Not long ago, Lincoln Center stood as a monument to everything that was pretentious and staid about the performing arts in America.
Certainly the archly conservative programming of the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera, as well as the gilded interiors of their Lincoln Center auditoriums, suggested a closer relationship to 19th Century Europe than 20th Century America.
The Lincoln Center of the 1990s, however, might startle the cultural advocates who founded the place in 1962. Though the Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera and New York City Ballet are still in residence, they now share the spotlight with jazz, avant-garde music and, beginning next year, American popular song.
Specifically, the Jazz at Lincoln Center program — with an annual budget of approximately $5 million — stands as America’s pre-eminent institution devoted to jazz. And beginning in the 1998-99 season, Lincoln Center will unveil a new department, tentatively called American Popular Standards.
Like the jazz program that paved the way, American Popular Standards will offer themed concerts, film screenings and educational sessions, all with the hope of nurturing a deeper understanding of music by George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern and the rest of the Tin Pan Alley pantheon.
So why has Lincoln Center begun to swing?
“We had taken a survey, and we found out that our audience, not surprisingly, was old and getting older, and rich and getting richer,” says Nathan Leventhal, president of Lincoln Center.
“Now I have nothing against old and rich people, especially rich,” jokes Leventhal, “but I think for any performing arts center to be satisfied with an average age of 55 is a mistake.
“So these programs were designed to appeal to both a more diverse audience and a younger audience.”
In this regard, Lincoln Center faced the same crisis that has haunted arts organizations across America for more than a decade. As far back as 1985, the American Symphony Orchestra League, a nonprofit group that keeps track of the industry, warned that growth was slowing and deficits rising among classical institutions across North America.
By 1993, the league had delved into the subject again, concluding that “American orchestras should reflect more closely the cultural mix, needs and interests of their communities.”
No arts complex took that challenge closer to heart than Lincoln Center, which in 1987 launched a summertime Classical Jazz series. Not that everyone in Lincoln Center management was smitten with the idea.
“Some people said, `Well, you know, jazz is not really a very rigorous art form, it’s all improvisation, it doesn’t belong here,’ ” remembers Leventhal.
“I’m not a jazz lover at all, but I learned from Wynton Marsalis (Jazz at Lincoln Center’s artistic director) that the complaints were baloney, that there was as much rigor and technique in jazz as there is in any other form of (concert) music, that there’s as much variety and excellence in music of Duke Ellington as there is in W.A. Mozart.”
Ultimately, of course, it’s the ticket-buying public that decides the success of any arts program, and the response to Classical Jazz was so favorable that Lincoln Center turned jazz into a year-round offering in 1991. Last year, in an unprecedented move, Lincoln Center made the jazz department a “constituent” at Lincoln Center, meaning it now was equal to its symphonic and operatic counterparts.
Never before had an American art form been thus honored by an arts institution otherwise devoted to European culture. Moreover, surveys indicated that the new offerings attracted audiences that were 15 to 20 years younger than Lincoln Center’s typical crowd, says Leventhal.
The obvious artistic and commercial success of Jazz at Lincoln Center pointed the way toward subsequent developments, most notably the debut of the Lincoln Center Festival in 1996. During its second season, last summer, the multi-arts event featured the New York Philharmonic in collaboration with jazz avant-gardist Ornette Coleman in a historic performance of Coleman’s epic “Skies of America.” Here was the kind of daring, genre-bending collaboration that few, if any, of America’s arts institutions would attempt.
Though Leventhal hastens to note that Lincoln Center’s commitment to classical music remains firm, there’s no question that the institution is redefining itself for a new millennium. And though several arts centers across America have followed Lincoln Center’s lead — most notably Carnegie Hall, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and the Los Angeles Music Center, each with jazz programs in various stages of development — none has approached the breadth or depth of Lincoln Center’s commitment to music with an American cadence.
“We’re lucky, because we have a board that is committed and wants us to expand,” says Marsalis.
“And we’re fortunate to have Rob Gibson (executive producer and director), because he’s one of the hardest working people who ever has lived.
“He and I talk almost every day, and we are deeply committed to bringing this music to people. That we had the opportunity to come together in New York and build a program that could provide a service to the public — through our music — was like a godsend to us.”
The program that Marsalis, Gibson and their artistic advisers (Albert Murray and Stanley Crouch) have conceived certainly set a high standard. The lineup of 150-plus events each year includes shrewdly programmed concerts featuring guest artists with the resident Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra; recitals spotlighting esteemed pianists such as Cuban artist Chucho Valdez and Modern Jazz Quartet founder John Lewis; film screenings on topics such as “Dizzy in Celluloid” and “The Wizard (Sidney Bechet) on Film”; young people’s concerts and competitions; and a weekly broadcast series on National Public Radio.
At a time when Chicago’s Symphony Center prepares to enter the next century with a newly expanded, $110 million facility, Lincoln Center’s model would be well worth following.
“We’re going all the way,” says Leventhal. “If a performing arts center isn’t a creative risk-taker, who the hell is going to be?
“Our luck has been that we’ve succeeded in everything we’ve done. But you know that the law of averages says that we’ll have clinkers too.
“Nobody’s perfect, but our batting average has been pretty good so far.”
