A Major Conservatory President Who Knows the Life of a Working Musician

Franz lists Patch non Trovo. In three he even auditioned successfully to be a backup singer in the Pet Shop Boys number one hit Go Best These days, it's a fitting anthem for the Manhattan School of Music's changing student body. We have more applications now than we ever have in our entire history. But the change has been that it's more and more international students from Asia filling those spaces.

Why do you think that is, um? I think the reason is it's because those cultures have a very strong educational program from elementary school on and they have a commitment to it. And I think what happened in North America is that there's less and less education at a lower level, and so you have fewer and fewer people who are then going to take it seriously because they didn't have the early training and exposed to it. Right, you believe that it's the same in Europe as well

as what's happening here, that they're solely eroding that. Yeah, when I talk to my colleagues, they're the heads of the major independent conservatories in Europe. The same thing is happening. It's just it's just delayed, maybe ten years from what we were. Do you see a future in which you just moved the school to Beijing? Why make all of them come all the way over here when most of them are there? I don't. Who knows about the future

is going to hold? But I don't because there's there's something else has happened that's countered the lack of education in public schools a bit, which is that community music schools have gotten better and better, and they have grown in size, and they have actually filled a lot of the gap and in some ways done it better than public schools would have done it because they're they're focused

solely on music. So you have places like the Merritt Music School in Chicago, which produced the McGill brothers, and in New York there's the Harlem School for the Arts and the settlement school in in the in the village. Those places have all branched out and gotten larger and done a better job than they had in the past, in part to make up for what's happening in the public school system. I'm assuming schools not just Manhattan School of Music, but other famous schools like Julian and Mannis.

I'm sure they will have some differentiation in their approaches. But but so there's not an academic program while they're there, or there is, I would say, you know, at a normal university or college, a kid goes to school for maybe fifteen hours a week of class, and the rest of their time is up to them to study, to

join clubs, to do volunteer work for themselves. Where I think at a conservatory, what you find is that the kids are so First of all, they're so driven because they're clear what they want at least at this point in their lives. And secondarily, the curriculum is probably somewhere around twenty five to thirty hours of classic academic right. Um, we're credited by Middle States Association, which is the same crediting agency that a credits Columbia University, and so we

have to provide. We we on the undergraduate level, we we offer a Bachelor of Music degree and Master of Music degree at the graduate level and a Doctor of Musical Arts. So in those programs you are probably in class twenty to thirty hours a week as opposed to a fifteen hour and then you've got all the practice

and all the rehearsals and everything else. So a for instance, a voice major a school like mine would take voice lessons obviously, might take choir of things that you would expect, and then they would also take French diction, Italian diction, German diction, English diction. They'll take music theory for two years, they'll take music history. They have to also take a

humanities core as well. So every semester that science, no science and math at my institution of most conservatives don't when they come to your school, is there an audition. That must be an audition process. So each year, the first week of March manis College of Music, ourselves and Juilliard hold our auditions the same week, so students that are coming wanting to come to your can come and

do all of us at one time. And so we have over two thousand students audition the first week in March every year for about four hundred spaces now the two between you or at your scho at my school. And but before that there's a pre screening audition. So we actually do a primary screening which students send in recordings and then they are either accepted to go to

the live audition or not. So there's another eight hundred or so before the two thousand that are screened out that we just say there's no way that they're going to make the audition. Is it safe to assume that they're all good if they're applying to you? Um, I would say most are good, but there's a few that go in there every year I think being naive, uh, and not knowing the level at all. To think that you didn't really know what you were getting into when

you sent your tape into Juilliard seems absurd to me. Well, I think again, most of the vast majority do. But there are always a few that you know, they they they've been told all their lives that they're fabulous, and you know, they don't know they're from I don't know, Wichita, Kansas and they don't. And then when there has told them, dear you don't really have it. Yeah, well, their finger

paintings are Picasso's. Exactly when the student body arrives in the incoming class, I would imagine not everybody makes it. Is there some attrition after the first year? Yeah, the

attrition every year. There's a bit of attrition in the first years, and maybe seven of the students don't come back, and when they don't want They were the best in their hometown and now they're with a bunch of other people who were the best in their hometown, and suddenly they're not sitting in the in the principal seat of the orchestra. They're sitting at the back of a section or something, and I think they realize, oh, this is going to be harder than I thought. Talent alone isn't

going to do it. I actually have to work really hard. But going from college to the NFL, right, I would imagine some cultural conditions as well where they come to that they're not New Yorkers, they don't want to live in New York, and there's sort of that. There's a far there's a little bit of that, but I think that actually most of the kids who come to New York really want to be here. Because New York is

not a place that you feel lukewarm about. New York is a place that you either love or you really don't want to want to get out. You want to get out, and I think so. I think most of the students that's not why they leave. You think about

young people going to school. I had some pretty intense conversations with the staff at one or two schools, and they described me privately, Um, you know some of the statistics drug over doses and sexual assault, and I would always imagine that the discipline that was part of the classical repertoire. You have a minimum if if none of that correct. Yeah, I think compared to most other institutions,

we have very little, but we have our own. Every every institution, some people come in there and they're young, they're very in the years old, and they're in New York and they're away from their parents for the first time. We certainly have some of that, but it's not nearly one of my colleagues that more traditional institutions tell me about. Now you're from Sheboygan, I am what did your dad

do for a living? My father was a pattern maker in a furniture company, which was he made the first chair. If when a when a chair was designed, he would take it from the designer, make the first chair, and make the patterns that would then be used on the family line to mass produce it. Your mom did she work? She worked in the home until she was in her fifties, and then she decided she was going to break out of my father's a stricture of never working outside the

house because he was the breadwinner. Um. And she got a job at a grocery store as a checkout clerk, and she did that until she was never happier. She didn't. She stopped working when she was seventy eight years old when she said she just couldn't stand that long for

that many hours any longer. Well, my mother, who had six children and was home in a very kind of suffocatingly traditional How many kids in your and there were five, three biological, two adopted, and then my parents had foster children, so we had about ten foster children coming in and out of the house when I was growing up. I'm number three of the biological. What was music in the family when you were a child? None of none of my parents are musical. Um. So I got my start

through public education. So in fourth grade, we got to choose an instrument if we wanted to, and I started playing the trumpet, and then I switched to french horn. Later I wasn't a very good trumpet player at french horn player. And then in tenth grade, when I went to high school, my best friend said to me, let's join the choir. And I said, no, no, no, I'm not going to join the choir. Thank you very much.

We're not going to do that. He kept being persistent, so we did, and I immediately was placed in the at that time, the top choir because it was several It was quite a robust music program back then in the dark ages. And I was also put in this very very small choir that was only sixteen people. So immediately I started singing and being very successful at that and that's when I decided I was going to go

into music. Um, I had first wanted to be a minister, then I wanted to be a social worker, and then I wanted to be a teacher. There's a pattern in there. Then I went to college and studied music and decided I was going to be a perform and then later when I got through uh my bachelor's and master's degree. Uh,

and moved to New York. I realized that I liked education and I wanted education transformed by life because I came from a working class family, and I thought there would be nothing better than to combine music and my love for higher education and help transform other people's lives. You went to Lawrence University in Appleton. Mari ton of Gucci was your voice coach, and uh, we do a little bit certace. What made Mari Tona Gucci so effective

for you? Well, she was both effective and frightening. Um. She was about five feet tall. She was somebody that everyone revered and feared. She could reduce you to rubble in two seconds. Where she was from. She was born in California. Her parents were from Japan. Um. She she taught me about excellence, and she taught me she was probably one of the best musicians I ever met. She wasn't a very good voice teacher, actually, but she was

a great musician. And she really taught me that every single nuance and every millisecond counts and matters, and that I think is something that is rare in society now, that attention to detail, that attention to being as perfect as you can be she wasn't a very good voice teacher, which was a great musician. How do you distinguish the two. Being a great voice teacher is how they teach you at the technique of singing to actually produce a sound

better and better every time. I got better, but I didn't get better I think in the ways that I should have. If my next teacher at the San Francisco Conservatory music for my master's degree, with someone who instilled in me a sense of pride and myself and confidence in myself, because because Marina Gucci had sort of reduced that a bit, because if she was so demanding and kind of a punitive way, my next teacher was just terrific. He just built me up. You know. Personally. Was your

family supportive of you doing this kind of work? Yeah, they were supportive, I think in part because they didn't They didn't really know much of education, so so what was great about that was they just said, we want you to be happy. And the great thing about my parents always was that if I had been a truck driver or i'd be a president of a conservatory, it wouldn't have mattered to them. As long as I was a good person. I worked hard and I did my best.

It's always interesting when you have parents who say they want you to be happy and they mean it. Yes, was it at Appleton or San Francisco that William Sloane Coffin spoke in the campus? It was first semester of my freshman year in Lawrence. Yes, and uh it was political activism, something that was royal ing for you when you were going to school. It was beginning to boil I had. I had been a nuclear power sort of

activist when I was in high school. They were trying to build a nuclear power plant near my home, my hometown and no, well they had several already along the along Lake Michigan, but they were kind of trying to build another one. And I was working and I was doing some protests here there to star not anti nuclear weaponry, anti utility. Correct, That's what I've worked in for about twenty five years. And so when I went to college and I saw and I heard williams sound Coffin, he

was talking about nuclear proliferation as in war. And I had never been to a public lecture before, and I went because I they said it was good for me, and so I went because the authorities at the school said it was good for me. So I went and I loved it. I couldn't. I thought, this is what college is about. I can learn all these things and I can get exposed to these incredible, inspiring people. He really was important in my education because it was so

early on. And then later when I lived in New York and I saw him walking down the street near Riverside Church, which is where he spent many years since you know, um, I went up to him and I said, I heard you wish and you really thank you so much for that great You know, we were your parents were either we're both of your parents liberal or vaguely liberal people or now no, I would say my parents were on the conservative side. Although they were independents. They

would vote. They would always say they voted for the person. Um. My mother, however, in her later years, has become a Democrat, and it is very much kind of hard not to these days. She was very happy when Governor Walker was defeated.

She's very unhappy when Hillary didn't win. And I think that came out because when I, um, I think when I came out of the closet, she started changing her views and she realized that her child was not being protected by society and right and was treated fairly, and she was and that changed a lot of her views. And she's just the most incredible person you could ever meet.

And back, Yeah, when we go back to in my hometown, my husband and I, she introduces my husband as her son in law and it's very sweet and it's and it's important. Actually, was that difficult to come out with your roots? Well, it was in the nineteen nine so it was. It was not easy at a place like Lawrence Appleton is the home of Joe McCarthy. Um. Perfect. So but you know, I have to say that that I didn't have any overt problems among the faculty or

the administration. There were some student things that I endured, but um. And then when I went to San Francisco, I didn't know it. I didn't know what San Francisco the honest when I moved there. But I found out very quickly. More oxygen there for you, Francisco, A little bit for you. What was the joy of singing? Well,

I love I have to say I love being on stage. Um. I remember when I was student training and one of the opera directors was saying to the group, now, you've got to make sure you get in the light, getting the light. Jim never is out of the light. I just I naturally went to wherever the spotlight was right. So I love that part of it. I also loved

the magnificent magnificence of the music. Um, you know, to be performing with a great orchestra in a great hall like I've performed with the New York Philarmonic maybe eight hundred times. In the New York choral artists back in the nineties and the eighties. Joe what's his name, Joe Flummerfeld, I always say his name on the on the other radio. Yeah, and the New York Choral artist, Joe Flummerfeld director, I'd say, correct.

But so you perform with them, yes, a lot under Mayton Massour mostly, but also with Sir Colin Davis and Bernstein and other guest conductors as well. I mean to

work with Bernstein. Was we did Maller second course. Mahler was the thing that he was particularly noted for, um and it was a year before he died, and it was for performances and he never looked, He never had a score in front of him and he's getting up there in age, and obviously he was relatively close to death, but the amount of energy and inspiration that he gave from the podium was I'll never forget it. Then there's a physical part of singing. It's just viscerally feels good

when it's on. You just can't imagine anything feeling better than that, especially with a symphony. Granted this was not a philharmonic, but I was on the stage with Jim and Nanni with a big orchestra, like when adp Sorra or ninety and when they fired up Bali high and almost classically did a medley, you felt the chill go up your spine. Here will those people played that music five ft behind you. There's nothing like a live orchestra, and there's nothing like an orchestra of a size because

the Broadway the orchestras get smaller and smaller. They're miked and so masks a little bit of how small they are. But it's just not the same as an acoustic orchestra that's huge. South Pacific kind a very successful run. I guess Broadway audiences have become much more generous in terms of the lower their expectation about that sound quality because the music it did sound a little thin, you know, it was only like a I don't know what it

was like. I don't like it was such a difference now to get back to and for our listeners we mentioned that ms M. I'm referring to the Manhatan School of Music. So when does MSM begin for you? You start teaching their when Well, I didn't teach there in the beginning. I moved to New York a day after Christmas night four solely because I wanted to study with a wonderful, wonderful teacher who taught me really how to sing,

Marlene Amalas. And she is a teacher of people like Susan and Graham and Touchy on a try on us, and the whole bevy of people who have sung at the mat um. She taught at Manhattan School Music at the time. She now teaches at Manhattan School Music, Julliard and Curtis. So I went there because I wanted to study with her, and also because I needed to defer my student loans. So I did that, and after a semester, I needed to have find a job because I was running out of money, and I did pay my rent

so party town, are you living here? I was living in health kitchen and eighth back back when I with the place, living at a cheap compartment, right, no longer, right, exactly, It's as expensive as everywhere else there. And then um so I got a job as an administrative assistant in the Summer school office. And then four months later I started working the admission office as assistant director. And then I became the director of career planning, and then I

came the director of admission. You're doing that early run you're talking about. You got the bug? You liked it? I did, And I realized then beyond liking a steady paycheck, you liked the realized that not only the institution was great, but this is what I really wanted to do. This was actually giving me more fuel for my soul over a daily in a daily basis than what being a

singer was. And it was, but I but the great thing was I was able to continue to sing, singing in two groups for the most part, the New York Choral Artists with the New York Philharmonic and a few other visiting orchestras, and then another group in the village called Voices of ascension. So I had what I thought was the perfect combination and of being a professional musician

and yet doing full time what I wanted to do. Interesting, when you find a job and you're a performer, and so it's I think it's the same for whole performers, regardless of what your singing, classical repertoire, or you're acting or playing an instrument or what have you are doing comedy. I don't know that when you find that job, it's the money gig, that's the paycheck gig. You stumble on one that you actually like, and it's the birth of a career. I agree, and I can't imagine doing anything

better with my life. You're listening to Manhattan's School of Music president James Gandry from his days as a tenor making ends meet from gig to gig. He's here in the choir singing Porgy and Bess with the New York Philharmonic under the incomparable Zubin Mehta, enough leader of the New York classical music scene. His former New York Philharmonic director Zarin made a Yes, that's Zubin's brother. It wasn't easy, but I got Zaren on the record about his favorite composers.

I mean it sounds pretty trite with people want to hear this Shoe. I love Shoe, but sho was song She's Somewhere. You're indifferent too, Yeah, haven't got enough time here. Zaren made his other strong opinions in our archive at Here's the Thing dot org. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. I'm back with the

president of the Manhattan School of Music, James Gandry. You're listening to his very first recording as a professional singer in John Adams Harmonium with the San Francisco Symphony, recorded in Gandry has ultimate responsibility for the hiring and firing of the school's two hundred and fifty full and part time teachers, who spend every day with students in classrooms

and one on one. It's a relationship that is very intimate, and I don't mean that in an inappropriate way, particularly in voice, because unlike other instruments where you can a teacher can actually show the student, hold your fingers this way, hold your arm this way, put the violin and or your chin this way. Um, raise your elbows this way. For a pianist or something. You can only do that really through imagery and through feel with the voice. Because

you can't see the voice, you can't manipulate the voice. UM. So I think that half of the half of the success of any voice teacher student relationship is a personal one. The other half is a technical one and knowing what you're saying and and and being able to translate imagery to doing something that actually works for the student and and and each student is different because each body is different. Also,

so residences are slightly different for everybody. So the intuition that a great teacher has to know how to change the approach that they do to technical the technical work that the student the teacher are doing is what I think UM delineates between a eight teacher and an okay teacher and just a bad teacher it just doesn't really know how to teach at all and shouldn't be teaching UM.

And also, I think to make sure that you know how to guide the student to put themselves out there again into risk because I think you know, being on stage every time you perform, there is a risk. There's a risk that you're not going to do well, and you're in front of all these people. Know, most people don't do their job in front of an audience, and often they want to be safe, and when they're safe,

they actually don't do the right thing. And I would teach it, and that's it was like no new drop on. I'd sit there and I'd say, you've got to develop this very artificial ability. You've got to develop this very foreign capacity to not care what people think about you. And we care very much about what they think about this. But and we do before we go on stage, and we do after become on stage. But the trick is that while you're on stage doing it, you have to risk.

You have to jump off the cliff and dry anyway. Do you have a teach Do you have a teach voice? There? I don't now what I did back in the in the day I taught performance classes, not actually individual voice who told them all how to find their light. Indeed, and continue doing that when I was when I moved to Chicago in two thousands. You left ms M, Yes, I did. After fifteen years. I left MSN sure too, because I thought it was time to move on. I

needed to grow in different ways than I could. I think if I had stayed I love the institution, but I wanted to actually lead an institution. So the opportunity to be the head materialized where where I was the dean of Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. So I did that for seven and a half years, and in the last year and a half, I was asked by the then provost of the institution to be the interim dean of the College of Education as well.

So I had to deanships at once. Then she laughed, the institution the provost and I became the interim interim provost. Provost is sort of the dean of the dean's It's the chief academic officer and all the deans of the colleges report to the provost. So I had the dean of pharmacy in the Den of Business and the dean of education is um. I wanted it because I thought that I could be a president. To me, like, you're

just power badge. Your power now, transforming people's lives and making a difference in them is what I get off on. So I realized more and more that unless you're at the very top roll, you can't change an institution. You can have an effect in a certain number of people's lives.

But when you're the president, you affect significance. I'm assuming that as you climb this ladder administratively at these fine institutions, does the performance and the part of you that's a singer gets squeezed out more and more when you climb the ladder. Almost everyone does. And whether you're a historian or you're a physicist or whatever, when you climb that ladder, you stop doing your the other work because you just

can't any longer. It just takes up judge job. So you're there for seven and a half years, and what entices you to come back? So after my seven half years is Dean and then five and a half years as provost, I was beginning to think of looking for presidencies, And so I was, and so the president of manhatt School Music had just resigned, and so someone had said to me, you know, can I nominate you? And I said sure, But I mean, Manhattan School Music is not

going to hire me. Why do you say that? Because I have an idea, which is that? Is it the idea that they knew you when you were like junior, You were in the lower ranks and they just didn't have the ability to see you. And that's what I thought, And I'm sure there was part of that during the process of them. I'm sure that was a discussion they had. But in the end I was offered the job, and I was thrilled to death to be coming back to a place where I had started as an administrative assistant

at one time. UH to become the ninth president of the school, following some people who were pretty impressive. Did much change and did much change of Manhattan since you were gone. One of the things about conservatories is that conservative is in their name. Higher education in general, although politically fairly liberal, is in their own curriculum and their programs fairly conservative. Um, So conservatives have a hard time changing.

So right now we're in the middle of a planning process and one of the things we're gonna be talking about is how should we change and how do we continue to hold onto the traditions which are important at the same time as looking forward to a new world that we need to prepare our students for. So um, there was a lot that was very similar. I think what what the institution had always done a really great

job at was the actual education of the students. What institutions like MIND have neglected are the facilities and the promotion of the institution. I'm assuming that thirty years ago, schools have Manhattan School of Music didn't have to do much promotion. People who were disposed towards that they knew who you were, and they were like like Harvard, they were headed in your direction. There was a lot of that.

There was also, um, a sense that doing that kind of promotion maybe was yes, and so you just didn't do it because those of us do at this level. So I think that's long gone, thank goodness. Um. But when I arrived, there was very little social media going on, almost none. Um. We were not promoting ourselves very much, and we were living off our reputation, which was a great reputation and thank god, it is so good. So the institution kept going. But now I think we have

a different presence. You do start uh adding to that dent. But the good news is, you know, the number of followers on Twitter and Facebook, etcetera. Have been exponentially growing for us. So that's been terrific. In our numbers are this year. Application numbers are up again what percentage to the extent you can say, are on some kind of financial aid. About two thirds are on institutional financial light,

meaning in money that we give them. Uh, there's another group, another percentage I'm not exactly sure that also received government aid and outside aid, but not necessarily for lots. You have four hundred incoming per year, correct, because the most conservatories have a disproportionate number of graduate students. A lot of graduate students go to universities for their undergraduate education and then they come to conservatories for their graduate program.

So you'll find either fifty fifty or sixty forty kinds of balances at most conservatories graduate to undergraduate. So that's why there's four hundred coming in every year, because we were replacing them every two years as opposed to four year undergraduate program in entering freshman classes, how many of the four which the housing imperative for them in an institution in Manhattan, So we have a we have a

residence hall where my husband and I live. Actually, um, we have a slightly better dorm room than they do. Where is that. It's at the school, So it's at one and Claremont Avenue, which is right across from Riverside Church. About half of our student body lives in the residence hall, and fresh and sophomores are required to live there. When I went to that commencement with Long Long, where was it held? The game with the side, Can I tell you something? It was? Absolutely it was. I mean I

had tears streaming down my face. We were up on that altar and I'm there with Long Long who I worship that commencement? Oh my god, that's the advertisement for your school right there. You should take that and put it online. We do not live stream it actually doesn't

have it. Um every year when I have people like yourself getting honorary doctorates and I say to them, what it's going to be alike, and you know, I explained it to them and they they understand it, but when they actually experienced it, they just remember bbne Earth when we gave her an honorary doctrine and she's now on our board of trustees. Also, I told her, I said, you're going to be overwhelmed in a way that you've never been overwhelmed, no matter all the great things you've

done in front of the lights and everything. This is going to be one of the big moments. And she after it was over, she said, Jim, you were absolutely right. That was one of the greatest things in my life to get that honorary Doctor trit and to be there in that grandeur of that whole thing, and to see the kids and the who the whole thing is. It's it's everyone who knows me well knows. There are two

days that are my favorite days of the year. Which is the day, that moving day, when the kids come with their families and they've got their cars and their unloading their stuff, and they are full of energy and excitement and a little bit of fear about this journey they're about to take. And then it's the last day, which is commencement, which is the same thing. They're excited and they're also fearful the next step they're going to take.

They don't know what it's going to be on. Do you teach conducting as well, Yes, we do, And and you know, being a conductor is a very very hard job. Why do you tell me what? Well, first of all, just technically it's it's difficult because you have to make sure that you know how to guide an orchestra so that every single person understands the slightest thing that happens in the tip of your baton, but also it's leadership

without bludgeoning. Often. I mean some conductors, certainly old time um you know, George Zel, etcetera, were known as to be pretty pretty hard task masters. That doesn't really work some watch anymore. But to be able to inspire a group of people to follow you and also at the same time demanding that they do um and having a certain rapport with the audience, all of that together. I mean, I've watched Leonard Slatkin teach, because he's on our board

all Sound. He now teaches. He takes two fellows from our conducting program and works with them every year, has them conduct here, and then he goes until this year when he stepped down from Detroit. He would take them to the Detroit Symphony and give them a full rehearsal with the Detroit Symphony on the same repertoire that they

conducted with our students. So he takes half the concert, they take the other half of the concert, and just watching him work with really talented young people, telling them, do you see what you didn't do right there? If you had just done this slightly different thing with your risk, they would have followed. But what you did was unclear those new ones, and you can't see anything consistently. I mean, books are keys trying to, you know, sweep a smoke away from a from a pan that's on fire in

a kitchen. And remember the two conductors that I would I worked with the most, which was Zuba Mata and Kurt Massour the New York Philharmonic, And they could not have been more different conductors. I mean they are world's apart. Um. Zuban's stick technique is as good as any I ever worked with him. You could follow that baton without any problem, anytime, during any problem of any sort. He was amazing. He was also incredibly effusive in a very generous kind of way. Um.

And I think Missour was chillier he was. He was harder his stick. He wasn't very good in part because he had a you know a bit of a disability with his right arm. But it was always easy to follow him because what he did was he learned how to convey what he wanted through his face and his body, so he made up for what he was lacking with his right arm. And what goes into the choice between stick,

no stick, have no stick? Oh really, I didn't remember that but there's very few conductors who don't use a stick. Sometimes the conductors will mostly use a stick and then put it down for certain passages, usually in very subtle, soft passages. I don't find it necessary. It's certainly easier with a stick. Um. I think you have to look if you're if you're a performer, you have to watch far more closely if you don't have a stick. I got two more questions for you. Your husband, What kind

of work does he do? He's a psychotherapist? Oh my goodness, former lawyer turns the psychotherapist that comes in handy or it's an ongoing pain in the ask to have someone, No, it's not at all. Um. People he meets they asked him, you know, are you analyzing? And he says, you're not paying me, so no, I'm not, you know, and the same thing you probably would say for me. But when you know, when you're home, you're just you're just a couple like anybody else. Was he a classical music of

a senato when he met you. I mean he grew up playing piano, so he knew about classic He wasn't going to the symphony or the operator regular basis, although he was going, and now we go of course a lot. And oh and he's got great ears. He can he can, especially with singers. He will start to explain why he thinks the singer was good or bad, and then I will tell him the technical reasons why what he's saying

is correct. And the other question I have is people, when they finished the program, where do most of them end up? The vast majority of our our graduates have what would be called portfolio careers UM. And what I mean by that is that they might play in a regional symphony orchestra, they'll teach privately or at a college UM, and they might be an administrator at a nonprofit. And so they put together this portfolio care of somewhat freelancing,

but they're steady, and that has been true forever. I remember hearing of the now former president of Juilliard talk on thirty years ago, maybe Joe Pleasey, and he said, uh, of Juilliard graduates. Of the graduates said they their primary source of income was teaching, not performing. And I think that's been true forever. And I don't think that's going to change. Ensembles, the major ensembles, and not just confining ourselves to the Big Five, as they used to say, but on not to l A and UH and so

forth and around the world. Would you say that a significant number of chairs have roots in Manus, MSM and Juliet, Oh. Absolutely from New York. If you look at the seven independent conservatories of music in America San Francisco, Cleveland, New England, Curtis, and then the New York Conservatories UM, you will find that the majority of people in the top twenty orchestras

in America are graduates from those institutions. There's something about them, the smallness, the intensity, the quality of the faculty that I think it's a hothouse for great music making. You know, you look at to the New York Pharmonic, for instance, ten percent of the members are are graduates of our school. About nearly of the met Orchestra is UM. The the

Detroit Symphony for instance, about more than ten percent. Also, so you look at all these orchestras, then you add all these other institutions in there, and it's the vast majority of those orchestras well. I have never been as inspired to want to aid a cause. Then when I was invited, it was a lovely day. I thought why are you people giving me an award? You know what I mean? And I was so humbled and to be there with Long Long was one of the greats. I mean,

what you guys do there, it is a miracle. It's so beautiful. And when I see these kids do what they do and grow up and change, and then when I get to go to the met or to go to the New York Pharmonic and see them and they were students and now they're on that stage, it's just I mean, this year alone, for instance, there are more than any of our grads are are at the Metropolitan Opera. And I try to go to every performance of of of all the all the alumni performances. I mean, my pride,

it's like this incredible father pride that one has. This too is James Gandry. Last year, to celebrate the renovation of the school's main concert hall, Jim the working tenor re emerged. He cleared his president's schedule to rehearse Beethoven's Choral Fantasy. The result is this performance, alongside dozens of current and former Manhattan School students and faculty. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing is said to say, is as s