney’s blond hair sparkled and her huge blue eyes were perfectly spaced in an oval face. Nearly six feet tall, her confidence inspired respect even from strangers, her polished style elevating her above her contemporaries.

  Fresh from conservatory, Sydney had already made finals at major orchestra auditions. Even her instrument was special, a gold and silver Powell flute that her teacher had played on some of the most famous recordings of his day. She dated a bassoonist from a wealthy family that ran a scientific foundation, and he’d given her a diamond ring. Neither would worry about money if they married, though she’d be fine on her own. She played in the city’s best chamber orchestra, won a woodwind quintet position, and substituted with the American Ballet Theater orchestra. With her reputation as a fine musician and colleague, she’d be a member of many more groups before long.

  In the mid-1970s, the cultural prophecy came true as iconoclastic chamber music groups and orchestras formed. The twenty-six musicians of Orpheus played without a conductor, and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s also rose quickly. Another chamber orchestra was organized at the 92nd Street Y, while the American Composers Orchestra dedicated itself to playing new works. Sydney hadn’t arrived in time to land any of those permanent jobs, but more groups
would surely form in the 1980s.

  Sydney wasn’t only looks and talent. Growing up in an affluent suburb, she had the social graces of a cultured young woman. She spoke fluent French. Her manners were impeccable, her graceful smile and gestures capable of putting the surliest colleague at ease. Sydney personified America’s new Cold War fantasy: a home-grown American goddess of the European fine arts. She was everything a classical musician should be—refined, charming, accomplished. In the music business, and to the men around us, Sydney was unquestionably a muse.

  With so many tenants who knew each other well, the Allendale offered many inside dating opportunities. A conductor invited me to erase string bowings in rental music in return for dinner. He forgot his wallet but remembered to grope me. A saxophonist who was marketing a CD he’d produced, One Jew’s Views, for sale through his toll-free number, 1-800-586-SAXY, made it clear he wanted to cheat on his fiancée. Manhattan School of Music’s piano tuner, sporting a comb-over, started dropping in too. Installing himself at our reed desk, he stared at me and at my roommate Missy, scooting his chair closer and closer until we lied and told him we were lesbians.

  One boyfriend, a scrappy midwestern fiddler, played in second-violin sections all over town: Queens Symphony, Long Island Philharmonic, and Basically Baroque, which was an Allendale connection. The place he shared with a black mutt, left over from his divorce, celebrated 1970s bachelor decor. In the bedroom, a massive laminated dresser and mirror, part of a bedroom suite from his former marriage, dominated one wall. His living room featured a carved wooden sofa in tones of cherry Nyquil. Red panne velvet bordered Moorish arches along the back. An orange phone, meant to match, sat beside his Heathkit ham radio set and telegraph key.

  I woke up here many mornings.

  At thirty-seven, my boyfriend had never smoked pot. In fact, since he wouldn’t smoke anything, I made pot brownies. I’d heard that sautéing weed in butter released its best properties, and I embarked on a culinary production using an entire ounce. Their smell billowed into the hallway, and when they were done, I cut the pan into nine big pieces. We each savored one and, four hours later, another. Finishing the pan, we settled into the sofa to watch Marilu Henner on Taxi.

  It was dark when I woke up. The radiator hissed like a python. Python. Oh, I could eat a snake! My boyfriend ricocheted off the dresser, shot into the other room, and crashed to the floor.

  Face down in the hall, he lay completely still. I turned him over, scooting velvet cushions under his head. He stirred, breathing audibly, and I relaxed.

  He started convulsing. The dog yelped maniacally.

  “I’m calling Nine-one-one,” I said.

  My boyfriend mumbled something about cops. Being stoned isn’t illegal, I assured him. We were in this very fix because the evidence was gone.

  At 4 A.M., two officers wedged themselves in the door, exploding backwards into the hall like Keystone Kops and crashing into the paramedics. I doubled over laughing. My boyfriend’s hands opened and closed involuntarily. His tongue lolled. The dog barked.

  The poor man recovered in a day, but Jules reported to Brunhilde.

  Inside the Allendale, everything went public. Near the garbage a corpulent clarinetist’s love letter to Sydney peeked out from coffee grounds. Wolfschmidt vodka bottles spilled from Betty’s trash. On the roof—one went there for air, to smoke dope, watch fireworks, sunbathe, or escape roommates—I saw, in a painter’s studio over in the annex, half-finished pictures of the Allendale’s tenants and stone lions propped on his easel.

  From the outside, we were invisible. Our windows were obscured by nearly a century of filth, a barrier not unlike NCSA’s high fence. I could see into the expensive co-op apartments across West End, though. One couple drew their shades nearly to the sill, leaving a nine-inch gap where their hips beat away on the bed. In other apartments, I saw candlelit dinner parties, fancy sofas, and stay-at-home moms in lives that changed and grew. Waiting in my Honda during alternate-side-of-the-street parking, I saw them anxiously hailing cabs or pushing strollers to Riverside Park. They bought tickets to our concerts yet did not recognize us.

  It was warm now, the May air pleasant. Waiting for the street sweeper, I flipped through People magazine, stopping at a picture of Itzhak Perlman. Big news—he’d broken a string. Behind him, Sam Sanders grinned from the piano. A halo of curls framed his face like a Lab puppy’s big ears. Why had he snapped at me back in Greensboro?

  Tossing away the magazine, I locked my car. I’d seen Sam hailing a cab in front of the Allendale, where he visited some singer. His concerts with cellist Leonard Rose got written up in the Times, and he was featured in recent stories about accompanists in The Wall Street Journal and Piano Quarterly.

  Sam was handsome, powerful, and probably rich.

  I leaned against my car. Sydney’s liquid flute tone, as golden and silky as her hair, spilled from her windows. The building seemed alive, its walls singing as if it might break free from its foundations in an elegant dance. My eyes swept the building’s stately exterior, the Gothic iron ALLENDALE PARTMENTS fixed into beige sandstone. Ivy clung to the curlicues of carved masonry and decorative balustrades.

  Like most people, I did not look closely, or I would have noticed how the vines tangled, untended. Brown leaves dropped to barren planters flanking the entrance. Cardboard patches covered jagged basement windows. The stucco flaked and eroded; ivy tugged the rusty fire escape from its moorings. The bricks were falling out, one by one.

  CHAPTER

  6

  Elixir of Love

  I HEARD MUSICIANS practicing piano arpeggios, clarinet long tones, and bassoon excerpts in apartments down the side streets as I walked the mile uptown to school. After passing the stone buildings of West End Avenue, I walked beyond the gates of Columbia University, Barnard College, and two theological seminaries, places where other eighteen-year-olds were starting lives very different from mine.

  Manhattan School of Music, founded on the East Side in 1917 as the Neighborhood Music School, changed its name and first offered bachelor’s degrees in the 1940s. After the Juilliard School of Music moved to Lincoln Center in 1969, Manhattan School took over its old building near Harlem, tucked beside Riverside Church and Grant’s Tomb.

  Before housing Juilliard, the structure was built for the Institute of Musical Art in 1910. Now, sixty-eight years later, the Claremont Avenue Edwardian was showing its history. When Manhattan School moved in, the first weathered-beige granite block was removed from the name JUILLIARD SCHOOL OF MUSIC and a new white stone inscribed with the word MANHATTAN was shoved in its place, its color standing out starkly from the rest of the façade.

  Although many music students considered Manhattan inferior to Juilliard, the school trained big names, among them composers David Amram, Anton Coppola, and John Corigliano, conductor George Manahan, divas Dawn Upshaw and Lauren Flanigan, and violin virtuoso Elmar Oliveira. Unlike Juilliard, Manhattan School also boasted a jazz department; its alumni included Herbie Hancock, Yusef Lateef, Herbie Mann, Max Roach, and Ron Carter.

  Settling into his new Philharmonic gig, my teacher from NCSA, Joe Robinson, had accepted an exclusive faculty contract at Manhattan School. His studio window overlooked Union Theological Seminary and was soundproofed by double walls and cork flooring. Arriving late by a half hour or more each week, Robinson started me on a fourth year of the same long-tone D, adding an occasional sixteen-bar melodic study from my dog-eared Barret Oboe Method. Robinson gave each of his students exactly the same routine, regardless of the oboist’s individual strengths and weaknesses.

  Though moving to New York signified a quantum leap in my lifestyle and opportunities, my lessons hadn’t changed a bit. Each Thursday at two I still had to put my hand on Robinson’s belly, just below the belt. He hadn’t stopped commenting on my “small lungs” and had even added a new feature to my lessons by describing in exquisite detail the breasts of the Philharmonic’s new flutist.

  The boob talk at least
cut down on critiques of my reeds. I’d spent the summer in Georgia taking reed-making lessons from the Atlanta Symphony’s principal oboist. Living alone in the Georgian Terrace Hotel for $12 a night, I had just enough left over to pay for instruction and my Greyhound bus fare home. Making reeds all day every day, my skill should have improved, but it hadn’t. My reeds still made sounds like dying fowl.

  However, I loved being in the center of New York City’s rich smorgasbord of classical music performances. Whereas visiting artists like Itzhak Perlman had come through North Carolina rarely, in New York I could hear internationally renowned soloists, opera productions, and orchestras at Carnegie Hall or Lincoln Center any week of the year, for the price of an inexpensive student ticket.

  The rest of my classes at the Manhattan School of Music were a snap, as we repeated the same music theory, sight-singing, and ear training I’d already studied at NCSA. No math or science was offered, and the few humanities courses—mostly taught by adjuncts—left much to be desired. Foreign-language classes, filled with vocalists who sang entire operas in Italian, French, and German, didn’t progress far beyond present tense. The art history teacher misspelled Renaissance. Yet Manhattan School’s tuition ($24,500 in 2004) was nearly as high as an Ivy League university like Harvard ($27,448 in 2004).

  Even if my reed-making needed work, I was advanced for a freshman oboe student, with excellent technique, rhythm, and an ear for playing well in tune. Robinson didn’t assign me the music that would develop these skills while learning the basic oboe repertoire. Because his students played little more than the same old D in lessons, only a few had the wherewithal to perform even a short solo work. Fortunately George Manahan, a talented young conductor on the school’s staff, immediately placed me as principal oboe in one of Manhattan School’s orchestras.